Have you ever thought about where your food issues come from?

DietPrada

My father was a European immigrant when he was a child - one of 11 kids and an alcoholic father, and they had been poor, and hungry.

Growing up, dinners in my house consisted of being served a meal as big as my Dad ate, and then being screamed at until it was all eaten. Praise was delivered for having a big appetite and the reward was dessert. In his own way he was proud of being able to provide for his children so we would never go hungry.

As an adult, I did not know how to eat anything less than huge meals, until I was full. I have been keto (low carb) for 4 years, and have limited my calories that whole time. I have lost about 70lbs. I still do not know what it means to eat "until satisfied". I weigh and record all of my food, and I eat based on the maths. I still don't understand "eat when you're hungry". On low carb you are naturally less hungry, which helps me to control my eating, but that's exactly what it is - control. I will never know the feeling of intuitively eating what my body needs, and staying at a healthy weight. I don't think I will ever have a healthy relationship with food - intellectually I know the whys and hows of it all, but it's very difficult to change something that is as much a part of you as your eye colour or your height.

Who_Needs_Pants

This ^^^^^.

baconslave

I was born ravenous.
My parents always joked about that. Always hungry from a young age. Always asked if I could have seconds before I even had my first bite. Having a finite amount of food, and my parents saying no to seconds if the plate had already been reasonably full, kept me from ballooning up. I was always wanting to eat. It took me a long time to get full. I was always a little overweight growing up, but I played sports. In jr high I was old enough to make my own plate. I was still limited by food availability but not as much. And I ate what I wanted at school and with friends. I started gaining weight. High school was worse, as I often had a little spending money, and it was mostly used to eat. Briefly in my senior year I lost a lot of weight and kept it off until the middle of my freshman year in college, but I dieted throughout that time. Then I got mono for 6 weeks. After that I gained 60lb by Christmas and my weight continued to go up. Time passed: Marriage, 4 kids, many diet attempts gone bust. I was still always hungry. I got up to 284lb in the last pregnancy. Got gestational diabetes. Then, a few years later, my mother almost dying from diabetic complications impressed upon me that I had to do something because I was on that exact path. I was 252lb and my youngest was almost 4. So I used keto to lose 102lb.

I got down to goal and decided to recomp. Then gained 10lb. Some of that was water weight going to low-carb (100-120ish grams) instead of keto. A little was muscle. Some was probably fat, because I thought I could be like a normal human and stop logging obsessively. Surely I should have developed appropriate hunger cues, right? HAHAHA! Trying to get it off still...that's another frustrating story. Body is still changing by measurements even though the scale is being a turd. I've resolved my issues with food to the point I can enact personal strategies that I call "brain hackery" to keep my intake in check. But I still have a delayed satiety reflex. And it still takes a metric *kitten*-ton of food for me to actually feel physically full. Don't even get me started on how well I can hold my liquor. It takes 400cal to get me a little drunk... I will always have to log.

Born ravenous and will likely die ravenous.
Don't know what faulty wiring I have, but at least I learned how to bypass and ignore it. Most of the time.

Isolde1953

Other than overeating I also stockpile food. I can see a direct correlation between stress and umpteen pounds of dried beans in my pantry. I like this app because I record what I eat. No more calories left means no more food - usually. I think I finally am on the right track

BCullari

I have always self-medicated negative emotions with food...and it bloated me up like a walking land-whale.
My mommy and daddy are to blame which is why we never talk - well, that and they're both deceased which just makes me want a gallon of chocolate ice-cream!

jessVanL

Mine come from my mother , she was an anorexic dancer as a teen and then got pregnant with me at 24 and ballooned falling pregnant with my sister straight after and getting even larger. She absolutely hated her body but never got rid of the eating disorder mentality so she became a binge / secret eater. So as a child she would let us go crazy and eat take out 3 times per day if she was having a bad day , our plates were always piled high with exactly what we wanted but on the flip side she would cheer us on when we went on obscene crash diets , she didn't even notice I'd developed an eating disorder until I had dropped 15 kgs and was passing out. Now like my mother I struggle with binge eating/ secret eating and never knowing how to control myself. I am pretty good at loosing the weight but I'm just as good at picking it up again . I've lost and put on the same 10 kgs 5 times in 3 years.

ripiirai

Hi, here's my story regarding my food issues. I've actually never told my whole story to anyone, so this text just grew and grew, sorry for the length of it!

