This is the safest time of day for me. From the time I eat breakfast to the time I start to crave lunch, I have no appetite at all. I don’t know why breakfast is the one meal of the day that satisfies me and lets me forget about eating for a while. Maybe because I’ve eaten the exact same breakfast for over ten years?
I’m not in counseling, but I think an “Overeaters Anonymous” type of experience would help, which is why I started this thread. I’m already learning a lot.
I did three years of counseling about my childhood “issues”. I managed to forgive my mother for her role in things, and came to terms with a lot of what has happened to me. Unfortunately, I was already in my 30s when that happened. By that time, “food is an appropriate response to stress” was so deeply ingrained, there was no turning back. Not to mention that all those years of binging/dieting screwed up my metabolism royally.
Also, an interesting side-note, when my surgeon did my weight loss surgery, it took longer than he’d planned, because my stomach was physically much larger than he’d expected it to be (and he’s done thousands of weight loss surgeries). Well, no damned wonder it was so hard to lose weight! My stomach was huge. It took an alarming amount of food just to make me feel “not hungry” anymore, and an even larger amount of food to actually make me feel “satisfied” (a rare thing, pre-op). Now, I’m not trying to deny responsibility; whose fault was it my stomach was so damned big in the first place? Mine. I’m just saying that once he told me that, a lot of things made sense.
Rushgeekgirl, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve sent you an email.
I grew up being able to eat as much as I wanted and still stay skinny. When I turned 16 I started to gain wieght. I would come home from school and eat and eat and eat. For hours. I was severely depressed at the time. I would make myself 6 eggs, have a bowl or two of cereal, a couple chicken breasts. Pretty much whatever we had I would eat till I couldn’t move and then pass out. The only thing that stopped the weight gain then was that I started skipping school every day all day. (I have reasons for this I won’t go into right now) I would walk for miles with my friends to where-ever. After a while I dropped out 
and then got my HSED with high honors. 
I went through a period when I was 17 when I lived in a party house for 6-7 months. I was broke, and too miserable to get off my ass and get a job. I literaly lived off the change I found in the couch. That amounted to maybe a couple Nutty Bars and a 6" sub from subway a week. Oh, and the drugs of course. Not coke or anything really hard like that though. As I lost more and more weight, I thought I looked better and better. I can see how easy it would be (if I were broke all the time) to continue down that path. I was 5’10" and wieghed 115lbs.
One of my turning points was when a friend asked me to go out to eat with her. I told her I had no money, but that I would go with her anyway. She ordered all-you-can-eat broasted chicken for both of us. I had no idea how hungry I must have been untill I was done, and looked at my plate. I had eaten 7 pieces of chicken! And a bunch of helpings of mashed potatoes and gravy. :eek: I thanked her profusely, and she said “Yeah, you were looking pretty sickly, you need to EAT!” I was shocked, I felt like I looked great. I ended up moving back in w/ the parents and getting my shit together.
Fast foward 2 years. I had been riding my bike 20-25 miles a day when I wasn’t at work. Mostly out of boredom. I actually did look good then and it felt great. I was up to 135lbs. I was back to eating everything and anything I could get my hands on, but the excersize made up for all of it. I then got into a relationship and moved in with him, got my liscence (finally) and stopped riding my bike almost completely. I proceeded to gain 50 lbs. in 3 months. My boyfriend at the time didn’t help, he’s the most vain person I’ve ever met. I went into a bought of depression, again. I wanted to excersize, but I didn’t want anyone to look at me. Viscious cycle. After three years of mental abuse I finally broke up with Mr. Super-Athletic-Howcanyoustandyoureslf-Guy. I proceeded to lose 30lbs in 2 months. I didn’t diet, but I did turn 21, and went out 2 nights a week and danced till I thought my legs would fall off.
I’ve noticed that for me, relationships= comfort and/or depression (I know it doesn’t make sense), which= eat-eat-eat and laziness. I went back up to 180lbs for 2 years.
1 1/2yrs ago I landed a great paying and very phisically demanding job. I lost 30lbs (agian) and gained it right back. But, I gained it back in muscle! OMFG, I am Amazon Woman. I look like I did when I wieghed 140, but now I can bench 150lbs :eek: 
(I tried it just to see if I could, I don’t wieght train, and I don’t want to look like I do.)
