Binge Eating In The Media (or More Help Might Be On The Way)

Binge eating has been talked about in the media quite a bit lately. Most of it is surrounding Monica Seles and her story. I’m so impressed that she went public with her story. Binge eating is such a secretive thing and even though there are many people who suffer from it, rarely do people speak out. So more often than not, people think that they are the only one with this problem.

I remember when I posted my post about my binge eating. I think that was probably the hardest post for me to write. I was so scared that people would judge me, hate me, and think I was disgusting after I wrote about it.

But instead, I found more support than I ever could have imagined.

Being “out” with my eating disorder really has been the best thing for me. I think that once I lose more weight, it will be a bit easier for me to be open about it with new people. Right now, I’m still scared that people will judge me and my eating disorder because of my weight (because obviously my eating disorder is what got me to this weight). But besides the fear of being judged, everything else about being open and honest about my eating disorder has been positive.

After reading the story about Monica Seles, I noticed that she was a spokesperson for a pharmaceutical company. I looked more into it and it turns out that the FDA has approved the first medication to treat binge eating disorders. It is currently a medication for ADHD that has expanded what disorders that it can treat.

I’ve been told in the past that going on a medication for ADHD might help me, but my insurance wouldn’t cover it since it was not an approved use of the medication. But now that this medication has FDA approval for use for treating binge eating, there’s a chance that I could take it and have it covered by my insurance.

Yes, there are side effects to this medication and losing weight is not one effects that taking this medication might cause, but it has been proven to bring down the number of binge eating episodes significantly.

While right now, I’m in a great place with food, once I remove some of the restrictions that this cleanse has, I’m scared that I will go back to my old habits. That happened twice after the UCLA RFO diet. And it’s not realistic for me to maintain the restrictions I have on the cleanse long-term.

I’m thinking of trying to get an appointment with my primary care doctor and seeing if they can prescribe this medication for me (or if I’m even eligible, which I feel pretty sure that I am). I don’t want to have to rely on a medication to help me, but any help that I can get would be amazing.

It’s weird to think that when I started to try to get treatment for my eating disorder, they didn’t even properly diagnose me. Even in my medical record right now, it says “eating disorder unspecified”. There wasn’t an option to put binge eating as my diagnosis. And the help that they were trying to give me was for bulimics (because according to the doctors, bulimia was the closest eating disorder to what I have).

But now, not only is it a recognized eating disorder and more people are speaking out about it, there is finally medication that might help. So much has changed since my diagnosis and hopefully all this change means that in the future, nobody will have to wait as long as I did to get a proper diagnosis or the help that they really need.

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