“In all the years I’ve been a therapist, I’ve yet to meet one girl who likes her body.” – Mary Pipher
Disordered eating is difficult to deal with particularly because eating is necessary and cannot be simply stopped as in smoking cessation or abstaining from drugs or alcohol. One must learn to eat appropriately not stop. In binge eating disorder (BED), the initiation of eating frequently results in the ingestion of wildly excessive amounts. It is called disinhibited eating as there appears to be no restraints (inhibitions) that stop food intake. Once eating starts it goes on without anything holding it back.
“Binge eating disorder is the most common eating disorder in the United States, affecting 3.5% of women, 2% of men, and up to 1.6% of adolescents.” – National Eating Disorders Association. BED is associated with body weight and around 2/3 of individuals with BED are obese. It has not been proven but it is thought that overweight and obese individuals chronically diet and are chronically hungry. The disinhibited eating, binge, is much like going off the wagon for an alcoholic; once, started excessive intake results.
Contemplative practices have shown promise for the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. Yoga practice has been shown to reduce emotional eating (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/30/stop-emotional-eating-with-yoga/). In addition, research demonstrates that mindfulness based interventions are effective for reducing the incidence of some obesity related behaviors that lead to overeating; binge eating, emotional eating, and external eating. (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/26/eat-mindfully-for-obesity/). So, it would seem appropriate to further investigate the application of mindfulness for eating disorders like BED.
In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and Eating Behavior in Adolescent Girls at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4544599/
Pivarunas and colleagues investigated the relationship of mindfulness to binge eating, eating in the absence of hunger, the reinforcing value of food, and eating attitudes, in adolescent overweight and obese girls. They found that girls who were high in mindfulness were significantly less likely to engage in binge eating and had less concern with eating.
Pivarunas and colleagues also found that high mindfulness was associated with lower levels of eating in the absence of hunger. Thus the individual is less likely to eat palatable foods in the absence of physiological hunger. In addition, high mindfulness was associated with lower levels of the reinforcing value of food. Thus high mindful individuals find food less reinforcing and are less willing to work for preferred, palatable snack foods.
These results represent an important piece in the case for mindfulness’ applicability to the prevention of binge eating. The higher levels of present moment awareness associated with mindfulness may make the individual more aware of their actual state of hunger and satiety, producing better control of eating.
Mindfulness also is known to improve emotion regulation, allowing the individual to sense and feel emotions but react to them appropriately. Additionally, mindfulness has been shown to reduce perceived stress and the physical and emotional responses to stress. Hence the emotional triggers for a binge eating episode may be less likely to actually produce one in a high mindfulness individual.
Finally, mindfulness is associated with mindful eating. That is a mindful individual is aware of eating and all of its associated sensations while they’re eating. Frequently eating, particularly excessive eating, occurs while the individual is distracted, watching TV, engaged in conversation, texting, reading etc. This has been shown to produce overeating. Hence, by improving the present moment awareness of eating, the individual is more aware of their body’s signals of hunger and satiety and more likely to stop eating at an appropriate amount.
So, practice mindfulness and fight disordered eating.
“Most women in our culture, then, are disordered when it comes to issues of self-worth, self-entitlement, self-nourishment, and comfort with their own bodies; eating disorders, far from being ‘bizarre’ and anomalous, are utterly continuous with a dominant element of the experience of being female in this culture.” – Susan Bordo
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies