Hello, I just wanted to share my experience with Binge Eating Disorder, the social stigma, and the lack of resources or help for people with this disorder. 

I was diagnosed with Binge Eating Disorder about 6 months ago. About a year ago, I was released from the hospital. While I was in the hospital, they fed me fatty foods and gained a lot of weight. My parents tried putting me on weight watchers which greatly limited everything I ate. This is when my symptoms of binge eating started to manifest. I would secretly buy hoards of food, sneak them up to my room, and eat them all at once. I would then hide all the trash under my bed. On top of sneaking food in to my room, I would also go to Wendy's after work and spend a lot of money on food. At one point, I was spending $200 a month on fast food alone. When my parents found out that I was sneaking food in after finding all the wrappers and that I was spending a large sum of money on fast food, I told them it was time for me to speak to my psychiatrist. 

I spoke to my psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with binge eating disorder. He gave me some appetite suppressants. Appetite suppressants may curb appetite, but it didn't help with my binge eating. My binge eating episodes are a psychological thing. Even when I am not hungry, I still binge eat. This is actually a symptom of BED. I looked online and found that BED therapy is pretty much limited to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and appetite suppressants. Here is the problem, CBT has NEVER, *EVER* worked for me. As a lower functioning autistic person, I have received CBT many times in my life and it never worked. It turns out that telling a developmentally disabled girl who could only communicate by crying until the age of 6 to "go talk to Susie" isn't very effective. The only therapies that work for me are ones where they have to physically teach me and monitor me. I think CBT is great, but I don't think it is for everyone, especially for developmentally disabled people such as myself. 

When I went back to my psychiatrist after increasing doses, changing medications to try and find a good appetite suppressant, he eventually just told me to eat healthier. "Well no shit." I thought to myself, "I've been trying to do that this whole time." This advice is about as effective as telling an anorexic person to just eat more food. People just assume that binge eating, or even just eating disorders in general, is something you can control and that it is just sheer gluttony rather than a legitimate mental disorder. I believe that this notion hinders the efforts to treat eating disorders. 

I gained 40 pounds in the span of 1 year ever since I started binge eating. I am currently trying to come up with my own creative treatment plans with the help of my psychiatrist and doctor.