I grew up in a family where food was a source of happiness, it was used for comfort when you were sick, or if you were feeling down. Our eating habits as well as all of our family members weight was something to be ashamed of. Both my parents and my sister are overweight and everytime we eat together (still...) they comment how we shouldn't be eating this or that, while we're eating it! And every healthy meal is put on a pedistal, sometimes we talk about nothing else but food in the table, we don't know how to talk to each other really... So the food to me has such a complicated meaning, it's vital for staying alive, but at the same time it's a therapist, and a taboo.

I picked up a habit of binging the taboo- foods (sugary snacks for me) as a kid, I ate them very quickly, so that no one would notice. I gained weight gradually, always trying out a new fad diet, so I managed to mess up my bodys normal hunger signals for a long long time. Still this way I was getting bigger in a slower pace, up until I was sexually abused at the age 18. After the abuse I seeked comfort from food in a fashion that the weight came on very quickly. I ended up being almost unrecognizable to myself. My thoughts were always circulating around the idea of not being good enough, always using negative comments in my head to punish myself for whatever the thing I supposedly was doing wrong. I started to believe that I am nothing, just a waste of time to everyone around me. And I truly despised myself, my body, all of it.

So, 4 years ago something changed, I decided to start a very strict diet due to a career opportunity where I had to be on a video. The video shoot was 5 months away, so it was obvious that it would be a short time to get fit for a person who had a lot of kgs to drop. I ended up developing eating disorders, first orthorexia, then bulimia. The number on a scale was what mattered to me, I started to set goals to ridiculous numbers and those numbers were my whole life. And it didn't stop to the video shoot, I kept reaching for smaller and smaller numbers by all means. So I became obsessed. I remember being at my mothers 60th birthday and having a panic attack because the food they were serving wasn't healthy enough for me. Instead of enjoying the celebration with my familymembers, I was fixated with my diet. And that occurred everywhere. I stopped seeing people because of this. I was never thin enough, smart enough or fit enough, even though by that time I had lost over 50 kgs and started to pass out everywhere due to the fact that I wasn't eating enough. I couldn't see myself correctly in a mirror ( yeap, picked up another condition called body dysmorphia).

So, after losing and gaining weight constantly all through my life, I finally realized that I need something else than just a diet and that being thinner actually had nothing to do with happiness. By that time I was diagnosed with a depression and I was ready to end my life. I really needed a therapist.
So right now, after talking about my issues in therapy for 1.5 years, I'm back here. I gave up dieting for almost a year and I became happier. Just like that. I didn't think myself as a number, but as a whole person with other traits than just my outer appearance. Unfortunately the old bingeing habit started to slowly come back.

At this point I'm trying to have a different approach on this weight loss thing.
In my mind I'm just a human being now, I am not perfect and I don't need to be. I have caused my body so much damage, not only by gaining weight, but by using stupid diets and unhealthy habits to get it off. So I'm now showing mercy to my body, it is a part of me, whether I like it or not. Hate didn't make it any better, so I'm trying to love it this time. And food is just food, it's fuel, but it can also be a source of enjoyment, when it's enjoyed with friends for instance. I never binged around company, I always binged by myself. So I'm setting up a new kind of goal. A goal to be active and do the things I want to do, instead of trying to hit a certain number. I didn't gain all my lost weight back, but I got quite close to it. Hopefully this time I wouldn't have to think of this journey as a diet, just a lifetime regime, that wouldn't take over all parts of my life.

Good luck to all to your journeys!

Pamela_43

EbonyDahlia wrote: »

My father was a European immigrant when he was a child - one of 11 kids and an alcoholic father, and they had been poor, and hungry.

