STICKY POST: In Which Fatso Talks About Her Eating Disorders
I’ve been thinking about doing a post on my eating disorders – plural – for a while, but. It’s a hard subject to write about.
So much of what I can say could be taken negatively. I’m not sure if I could write it down properly.
But then COR Retreat, A Food Recovery Program, sent me this infographic about Food Addiction, and I thought… what better time to do it than now?
So, what is Food Addiction? I’ll let the infographic do the talking.
Click image for full size
I want to say that food addiction, for me, started in high school, but it didn’t. It started when I was younger, when I was being abused. I’d eat in secret, often using my lunch money to buy sweets from the shop around the corner on the way to school, leaving me enough money to buy the cheapest item on the lunch menu. I used to buy packs of sweets or mints or whatever, and I could never leave any. I had to eat the whole pack.
Say, for instance, now, I buy a multipack of crisps. Chances are I will sit and eat the entire multipack – not just the entire individual pack, but the entire multipack – in one sitting.
I cope with my feelings with food. Good mood? Food! Bad mood? Food!
When I was in college, I became an alcoholic, and started dealing with my feelings with alcohol, which was an even worse method than food. When my partner broke up with me at the start of this year, my first instinct was to go to the rum in the alcohol cupboard and take a drink. I’m mostly teetotal now, but things like that happen.
If I could be teetotal, or the food equivalent, I’d be fine.
When I was in high school, I used to sneak biscuits. I used to do whatever I could to sneak them – it usually amounted to hiding them under my boobs, and then eating them when the coast was clear, sometimes in the bathroom, sometimes in my bedroom. Sometimes I’d hide them in my school bag so I could eat them when I got to school.
When I got old enough to have my own room, I started eating in it. I hated eating where people could see me. It makes eating in public restaurants very difficult. I always feel like people are watching me. “Look at the fat girl eating, oh my god!”
Because fat people don’t have to eat to survive. We just shouldn’t eat where we can be seen.
About two weeks ago, I bought a special on a pack of biscuits. Kit-Kat, I think. £1 for something like 8 double-finger bars, and I said, “that’ll do me a wee while, then, with a cup of coffee.”
Would it hell. I had a cup of coffee that afternoon, and I had no Kit-Kats left by the end of the cup. I didn’t want to eat them all, but I couldn’t help myself, either.
The last time I had a binge, was about a month ago. I’d just had my Social Welfare money paid into my bank account, and I’d been to the shops and bought my groceries, so the fridge was full, and the cupboards were full.
There was nothing I wanted for lunch.
I walked over to The Co-Operative across the road, and I bought one of their Meal Deals: sandwich, snack, bottle of soda. They had things on cheap, too, so I bought a four pack of pork pies. A yoghurt. A pack of cream slices. A bar of tablet. A pack of crisps.
And, at the time, they were selling a 4-pack of Snickers for £1.
So I bought one of those, too.
This ties into my Food Addiction. I thought, “the pork pies will do me for lunch and dinner. The rest of the stuff’ll do me at least three days.”
I sat down, and I ate the lot of it. In one sitting.
Admittedly, it wouldn’t be called a binge if I hadn’t, but.
I couldn’t stop. It was like opening a pack of biscuits: I had to eat it all. I got halfway through it – I’d eaten the sandwich, the snack (a flapjack, I think), the bar of tablet, two of the pork pies, and I was looking at the rest going, “I could leave that until later.”
I didn’t, of course.
I ate it all. And I still ate something for dinner. I could have not eaten something for dinner – I still felt stuff at dinner time, but I ate something anyway.
I’m not entirely sure why I binge eat. I wasn’t starved as a kid.
I know there was that whole, “I have to put on weight so I’m disgusting so that I don’t get abused by men again,” thing, but now? Why do I do it now?
Now that I want to be fit and healthy and have relationships and significant others and I don’t want my knees to pack in on me, and I want a job and I want my backache to go away?
Why can’t I stop binge-eating?
Why can’t I get rid of the food addiction?
I know I’ve babbled a fair wee bit for this entry, and somehow it still just doesn’t seem enough, does it?
If you’re suffering from an eating disorder, please, get help. Don’t suffer alone. Suffering alone is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.
(Waiting for help is also hard. But not nearly as hard as suffering alone.)
