Binge Eating Disorder by Another Name?
Published 2.25.2025: This piece began with the following article: Aubrey Gordon now claims to be an anorexic… albeit an "atypical" one. Atypical Anorexia (AA) is alleged to have the same traits as "actual" anorexia (ana) without the excessive weight loss. I'm not on YouTube, so I'm just going to state and spell out the conditions, although I will be using the common abbreviations. (YouTube demonetizes videos that mention ana.)
Frankly, I think AA is Binge Eating Disorder (BED) by another name. Sure, binge eaters often don't eat for extended lengths of time… but then that triggers a binge and thousands upon thousands of calories are ingested. Weight doesn't come from nothing. Aubrey Gordon is eating to maintain her 350 lb size, whether she admits that or not. If she actually had ana, she'd be dropping pounds. She doesn't have ana, she has BED. The two conditions do share symptoms, but BED is differently disordered eating (I believe Gordon when she says her eating is disordered).
Tess Holliday has also claimed that she has AA, all while filming herself binge eating on her TikTok channel (which I don't actually watch, but I have seen reactions on YouTube.) That's a hallmark of BED: not eating for awhile (perhaps even a long while), then overheating. Body dysmorphia also accompanies BED, just as it does with ana. I guess I'm confused as to why they will admit to AA but not BED?
So, having asked the question, I went looking for answers. Apparently, BED is (at least according to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders) NOT a diagnosable disorder, but AA is. And that probably explains the difference. These fat women do binge, but the bingeing can't be diagnosed. The limiting food prior to the binge, can be.
Which is just nuts to me, and solidifies the idea that it's a different name for the same idea. Actual anorexics, (those women or men starving themselves to death) are apparently peeved by fat people claiming to be AA. The argument seems to be that enlarging the diagnoses to include AA is diluting the diagnostic power of being denoted an anorexic.
In my opinion, binge eating disorder might be the most common type of eating disorder out there. I do think it's more common than "true" anorexia— which requires a supreme will. It's hard to not eat. Not eating followed by bingeing is far easier, and sadly I have personal experience to draw on here. But that will be the last I will mention of that. Plenty of the fat acceptance YouTubers and TikTokers are seemingly binge eaters.
Here is an older video, and 25 minutes in— after telling us she was anorexic, Chef AJ mentions bingeing. The video is from 2015, and I don't recommend Dr McDougall's plan or for that matter Chef AJ, I just found it interesting that she was a fat anorexic (diagnosed and treated). Granted AJ at that point was living in California, and California often seems to lead the country in treatments.
Eventually AJ admitted to bingeing, which is why she was fat, even while having diagnosed anorexic habits. Weight (even for a vegan— which AJ was at that point) doesn't come from nowhere. In Chef AJ's defense, she doesn't sugar coat it (so to speak), she knows why she was fat. The reason for pointing to the video is that the idea of fat people being diagnosed as anorexic is not new. What might be new is the ignoring of the BED that accompanies that AA diagnosis (though, to be fair, I'm not a medical practitioner, and BED might be part of the diagnosis.) Again, weight doesn't come from nowhere.
I think AJ was fat in the 1990s, but nowhere near the size of Aubrey Gordon or Tess Holliday. She's said that she was uncomfortable at the size she reached, I can't imagine how badly Gordon and Holliday feel.
Graphically Alex often makes the point that bingeing is secretive, people don't want to admit it— he says because they don't actually want the behavior to stop. But that is a topic for a different piece, and so I'll leave that there without further comment.
Frankly, I think AA is Binge Eating Disorder (BED) by another name. Sure, binge eaters often don't eat for extended lengths of time… but then that triggers a binge and thousands upon thousands of calories are ingested. Weight doesn't come from nothing. Aubrey Gordon is eating to maintain her 350 lb size, whether she admits that or not. If she actually had ana, she'd be dropping pounds. She doesn't have ana, she has BED. The two conditions do share symptoms, but BED is differently disordered eating (I believe Gordon when she says her eating is disordered).
Tess Holliday has also claimed that she has AA, all while filming herself binge eating on her TikTok channel (which I don't actually watch, but I have seen reactions on YouTube.) That's a hallmark of BED: not eating for awhile (perhaps even a long while), then overheating. Body dysmorphia also accompanies BED, just as it does with ana. I guess I'm confused as to why they will admit to AA but not BED?
So, having asked the question, I went looking for answers. Apparently, BED is (at least according to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders) NOT a diagnosable disorder, but AA is. And that probably explains the difference. These fat women do binge, but the bingeing can't be diagnosed. The limiting food prior to the binge, can be.
Which is just nuts to me, and solidifies the idea that it's a different name for the same idea. Actual anorexics, (those women or men starving themselves to death) are apparently peeved by fat people claiming to be AA. The argument seems to be that enlarging the diagnoses to include AA is diluting the diagnostic power of being denoted an anorexic.
In my opinion, binge eating disorder might be the most common type of eating disorder out there. I do think it's more common than "true" anorexia— which requires a supreme will. It's hard to not eat. Not eating followed by bingeing is far easier, and sadly I have personal experience to draw on here. But that will be the last I will mention of that. Plenty of the fat acceptance YouTubers and TikTokers are seemingly binge eaters.
Here is an older video, and 25 minutes in— after telling us she was anorexic, Chef AJ mentions bingeing. The video is from 2015, and I don't recommend Dr McDougall's plan or for that matter Chef AJ, I just found it interesting that she was a fat anorexic (diagnosed and treated). Granted AJ at that point was living in California, and California often seems to lead the country in treatments.
Eventually AJ admitted to bingeing, which is why she was fat, even while having diagnosed anorexic habits. Weight (even for a vegan— which AJ was at that point) doesn't come from nowhere. In Chef AJ's defense, she doesn't sugar coat it (so to speak), she knows why she was fat. The reason for pointing to the video is that the idea of fat people being diagnosed as anorexic is not new. What might be new is the ignoring of the BED that accompanies that AA diagnosis (though, to be fair, I'm not a medical practitioner, and BED might be part of the diagnosis.) Again, weight doesn't come from nowhere.
I think AJ was fat in the 1990s, but nowhere near the size of Aubrey Gordon or Tess Holliday. She's said that she was uncomfortable at the size she reached, I can't imagine how badly Gordon and Holliday feel.
Graphically Alex often makes the point that bingeing is secretive, people don't want to admit it— he says because they don't actually want the behavior to stop. But that is a topic for a different piece, and so I'll leave that there without further comment.