Growing up, dinners in my house consisted of being served a meal as big as my Dad ate, and then being screamed at until it was all eaten. Praise was delivered for having a big appetite and the reward was dessert. In his own way he was proud of being able to provide for his children so we would never go hungry.

As an adult, I did not know how to eat anything less than huge meals, until I was full. I have been keto (low carb) for 4 years, and have limited my calories that whole time. I have lost about 70lbs. I still do not know what it means to eat "until satisfied". I weigh and record all of my food, and I eat based on the maths. I still don't understand "eat when you're hungry". On low carb you are naturally less hungry, which helps me to control my eating, but that's exactly what it is - control. I will never know the feeling of intuitively eating what my body needs, and staying at a healthy weight. I don't think I will ever have a healthy relationship with food - intellectually I know the whys and hows of it all, but it's very difficult to change something that is as much a part of you as your eye colour or your height.

I feel for your dad. Being profoundly hungry and having nothing to eat, is a feeling you never forget and never want to experience again. I know exactly why I am the way I am. I gained control by listening to myself and not others. I cant stand to be hungry but I can tolerate it as long as I know I CAN eat if I choose to. I dont do the "if it's not in the house you want eat it" thing. I have plenty of food in the house, so I feel comforted knowing I could have it if I wanted it. That helps me.

Treece68

I look at photos of when i was young 5,6,7,8, and I was a chubby little girl but not anything unusual. I remember looking at myself in the mirror when I was 8 and thinking I look fine why do my parents think I'm fat. As a preteen my mother would go on diets with me she would have me do workout tapes with her and would make me ride my bike for an hour ever day in the summer. My grandparent would say you would be so pretty if you lost a few pounds. My parents would question everything I ate. Do you really need two pieces of toast? Do you really need this and that. I felt so bad about eating I would hide food and wrappers in my room. I would wrap things in toilet paper and flush them down the toilet or put them at the bottom of the garbage can. I would walk or ride my bike to the gas station and spend all the money I had on sweets and sodas.
I was very active I was in softball, basketball, track,I lived in town and walked or rode everywhere. I would play bad mitten every day of the summer because my best friend lived next door, but she could not go out of her yard while her parents were not at home so we met at the fence and played bad-mitten all day. High school I was in marching band, and musicals (lots of dancing) and later color guard (dancing with flags). I was active and fit but still 180lbs as a highschooler.
My dad would call me fat. My mother would not say it but she would say she was worried about me and would try cabbage soup diet, Weight Watchers (several times), Atkins, LA Weight loss. She took me to the doctor who told me no mater what I did I would never be skinny and then gave me a food plan that was basically the cabbage soup diet. No matter what I did or tried the scale would only move 5 -10lbs.
In Collage I was not active and I still had that bad food habits secret eating. I would feel so ashamed of myself.
I ballooned. After collage I lived with my boyfriend (still do) and would eat in my car, fast food, sandwiches from the grocery store, candy, anything I had money I would buy it. I tried to stop I tried to count calories work out 5 days a week for several hours. I felt better but the scale only move 10lbs.
This went on for several more years and finally I found out I have Celiac in March 2016. Once this was under-control I am now able to lose weight. I was malnourished, fat, but malnourished so my body held onto my fat thinking I was starving. I have been doing CICO since March have lost weight and have realized that I don't need to hide food. I am an adult. I try very hard to stick to this but sometimes when I'm in the kitchen eating a snack like cheese or a spoon full of peanut butter, and my boyfriend walks in I jump like I have been caught doing something wrong, and I then have to remind myself. I am doing nothing wrong. I am hungry I needed a snack. I can eat this snack and nothing will be wrong. I won't be yelled at.
I am working on my problems mentally and physically and I feel like I am doing a good job.
I don't blame my parents, but I think if they were food positive I would not have the ketch in my brain to hide my food like a squirrel.

baconslave

Treece68 wrote: »

