Secret Eating - help!

Omg I can totally relate to this Hun, I'm trying my hardest to cut down but it feels like I'm obsessed with food. Like I'm scared if I don't have it near me. I've been back on mfp for a week and I think I've turned a corner. Only a small one mind. although I really miss my huge bars of chocolate and whole tubs of Pringles. I'm ashamed to say it's just pure greed for me. I love junk food. I am an addict and I wish I could get to a point where I overcome it. Good luck with your journey. Add me if you need motivating xx

PS, I should have added that I used to binge eat, sneak eat, do all kinds of crazy things with food. OA helped me. I have been "clean" for three years. xoxo

OMG me too! only mine is the chocolate drawer... you see the chocolate drawer in my house contains chocolate ... but when I am trying to loose weight this magical chocolate drawer is my sabotage... I eat it.. don't log it and think oh I'm still on plan. NOPE.

I need to omit this drawer from my life. I have done so in the past, and that is how I have lost my weight...

But it now contains hershey kisses. I am addicted to it. last night after weighing in at a ww meeting I shamed myself because I gained 1.2 pounds this week. So what better thing to do then go home... open chocolate drawer and go nuts!! And by the way while doing this telling my husband.. this is why I am not loosing weight! we need to get rid of the chocolate drawer! (I just need to throw it out.) The gateway drug was the Reesse's peanut butter eggs from Easter. Once I started those... it was down hill & have not lost anything since March.

Ok now that I have admitted to it.... it needs to stop.
Can you see me with these two voices in my head?

I seriously feel like I have an angel and a devil just sitting on my shoulders... I need to kick that little red jerk off my shoulder!~

I guess I am looking for advice too... and letting you know you are not alone!!!!!

Hiding things from your spouse like that? It sounds like cheating to me. You should just break up. Its really no different than having an emotional affair.

I've done the secret eating in the past. As I was reading these responses I was trying to figure out why I used to and why I don't seem to do it anymore. I think for me, I changed jobs which cut way down on stress. I also think a big factor is a change in my routine. I used to have a routine where I would drive 25 minutes to pick my kids up from daycare. I got into a habit of stopping to get a snack for the road. That snack was often a huge snack with lots of calories. I would eat all of it and throw away the containers before my husband saw. It seems crazy to me now. Anyway, when I changed jobs, I no longer have that drive so that helped.

I have also made a commitment to myself that I will log my food whether good or bad every single day for a year. One of my MFP friends inspired me. She also told me to not look at your food diary as a judge of your food. It is simply a tool. That helped me too. I don't want to see that I've eaten 600+ calories in chocolate covered pretzels and I'm going to log it if I eat it!

Good luck!!

I am not a doctor, by any means, but struggled with this type of behavior for YEARS. I would hide in my room and eat, and even hide the trash afterwards until my roommate was gone and wouldn't see me sneak it out. For me, it was a symptom of Binge Eating Disorder. It may not be that, for you, but regardless, it is something that you should get help for. There is no shame in going to see a behavioral therapist and talking it out, and in the end, it's likely to help much more than you'd even think.

With my insurance, behavioral therapist visits are something like $12 - a super-small price to pay to get my emotional/boredom/binge eating in check, and be able to focus on my health, rather than focus on how I can sneak off to binge-eat something and then feel ashamed about it.

I am a secret binger. When I am upset, I eat until I feel sick.
Some things I have found that help -
1. Are you eating enough? If I cut my calories too low, it can lead me to binging because hunger, tiredness and low blood sugar combine together to make me feel upset.
2. Do you enjoy your meals? I think about food all the time. If a meal doesn't satisfy my brain, I don't get pleasure out of eating it and thus don't feel satisfied after I eat it, even if I am physically full. If a meal doesn't excite me, I would rather eat nothing, which can lead to binging. I have found it very helpful to plan my meals in advance and get really excited about them, as excited as planning a binge, except I know the foods and quantities are within my diet plan.
3. Where do you eat? I try to keep to the rule that I only eat at the kitchen table. When I binge, I binge in my bedroom, so allowing myself to binge as long as it is in the kitchen, in front of the family, means I don't binge. It doesn't really help with binging, but it helps with boredom eating and by allowing myself to eat under those conditions takes away the feeling of being restricted or curtailed that can happen if I just tell myself 'No eating!'.
4. Why are you really eating? Push further through your feelings. Is it really boredom and taste? Do you want comfort? Are you angry, upset, frustrated, sad? What happens just before you eat to make you reach for food? I understand now that I reach for food for comfort when I am upset because I can't deal with my feelings of sadness. While I haven't got to the stage when I can just sit and 'be with my feelings', it is always good to know why you are doing something.

Anyway, good luck!

I didn't think of it until right this moment, but I eat in secret, too. This is exactly why my eating binges look like this: a bite of this, a dab of that, a sip of this other thing, a lick of that other thing. I don't want anybody to be able to see that all of something is gone since the last time he or she was in the kitchen, so I make it hard to pinpoint what and how much I ate. It's hard behavior to change; that's for sure! I think the first time I joined an on-line support group, I weighed about 30 pounds less than I do now. I try and give up on myself on a daily basis!

i am the same way! I am a smaller person (5'1 and 117 pounds) but I can out eat any man. Last weekend i ate 5 pieces of papa john's pizza and then went to get a milkshake and had to cookies (from Chick-fil-a) on the way home and threw away the wrappers and only walked inside with the milkshake. Of course my stomach hurt and i felt guilty, but while i was shoveling food in my face...i DIDNT CARE! it was so good. If i didnt order the pizza, i would have been fine. Everyone says "eat 1-2 pieces". HOW???????

I have the exact same problem and finally this week, I got fed up with it and I looked into OA. I live in a small town in North Dakota and the closest meeting is 50 miles away, but I found both telephone and online meetings so you don't have to live near a face to face meeting! Go to www.oa.org and you can choose find a meeting and click on online meetings. I don't think it's as good as a face to face meeting, but it connects with you others who are going through the same thing!