Common Sense - Part 3 of ?

I know it's been ages since I posted on this topic. For the record, it started here, almost 2 years ago (!!!):

http://mylifemywordsmymind.blogspot.com/2006/03/dr-phil.html

Continued here:

http://mylifemywordsmymind.blogspot.com/2006/03/common-sense-part-1-of.html

then here:

http://mylifemywordsmymind.blogspot.com/2006/03/common-sense-part-2-of.html

All disclaimers for those posts count here too. I'm not sure where this will go yet, but it could be a trigger and my typing laziness will probably result in a gender bias. You've been warned.

The topic was re-awakened by my old buddy Dr. Phil in the show this week about the anorexic/bulimic girl, Aimee. The show freaked me out and saddened me because she was in such a bad state, and because so many of her thought processes mirrored my own. Especially those where she was facing the image of her younger self (with the doc) and criticizing that incarnation for "allowing" the bad things to happen and not protecting her. Scary. It's not rational or healthy, but I have done that same thing far too many times in the past.

But what struck me this time was her purging. Or, to be more accurate, her "count". She said she purges about 150 times per day, and I hate to say this but I think she is counting wrong. Not that I at ALL want to minimize this disease, but... well... here's my take: I think - and sorry to be this graphic/explicit but I have to - that she is counting every "heave" as a separate purge. I count an "episode" as a purge. Like I don't count one bite of food as a "meal". To me, a single purge is getting up everything (or as much as I can/want) that just went down. It might take up to 20 "heaves", depending on what I ate and how much and over what period of time, for one "purge" in my estimation. This is how I have always counted my purges, and I can't find anything online that says I should do otherwise.

I'm curious/interested because I saw the girl's cooking-and-eating behavior. I honestly think she doesn't have enough time in a day for 150 purges. Not the way I count them. Like Dr. Phil said - that's a purge every 10 minutes, not including time for sleep. Which is why I think she's counting wrong.

Or am I the one who's counting incorrectly? I looked around online, and although there were lots of examples for what constitutes a "binge", I couldn't find anything that gives a clear definition for a "purge". I certainly understand why people don't want to touch the subject. And while I know that I more than meet the most loose interpretation of the DSM criteria for bulimia, and feel that anyone purging in any sense "for weight loss" is headed down that slippery slope, it bothers me that there isn't a clear-cut definition/standard for what a purge actually is.

We have numbers for cholesterol, blood pressure, insulin, etc. Would it be so wrong to specify whether a purge is a "heave" or a "meal"?