Breaking Away from the Toxic Narratives of ‘Comfort Eating’ and ‘Lack of Self Control’: Navigating Binge Eating Disorders in A Fat Body

By Bethany-Jade Fisher 

The stigma surrounding Binge Eating Disorders is forever harming people. Being a fat person struggling with one can often mean that the harm is even more severe.  

Being a fat person displaying the key signs and behaviours of early-onset binge eating means that you’re automatically dismissed as not having an eating disorder due to medicalised fatphobia. Binge Eating Disorders are commonly dismissed as ‘comfort eating’, or simply a lack of self-control if your body type is fat. They often end up undiagnosed. This toxic narrative persistently dismisses fat people who are struggling with their eating habits and displaying behaviours relating to either restrictive eating or binge eating. 

To fully understand what is meant by restrictive and ‘binging’ behaviours, we need to investigate what those specific behaviours entail. Restrictive behaviours are the most widely spoken about in terms of the ‘typical’ warning signs relating to the two most addressed eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia. People who suffer with anorexia or bulimia often partake in restrictive behaviours due to a harmful dysmorphic view that they have of their body. However, there is a crucial difference between anorexia and bulimia; those who suffer with bulimia believe that they have over-indulged in food by eating, therefore leading them to ‘purge’ their food due to feelings of shame. This behaviour is categorically described as ‘binging’. 

People who suffer with binge-eating disorders, like those with bulimia, often go through a cycle of restrictive and binging behaviours. They over-indulge with food and then restrict their food intake out of shame. Despite the similarities in behaviours of bulimia and binge-eating, one is more addressed than the other due to the medicalised stigma of eating disorders only affecting thinner people. 

For the longest time, I didn’t realise that my ‘comfort eating’, as it was so often called, was the beginning of a struggle that would follow me into adulthood. From the age of eight, I’ve personally battled with the vicious cycle of binge-eating. I’ve stashed wrappers in places that I didn’t think they’d be found, I’ve eaten thousands of calories worth of food in a few hours after restricting my calories, and I’ve been on crazy diets through Weight Watchers, starting when I was just a child and continuing to try diets right up to the later stages of my teenage years. I’ve been in a constant battle with my dysmorphic view of my body. 

The dysmorphic view of my body was something that was considered ‘normal’ because of the consumption of unattainable early 2000’s beauty standards that were drilled into my subconscious brain by the Disney Channel or MTV. They were even more drilled into my brain by Tumblr in 2014 and 2015. The same narratives that thin was beautiful were being carried on through the ‘thinspiration’ that was circulating on the platform and that promoted restrictive eating with a goal weight in mind. 

My restrictions turned into binging and continued as a vicious cycle that I couldn’t seem to break. I didn’t know what my struggles were because they didn’t fit into a diagnosis of anorexia or bulimia, which were the only two eating disorders that ever got discussed or spoken about despite the shame of my binge-eating disorder being the same shame that was present in anorexia and bulimia. 

From the age of eight, I’ve carried so much unaddressed shame and humiliation. I was terrified to say that I was hungry when restricting through diets because I was afraid that I’d be perceived as having ‘no control’ and being labelled as ‘lazy’. There was nothing wrong with my body at eight. I was a child. I was innocent. 

The issue was the blatant disregard of the beginning of an eating disorder because I was fat. I was medically being treated differently because I wasn’t ‘thin enough’ to possibly have an eating disorder. The binging, the restricting, and the stashing of the wrappers was all a cry for help and a display of the crippling eating disorder that I fell into at the hands of fatphobic narratives and behaviour. 

On the nights I’ve spent surrounded by wrappers, crying in silence at the lack of acknowledgement and understanding that people showed towards my blatant disordered eating, I wish I had been able to read an article like this to help me. 

If there’s one thing that I want anyone who is struggling at the hands of fatphobic narratives within eating disorders to take away from this article, it’s that you shouldn’t feel shame about your disorder. The issues that will form if your eating disorder remains a shameful secret are far worse than feeling ashamed for admitting that you need help and seeking out someone who will take your struggles seriously. 

The medical industry is failing us. Please, take this article as a message of strength, encouragement, and an urge to put the shame that you feel aside and ask for help. Keep pushing your medical health professionals for a consultation. Keep pushing for them to take you seriously. 

You are so much more than the fatphobic narrative that has been presented to you. You are so much more than the shame you’ve been conditioned to feel surrounding food. You are so much more than your eating disorder.