at some point in their lives, more than double the reported numbers for bulimia nervosa and anorexia.
At the time, the diagnosis was fairly controversial, said Dr B Timothy Walsh, who led a group that recommended changes to existing criteria for eating disorders and proposed adding new ones to that edition of the DSM. Some thought that it was “pathologising normality”, he said, and did not understand how it was different from ordinary overeating.
People with binge eating disorder also tend to eat more quickly than usual during an episode; many also eat in secret and grapple with guilt, said Kelly Allison, the director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania. During a binge, Kaitlin Schaefer, 36, who manages corporate sustainability efforts for a clothing brand in Toronto, often felt like she was hovering outside of her bodytime would dissolve in the minutes between opening a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and the spoon scraping the bottom of the carton.