1. Trouble
   
2. A condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs the performance of a vital function: sickness, malady.
   
3. A harmful development.
   

Webster defines sickness in the following manner:

1. Ill health
2. A disordered, weakened, or unsound condition
3. A specific disease
4. Nausea, queasiness
   

Webster defines malady in the following manner:

1. A disease or disorder of the animal body
2. An unwholesome condition

Thinking of the term "disease" as "trouble" or a "condition that imparis the performance of a vital function" makes it easier to label the behaviors surrounding food abuse "disease".

Recognizing that food abuse is an addiction and that addiction is an illness opens the door to several concepts:

1. The illness has many predictable symptoms. The alcoholic's compulsion to drink, the addict's compulsion to use, and the compulsive eater's obsession with food is manifested in eating, drinking, and using habits that are inappropriate, unpredictable and excessive. In addition, all areas of a person's life are effected by this disorder.
   
   
2. The course of the illness is predictable and progressive. It will get worse, never better, as long as the addict continues to eat, drink, or use. There are times when it appears that the eating binges/purges, the drinking, or drug taking remain constant or even decrease - months or even years However, without treatment, over a period of time the course of the disease is inevitably towards greater and more serious deterioration. This deterioration can be physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
   
   
3. The disease is primary - that is, it is not just a symptom of some other underlying illness. It is a primary disorder that causes mental, emotional, and physical problems. Other problems the person might have cannot be treated until the addiction or dependency is treated first.
   
   
4. Trying to control your eating or drinking/drug using is an impossibility for the person who is addicted to food, alcohol, or drugs. The only solution is to seek help to permanently arrest the disease; the earlier the better.
   

Today medical doctors, clergymen, and other professionals have come to realize that alcoholism/drug dependency is a disease, and that it responds to properly designed treatment. It is just coming to light that food addiction is also a disease, that its course is predictable and progressive, and the results are inevitable if not treated.

Unfortunately, the compulsive eater/alcoholic/drug dependent himself/herself is often the last to accept the disease concept. In addition, the rationalizations that he/she uses to try to convince others, and himself/herself that he/she does not have the disease are actually common symptoms of the disease itself.

Indeed, denial is a primary symptom of the disease. As long as there is denial of the disease, there can be no recovery. However once the individual accepts the fact that he/she has a chronic ongoing illness, and becomes willing to do something about it, he/she can begin recovery.