How to Tell if Your Eating is Disordered—and When to Seek Help
If you have moments where you feel out of control around food but are unsure if your eating habits are problematic, the term “disordered eating” might sound scary.
A perfectly reasonable first response could be jumping to the conclusion that disordered eating doesn’t apply to you. After all, how could it, when you’re simply adhering to the rules you’ve been taught while following various diet programs?
Additionally, the term “disordered eating” is confusingly similar to “eating disorder.”
The first step to understanding whether or not your eating habits might be disordered is to learn the difference between disordered eating and eating disorders:
Eating behaviors occur on a spectrum. On one end is optimal, healthy eating (sometimes referred to as “normal eating”). Optimal eating is characterized by eating when you’re hungry, stopping when you’re full, not restricting foods, holding a positive body image, etc.
Eating disorders are on the other end of that spectrum. And disordered eating falls in between the two.
What are eating disorders?
Eating disorders are clinically diagnosable and include:
Anorexia Nervosa - characterized by extremely restrictive caloric intake and an intense fear of gaining weight
Bulimia Nervosa - characterized by recurring episodes of binging (consuming a large amount of food within a concrete amount of time), followed by behaviors to compensate for the calories consumed (purging), including self- induced vomiting, over-exercising, fasting, or laxatives
Binge Eating Disorder - characterized by consuming a large amount of food within a concrete amount of time without the use of compensatory behaviors (purging) afterward
Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED) - characterized by symptoms of anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder without falling into strict diagnostic criteria
Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) - characterized by limitations in the amount and/or types of food consumed, but without any distress about body shape or size or fears of fatness
Eating disorders can only be diagnosed and treated by a credentialed professional, including:
• Registered dietitians
• Licensed mental health professionals
• Physicians
• Certified Eating Disorders Specialists
I am none of these, and thus I cannot diagnose you with an eating disorder nor treat an existing one. That’s out of my scope of practice.
However, if you suspect that you have an eating disorder, I would be happy to help you find the appropriate professional who can assist you with diagnostics and treatment.
What is disordered eating?
In between optimal eating and eating disorders is disordered eating—which is most likely why you’re reading this article.
If you recognize some of your current eating behaviors in the disordered eating portion of the spectrum, you’re not alone.
A 2008 large-scale survey conducted by SELF magazine in conjunction with the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, out of more than 4,000 participants, 75 percent of women admitted to regularly engaging in disordered eating and exercise patterns.
Although this survey was conducted with women, men are not exempt either; in fact, men are most likely underrepresented in surveys and studies about disordered eating because of the stigmas they face in admitting to these behaviors.
So what does disordered eating actually look like?
It can include behaviors such as:
Obsession with weight control
Preoccupation with food/eating
Chronic dieting/yo-yo dieting
Villainizing foods (characterizing foods as “bad” or “off limits”)
Skipping meals (or similar behaviors) to restrict calories
Fears and anxieties around food
Feeling out of control around food
Emotional eating
Binge eating (not quite to the extreme of binge eating disorder)
Compensatory behaviors, such as “making up” for a binge by restricting, purging, or over-exercising
Worries about body image
Orthorexia (an obsessive preoccupation with the “cleanliness”, “healthiness,” or “purity” of food)
As you can see from this list, there is some overlap between disordered eating and eating disorder behaviors. So, where is the line?
Some of the indicators that disordered eating has become an eating disorder are the quantity and frequency with which the disordered behaviors occur, the intensity of obsession or psychological disturbance they cause, and the degree to which they interfere with normal functioning.
Now that you understand the difference between eating disorders and disordered eating, let’s talk about a few of the behaviors that can occur on that side of the spectrum:
Emotional eating - Eating that is performed as a response to a strong positive or negative emotion, rather than as a response to physical hunger. Emotional eating can be in response to uncomfortable emotions or stress, therefore comfort eating and stress eating are both types of emotional eating, but it can also be in response to strong positive emotions.
Comfort eating - The act of soothing uncomfortable emotions by using food to change your emotional state, regardless of your state of physical hunger. In other words, when you feel bad, you eat to feel better—a form of emotional eating.
Stress eating - Eating that is performed as a response to stress, rather than as a response to physical hunger. A form of emotional eating.
Binge eating - NEDA, the National Eating Disorder Association defines a binge episode as having 2 characteristics:
Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any 2-hour period), an amount of food that is definitely larger than what most people would eat in a similar period of time under similar circumstances.
A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating).
Binge eating may be for emotional reasons, or it may not.
Overeating - Eating past the point of fullness. Emotional eating and binge eating could be considered overeating if you were to eat past the point of fullness. Overeating may be for emotional reasons, or it may not.
When is it time to seek help?
You may recognize some of your own behaviors in the descriptions of eating disorders or disordered eating. If so, I invite you to check in with yourself and see how those behaviors feel to you. Occasionally skipping a meal or overeating, for example, does not necessarily mean your relationship with food is problematic.
However, if you feel that your thoughts or actions toward food are taking away from your sense of well-being, or you would like to change the way you think or act around food for any reason, your journey toward restoring a normal relationship with food will be greatly facilitated by working with a professional.
In terms of treatment, the majority of individuals I work with fall in the disordered eating portion of the eating behavior spectrum. And while I cannot diagnose or treat an eating disorder, if you have been or are diagnosed with one, I can be a member of your treatment team, on a case-by-case basis. I would likewise be happy to help you find the appropriate professional who can assist you with diagnostics.
If you were to pursue the coaching route, Food Body Self® is my proprietary program that, co-created with Aiko Smith and Vitalis Im, to M.A.S.T.E.R. your food mindset in 6 steps. We’ll work together to:
Increase your Mindfulness of your behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions—which is an essential first step in any transformation journey;
Cultivate Acceptance of difficult emotions, circumstances, and parts of yourself through self-compassion—so that you can navigate life’s inevitable turbulence with grace, rather than in chaos;
Practice Sitting with feelings and cravings so that you won’t need to use food (or food avoidance) as a coping mechanism;
Transform your feelings through proven techniques like reframing, workability, and compassionate self-talk (this is something my students have referred to as “mind-fuckery”);
Evolve your beliefs to produce value-driven actions, enabling you to consistently progress towards your goals—no cheesy mantras or affirmations required; and
Rethink food & exercise by applying everything you’ve learned above to your relationships with food, exercise, your body, and yourself so that your habits and actions become fully aligned with your desires
The term disordered eating might seem too clinical or intimidating to describe symptoms like a preoccupation with food or using exercise as a means to burn calories. But you can think of it as indicating that your eating behaviors are less than optimal.
Additionally, many diets teach individuals to eat in ways that deteriorate their relationship with food. This is often seen as a necessary trade-off in order to lose weight. But the truth is, it’s not. Dieting can absolutely be done in a way that preserves a healthy relationship with food. Unfortunately, it’s rare to find a coach who can guide you down this path (though you can ask me, I know a few).
Regardless of whether you desire to change your body composition, enjoying the peace of total food freedom is a goal worthy of pursuit.
Because your relationship with food affects your mental and physical health. And I personally believe that there’s nothing worth giving up your health for.