Definition:
Compulsive overeating is characterized by uncontrollable eating and weight gain. Compulsive overeaters often use food to cope with stress, emotional conflicts and daily problems. Like bulimics, compulsive overeaters recognize they have a problem.

Compulsive overeating often starts at childhood when eating patterns are formed. Most people who became compulsive overeaters never learned the proper ways of dealing with stress and emotional problems. Unlike anorexia and bulimia, a great number of compulsive overeaters are male.

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Signs/Symptoms:
>Binge eating
>Fear of not being able to stop eating voluntarily
>Depression
>Self-deprecating thoughts following binges
>Withdrawing from activities because of embarrassment about weight
>Going on many different diets
>Eating little in public, while maintaining a high weight
>Believing they will be a better person when thin
>Feelings about self based on weight
>Social and professional failures attributed to weight
>Feeling tormented by eating habits
>Weight is focus of life

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