Beyond The Binge

The 4 Different Types Of Binge Eating

• Mo Rezk, RD

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After years of working on this concept, I'm finally ready to reveal the 4 different types of binge eating. All binge eating behaviours fall underneath one of these types. In this episode I share the 4 different types and the challenges they face. 

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Mo Rezk:

Hello and welcome. I am very, very excited to be sharing something that I've been working on. For a while this is really a result of years of, of hard work on binge eating and working with people who come through my program and working as well and through it myself, as well as working, researching and learning more about binge eating, as I've finally been able to categorize the different types of binge eating because I always wondered why the industry tends to look at binge eating as just binge eating. And that's it, you're either struggling with binge eating, and you're not. And I've always thought that it shouldn't just have to be about that is there must be different subsets of binge eating. Because based on what I've learned through my work through working with people is not everybody binges for the same reason is there's different causes contributing to the binge eating. And so to treat two people who struggle with binge eating, the exact same way is to do do them both of this service really, unless one gets lucky and just matches the intervention or the approach that they recommend happens to align with the with the binge eating that the person struggles, the type of binge eating the person struggles with. So I'm going to be sharing four different types of binge eating that I've grouped based on my work. Unlike personality tests, and different personalities, one is not one type, or nothing at all. So you're not just like Type A or type B, and that's it. And this is where it becomes it can be a bit complicated, unfortunately, is that one can be a combination of all different types of binge eating. So one could be type A, B, C, D, for example, I'm going to give them specific names, as I started discussing shortly. But one could be type a type B, or type ABCD, or type C type D, there's really, it's not because one is a certain type means that they're not other types. So that's unlike a personality test, where one is predominantly like introverted or extroverted, for example, right, that's different with binge eating is that one could be more than one type. And I also think that one could have a different percentage of how that type of binge eating is prevalent or dominant in their life, is there's a different percentage there. And that's, that is what is kind of similar to personality tests. So if you've ever taken a personality test, and you you, specifically the Myers Briggs one and it will give you the percentage of introversion extroversion, right? Like you're let's say 20%, introverted or 80%, etc. With the different types of binge eating is one could be 60% 50% 20 80%, etc, I've type A or type B, type C, type D, depending on the different causes that contribute to it, and how prevalent it is in their life as in how dominant that type of binge eating is, how much it how much it's expressed, the frequency, the intensity, how long they struggled with it, and whatnot. So let me start by talking about the four different types of binge eating. And as you start to learn more about them, start to reflect a little bit and see if potentially, you belong in one of these, or multiple of these, and most people are combination of multiple of these. I also want to share that i will i am working on a quiz right now that will help people kind of discover what percentage they're binge eating. They're different than binge eating types are and which ones who struggle with the most. This might take a little bit of time just because I want to get it right. And the specific questions are really important to get right. And so I'm devoting a lot of time on that this project I'm working on. So let's get started on the different for the four different types of binge eating. And as we go along, I'll talk about what is the main characteristics of that type, and what the challenges for them lie in so that we know what to focus on. So we can overcome that type of binge eating. The first one is very, very common, is the emotional eater. And the emotional eater usually is more best described by eating to avoid certain emotions. So whenever there's negative emotions prevalent like anxiety, depression, sadness, shame, disgust, etc, or anything like that, it will trigger a bit so we're eating to avoid the negative emotions. And the negative emotions don't have to be a result of something we experienced, right? So many people think well negative emotions is that say I go to work and my boss says something that makes me feel anxious or I'm at home and my partner is doing something that makes me feel upset. And so that causes me to be upset. No, sometimes negative emotions is directly a result of our own thought process of what we are thinking and how our mind looks like. And so if our mind is almost like a prison constantly saying things to make us feel anxious, and that is very common. For those who struggle with Body Dysmorphia is something that I struggled with for a long long time. It you know that it is very easy to get triggered into having negative thoughts about yourself and that is enough to trigger that negative emotion. So the the trigger doesn't have to be external, you could be having a great day, everything is good, nobody is bothering you. But that internal narrative is causing negative emotions that lead to a bench after and what would happen is you'd feel that anxiety come in or a wave of sadness or depression coming about and your first thought would be binge eating. And that's your way of kind of getting out of it. The emotional eater is an avoidant type. avoidant type means they avoid their binge eating is their binge eating is rooted in the as a