Overeating and abusive relationships

Hi all,

I have had a bad week of illness, topped today by an allergic reaction to something I ate and that I thought was ok - which left me disabled and in pain all day. When I feel sick, when I feel tired, I eat too much, and not well. I need to lose 35 lbs and I feel like there is no hope for me. This is my story.

I have sufferd from hyperthyroidism since 2011. I started developing the disease more or less at the same time as a long-term relationship with the first man I'd ever loved was going very badly. He would disappear for days, say I was part of the family, ask when it'd be a good time for kids, and then shun me. He was often away for work, but made me feel guilty when I went visiting y family (in another continent).

He vanished a few days before my birthday, refused my phone calls, and broke up with me on my very birthday. I was a wreck. At that point, I had already gone from my usual 100 lbs (I'm short as anything) to 92 after a viral infection. He said he needed time to think, but he also felt guilty because I was "so skinny." I remember him trying to spoon-feed me in a restaurant.

We sort of remained in contact, during which time I was pining after this blob, and I was devastated by my yet undiagnosed condition. I spent months sleeping three hours per night; I remember nights spent in tears on the floor of my kitchen, in British hotels, anywhere, desperate because I could not sleep.

I kept going to health services, complaining of insomnia, and weight loss. They gave me sleeping pills and told me I was anorexic. I was already eating large bowls of cereals and fruit in the morning, and triple servings of dessert for snacks. But they said it was "my fault."

My roommate and random people would mock my eating habits - because I ate clean, home-prepared foods, because I didn't and still do not like dressings, or melted cheese, or fried food, but simple, clear flavours of vegetables, meats, and fish - the flavours of my home country, 12,000 miles away, which they considered "rabbity," but teemed with memories of my nannie's gardens, and of summer walks in the hills.

My ex said it was just that I didn't want to eat: every contact with me was about how he wanted me to eat a lot. And I, desperate to do one single thing he would approve, tried to, force-fed myself everything, and anything, even things I didn't like: I had always been a foodie, and a moderate eater; now, instead, I was just overeating "as a good girl."

But I kept losing weight. I plummeted at 82 lbs in a few months. I thought I was going to die, he thought I was going to die - everyone did. I started eating like a madwoman, causing myself daily painful indigestion which forced me to bed in shivers. Finally, someone at the lab decides to test me for an autoimmune thyroiditis. And lo and behold - well, you imagine the rest.

No matter how much I tried to explain this, on his part, the message was always "you have an ED; will only like you if you eat a lot a lot a lot and put on a lot of weight." Love-starved, geographically isolated from family and friends, in a grinding professional environment - I would have done anything. And so I did.

I gained back my original weight of 100 lbs by forced steps of overeating, which made me lose all the pleasure I found in subtle tastes, in cooking, in creating any recipe from scratch. I just needed to fill myself. When I felt I was not being "a good girl," I was unhappy at work, I felt lonely because he never called - I overate, and I felt I had been "a good girl." For almost a year. I got back to my normal weight, but I was also exercising like a madwoman, about 2 hrs per day.

Then, he finally decided to tell me he had been seeing someone else (this after about 15 months of 'thinking about it'), and at the same time telling me "I love you, I love you, I love you, it's just that I'm seeing someone, I may not see her in a month, don't press the delete button on me." Needless to say, that was it for me - no coward soul is mine, and I'd be ashamed to own I once knew someone this wormy. But whatever.

I felt horrible. Not because he was seeing someone, I was just mad as hell at myself, for having been so idiotic, and love-blinded as not to see what everyone, even my colleagues, could see, that I was giving away my very life for someone not fit to tie the laces of my shoes.

Thus, the "I feel bad-I overeat" cycle continued. For some time, I could slow down the weight gain by intense training, because I had always been an athlete. I only gained about 7-8 lbs, and was still ok, curvier, but ok. Then I had an infection which was badly treated when I was abroad, my hyperthyroidism went out of control, my food sensitivities exploded during a summer of travels, my overeating continued, and here I am now, 7 months later, 35 lbs heavier, with pain in all my joints and asthma because my body is not programmed for this much weight. Weight partly due to my thyroid disorder (especially edema), and partly due to overeating.

I have been in therapy for a long time, and it took me a year, a weekly therapist, and a psychiatrist to finally accept the fact that my problem was not an eating disorder, but some kind of adaptation to external pressure. But even though that abusive relationship is over, and I am happy it is, and even if I can understand this mechanism - I cannot stop overeating.

I feel like I try each morning, and then fail. And as soon as I fail by one bit, a spoon of chocolate, a scoop of sorbet, a banana, I feel I am not "a good girl," and I overeat. I overeat, in a way, to punish myself, I guess, because it makes me suffer: I have a very delicate GI system, and multiple food sensitivities.

Is there any hope for someone like me? Will I ever manage to break this downward spiral, and be myself again?

What can I do to beat this hopelessness, this sense of being bound to a stupid behaviour such as mine, this hatred for what I have become, physically, and mentally as well?

Thank you - if you got this far. Thank you for listening to my ranting moments of despair.