I still give in to daily cravings for greasy-fatty-sugary-salty-goodness. I’m still fighting the fat and depression, it’s trying to come back. But now I have my job to kind of keep it in line. Carrying 30-65lb boxes up stairs for half the day does wonders. I know that if I change jobs all that muscle will turn right back into fat unless I work out all the frickin time.
Now, all I need to do is find a good guy, that I can’t pick up and throw 10ft. (Not that I’d want to or anything) Unfortunatly, or not, ::shrug:: I always end up attracted to the short, shy, skinny, sweet guys.
Wow, that post was a lot longer than I had planned. Sorry.
To those posters who can’t imagine having these types of compulsions, I say (in ALL sincerity), that’s great for you. Really. You’re lucky.
I don’t look like someone who is obsessed with food. I’m neither particularly thin nor particularly heavy. Right now, I am sitting at my desk, enjoying Shredded Wheat and Bran with fat free yogurt…and I really am enjoying it. I like vegetable soup and whole wheat bread. But I also like Reeses’ Peanut Butter Cups and chips and pizza and cake (cake! I love cake!!!) and…so many other things.
I like reading about food, too. cookbooks, restaurant reviews, cooking blogs.
I am the person who doesn’t do well in a meeting where there is food. Sure, I’m wanting to pay attention to the goals for next quarter but the muffins start to hum at me. What kind are those? Some of them do look whole grain-ish. How many people are eating the muffins? If I take one, wll I stand out? What if I just took one and ate part of the top? Oh, but then people might think I was being wasteful, and I don’t want to stand out for that. Maybe they’ll be some muffins left over and I can grab one after the meeting and do what I want. George Costanze taking the eclair out of the trash? I’d never do that, but I sure understand it.
It takes a lot of mental energy to be obsessed with food! I spend a lot of mental energy going in the other direction, though—striving for normalcy, particularly since I know have kids and don’t want to mess them up the way my parents did me! My desire to be a healthy weight and to have the energy for my athletic pursuits are also things that save me from being either huge or tiny. I’ve been tiny, and I’ve eaten huge, and sure, things are a lot better now after a lot of therapy.
But the hum is still there.
Someone upthread mentioned OA, and I have to say, my experience was not good. I know a lot of people get a lot out of it, but it was way too rigid for me. Of course, I was coming from an anorexic background, so telling me I had to weigh and measure wasn’t going to work. (Please, don’t just take my word for it. Ask around your own area, as I know all meetings are different and they just might suit your needs well).
I have to wonder how much emotional eating is a gender issue. It seems to me like women tend to overeat because they are depressed, whereas men overeat because there’s BBQ sauce. I’m proud to say that, as a man, I don’t turn to food for emotional comfort. I turn to it because I like food.
Or maybe I’m just in denial.
I do tend to do a sort of hoarding thing. I have no compunctions about taking something off of my GF’s plate, but if she makes a grab for mine, I growl like a rabid dog. Something must be going on there.
Ah, sharing issues…I have those, too…
Thank you for starting this thread. For one thing, it makes me feel less alone. For another, yes, maybe non-overeaters will understand something of what it is like.
Everyone has said something I agree with so I can’t quote everything that rings true for me! Food has been a constant in life, with foods being reliable in ways that the moods around me (mostly my father, who was the dominant person and was very changeable) weren’t. It is reliable in ways that people aren’t, or how I fear they won’t be. I have social anxiety and feel much more comfortable curling up with a binge that just lays there and waits to make me happy. It won’t leave me, it won’t do anything unexpected; it won’t disappoint me and I won’t disappoint it.
I’ve never understood how people stop eating when there is still something good available. Once I was at a party in high school where the mom went all out with dinner and snacks, etc. Later in the evening she came around with doughnuts and of course I took one, who wouldn’t? Well, everyone else in the room, that’s who, who had filled up on the other stuff like normal people.
I knew I had a problem when I was pretty isolated in NYC and binged alone. My method was to clean up, to erase all evidence of the binge because of course it was the last time it would happen. I have had “the last time” pretty much every day for 12 years. And when I moved to NH and had only my boss as a friend, when he would call in off for the day I would feel sad and lost and eventually decide I would get a pizza, that would lighten my day. It was when it went from boss: “I’ll be out today” directly to “I’ll get a pizza”, with no processing of emotions in between that I really knew. And when I was feeling sick one day but had plotted a binge while at work and bought for it on the way home; even as I was throwing up I thought, but I’m still going to have that binge.