means to avoid the emotion itself, or what they're experiencing in their body. And so that is one of the most common ones I come across the challenges for the emotional eater is to learn how to deal with their emotions, and how to prevent unnecessary negative emotions as to prevent emotional overwhelm. So let me break that down for a second. How to deal with the emotion is a matter of trying to understand our negative emotions and try to learn how to deal with them, and work with them as opposed to run away from them and avoid them, or start to kind of look at them as a source of stress and a source of discomfort, we need to gain a need to be friend, and basically to be friends with our negative emotions. They come from our body, therefore they serve a purpose. So unfortunately, we grew up in a society where negative emotions are completely shunned. And they're completely downplayed. And a big example of that is the huge amount of medications being prescribed to reduce negative emotions like anxiety, depression, and not that I'm against medications, by the way, because I do think medications can provide some people with relief and give them a window of working on themselves. But I think that the tendency to prescribe medication, whenever somebody is feeling negative, feeling anxious, the moment they're feeling anxious, we give them medication, and we numb it is sending the signal that anxiety, sadness, all this stuff, all these negative emotions are bad to experience, they're not normal to experience. And that is incorrect, negative emotions are normal. So that's the first part is learning how to deal with our emotions. And the second part is how to prevent unnecessary negative emotions. So unnecessary negative emotions are emotions, we trigger because of certain thought processes that we have that are incorrect. So for example, if I look in the mirror, and I start giving my body a hard time, and I say, find all the reasons why I don't look good, and why I'm not worthy, and why I'm not good enough, then I start to trigger a lot of internal, a lot of negative emotions, because I've just attacked my body myself using my own thoughts. And that is unnecessary, it's unnecessary, because it is something within our control and doesn't do us well at all, there's no upside to attacking our body. Unfortunately, it's an automatic pattern that we don't really have control over. And so to learn how to be in control of it, and to reverse it, is one of the mains way, one of the main ways to prevent emotional overwhelm, so that we're not always having to deal with negative emotions. Because ideally, we wouldn't have to deal with negative emotions all the time, we will be dealing with negative emotions when they arise, because of a adjust cause or a reason. So for example, if somebody is crossing boundaries with me, then feeling anxious is to my benefit, or right to feeling a bit angry is to my benefit. If somebody is not treating me well, or if my partner is not treating me well, and I'm experiencing some sadness, and that that is to my benefit, again, I have a right to feel that way. But if I'm constantly making myself feel bad, because of what I'm saying to myself, or because of what I'm interpreting that how I'm interpreting things around me in a way that is untrue, then I start to add unnecessary negative emotions. And that can be overwhelming because then when in a constant state of negative emotions, so that's the emotional eater. Number one, the emotional eater, we're going to talk call it Type Type A emotional eater. The second one, type B is the stress eater. And the stress eater is also an avoidant type. And it's an avoidant type because it is trying to avoid stress. So in the moment, the stress crosses a certain a certain threshold. And it's different from person to person, it's not exactly the same, but the moment it crosses a certain threshold, then that person starts to think of binge eating and wants to eat so that they can avoid that stress. And so stress is really is different than emotions is that it's marked by the body's body's response to certain triggers or things happening in our world, in our in our in our life, whether it's external or internal our mind by the way, that causes us to be in a kind of like an tensed up spot, a bit tense and a bit kind of, on the on the alert a little bit. So it's a strict kind of like a distressed place. So the body is in a when the body is in a constant state of stress, the body's cortisol is high. So cortisol is the stress hormone. And when it's too high, what happens is we become really fatigued and the body is overworked. Even though it doesn't have to be overworked. It doesn't have to be in that constant state of high stress. The problem is we don't know how to bring our stress down, and we're constantly adding stress to the body. And this is very common for people who struggle with traumatic experiences in the past. or some forms of PTSD because their body is in a constant state of stress constantly in that state of elevated tension prepared preparing itself to do anything. And that can be difficult because then it's never at a point where it takes a break. And ideally, the stress cycle, and this is something that I really focus on in my programs is the stress cycle is something that requires is a requires a completion. So completion basically means that the first half of it is the stress being elevated. And the second half of it is us bringing that stress down. If the stress is constantly constantly elevated, and we don't know how to bring the stress down, then the cycle is not completed. And our body is too overworked, specifically, the kidneys, the adrenal glands are constantly in a high state of functioning overworking, and it becomes fatigued. And so we get to a point where like we're really burnt out that is burnout is when we're too stressed out. But the moment we experience certain a certain threshold of stress, stress eaters will find themselves eating to try to resist or avoid that stress, or bring the stress