Defining Characteristics of Over Eating:
Compulsive eating is any eating out of relation to physiological hunger and satiation.
This means that anytime one eats for reasons other than hunger or bringing hunger to satiation, we say that eating was compulsive in nature. Which is to say, we all eat compulsively at times (i.e. for reasons other than physiological hunger).
People with eating problems, however, eat compulsively consistently and feel terrible shame about both the behavior and the effects of the behavior (perceived or real) on their body size.
In fact, each compulsive eating episode tends to be accompanied by a great deal of shame. Indeed it could be said that shame is the main ingredient that turns a “normal” experience of compulsive eating into a repetitive anguished pattern.