A renowned expert on binge eating, the director of the Eating
Disorders Program at the University of North Carolina, shares
proven techniques for conquering food cravings. Clinical
psychologist Cynthia M. Bulik, specially trained in psychiatric
genetics, is a leading authority on eating disorders such as binge
eating disorder (BED). For twenty years she and other researchers
have tracked thousands of people, and have found that BED runs in
families. I n 2000, Bulik was one of a group of researchers who
studied eight thousand sets of twins in a Norwegian registry to
learn more about how genes contribute to binge eating disorder. T
hey found an astonishingly high heritability of 47 percent. Binge
eating disorder is less well known than anorexia or bulimia nervosa
but is more prevalent. Health professionals estimate that more than
five million American women and three million men suffer from BED.
Jane Brody revealed in the "New York Times "that when she
was twenty-three years old, her food binges were so extreme that
"many mornings I awakened to find partly chewed food still in
my mouth." Genetic predisposition, brain chemistry,
psychology, and cultural pressures increase a person's
susceptibility to BED, but bingeing is not inevitable. "Crave
"helps readers understand why they crave specific foods,
recognize what triggers their strong urges, and get control over
their responses to those triggers. BED is highly treatable; Bulik
shares with readers a set of easy-to-implement "curb the
crave" techniques that has empowered patients at the U NC
Eating Disorders Program and elsewhere to triumph over their binge
eating. T hrough the stories of some of these patients--men and
women, young and old--and with the guidance of Bulik, readers will
develop effective strategies to successfully conquer their cravings
and establish healthy eating and activity habits.
