it is also performing a vital purpose; just not that of nutritional need, but it may be preventing someone from lapsing into such a deep depression that they cannot sustain their own life. So in a sense, it is performing a similar role to that of nourishing the body. So is it overeating if not eating that amount could remove an obstacle to ending your life by other means?

I believe you just described a coping mechanism. Which is exactly what compulsive overeating/binge eating/food addiction is for most people who experience it. At least most in my experience.
There are lots of things that serve as coping mechanisms. Cutting is a coping mechanism. Drug and alcohol addictions can be coping mechanisms. Et cetera. Or maybe a better analogy would be a sex addiction, like Jeff points out. I think that is a good comparison. Because sex and eating both are completely normal activities, but there can be a point where it because a harmful coping mechanism for some people.
I think it’s being overly simplistic though to just say that a coping mechanism serves a functions. Of course it does! Why else would we do these things? But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to find other ways of coping and dealing with underlying issues.

I don’t think using terms like addiction and/or compulsion is inappropriate at all. Overeating and compulsive eating can definitely be viewed at as a so called “behavioral addiction”. The term addiction is misunderstood and fraught with baggage, which is sad.

If you wikipedia it you’ll find it’s simply described as: any behavior someone engages in regularly due to cravings, despite negative consequences. Sometimes tolerance and withdrawal are thrown in, and this is what makes it different from compulsion. Growing up with my mom and watching her diet, I have no doubt she experienced tolerance and withdrawal.

Many people think of addictions and compulsions as resulting from the pleasure-reward circuitry of the brain getting hijacked and out of whack. Well, eating and sex are two behaviors that are evolutionarily intimately connected with the pleasure-reward circuit. The idea that they could get out of whack seems pretty understandable and straight forward. Far more understandable than some of the other “behavioral addictions” in fact.

I was a sex “addict” and an alcoholic for years and years. I use “was” because I’m not convinced of the need for life long identification. The similarities between the two was so remarkable that I don’t even distinguish them, really. I think it would be more appropriate to simply say I was “addicted”, to virtually anything that felt good, and some things that didn’t.

Societies attitudes about addictions and compulsions needs fine tuning. I think ideas such as “blame” as “fault” are not very useful. Perhaps they are appropriate ideas, perhaps not. Either way, I think the thing that we all loose site of is this… maybe it’s okay not to be perfect? Maybe it’s okay to screw up, be compulsive and weak at times, and to have problems? Life is tough, you know, and people deal with it in different ways. Our society is simply so judgemental.

As the same time, I’m uneasy with the 12-step ideas of powerlessness and the “disease” model in general. Having more or less completely screwed my life up with alcohol, and having finally gotten things straightened out a bit, I can truthfully say now, with a bit of hindsight, that yeah, I WAS responsible for a lot of the crazy crap I did.

I think the truth about addiction/compulsion is far more complicated than any of us realize. It lies on the fringe of ideas about freewill and determinism. Just like light can appear to be a wave and a particle, maybe addiction can have different interpretations in different circumstances.

Regardless, we would all benefit from minimizing all the judging we do.

I get almost zero pleasure from food, and I’ve always thought it was due to some kind of hormonal imbalence. I get ‘full’ (and nauseated) too quickly. I wish so much I got the pleasure from eating that almost everyone I know does. It seems to me I’m missing out on one of the great joys in life.

I pay a lot more attention to what I eat now and have a lot of coping mechanisms to ensure I get enough (meal planning, distracting myself with a book or tv, eating small amounts of many different kinds of food at a meal so I will eat more, taking a sip of water before I swallow to ease it down – I tend to gag), but for most of my life I ate only just enough to satisfy hunger pangs, which was definately NOT enough to keep my body healthy and functioning normally.

I classify myself as an emotional eater and sometimes I fear I’m addicted to food (or certain types of food).

I have a long history of depression (something noted by others in this thread) and I think that is connected to my eating habits. Once I hit my 20s my eating habits slowly started getting out of whack. Now I’ve reached the stage where very often I literally cannot stop thinking about food – especially junk food like chips (crisps) and chocolate. Sometimes I eat so much junk food I literally feel ill and bloated afterwards. I’m making slow progress in cutting down on the junk food but it is definitely still a problem.

When I’m feeling down I eat to make myself feel better. While I’m eating I do feel better, but that feeling only lasts a little while and I seem to need to eat more to get the same “high”.

aebhel, that explains something. My doctor missed my depression back in the 90s because I was eating more and falling asleep by day. Turns out that’s what they now call ‘atypical’ depression, the opposite of the classic off-your-food and not sleeping kind. Does dopamine explain the different sleep patterns too, I wonder?

I seem to recall a claim a few years back that there was such a thing as a ‘food orgasm’ – i.e. a moment when you reach maximum pleasure and satisfaction from food, just as you reach a peak of sexual pleasure at the point of orgasm. Probably way oversimplifying things – they’re two very different bodily functions, even if they do involve the same chemical – plus, it was a bloody diet book, not an arena renowned for your actual science.

And, a biochemist of my acquaintance told me that the so-called ‘endorphin high’ of exercise is not down to endorphins but to adrenaline. Makes sense, because apparently endorphins are what give you the amaaazing feeling you get immediately after an orgasm, and no amount of exercise has ever made me feel that good.

I’ve found that using spices and varying up the foods I eat seems to help but that’s during the up-side of my depression cycle, I don’t know yet how I’m going to manage when the low comes and I’m too lethargic and uninterested in my life to care about putting the effort into it.

If I understand your interpretation April, you are saying that when you have more energy, you can eat with more care and this might make it more enjoyable.

Maybe it is that you are less depressed and that’s what makes food more enjoyable, as well as giving you more energy.

This is why I have a problem with the kind of sentiment behind AR’s statement:

I would say that when you are eating all the time for emotional and psychological reasons, rather than hunger, and when you eat so much you are physically sick, that is overeating.

Strictly speaking, this is ‘overeating’- eating more than you otherwise would (if you weren’t down), but it is also performing a vital purpose; just not that of nutritional need, but it may be preventing someone from lapsing into such a deep depression that they cannot sustain their own life. So in a sense, it is performing a similar role to that of nourishing the body. So is it overeating if not eating that amount could remove an obstacle to ending your life by other means?