Let’s put this on the table

Squirrels are hoarders. but since they do this so they can camp out inside a tree when the weather gets awful, no one judges them.

Similarly, autumn finds bears living a sort of life of Roman dissipation, eating almost non-stop. But since they’re about to hibernate, and since they are bears and can eat you, no one says anything to them about it.

Binge eaters are not preparing for winter survival and their killer instinct falls woefully short of anything that would strike fear in you. The only thing they really have in common with squirrels and bears is, no, not the food-on-the-brain, but the hiding.

Binge eating disorder (BED) is not your Christmas-induced indulgence. It’s not one serving too many because jovial friends keep rolling out a never-ending parade of you-really-must-try-one-of-these type of things.

Bingeing is ongoing. Maybe a few times a week; maybe a few times a day. You can binge when you are not remotely hungry. You can eat well past the point of fullness to the point of discomfort or even pain.

Because it was never about the food. Not really.

This is something some of us do, not to put too fine a point on it, to fill a space. If we feel empty or worthless, a well-timed nom-fest can fill us right up.

Anger, sadness, boredom, anxiety are also fuel for the disorder.

It’s there in the name: it is an eating disorder.

Still, I always feel it gets treated differently in several very painful ways. The conversations surrounding anorexia and bulimia have been going on for quite a while. The people who suffer from them are very sick and deserving of our care and understanding. People can die from those things.

We have a long way to go before the general public sees a binge-eater as something other than an undisciplined snackoholic.

Bingers do not purge like bulimics. They do not frantically exercise or go into a period of starvation to kill the calories.

No. Having eaten, the binger does not try erase the actual food consumed.

And this is where I think the beginning of a special kind of public and private torture starts. This is where it starts to get multi-multi-layered for me. Because I think this is the thing the world does not find possible to forgive: why would you keep all that fattening stuff inside you?

Instead, hiding is what happens. Hide the evidence: chocolate wrappers, chip packages, empty ice cream containers. Put them in the trash and then take the trash out before anyone sees. Or shove everything under the bed – you’ll clean it up eventually, but it’s not visible if someone comes into your room.

Hide an emergency supply: keep a surfeit of your preferred foods tucked away in secret places around the house – sofas are good, also handbags, schoolbags, sock drawers. Definitely keep your safest space well stocked, whether that’s your bedroom or the garage. I feel a gardening shed would be a good space, but don’t think we have much of a shed culture.

Hide how you eat: quickly, shovelling, like you can’t get enough into you. Like you can’t stop.

Maybe you’re a bit messy when you eat.

Most of all, hide the quantity of food. The box that held a whole cake, the pizza boxes (plural), the bowl of leftover potato salad you didn’t bother to put into some smaller plate because you just stuck a spoon in and went for it.

Finally, hide yourself.

Hide from the world that brought on the unhappiness or anxiety. Hide from everyone who thinks it’s their right to tell you about your weight or how much you put on your plate at lunch. Hide because it’s safer to be at home, in your room, away from everyone and everything that tells you that what you are is greedy and what you are not is someone in trouble.

This is a disorder underlined and exacerbated by guilt and shame. Many sufferers have histories of depression, physical or substance abuse, or some other problem they’re trying to bury. It runs in families. It affects more women than men.

Having binge eating disorder does not always mean you are overweight, but it is often the case. And because there is no end to the brain-body’s cruelty, obese people are more at risk of becoming bingers than others.

Some people got no luck, no luck at all.