A typical Compulsive overeater will binge at least twice a week for several months. The amount of food used during their binges is tremendous. A typical binge could consist of an entire cake, a gallon of ice cream and some cookies. Some binge eaters report consuming as much as twenty thousand calories in a single sitting, the amount an average person eats in 8 days.
Compulsive overeaters will binge for a few months and then they will stop for a few weeks to begin dieting. The diet is an attempt to loose whatever weight they gained during their months of binging. This however, is useless, because as soon as the weight is lost they will begin to binge again gaining all of the weight back.
The more the person transitions between binging and dieting the slower their metabolism becomes, therefore making it much harder for them to loose weight. Aside from being physically harmful compulsive overeating is also harmful to a person mentally and emotionally. Since almost all compulsive overeaters binge in secrecy it becomes a dominant part of their life which forces them to withdraw themselves socially. Most compulsive overeaters are aware that they do have a problem, but they are unable to control it and are too ashamed to ask for help.
Twenty-five percent of people with eating disorders, no matter which type, will experience periods of time where they will go into a trance. (Smolin, 2005) When a person goes into one of these trances it is an indication that they are at the most serious psychological state of the illness. The persons negative mind consumes them are they are oblivious to reality. Warning signs to an approaching trance may include; the voice of the person becoming a whisper, the body beginning to immobilize, and the person does not make eye contact and seems to be lost in the battle that is going on within their mind.