If your teenager has been struggling with binge eating, there’s a good chance you already feel confused and a bit perplexed. You may have noticed food going missing. You may have found wrappers hidden in their room, or realized they’re eating in secret late at night. You may have tried talking to them about it and hit a wall. Or maybe they’ve shut down entirely, and you’re not sure why.
Here’s what I want you to know first: you are not the only parent in this situation. And your teen is not the only teenager going through it.
But there’s something about binge eating disorder that makes it much harder to talk about than other eating disorders, and that silence is part of what keeps families stuck. So let’s talk about it.
What Binge Eating Disorder Actually Is
Binge eating disorder, often called BED, is the most common eating disorder in the United States. More common than anorexia. More common than bulimia. And yet many people have never heard of it as a real diagnosis.
BED involves recurring episodes of eating large amounts of food in a short period of time, often past the point of fullness, and often feeling out of control while it’s happening. What makes it an eating disorder and not just overeating is the distress that comes with it. The shame afterward. The secrecy. The sense that something happened that your teen didn’t quite choose and couldn’t quite stop.
Unlike anorexia, BED doesn’t come with visible signs that most people are trained to look for. Your teen may not be losing weight. They may not look sick. And so the eating disorder can go unnoticed sometimes for a very long time.
The Thing Most Parents Don’t Know: Shame Is Running the Show
Here’s what I don’t see talked about enough: the central experience of binge eating disorder, for most teens, isn’t the eating itself. It’s the shame.
By the time a teenager is in the middle of a binge eating disorder, they are usually already caught in a cycle that’s very hard to see from the outside and very hard to break from the inside. Something happens. Stress, boredom, emotional pain, a fight with a friend, a hard day at school. The urge to eat feels overwhelming and then suddenly unstoppable. And then, after, comes the shame. Why did I do that? What is wrong with me? I have to hide this.
That shame does something important, and not in a good way: it drives the behavior underground. It makes it harder for your teen to tell you what’s happening. It makes them less likely to ask for help. And it often feeds the next episode, because shame is one of the most powerful emotional triggers for binge eating there is.
This is the cycle. It isn’t about willpower. It isn’t about discipline. It isn’t about how you raised them or what you put in the pantry. It’s a shame cycle, and it has a life of its own.
Your teen is probably hiding it from you not because they don’t trust you, but because they’re deeply ashamed of something they can’t explain. They may not have words for what’s happening, or they may worry you’ll be angry, disappointed, or put them on a diet, which often makes things worse. The hiding isn’t defiance. It’s self-protection, and it’s part of how well this disorder hides, even from a parent who’s paying close attention.
If You’ve Already Been Trying to Help
Most parents who end up here have tried to help their teen, often for a long time, in ways that made complete sense given what they knew.
Maybe you’ve had heart-to-heart conversations with your teen, the kind where you stayed up late, chose your words carefully, told them you loved them and just wanted them to be okay. Maybe you framed it around health, not weight, because you knew that was the right thing to do. Maybe you’ve started cooking differently, suggested a family walk after dinner, or quietly cleared the house of certain foods.
None of that is wrong. All of it came from love. But most of those approaches, even the thoughtful ones, work on the surface of the problem. A heart-to-heart about wanting your teen to be healthy, even when you’re genuinely not making it about weight, can still land on a teenager in a shame cycle as one more reminder that their eating is a problem, that they are a problem.
This isn’t a reflection of what you’ve done wrong. It’s a reflection of how well BED hides, and how much of it lives underneath the behaviors you can see.
What Helps (And What Doesn’t)
If you’ve been trying to address this by monitoring your teen’s food, commenting on what or how much they’re eating, or encouraging them to eat less, I want to gently tell you: that approach usually backfires. Not because you’re doing something wrong, but because it increases shame, and shame is what’s keeping this going.
What actually helps is the opposite of what most parents instinctively want to do. It starts with lowering the temperature around food in your home. Not making meals a place where your teen feels watched or judged. Finding small ways to signal that you are safe to talk to, not about eating, but about whatever is hard.
It also helps to get a professional involved. Binge eating disorder responds well to treatment. Cognitive behavioral therapy approaches have strong evidence behind them. A therapist and registered dietitian specializing in eating disorders can help your teen build a more regular relationship with food that reduces the conditions under which binges are most likely to happen. These aren’t quick fixes, but they work.
What your teen needs most from you, right now, probably isn’t a conversation about food. It’s to feel like you see them, that you’re not disgusted or disappointed, and that the relationship between you isn’t contingent on what or how much they eat.
What to Say (and What Not to Say)
This part is hard, because your instincts as a parent are to problem solve. To fix it. To say something useful.
But the most useful thing you can often say is something much simpler. Something like: I’ve noticed you seem like you’ve been having a hard time lately. I’m not here to make things harder. I just want you to know I’m in your corner.
And then leave space. Don’t push for details. Don’t bring up food or eating. Just let them know the door is open.
What tends to make things worse: comments about their body, about portions, about eating habits, about weight. Even gentle, well intentioned comments. Even comments framed as health concerns. For a teenager already deep in a shame cycle, these land as confirmation that they are the problem, and that confirmation makes the eating disorder louder, not quieter.
Getting the Support You and Your Teen Need
If you’re reading this and recognizing your family in it, the most important thing you can do right now is get support. Not a diet plan, not a meal tracking app, actual clinical support from someone who understands eating disorders.
That means finding a therapist who specializes in BED, and ideally also working with a registered dietitian who has eating disorder training. These two pieces, together, the psychological piece and the food relationship piece, are what give treatment the best chance of working.
You deserve support too. Parenting a teenager through an eating disorder is exhausting and frightening and often isolating. Finding a therapist or a parent support group can make a real difference, not just for you, but for your teen, because a calmer, more grounded parent is one of the most stabilizing things a teenager in recovery can have.
Your teen is not broken. You are not at fault.
If you have questions about what treatment for binge eating disorder might look like for your teenager, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to talk through what support could look like for your family. Schedule your free 20-minute consultation today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: My child seems “addicted to sugar.” I’ll buy a pack of cookies, and they eat the whole thing in one sitting. When I ask about it, they tend to fib. Should I stop buying sugary foods?
It’s a completely understandable instinct. If the food disappears, maybe the problem does too. But this isn’t really about the cookies. If you remove sugar from the house, your child will likely find a way to get it elsewhere, because the food itself doesn’t drive the behavior. It’s driven by what the eating is helping them cope with. The more useful path is getting your child support to build other ways of handling difficult feelings. The food is the symptom, not the cause.
Q: Our pediatrician referred us to a dietitian, and we’ve been going, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. What should we do?
Working with a dietitian who has experience treating eating disorders is a great foundation. What I’d suggest adding is a therapist who also specializes in eating disorders. Binge eating has a psychological component that needs its own dedicated attention alongside the nutrition piece; the two work best in tandem, not in place of each other.
Q: We eat very “clean” at home, but when our teen is out of the house, they go after sugary food like crazy. We don’t understand what’s happening.
This happens more often than parents realize, and once you understand what’s driving it, it starts to make sense. We’re surrounded by confusing, often fear-based messaging about food, the idea that we’re one bite away from disaster. But research tells a different story: dietary restriction and rigid food rules are a known contributor to binge eating developing in the first place. The “clean” eating at home and the “going crazy” outside it are often two sides of the same cycle, not two separate problems.
Please feel free to reach out for a free 20-minute consultation if you would like to discuss your child’s relationship with food further.
If you are a clinician who wants to learn more about eating disorders, check out my services for clinicians here.