Binge Eating and Co-Dependency - A Dangerous Connection

Are you tired of spinning the wheels at the game of weight loss? Do you have a tendency to regularly overeat in response to your emotional and mental state? Do you seek comfort foods in times of stress? Lastly, are you in a relationship with a person with harmful addictions like alcohol, drugs, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorder, body dismorphic disorder, etc. Does this person regularly experience irrational moods swings, Garmin bluechart heightened anxiety and depression and become verbally and physically abusive? If you are in a long term relationship with such a person, chances are you may need more help than the perpetrator of abuse.

Abuse is like a wheel engaging a momentum of tension building and violence, followed by passionate reconciliation only to set the cycle off again. Abusers are like bush fires, they flare up and subside. They are not consistently aggressive and may even be positively charming during the "honeymoon" phase of the abuse cycle.

As the submissive and passive carer, you are likely to be a co-dependent person. A co-dependent individual is often hazardously dependent on their abuser emotionally, socially and financially. They often cannot see a way out of their predicament. And even when they can, the cannot believe they can survive on their own. Instead they stay and "hope that things will change".

If you are in a relationship with someone unstable or self-destructive, you probably experience considerable pain and helplessness periodically. You tend to give till you hurt and have the tendency to remain in harmful situations or relationships way too long significantly compromising the quality of your life and mental state. You often create a state of helplessness for yourself and justify remaining in the harmful situation with lame excuses and even argue for staying in abuse. Unfortunately, the more you argue for staying in abuse the more likely you are of experiencing increased risk "self-loathing" for being "spineless". This then perpetuates the whole cycle of binge eating. Self-loathing often expresses itself in destructive binges in the desperate attempt to seek comfort or even revenge by "drinking poison to kill someone else" to end the pain.

Unfortunately, no amount of food can take away your pain and anguish. The best way to stop binge eating is to develop kindness and compassion for yourself and learn to nurture yourself. Be extra gentle and forgiving with yourself and take steps to ensure that you regularly engage in activities that fulfill and re-energize you.

Giselle Brand is an accredited practising dietitian and the founder of Concept Nutrition at , an online community for people interested in weight management and healthy living. Giselle is an expert in helping people take action to achieve their health goals.

To find out specific strategies you can employ to stop binge eating, go to [/how-to-stop-binge-eating/]/how-to-stop-binge-eating/.