Compulsive Eating is often caused by a lack of sex...

This is an excerpt from my HCG diet "manual" and is very interesting. It makes sense if you think about it...overweight women are more likely to eat compulsively, maybe it's because they aren't having enough sex. What if they are married and their husbands no longer act attracted to them? I'm not saying it's an excuse but if a woman is already overweight and she isn't getting "any" she is more likely to turn to food for "comfort" or "love." It sounds spot on to me!

Compulsive Eating 

No end of injustice is done to obese patients by accusing them of compulsive eating, which is a form of diverted sex-gratification. Most obese patients do not suffer from compulsive eating; they suffer genuine hunger - real, gnawing, torturing hunger - which has nothing whatever to do with compulsive eating. Even their sudden desire for sweets is merely the result of the experience that sweets, pastries and alcohol will most rapidly of all foods allay the pangs of hunger. This has nothing to do with diverted instincts. 

On the other hand, compulsive eating does occur in some obese patients, particularly in girls in their late teens or early twenties. Compulsive eating differs fundamentally from the obese patient’s greater need for food. It comes on in attacks and is never associated with real hunger, a fact which is readily admitted by the patients. They only feel a feral desire to stuff. Two pounds of chocolates may be devoured in a few minutes; cold, greasy food from the refrigerator, stale bread, leftovers on stacked plates, almost anything edible is crammed down with terrifying speed and ferocity. 

I have occasionally been able to watch such an attack without the patient's knowledge, and it is a frightening, ugly spectacle to behold, even if one does realize that mechanisms entirely beyond the patient's control are at work. A careful inquiry into what may have brought on such an attack almost invariably reveals that it is preceded by a strong unresolved sexstimulation, the higher centers of the brain having blocked primitive diencephalic instinct gratification. The pressure is then let off through another primitive channel, which is oral gratification. In my experience the only thing that will cure this condition is uninhibited sex, a therapeutic procedure which is hardly ever feasible, for if it were, the patient would have adopted it without professional prompting, nor would this in any way correct the associated obesity. It would only raise new and often greater problems if used as a therapeutic measure. 

Patients suffering from real compulsive eating are comparatively rare. In my practice they constitute about 1-2%. Treating them for obesity is a heartrending job. They do perfectly well between attacks, but a single bout occurring while under treatment may annul several weeks of therapy. Little wonder that such patients become discouraged. In these cases I have found that psychotherapy may make the patient fully understand the mechanism, but it does nothing to stop it. Perhaps society's growing sexual permissiveness will make compulsive eating even rarer. 

Whether a patient is really suffering from compulsive eating or not is hard to decide before treatment because many obese patients think that their desire for food - to them unmotivated - is due to compulsive eating, while all the time it is merely a greater need for food. The only way to find out is to treat such patients. Those that suffer from real compulsive eating continue to have such attacks, while those who are not compulsive eaters never get an attack during treatment.

I'm no doctor but it sounds like we should all be getting it on regularly!

Liebe,

Mandy