There is no good time to be a compulsive eater, but there is a worst one, and people with the eating disorder/addiction are right in the middle of it.

"It is the single most difficult time of the year, and it goes on from pre-Halloween through the Super Bowl," said Elizabeth Babcock, a clinical social worker. Based in an office in Peters, Washington County, she describes herself on her Web site as "on a personal mission to increase public understanding of compulsive overeating."

"There is enormous social pressure to eat," she said in an e-mail interview. "Tempting foods that trigger repeat eating are found everywhere and are offered by others who may pressure you to eat.

"Social messages connect food to celebration, love, entertainment, socializing, etc., which increase the tendency to overeat.

"This all comes at a time of year when other activities are becoming less available due to changes in the weather. Food then becomes overly important as a way to satisfy emotional needs, which usually results in misuse of food. For many of us, this rises to actual self-abuse with food."

Emotions are a huge part of the eating disorder. It's not just the chronic, consistent eating of more than is needed that defines a compulsive eater, Ms. Babcock said. There also are the feelings of regret or remorse that accompany the act of overeating and "a sense of helplessness to change."

Ms. Babcock said there is no fast easy cure for the disorder -- "People can spend months in therapy trying to work this out. ...

"[But] in general, self-awareness, strategic thinking and purposeful planning are the linchpins of breaking the old patterns and replacing them with something that works much, much better."

She offered some specific highlights of therapeutic treatment:

• "Becoming aware of the needs you try to meet with food ... [like] using food to fill the empty spaces in your life and the fears you have of giving up food as your primary sense of comfort."

• Identifying the triggers for your overeating, whether they be uncomfortable emotional states or certain locations and times.

• Understanding how you set yourself up for failure by eating when you're not hungry, ignoring your body's "satiety signals" or eating thoughtlessly while on the run.

• Learning the full consequences of an eating disorder. Along with weight gain, Ms. Babcock said, "compulsive eaters are prone to depression, usually withdraw more and more from healthier ways to spend their time, and, at the extreme, may eventually reorganize their life such that food really is the only thing they have available to enjoy."

After that self-exploration comes replacement work, she said. Patient and therapist:

• Work on replacing the emotional thoughts that led to compulsive eating with "reality-based thought processes that make healthy eating much easier and more genuinely desired."

• "Work on replacing the behavioral patterns that encourage failure with new patterns that support success."

• Develop a partnership with your body rather than the "adversarial relationship" most people have. "The body is your absolute best ally in solving food problems," Ms. Babcock said. "It is not the reason for the problems or weight that you have [barring rare medical disorders]."

• Develop specific plans to deal with situations that are challenging instead of "winging it."

• Eat only when you're hungry. "If we could all reliably use hunger and satiety signals to decide when and how much to eat, weight problems for most people would cease to exist."

• Abandon all-or-nothing thinking that "tells you that unless you are completely succeeding with food, then you are completely failing and might as well give up." If you slip up "there's no need to wait until tomorrow," she said. "You can start right now."

During the holidays, Ms. Babcock suggested "spending more time with people who have a successful relationship with food, and less with those who are just as lost as you are. ...

"We've come to make the holidays all about the food, but it wasn't always that way," she said. "Shift some energy back to having a life, having fun activities and making good memories with your loved ones, and food naturally becomes less important."

Family and friends can help the compulsive eater with some basic common-sense rules, Ms. Babcock noted.

• If someone thinks he has a food problem, he or she probably does. "Be respectful of the person's concern, and ask how you can best support them.

• "Resist the temptation to try guilting or insulting the person into healthier behavior." You'll just cause emotional pain, which will make the compulsive eater turn to food.

• "When a compulsive eater musters the ability to say 'no' to food, leave it at that."

And, "basically," Ms. Babcock added, "support the compulsive eater in maintaining full control of what foods, and what quantity of those foods, end up in front of them."

For more information, see Ms. Babcock's Web site: www.elizabethbabcock.com, click on articles.