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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
This matters because the questions asked at assessment are usually the restriction ones, so a binge pattern can sit unnoticed for years. If you recognise yourself in eating fast, in secret, past comfort, and then feeling wretched about it, that is a thing with a name and a treatment rather than a personal failing. Both patterns can occur in the same person, so the point is which to ask about first, not which to rule out.
Who has forbidden the adornment and the nourishment God has provided for His servants? (Quran 7:32). The question is put against treating lawful food as shameful, which is the knot that binge and shame cycles tie.
الأعراف
قُلۡ مَنۡ حَرَّمَ زِينَةَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلَّتِيٓ أَخۡرَجَ لِعِبَادِهِۦ وَٱلطَّيِّبَٰتِ مِنَ ٱلرِّزۡقِۚ قُلۡ هِيَ لِلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ فِي ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا خَالِصَةࣰ يَوۡمَ ٱلۡقِيَٰمَةِۗ كَذَٰلِكَ نُفَصِّلُ ٱلۡأٓيَٰتِ لِقَوۡمࣲ يَعۡلَمُونَ
Say [Prophet], ‘Who has forbidden the adornment and the nourishment God has provided for His servants?’ Say, ‘They are [allowed] for those who believe during the life of this world: they will be theirs alone on the Day of Resurrection.’ This is how We make Our revelation clear for those who understand
Qur’an 7:32read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A systematic review of non-diet, weight neutral approaches found improvements in body image, eating behaviour and some mental health measures without weight loss being required. That is relevant here, because approaches built on tighter control tend to sit badly with a binge pattern. The studies reviewed were mostly small, so read it as a reasonable direction rather than a strong result.
Clifford D, Ozier A, Bundros J, Moore J, Kreiser A, Morris MN. (2015). Impact of non-diet approaches on attitudes, behaviors, and health outcomes: a systematic review.. Journal of nutrition education and behavior doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The eating pattern tends to follow the underlying trait, so impulsive systems produce binge type problems and over-controlled ones produce restriction.
Bingeing and purging need proper assessment and treatment, so take this as a reason to seek help rather than something to manage alone.
Put a rubber band round your water bottle for each refill you want to get through today, and slide one off each time you finish it. Nothing to remember, nothing to buy, and you can see where you are at a glance.
A child struggling with attention, anxiety and daily reflux at once may be dealing with one problem wearing three coats. Undiagnosed coeliac disease and other food reactions can produce all of it, and the gut symptom is the clue worth following.
Some foods are formulated to be hard to stop eating. That is a design brief rather than a flaw in you, and it goes some way to explaining why one particular snack is the one you think about at eleven at night.