Women binge to relieve stress

During the past five years, the number of women seeking treatment for eating disorders has risen alarmingly, reports Cynthia M. Bulik, co-author of Runaway Eating: The Eight-Point Plan to Conquer Adult Food and Weight Obsessions. "Eating problems don't discriminate on the basis of age," says Bulik, the William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan distinguished professor of eating disorders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the Eating Disorders Program at UNC Hospitals.

In 2004, 35% of the women treated in the UNC Eating Disorders Program were age 30 or older. The Cornell Eating Disorders Program saw a 50% increase in similarly aged women seeking treatment. Meanwhile, the number of women 40 and older at Remuda Ranch, the nation's second-largest eating disorders treatment center, has doubled since 1997. Bulik maintains that a growing segment of midlife women engage in unhealthy eating behaviors to "run away" from emotional and stress-related problems.

She defines runaway eating as the "consistent use of food and food-related behaviors--such as purging or exercising excessively--to deal with unpleasant feelings and the [sense] that these behaviors are out of control." The driving forces behind runaway eating and clinically defined disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are the same, but the symptoms are not as severe or frequent for a runaway eater.

Warning signs include alternating between severely restricting one's diet and eating large quantities of food, regularly performing exhausting exercise routines to burn off calories, and having at least one out-of-control binge in the last year.

People with runaway eating often are desperate for tools to help with their problematic eating behaviors, relates Bulik. However, since they "fly beneath the radar" of the health care system, they usually are on their own.

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