I’ve talked to my friend who is in recovery from drugs and alcohol and it seems the same:
–Communal eating/drinking: If I go out for pizza with others, I constantly count how many people are there, and how many pizzas, to know if I will get what I need. I am only partly engaged in the outing. He says at parties he would stand by the keg and count how many people were drinking and how much beer would be available to him. As lorene mentions, I am preoccupied with food if it is a part of work. I have to force myself to concentrate on the meeting and not the refreshments that are there or on their way.
–That Voice–that voice that tells me I must go buy a pint of ice cream. I work it out and decide not to go. Two minutes later, like I never thought about it, the voice. and again and again …Finally I am sick of the struggle, and know I am going to do it anyway, so I go. It calms the voice and has a feeling of comfort and inevitablilty about it.
Like Rushgeekgirl, I feel anxious when my binge is ending. If I give myself permission to have a binge, I have to get an entree and a dessert. As I am eating the entree, I am not even tasting it, but thinking about how when it’s over i still have the pint of ice cream to eat. The ice cream makes me feel ill enough that I can just go to bed that night and not need anything else. And of course that will be the last time. :rolleyes:
I have been to OA and I am sure it works if you work it, as they say, I just don’t know how I could live without my habit. Nothing else has the glow food does, not even sobriety.
somethingfishy.org has a lot of good information as well as message boards on the various types of eating disorders. I just wish there were fewer hugs, animations and avatars; it makes me dizzy to try to read it!
Oh hell, yeah. I used to stare aghast at people who would take without asking; how dare they presume that I wouldn’t miss that French fry out of the 1000s on the pile! Eventually I realized that it is the expectation that you would share so I took control and offered food; at least that way it’s my idea and I can handle it. It’s all about control for me.
But I always felt that if we each ordered food, we had what we wanted and why look at someone else’s. If I feel the territoriality why wouldn’t others? How would they feel if I took one of their fries? Probably just fine, since they don’t have these hangups.
I got PB&Js almost every day for school except for one day when I got a baloney sandwich and Fritos. Someone asked me for one and I look at them like they were nuts. I NEVER GET THESE, I thought, why would I share? And I just wasn’t socialized that you’re expected to share.
Long post ahead.
I was a secret binge eater all my life. I was nearly incapable of having 1 serving of any sweet thing. If I opened a box of cookies and took out 2 cookies and sealed up the package and put it away, I would eat the cookies and then want more cookies. I would fight it for awhile, and then go back to the package, open it, take out 2 cookies and seal the package again. Repeat until the package was empty. Muffins for breakfast, full fat venti lattes with extra syrup, M&Ms, fast food…I used to have a big bowl just for ice cream. I was weird about sharing food, if there were two pieces, I always arranged to have the biggest piece. If there was a birthday cake left in the office kitchen, I would sneak and scrape off all the bits of frosting remnants left when the cake was cut. When I was delivering an onsite training, I always brought Hershey’s miniatures “for the class” which I would eat 2-3 at a time the entire day. I had to have the biggest size of everything - venti latte, big ice cream at Cold Stone, biggest smoothie. I craved sugar and baked goods most of all.
I trace a lot of my unhealthy food habits to my childhood. My brother and I were “latchkey” children beginning when I was 11 years old. We had to come straight home from school and we weren’t allowed outside until my parents got home. In the summer, we weren’t allowed outside all day long. What else was there to do but watch TV and eat? I used to eat because I was bored. I remember sprinkling sugar on bread and eating it. I remember sneaking into my mom’s container of icing and eating icing by the spoonful. I would eat Nestle’s chocolate milk by the spoonful, and brown sugar by the spoonful. Anything sweet to give me something to do, give me some pleasure in my boredom.
I dieted unsuccessfully for 20 years. Well, I was successful at losing weight, I was horribly unsuccessful at keeping weight off. Dieting always meant a terrible, restrictive eating regime that I hated. Plain salads with a squeeze of lemon. 1/2 cup of rice crispies with skim milk. Plain baked chicken with steamed broccoli. Lean Cuisines for lunch and skipping dinner. I bought into all the fake food - fat free this, sugar free that, frankenfoods and meal replacement drinks. If I could cut some calories to lose some weight, I could cut MORE calories to lose more weight. Dieting meant being hungry. Dieting made me gain weight because I would always be WAITING for the diet to be OVER so I could go back to eating muffins for breakfast and pizza for lunch, M&Ms for snack and Taco Bell for dinner. I could lose weight, but I always gained it back, and MORE weight.
