Healing Your Relationship with Food?

I say it on my profile : I have lost and put back over 300lbs in the past ten years. I lived for months on less than 600kcal/day, exercising like mad. Then I ate about 10,000kcal/day for months. I am not exaggerating.
I still have a very unhealthy relationship with food and I don't think it will ever heal. But even though my weight still fluctuates a lot (between 70 and 90kg), I no longer starve myself and I no longer binge until I find myself sobbing on the floor from the pain. Meeting my lovely, understanding husband helped. Having children helped even more, because it showed me how amazing my body can be, and because I don't want them to think that eating disorders are normal.
In my case, counselling hasn't helped.

I would like answers too! My husband wants me to see a therapist, but I don't want to spend the money. I have a love/hate relationship with food. I've lost 99 lbs, but haven't healed that "relationship". I ate HALF a donut the other day and felt so guilty that I did an extra 45 min on the exercise bike. I keep thinking that things will change now that I'm at a healthy weight, but no.

I'm bumping for answers!

I'm thinking along the same lines but don't know what to do. In my case, it's certainly not extreme, but I often feel "deprived" when I eat healthy food and a healthy amount. I recently switched to a no meat, no dairy, no eggs diet - back in June - for lots of good reasons but yesterday I sat down to a big bowl of buttered egg noodles and went out to eat at a korean restaurant where I had a giant bowl of seafood udon soup.....None of this is a crime but it does sabotage my goals. And I can't seem to put it in a good perspective! Healthy food should make me know how much I love myself! Not Cheetos! (I always want cheetos)
Sometimes this is about supplements. I'm going to go take my Vitamins D and B-12 now.

A friend asked me why my last diet failed and that's when it hit me - every diet I'd ever been on failed because I thought I had to go without certain foods. They would work for a while but then a few months in and I'd be craving chocolate or pizza so bad it was driving me batty. Atkins was the only exception but even then, once I went on vacation and had "real" food, I realized what I was missing and that was over. So instead, like you, I decided to develop a more healty relationship with food. When I first started, I was with Weight Watchers so it was counting points instead of calories, but it's the same concept - as long as it fit into my daily/weekly allotment, it wasn't off limits.

Of course I made some adjustments too. I took some of our favorite recipes and lightened them up a bit by adding more veggies, cutting down on the pasta (and/or using healthier pasta) and cutting down on the meat (and/or using leaner meats). I also paid more attention to my portion sizes and made sure I stopped thinking that I had to keep up with Hubs and stuff myself every night.

Now that's not to say I didn't end up giving up certain things. Once you start on that path, it's like budgeting money, and you begin to realize what things just aren't worth the cost. Like we used to drink a lot of coffee brandy and milk which I later figured out was about 500 calories per (tall) glass. No wonder I got up to 260!! I also gave up McD's for the most part - I'll go there once in a while but it's more like a few times a year instead of a few times a week. And I don't practically live on cookies and that kind of stuff anymore. I still enjoy a piece or four of chocolate on a regular basis but I keep it to the dark stuff because that's what I love so it's totally worth the calories in my mind.

It's a process and I'm sure you can do it!

Yes, I have always been an emotional eater. When I felt like people weren't there for me and couldn't give me the comfort or affection I wanted, I could always turn to food. Food would never reject me. Food would never be too busy for me. Food would never cheat on me. Food would never insult me. Food would never criticize me. It filled me up. It made me feel good. I could control it (or so I thought). I even had a period of time in my teens when I was binging and purging quite a bit. When I stuffed myself with food, for a while I didn't feel the emptiness. Now I'm learning to be at peace with myself and with the people and situations that have hurt me in the past. I'm learning that exercise is a much better way to really feel good and take charge of something. I'm learning to enjoy food the way it's meant to be enjoyed and to use it as fuel and not to replace intimacy.