down. And you'll find them really kind of eating whatever certain things happen in the environment that they're not, that bring their stress up. So maybe when their job gets difficult, or when there's arguments going on at home, or when their kids are not doing so well. Or when they have this kind of fear or worry that they might not, you know, be finding a relationship, or that might they might not be doing well on this upcoming date or exams or anything like that. So things that usually will cause the body to be in a state of stress, that is quite normal. But instead of using that stress and learning how to work with it, what happens is we tend to avoid it by binging because we have that negative relationship with stress. And the challenges with stress is to recognize when we're stressed and to learn how to cope with it. And to complete the cycle by bringing it bringing the stress down eventually, and not counting it and a constant elevated state is that stress is useful sometimes, by the way. And I know this is actually a very big misconception is that stress is bad. And that is not true. Stress is useful, because it puts us in this elevated state where we can focus more, produce more, think more. But when we're stressed out in times where we don't need to think or produce or overcome anything or solve the problem, then we don't then we're constantly body's overworked internally, and so what we need to do is learn how to complete the cycle, and learn how to do things that bring the stress down so that we can go back to our day. And then the next day, we can start to think about the problem and how we can solve it. So to recognize stress, and to cope with stress while in complete the cycle. And the second part of it is to reduce unnecessary additions to stress. So unnecessary additions to to stress is a matter of again, it's all internal perception wise, is to learn how to perceive certain things that potentially are, can you view is very stressful and to view them instead as something that is not as stressful. So for example, let's say I'm, I have this stress in my mind that I know I'm not in a relationship, and I need to find a relationship. So I can, you know, be in one. And that's when I'll be happy, for example. And whenever I think about it, because I haven't found a person yet, it stresses me out, right, we can perceive that situation in different ways to reduce the stress from it, we can start thinking, well, when the right person comes along, then it will work out, I just need to focus on myself. And I need to learn how to be happy with myself, and how to be in a place where if I meet somebody else, then I can be a good version of myself. So you can contribute well to each other each other's life. And then I have faith that is going to go well in the end. But we're eliminating that idea of what's out of your control, removing it, instead of making it a source of stress. The problem nowadays is that a lot of times we look at things that are out of our control, and we worry about it, and we stress out about it. And while that's normal to kind of have that worry about a little bit, it's not really serving us well to be constantly stressing out about it, and thinking, Well, what is going to happen there? And how come it's not happening quick enough, etc. Another good example is the weight component, right? So we step on the scale, and the scale doesn't, you know, go down or instead it goes up and that stresses us out. Right? One of the most important things I talked about is that weight is actually out of our control. Yes, it is out of your control, wait, your number on the scale is out of your control, it's within your body's control to lose or gain weight. And not because you lost a certain number on the scale means that you actually lost lost that was a healthy weight loss, right? Somebody might lose 100 pounds and their friends would look at them be like oh good for you and whatnot, but maybe they were sick and they lost 100 pounds. And that's sickness and a lot of it was muscle mass and it was not good for them to lose that weight. Right. So looking at it as a from the perspective that weight loss is within your body's ability not actually yours, your what's within your within your control is how to make sure that you're providing the body with the energy and taking care of it and giving it what it needs so that it can do its best and keep you healthy as well as a healthy body is always going to minimize the fat on it and whatnot and just keep itself in a healthy So all we have to do is take care of that body and allow it to do what it does best. So that is one way we can reduce the stress is to kind of like perceive things differently. But the stress eater to summarize, is somebody who, whenever stressed, whenever things get a little bit stressful, they find themselves going to food and hitting that cookie jar really quick. So, the third type is the is that oh, sorry, I should have mentioned that this. Probably that mentioned that stress eater is also an avoidant type, like the emotional is an avoidant type. The third one, the Type C is the pleasure seeker. So now the pleasure seeker. Pleasure secret is a bit of a hybrid between an avoidant and a secret type. And I'm going to talk a little about that means. So a pleasure seeker is somebody who potentially is not emotion is not eating out of emotions, negative emotions is not eating because they're stressed. Or for the other fourth, cause that we're going to force types that we're going to talk about, but they're eating because there's kind of like a disconnect from the body, or source of discomfort in the body, or dissociation from the body, or an inability to feel joy in the body, or some form of pain that is not emotional in the body, right, and not physical pain as well. But this just potentially, like lingering pain. And pain is not either physical or emotional, it can be almost in the form of this, you know, this energy that we can see to get rid of, we're not really upset. We're not there's nothing