I look at photos of when i was young 5,6,7,8, and I was a chubby little girl but not anything unusual. I remember looking at myself in the mirror when I was 8 and thinking I look fine why do my parents think I'm fat. As a preteen my mother would go on diets with me she would have me do workout tapes with her and would make me ride my bike for an hour ever day in the summer. My grandparent would say you would be so pretty if you lost a few pounds. My parents would question everything I ate. Do you really need two pieces of toast? Do you really need this and that. I felt so bad about eating I would hide food and wrappers in my room. I would wrap things in toilet paper and flush them down the toilet or put them at the bottom of the garbage can. I would walk or ride my bike to the gas station and spend all the money I had on sweets and sodas.
I was very active I was in softball, basketball, track,I lived in town and walked or rode everywhere. I would play bad mitten every day of the summer because my best friend lived next door, but she could not go out of her yard while her parents were not at home so we met at the fence and played bad-mitten all day. High school I was in marching band, and musicals (lots of dancing) and later color guard (dancing with flags). I was active and fit but still 180lbs as a highschooler.
My dad would call me fat. My mother would not say it but she would say she was worried about me and would try cabbage soup diet, Weight Watchers (several times), Atkins, LA Weight loss. She took me to the doctor who told me no mater what I did I would never be skinny and then gave me a food plan that was basically the cabbage soup diet. No matter what I did or tried the scale would only move 5 -10lbs.
In Collage I was not active and I still had that bad food habits secret eating. I would feel so ashamed of myself.
I ballooned. After collage I lived with my boyfriend (still do) and would eat in my car, fast food, sandwiches from the grocery store, candy, anything I had money I would buy it. I tried to stop I tried to count calories work out 5 days a week for several hours. I felt better but the scale only move 10lbs.
This went on for several more years and finally I found out I have Celiac in March 2016. Once this was under-control I am now able to lose weight. I was malnourished, fat, but malnourished so my body held onto my fat thinking I was starving. I have been doing CICO since March have lost weight and have realized that I don't need to hide food. I am an adult. I try very hard to stick to this but sometimes when I'm in the kitchen eating a snack like cheese or a spoon full of peanut butter, and my boyfriend walks in I jump like I have been caught doing something wrong, and I then have to remind myself. I am doing nothing wrong. I am hungry I needed a snack. I can eat this snack and nothing will be wrong. I won't be yelled at.
I am working on my problems mentally and physically and I feel like I am doing a good job.
I don't blame my parents, but I think if they were food positive I would not have the ketch in my brain to hide my food like a squirrel.

I still do that sometimes, too. Like if I decide to have something "questionable" with my calories or it's a big snack. My husband can be blunt and critical. He used to make comments. When I got married is when I started the "hide/binge" nonsense. He's let up a lot with it now that he's seen all I have done. And when I do decide to indulge, he keeps his mouth shut, as he knows it's a one-off and none of his business. I still catch myself doing it a little but it's getting better. Just keep at it consistently and time will help you release that. You've got this.

DannyYMi54321

That one is easy to answer now - well, easier - than it used to be. My childhood household was chaotic - mentally ill father, domestic violence perpetrated on my mother, I was a long-term victim of psychological/emotional/sexual abuse at his hands. So I ended up a binge eater. It's taken a lot of hours in therapy to get some of it somewhat resolved - I'm still a work in progress. I understand better why I do what I do to myself, but I still don't understand it fully to the point where I've broken the cycle entirely.

NannersBalletLegs

I never really had issues with food until my 30s. As a kid, my dad kept tons of junk food in the house, but I usually ignored it and went for the raw fruits and veggies, mixed nuts, and lunch meats that my mom kept in the house. Most candy, especially chocolate, made me sick to my stomach. When I was a teenager, I ate terrible food, but not really in excess. All through those years and into my twenties, though, I was a smoker (but I also walked and biked a lot of places), so I did not have to work hard at staying thin. I just ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and stayed the same weight.

I lost both my dad and my grandmother in my late 20s, though, and moved really far away from the rest of my family for grad school shortly thereafter. I struggled with money a lot and had a few stretches where I was too poor to buy food and too proud to ask for help. Being depressed about the loss of family, acually knowing real hunger for the first time in my life, and then quitting smoking (and other vices) in 2012 caused a perfect storm where I started eating my feelings and gained over 40 pounds over the next four years. I binged on cookies, cake, french fries, and other hyperpalatable foods that would give me the little seratonin boost or feeling of comfortable numbness that I was craving.

