Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Women Diagnosed With Binge Eating Disorder: A Case-Series Study

Binge eating disorder (BED) is an eating disorder marked by a recurrence of eating unusually large amounts of food in one sitting along with feeling a loss of control over eating and experiencing marked distress. Outcomes from two adult women with BED who voluntarily participated in 10 weekly sessions of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy are presented. Binge eating was self-monitored daily prior to and throughout treatment. The average frequency of weekly binge eating across both participants at pretreatment was 5.7 times, which decreased to 2.5 per week at posttreatment, and 1.0 per week at follow-up. The improvements were particularly significant for Participant 1, who no longer met criteria for BED at posttreatment and follow-up. Similarly, both participants demonstrated improvements in body image flexibility throughout the course of study. A discussion of the results is presented along with implications for clinical practice and future directions in research.