May 20th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
I'm proud of you for sharing this, Tracy. It's a big deal to talk in depth about what's going on and how it's affecting you and not a lot of people can do it. It's a step in the right direction. I hope things look better for you this coming week!
May 24th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
thank you for this entry. i'm a food addict as well and i thought therapy could help me; turns out, it didn't. now i'm on a diet again and reading a lot about this subject and i'm pretty confident.
May 24th, 2012 at 6:40 pm
I still don't feel like I've said enough, somehow! I've missed so much out. But I suppose I can always talk about it again at a later date, too. It's just… it, along with the PCOS and the various medications I'm taking, are all ganging up on me to make it even MORE difficult for me to lose the weight.
I just don't want other people to feel alone or discouraged. What's the saying? Fall down x times, get back up x+1 times? I've been falling down and getting back up for years, and every binge is a setback, but it's not a breaking point. It's not something that stops me. It's just another reason to try harder.
May 24th, 2012 at 6:43 pm
I hope you're finding something that helps you, Maria! I know how hard it is, being a Food Addict. It's hard, being on a diet when you're trying to deal with this eating disorder. Even if you look at something like Paleo or Primal eating, or South Beach, (or something else entirely!) where it's not a diet, so much, as it is a lifestyle, it might make it easier? I know that when I was doing Paleo back in November/December last year, it's the best I've felt in a long time, and I never felt deprived, and I never, ever felt like I wasn't eating enough. I remember feeling like I was getting my eating disorders under control, a little. For me, diets don't work! But if you find one that works, keep at it! :) Whatever works, so long as it's not harmful!
May 30th, 2012 at 2:14 pm
Hi Tracy – have you tried cognitive behavioral therapy? This helps break cycles of thought and behavior. It takes a lot less time than typical "talking therapy" and its becoming more popular as something prescribed to help people in a practical way.
I too binge and cannot stop when confronted with one cookie or one thing. My answer was just to stop buying them. Otherwise I would eat an entire packet of chocolate rice cakes or Kinder Bars. If its not in the house, I cannot eat it. The over simplified solution perhaps but I know otherwise the entire thing goes in my mouth. From habit now this has resulted in not having so many cravings. I used to really obsess over having a sweet thing after evening meals to the point where I would beg my husband to go drive to 24HR Tesco no matter what hour and get some chocolate. Or I would divert to Marks and Spencer to get a fresh baked pastry after work. I haven't done this for months now and I only realized it recently.
I also stopped bringing money to work with me because otherwise I spent it on scones or in the shop on the way home. Started making up snacks and boxes of food to bring instead.
keep going tracy! I enjoy hearing about your success
May 30th, 2012 at 3:19 pm
I haven't tried professional CBT, but I've tried using The Beck Diet Solution, which is CBT. I've never managed to finish it, which I need to try to do again. I've been told that CBH is pretty much the ultimate way to break free from eating disorders, which is why I wanna try it.
But actually finding a professional CBT practitioner here is… hard.
I'm with you, though. Easier just to not buy the stuff.
Although the act of not buying the stuff itself is hard enough.
June 15th, 2012 at 4:47 pm
Oh my Gosh, i can't believe i missed this post! Everytime you post it gets sent to an email address i don't use that often and so i usually read in bulk every fortnight or so but i missed this, i apologise. It takes lady balls to fess up to an Eating Disorder, so well done for that. I know you've mentioned going to a psychiatrist, do you get treatment for your ED?
Trust me i've been there with bingeing, although i never consciously decided to be fat – i was always wanting to be as thin as the other girls in school but .. binge-eating saw to that. It's such an illogical problem! I found Overcoming Binge-Eating by Christopher G. Fairburn really useful when i first discovered i had a problem, but it sounds as if you're already pretty clued up on stuff. It's a useful read, anyway :) Hang in there my dear, you're working SO hard xx
June 15th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
I'm supposed to be getting treatment for the root problem of my EDs, not for my EDs themselves. Next time I talk to my psychiatrist, I'm gonna ask if there are any CBTs in the area that I can talk to, though.
Oh, I would have loved to have been as thin as the other girls in school! But alas, yeah. Binge-eating and food addiction = fattest person in school.
I'll look up that book, though. It may be helpful anyway. :)