making us upset or making us emotional, and there's nothing hurting us physically. But there's this energy that's there that's kind of uncomfortable to be with. And we tend to kind of avoid that sometimes and want to seek pleasure by benching to kind of escape it. So that is the that is how the pleasure seeker can be a bit of an avoidant, but it can also be a seeker as an a four, we feel nothing in the body, really, we can feel joy in the body, we can't feel a connection with the body, we cannot feel pleasure in the moment or just by being and in our body in our environment, we must seek food to feel some source of pleasure. And because as human beings, we want to feel alive. Food is a way to feeling alive. And the pleasure seeker you'll find is common is commonly also addicted to other things like has common addictions in the past, such as smoking, drinking, potentially drugs, sex, pornography, all these things. It's not that they do them, it's that they're addicted to them. It's an addiction that comes out of there. And so the pleasure seeker is one who binges to instill this source of pleasure in the body and to feel something because other than that, if they're not doing that, they don't really feel much pleasure or joy in the body. And if we look at it from a normal kind of perspective, it is from it is it we're supposed to be able to feel joy in the body and feel a certain amount of pleasure in the body and being present. Because that's something that's very, that's very normal when we're in our body. And we're just nothing, no, there's no negative emotions going on. There's nothing wrong going on. And we're in the body kind of experiencing that. And when people think, ask me, okay, what do you mean in the body, I mean, literally inhabiting your body and being in it, right, just being in that body and connecting with it and putting your attention on different parts of your body. Right? The pleasure seeker won't understand what that statement means. Because there's this inability to do that there's this inability to be present with the body, or difficulty being present in our surroundings. Hence why the pleasures eating comes out, the binge eating comes up comes to usually after, and frequently so that we can feel some sorts of pleasure, then usually excitement is the dominant feeling here is we're kind of seeking excitement. We're excited to do it, there's this like overwhelming excitement, and we must do it so we can feel like some excitement. And sometimes the binge eating comes along with other addictive habits such as like drinking or smoking, etc, stuff like that. So we can have like pleasure stacked on top of each other. And that is the pleasure secret is very, very common. Something I personally struggled with, it's the cause of my own addiction, with smoking and with binge eating is the is that I couldn't feel any source of pleasure in the body. It just it was kind of this this constant discomfort even when I wasn't upset or even when there was nothing going on to upset me this or this, there was this constant discomfort going on. And the only way to kind of overcome that is to seek certain pleasures like binge eating. The fourth type of binge eating is the energy seeker, or type D is the energy seeker. And that one is a little bit similar to the pleasure seeker as an IT is also a little bit of a hybrid of avoidant and a seeker type, which means that there's some avoiding something we'll talk about in a moment. But there's also the seeking right seeking energy as well and energy, the energy seeker primarily binges when they're feeling low energy, whether it's physically or mentally, specifically in the brain physically or mentally in the brain. And that low energy could be a result of many things, the most common being the dieting or restricting which is not eating enough during the day, which is specifically from cutting carbohydrates, and a lot of people when they're trying to lose weight. They immediately cut the carbohydrates out, and depending on how they're strong, they're more To Lose Weight is they can really white knuckle their way into doing that and you know, persist for weeks, but then eventually that low energy catches up. And eventually they end up binging. And the reason why is because there's a certain hormone called ghrelin, and this hormone is specifically, its only job is to motivate us to get go and get some energy. So something like, specifically carbohydrates, because carbohydrates are our main source of energy is to go eat sugar, go eat carbohydrates, that hormone is necessary. Because back in the days, when we were cavemen, and we were living, we had to go, the body had to motivate us to go out and either hunt to forage or do something. And that hormone is what got us to do that. Nowadays, we don't need to do that, we just need to click a couple of buttons and the food is right here, we order it or we go to a convenience store nearby, or we drive somewhere we pick up our box of doughnuts, etc. And from there, it's just a matter of going all out on it. And so this is where the low energy see, the energy secret starts, as the most common weights expressed, is in the form of seeking energy, physical energy, so that they can increase their energy because they've been no energy for a while, and the body doesn't like being low energy, no longer the body actually wants to be energized. So the this is specifically how it's expressed. But the other way, which is actually very common, I've realized is really, really common nowadays, is when we're mentally low energy. And when we're mentally low energy, it's a different story, because it might not be really big, because of an under eating or eating, not eating enough. But it could be because we've overwhelmed our brain's reward center, which has our dopamine, dopamine levels, so overwhelmed it. And we have a kind of like an over overworked and abnormal, kind of like levels of dopamine in the brain, ups and downs, ups and downs, I'm going to explain it in a second. So if you think about