I had to accept that I had to make a lifelong, permanent change to lose weight and keep it off. Because the change had to be permanent, it had to be something I could stick with, something I liked. I didn’t want to feel deprived, I didn’t want to feel always on a diet.
I looked at the foods I loved and made some choices. I love chocolate, love it, I could never give it up AND it had some health benefits. As much as I ate it, I didn’t love fast food, I could give it up AND it has zero health benefits. I made choices like that - emphasizing foods with high nutritional value over foods with low nutritional value. I did give up some foods forever (fast food, sugary soda, packaged baked goods) but I honestly do not miss them. I don’t get terrible food cravings for bad things like I used to. A lot of other foods, I just limit. Like…red wine or dark chocolate or full fat cheese or eating bread out of the bread basket at a restaurant.
I gave up sugar almost by accident. 2 years ago in July 2004, I decided to change my life forever. I concentrated on only eating nutritionally powerful foods (like salmon, blueberries, low fat yogurt, whole grains, broccoli, oranges, soy) and avoiding all foods that were not nutritionally powerful (fast food, candy, packaged baked goods, booze). I lost 5 lbs the first week and it motivated me to keep going. I eventually lost nearly 70 lbs. I didn’t even realize I had quit eating sugar until I started to realize that my attitudes about food were changing.
I remember standing in line at Qdoba, waiting for my healthy naked vegetarian burrito (rice, black beans, salsa, romaine) and eyeing the chocolate chip cookies by the register. In the past, I would have had to have had one - what kind of dinner didn’t include dessert? I realized I had no interest in the cookies, none. It was really fascinating to look at the cookies and not want a cookie. Around the same time I participated in a conference that started every morning with a heaping table of delectable pastries - my big weakness. No interest in the pastries. It was…indescribable.
It took a long time to get brave enough to add treats back to my daily life. I was terrified I would awaken the sleeping sugar monster. I still don’t allow packages of cookies or ice cream in the house. I also don’t buy a lot of cereal. These are definitely trigger foods for me and why tempt myself. I usually confine treats to splitting desserts in restaurants or having a biscotti with my afternoon coffee. I can handle those kinds of treats in moderation. And when I’m sharing dessert with a friend, I always take the smallest piece.
Giving my body whole foods, a wide range of nutrition, fruits, vegetables, lean protein, healthy fats, whole grains made a huge difference. It is honestly amazing to be completely free of food cravings. I get hungry, sure, but I don’t feel the need to eat an entire bag of mint milano cookies anymore. I never realized I was addicted to sugar until I kicked it - I never thought I would prefer a ripe mango to a brownie. Eating healthy changed my taste buds completely, I adore healthy foods. I love natural peanut butter on whole wheat toast, I love baked sweet potatoes, I love non fat greek yogurt, I love roasted vegetables, I love salmon, I love fresh berries. I would definitely take a package of meltingly ripe blackberries over an apple danish now and it is amazing to me. My tastebuds have completely changed.
Besides losing 70 lbs and looking fabulous in a size 6, the best part of changing my eating habits is how GOOD I feel. I used to fall asleep in my office every afternoon. Every afternoon. I feel like I’ve grabbed an electric fence, my body sometimes feels like it’s zinging with energy. Giving up processed foods, giving up the idea of “dieting” just eating healthy foods for the rest of my life, I feel like an evangelist, someone that’s been saved. I wish I had done this 20 years ago and saved myself 20 years of self hatred and feeling like a no will power loser.
I identify with all the binge eaters in this thread. I understand the feeling of shame. The feeling of regret AFTER you’ve eaten the 2 lb bag of peanut M&Ms. I understand eating until the stomach aches and not stopping. I wish nothing but the best for all of you.
I wonder if binge eating isn’t really part of our nature as human beings. Don’t animals exhibit similar behaviour? If I give my cat too much food, she eats like a pig and gets fat. Don’t lions gorge themselves after a kill? No emotional issues there, just doing what nature intended. Eat when you can and store the extra as fat, because food might not always be available.
