Anxiety and Food

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  • John772016
    John772016 Posts: 113 Member
    KrissCanDoThis wrote: »
    eryn0x wrote: »
    KrissCanDoThis wrote: »
    @ssee11

    I have binge eating disorder.
    Every food is a binge food. Not just the fudgesticks.

    So much this. When I binge it’s not always unhealthy. I would come home from work and stand with my fingers in a bag of frozen blueberries and feel HORRIBLE. It’s the loss of control that affects you. Then often after that I would feel so bad I’d eat something else, maybe more unhealthy. The anxiety from the lack of control would sometimes cause me to be sick.

    The good news is that I have a lot better handle over it now so there is hope!

    It's a loss of control that you really only understand when you're older too..

    When I was a kid, the countless times I left my room in the dark after everyone was asleep... quietly opening the fridge and scanning for what I could eat, and opening a big Tupperware bowl of cold soup and just standing there in the fridge digging through it to eat pieces of meat and potato.. closing the lid after feeling ashamed and scared of someone seeing me and going back to my bed... only to 15 min later go back out and find something else.. and opening a package of raw bacon and eating that.

    As an adult living paycheck to paycheck eating $300 worth of food in less then 2 weeks and having to borrow money for more food, cause you just couldnt stop eating packages and packages of chicken, steaks, hotdogs, even veggies, I would cook turnip, mashed potato and carrots, mash them all up and then stir a jar of cheese wiz into it and eat the entire pot with as much bread and butter as i could until i was ready to explode.

    You try everything you can to stop eating, you throw away all your food and leave yourself with nothing, you spend all the money in your bank account, you cut up your debit and credit cards, you leave yourself nothing but bottles of salad dressing and stale ice cream cones and after consuming all that.. as much as you want to starve yourself.. it's like you're not even you anymore and you go and borrow money for food only to have it last less then a day.


    Dont demonize fudgesticks? Just binge and you wont binge again in the future? Please.

    The amount of therapy and struggle I've gone through to be able to get to the point where I can finally put into practice a positive change in the behavior that's done nothing but consume my soul for almost 30 years.. to be able to acknowledge those binges, over eat if need be and NOT wake up the next day in total chaos or wanting to correct and just carry on is a huge achievement for me.

    I still have lots of therapy i need to get.. i am no where near perfect, but it really does trivialize an eating disorder when someone just says "maybe if you didnt demonize them and just ate them, even if it's the whole box, you wouldnt want to binge in the future"..

    It kinda makes me get my back up because it brings back memories of my ex telling me "if you dont want to eat, just dont eat it's that simple"

    Anyway.. lol

    Okay, loved the lol at the end...@KrissCanDoThis..
    Actually, found your post very informative, thank you.👍 Thank you for sharing your personal struggles.

    As someone who had to 'not demonize' various foods and learn that I could be satisfied with 'a serving', & now in maintenance, all those previously demonized foods are readily available- I just don't care. Though, just because I can have a serving and be satisfied that doesn't mean everyone can.

    My path isn't everyone's, there's nothing wrong with that.

    OP lots of great advice above, you got this!
  • Unicorn_Bacon
    Unicorn_Bacon Posts: 491 Member
    Hiding my food was something early on that I developed, when I was young, before I even started grade 1, my mom was probably just a little younger than I am currently, she had a lot of her own demons and while my dad worked, she wanted to sleep late into the afternoon.

    When I would wake up, making any kind of sound was a big no no, so tv had to be really low, I couldnt play with toys that made noise and unfortunately that also included food packaging or cooking methods.

    I would eat breakfast in the morning and when lunch time rolled around if she heard me she would scream at me to get the *kitten* out of the kitchen. She scared me a lot when I was a kid and she got angry.

    Now I asked her about it as an adult and she said that often times she didnt even know what time it was and thought I was eating her out of house and home.

    However as a small child, that isnt something I would think of as a reason and to me, she was just preventing me from eating food.

    The sneaking out of my room was just the night time actions over the course of years, but I also developed habits to prevent being discovered, like not using the microwave, sliding my fingers along the fridge door to stop it from making a suction sound when it opened, if something did have plastic, like an open pack of hotdogs, I would hide it under a pillow to get my hand inside.

    I also was terrified of being caught, every time I got food, I had a fear she was going to wake up and catch me eating, so I often did my best to eat small things and quickly. I tried not to eat anything that looked like I had taken food from it.. which is why those large bowls of cold soup were a go to, or I would eat things that weren't actually a "food" like spoonfuls of sugar from the bag.

    My mentality with food was bad during school years too, she would send me to school with an appropriate lunch and snacks for the day but during first recess, while other kids were eating a snack and then spending that time playing, I had my entire lunch inside my coat pocket, eating it hoping no one would see me and making sure no one saw me chewing.

    I unfortunately cant remember if I went hungry for the rest of the school day or maybe other kids would of given me something from their lunch.

    Since I was already obese by 9, as expected there was bullying, and eating anything during those years had to be done in secret, and those habits also continue into my adulthood... I eat what is considered a normal amount of food in front of people, but if I'm at a party or something, if the food is unwatched, I would shove foods into my mouth as quick as possible, just chewing enough to be able to not choke on it before someone catches me. Same with at work, any snacks or food consumed, most of it I do without anyone seeing me. I'll hide things in my pockets or back pack so no one knows I have it. If I get a lite extra to eat at dinner, I'll hide so no one knows I ate more.

    The shame and fear just weighs you down so much. You just cant stop eating and wish you could stop, but you're alone and all people see is some fat girl eating too much like a typical stereotype.

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