nowadays, with the, if you ever watched the documentary, the social dilemma, you understand what I'm about to talk about, if you didn't, you got to watch it. But Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical in the brain that is actually involved in motivating and stimulating the prefrontal cortex, which is the logical center of the brain. And whenever we do something, right, we accomplish a task, or we find something or we eat something, even the brain releases some dopamine, to motivate us to do it again, because it's something they want to reward. When we take that and look at it from the terms of social media. How many? How many? How many times do we find something new on social media right now, in a span of 10 minutes, right? So much, we can easily find up to like 50 videos, maybe in 10 minutes, sometimes even more. And so every time you find something the brain releases dopamine hit, and it gives releasing, releasing, releasing, releasing, it's very abnormal, because back in the days, when we were cavemen, there was no none of all that right, the brain release dopamine, a lot of intervals, maybe like you found something cool, they found a cool new spot, right, or he found a new bush or something to forage, that the brain releases some dopamine there, or you find a new, you make new friends, again, the bad news is dopamine over there, or you find some new piece of information from your neighbor, right, which is, nobody like back in the days would wake up and talk to the neighbor immediately. Nowadays, the information is right next to our bed, as soon as we wake up, we pick up the phone and overwhelm the brain completely. And so this is what caused this faulty reward center, the dopamine, dopamine levels are completely depleted. And so what that means is the body needs more like more dopamine to feel stimulated more and more and more and more. And that is what makes us mentally low energy. And so the way to sometimes the way to correct that, for us is to binge eat, because when we're eating so much food, it really causes a huge dopamine spike in the brain. But then what happens is there's a huge dopamine decline after that. And that's, that is very problematic. So that is what they're that is where the energy the energy secret comes in. Right. So the energy seeker is one who physically is is seeking energy physically, because they're under eating a lot, or they're seeking some source of energy mentally because their reward center is kind of depleted. And the challenges there is to learn how to provide the body with energy is to learn how to meet our energy needs, and also learn how to protect our brain's reward center, which is super important can't discuss how important it is right now. This is like the ADHD pandemic is purely because of the dopamine center being overwhelmed, and being completely overworked. And we need to learn how to protect our brain's dopamine center reward center. So we can learn how to focus and learn how to function without the need to stimulate constantly do something to stimulate the brain. And those are the four types of binge eating that I've been working on. Now, everything that I do and our program beyond the binge is to address these four types of binge, binge binge eaters, again, people can be different different different different types of they can be, let's say emotional eater, stress eater, pleasure eater, but not maybe energy eater, seeker that could be a pleasure, pleasure seeker stress eater energy, stress eater energy seeker, because this is a new concept to me. It's gonna take me a while to remember and is really well, but it could be combination of a few of them. And the percentage could differ. So somebody could be, let's say, 100%, emotional eater, or somebody could be, let's say, 40% emotional eater, which means 100% of the time they avoid their emotions. And they're eating every time they're feeling like feeling upset, or negative, or they can be on 40% of the time. So they're able to like hold hold on hold on hold, but then they eventually kind of given in Cape, so depends on several factors. And that that's something I'm working on in my quiz. So I just wanted to share this, that this exciting new area that I've been that I'll be kind of talking about, and I'll be doing more episodes, and videos on these different types of eaters how to recognize and different strategies and doing more work based on categorizing them. Eventually, when I finished the quiz, I will release it. And hopefully, you're able to take it and hopefully will give you more insight into what kind of eater you are and what kind of work you need to do. So you can overcome that. So that today I'm recording this is October 26. On the Tuesday tomorrow, Wednesday is October 27 is the last break the cycle workshop which I'll be running, if you haven't attended one, then please feel feel free to attend, you can go to Mr E's at k.com. And go to start here and book a spot. This workshop is practically free, but it is just kind of orientation into binge eating, discovering the root causes of binge eating, discovering why we binge eat, sharing our story and then looking into the ways to how you can break free from binge eating. So tomorrow is the last one of the month. If you would like to attend, you will go to www.mr is that k.com. And you will go to start here and you would find find it and just kind of like book for tomorrow. So we usually run those workshops towards the end of the month. So there won't be any for a few in the first weeks of November as we go into November. So just wanted to share the work that I've been doing. And I hope that you found that helpful. I hope that you found it useful. If you kind of have an idea at this point, what kind of either that you fall underneath, or potentially you struggle with put it and let me know. And hopefully this gives you kind of an insight as to what you need to do so you can overcome it. And I look forward to doing more episodes on this. Have a wonderful, wonderful day and I'll see you the next one.