I've been abstaining from the above foods and reverting to a more PBWF-oriented diet for over a month now and am working through my emotional issues. Eventually, sweets and fried foods will come back into my life (in moderation), but right now I know that they are a crutch and a binge trigger that will prevent me from really unpacking my baggage. Having had experience with and having overcome other kinds of addiction in my past, I can attest to overeating having a temporary numbing effect that simply delays and prolongs suffering rather than ending it.

Unknown

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Raynne413

I didn't realize until a few years ago where my issues came from. My Mumm gave me the insight when she was looking through pictures for my Father's mother's funeral and realized that I was never heavy until my grandmother (HER mother) committed suicide. When I really thought about it, I realized that the only thing I had to associate with my grandmother was food. She died when I was only in second grade and due to her mental health issues, she never really interacted with my brother and I, but she DID cook. ALL the time. So the only way I could really relate to her death was to think about the foods she would never make again. I think this is the reason why when I find something I really like to eat, I MUST EAT IT ALL!!!! Unfortunately, though, knowing what the root of the issue IS, and actually being able to do something about it, don't necessarily coincide.

And of course, it didn't help that my mother has her own issues and barely ate, but loved to feed and always talked about how fat she was. . . which made ME feel even worse about myself.

I finally started losing weight when I was 20, after giving my baby up for adoption. I think it gave me something to focus on other than my mental and emotional pain. Unfortunately I knew nothing about nutrition and have a Type A personality, and I ended up becoming anorexic and losing over 200lbs. Then I swung up to binge eating and gained back 80. Now I've kind of stabilized but I think I will always have food issues, and the holidays and any kind of celebrations and vacations really stress me out.

jruck371

My parents are both fad dieters.. and never been able to successfully lose weight and keep it off.. I didn't realize how much that effected me until I left home.

The first time my mom took me to weight watchers I was 10, the only thing I remember about it was that I was starving all the time and started sneaking food and binge eating and purging but never lost any weight. From there i did paleo, jenny craig, and a nutritionist (which actually worked for a while).
Foods in our house were labeled "good" and "bad" and there were foods we couldn't keep in the house because my parents couldn't control themselves around them.
It wasn't until I met my boyfriend and moved in with him that I started to realize how crazy their diets are- and how much shame they made me feel about my weight and the food I ate.

I now eat what I want within my calories, and although most of the food would be considered healthy (fruits, veg, lean meats) I also enjoy chocolate without guilt, butter, whole milk instead of skim, salami, wine, and many other taboo foods (in moderation of course) that I would have never had at my parents.

I noticed this recently when my parents came over to our place for breakfast and my dad commented on how putting homo milk in his coffee (since its all we have at our house) was "such a treat" and "something he can only have once a year". Seriously? Life's too short to punish yourself by eating foods you hate- and 40 cal worth of homo milk is not going to wreck your diet.

zdyb23456

I spent my first 3.5 years in an orphanage. When I was adopted by an American family. I used to hide bread/rolls in my room, and once my mom caught me with strips of bacon in my pocket when we were at the bank. She thought it was hilarious.

When I was 9 my parents adopted 3 more girls (sisters). They were very petite and very thin. When I went through puberty I filled out and suddenly was much larger than them. It messed me up. I felt so fat around them even though I wasn't. Starting as a young teenager I was always dieting so I could be "petite" like them.

lmunik

Im reading all of these and it seems as though a lot of diet issues come from family issues. I had the same go on in my kife. But now im older, much older and the culprit is me. I have to deal with my issues and emotions as they currently are- forgetting my past. Remember the goal is health.

nomorepuke

I never had a food issue. I was never obsessed with food or binged at night etc..No sweet tooth whatsoever. I gained weight because I didn't have time to prepare meals at home. I ate fast, frozen and processed foods on the go all the time.
Now I'm losing weight by eating Whole/Unprocessed real foods.
When I go thru tough times, I just stop eating.