I’m not a binge eater, but I have sympathy for those that are. Not binging when ample food is available seems like learned behaviour that goes against what nature intended.
Thank you for everything you shared. It is a light at the end of the tunnel that things could be different.
I am an emotional eater.
I had gastric bypass surgery in November, 2004. I have had to learn to deal more directly with my emotions as I simply physically cannot eat to the extent I did pre-op. It has been an interesting journey to say the least. I have a lot of anger that I have to deal with (I walk. A LOT). I had a bout of transference of addiction - from food to shopping - and learned a lesson from that.
It’s hard to have to face your emotions instead of deadening them. Very hard. I identify fully with so many of these postings. It hurts when I read the “fatass” and “fat fuck” comments on this board sometimes. You don’t know how helpless you feel sometimes.
Thanks for everyone for sharing their private thoughts.
I’ve got some of that…I read that the high that compulsive shoppers get is greatest right before the purchase; they’ve given themself permission and are acting on the compulsion. After they have the thing the high abates. I feel that way with food too; permission and the glee of “going for it” feels good and the actual eating is an afterthought/numb.
You have to figure out a way to always be about to eat, without ever actually eating.
I always was a binge eater and emotional eater. Once I sat down and LOOKED at my issues, it was easy to pinpoint how things started. I was sexually abused at the age of 7 by a neighbor, and never received any type of therapy for it. So I had that locked away for several years.
My binge eating/emotional eating started when I was 11/12 - JUST when my hormones and the hormones of my classmates started developing. I couldn’t deal with the attention of the opposite sex. Oddly enough, that’s exactly when I started putting on weight. I was never very heavy, but I was overweight enough to NOT feel or look attractive to myself through high school and college. It was a protection for me. No one would be interested in me if I was chubby, so I didn’t have to worry about it. And food didn’t judge me.
When I moved to NYC and moved in with my best friend/roommate, he and I started talking…discovered that we had a similar background of abuse…and he got me talking about it. After a year of working through my past with him…guess what? I was ready for the weight to come off. And it did. I lost over 50 lbs, looked and felt great, and best of all, I learned how to relate to guys and started dating frequently. I discovered that it felt GOOD to be attractive to the opposite sex.
Then I met my husband, and things kind of went the other way - but not in a negative way. I grew more comfortable in my own skin and more comfortable with him, and knowing that he accepted me no matter what, I let up on my strict eating habits a little too much. So now I may be back at the weight I was before, but it’s because I got a little too lax, not because of any emotional issues that I still need to tackle. And we both like food - we like to cook it, we like to eat it, we like to watch Alton Brown and then try his tricks and tips :D. We just need to learn to do it with a bit of a healthy slant.
The hardest part of pregnancy has been the fact that I can literally eat ANYTHING and I’ve barely gained any weight - I think my metabolism has just kicked up. I’ve fallen into some VERY bad eating habits, although I’m still not really overeating - it’s hard to overeat when your stomach’s been squeezed by a growing baby (I’ve had more Big Macs in the last four months, though, than I have eaten in the last five years…). But the one thing I look forward to after he’s born is EATING RIGHT. I want to set a good example for him, and I LIKE to eat healthy. I know how to do it, and I know that I’m past those emotional issues that once triggered my binge eating. Now it’s just a matter of doing what I know I need to do.
So yeah, I think it is possible to get past those emotional issues…the hard part is figuring them OUT in the first place. It took me from the age of 11 until I was 25 to figure that out.
E.
Aaah! It is simple and easy!
Thank you for your stories. Every story in here, I can empathize with. I’ve had my binge eats and more, and I still haven’t found a solution to stop totally obsessing about food. Ironically enough, when I was the most obsessed about food was when I was 100 pounds. Most days just require extreme, extreme self-control, and the grip doesn’t lessen at all, ever. The only thing that really helps is to stay busy, very busy & active.
I’m not compulsive about eating food, but I’m compulsive about buying it.
If I’m having a bad day I’ll buy chips and chocolate and ice cream and bring it all home and put it in the fridge till it rots.
Ditto for fruit, bread, etc, etc.
Sometimes I’ll eat chocolate chip cookie dough for dinner - about 4 tablespoons worth. The really sad part is that I don’t make it, I buy it in a big tub. And I never actually make cookies - I’ll just keep the tub till it rots.
Somewhere in my life I turned into a cliche.