It doesn't take a PhD to know that eating until you're beyond full on a regular basis isn't good for you. But what experts say many women don't realize is that their out-of-control eating habits have a name: binge-eating disorder (BED). BED affects millions of Americans; in fact, a breakthrough study released this year from McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School — the first nationally representative study of eating disorders in the United States — found that BED is more common than both anorexia and bulimia, affecting approximately 4 percent of women (about 6 million) and 2 percent of men in their lifetime.

"Binge eating is a major medical problem and a significant factor in the nation's obesity crisis," says lead study author James I. Hudson, MD, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Biological Psychiatry Laboratory at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. However, unlike anorexia (a disorder marked by a seriously decreased appetite, self-induced starvation, drastic weight loss and an aversion to food) and bulimia (a disorder in which a person eats large amounts of food and then vomits, uses laxatives and/or exercises excessively to control her weight), binge eating, which involves eating a large amount of food in a short period of time and feeling out of control during that time, is not yet considered an official psychiatric disorder. Instead, it's classified as an unofficial condition that requires more research. "This [McLean] study will bolster the case for making [BED] an official disorder," says Dr. Hudson.

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Official or not, BED is a very real condition that can hurt both your physical and mental health. Here's what you need to know — and how to get help:

Do I have binge-eating disorder?

Scarfing down a bag of chips in one sitting isn't exactly healthy, but a single binge (or even a few) doesn't constitute a disorder. BED is classified by uncontrolled eating binges at least twice a week for a period of at least six months. Rather than being recognized based on a specific amount of food consumed, BED is diagnosed on a case-by-case basis, relying on the patient's personal account of feeling out of control while she's eating. Still, experts caution that many people who don't meet the exact criteria for BED may still have a problem. "Bingeing once a week or more, for more than a few weeks, is a red flag," says Jean Fain, LICSW, a teaching associate in psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School. Other signs of trouble include eating excessive amounts of food until you feel uncomfortably full, feeling like you can't stop eating, hiding food or eating alone, feeling ashamed about your eating habits, and feeling that your eating habits are interfering with your social or work life. Notes Fain, "If you suspect that you have a problem, it's always a good idea to see a professional, who can help you determine whether to seek treatment."

Notably, you don't have to be overweight or obese to have binge-eating disorder. "On the whole, binge eating and obesity go hand in hand. But some binge eaters are normal weight," says Dr. Hudson. In many cases, people with BED start out at a healthy weight and later become overweight as a result of their eating habits; others may try to compensate for their binges by consuming very little food the rest of the time, which may keep their weight down.