Binge eating under a complex reading: Subsidies for the praxis of food and nutrition education

Abstract

ABSTRACT Binge eating disorder is characterized by the consumption of large amounts of food in a short time, accompanied by the feeling of lack of control, remorse and guilt. binge eating disorder has a close interface with the obesity problem, a matter of great dimensions for health services, especially for the high comorbidity. Although this disorder is closely linked to obesity, a matter of great dimensions for healthcare, especially due to it high comorbidity, this disorder is still poorly known in its symbolic dimension, compromising actions directed to this dimension, among them those included in the scope of food and nutrition education. The purpose of this article is to delimitate the issue of binge eating disorder, under a lens based on complex thinking, in order to discuss and support the scope of the nutritional eating education, illustrating, with life experiences, the multidimensionality inherent to eating disorders. The analysis aims to highlight the challenge of working in educational practices focused on these complex disorders. Therefore, we articulated the theoretical with the empirical levels, revisiting, through a reflexive exercise, the discursive material obtained in a broad research carried out by the authors, guided by phenomenological-hermeneutics approach focusing on the understanding of binge eating disorder, with obese women who have also received this diagnosis. The analysis highlights binge eating disorder as an intense experience of suffering, which compromises the ability to innovate and reinvent behavior, in which food operates as an emotional cushion. In this context, healing requires taking an active and engaged place, feeling an active part in the self-transformation process. Thus, food and nutritional education should be conceived in the scope of a comprehensive care, as a fundamental and strategic space due to the specific nature of the practice, in potential terms.