""There I was, laying in bed, waiting for this thing to happen," says the former model, comedian and salesman, now 44. "I thought about how to soften his heart so he wouldn't beat me, and I remembered these cases and cases of candy bars I had for a fundraiser for school. I took one candy bar and ate it, and it took me away for a little while. I took another and another and pretty soon, all the chocolate was gone."

""The next morning, I woke up and realized my dad hadn't come in. I felt relieved. But then I felt ashamed. I knew eating all that chocolate was terribly wrong.""

"Saxen points to the memory as one of several early "eating disorder acts" he now knows were coping strategies for an often violent and anxiety-filled childhood."

""You find a way to cope, to escape the stress," he says. "Instead of developing good coping skills, you develop bad ones, and for me, it was in food. You know it's wrong, but you hide the evidence.""

"Saxen tells his life story in "The Good Eater," in which he describes cycles of frequent bingeing, obesity, yo-yo dieting, extreme starvation and daily four-hour exercise routines, all accompanied by anxiety, depression, substance abuse and eventual heart disease."

""I spent 20 years in various stages of suffering with binge-eating disorder," he says. "I knew something was wrong but couldn't make sense of it. The deal is, I want people out there suffering in silence to know what it is.""

""The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," the American Psychiatric Association's resource for mental health professionals, says binge-eating disorder is marked by frequent uncontrollable bingeing without purging (at least twice a week for six months). The disorder typically is seen in people who are obese and binge alone."

"Although listed under a conditional classification requiring further study, other characteristics of the disorder might include eating until intolerably full; eating when not hungry; eating quickly, almost maniacally; and feeling disgust, shame and guilt that leads to further bingeing."

""Why people suffer from binge eating disorder is as individual as each person," says Sheila Cooperman, director of adolescent and eating disorder services at Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Conn."

"Tammy Nelson, a psychotherapist who specializes in eating disorder and couples therapy, stresses the connection between bingeing and coping with physical or emotional trauma, whether past or ongoing."

""Bingeing acts as an alternative to dealing with an emotion," she says. "Food is a way of stuffing the emotion -- fear, anxiety -- back down. You may be ashamed about the eating, but you're also ashamed about those feelings.""

"Knowing what constitutes binge eating disorder is better understood than the reasons people are unable to control it, says Cooperman."

"Results from a recent study published in February in the medical journal Biological Psychiatry suggest that more people suffer from binge eating disorder than previously believed."

"In the study, based on a nationwide survey of more than 2,900 men and women and conducted by Harvard University Medical School researchers, 3.5 percent of women and 2 percent of the men surveyed reported having binge-eating disorder at some point. In contrast, 0.9 percent of women and 0.3 of men reported suffering from anorexia and 1.5 percent of women and 0.5 percent of men reported suffering from bulimia. The study also finds an eating disorder often coexists with mood, anxiety and substance abuse disorders."

"The results concur with numbers from the National Institute of Mental Health, which says 2 percent to 4 percent of Americans experience binge-eating disorder at some point. Of those, 35 percent are male."

"The results of the study,
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