Confess.

At my 'worst' included anxiety that was out of control turning into depression for ~7-9 months. Do not recommend.

I would get up (say to myself I can't wait until I get back home and can get back into bed), shower, get dressed, go to work, work, on the way home I'd stop and get fast food and binge. I wouldn't eat all day so rationalized that meant I could eat a lot in one sitting once I got home. I can remember a meal I ate often was ~2100 calories. That, on top of literally no activity other than binging Netflix/Youtube lead to quite a bit of weight gain.

I can definitely eat 2100 (or even more) calories in a day now but I am FAR more active and have lost ~30lbs. Crazy. Hindsight is better though. At the time I knew I was not OK...but looking back I was really really really not OK.

It helps me to share my story of how I used to eat and how much I used to struggle. It helps remind me how far I've come even though I still struggle with overeating at times and reinforces that I don't want to get back to that place and that I have the tools not to do so. Although I don't liken myself to an addict, I do know that some recovering addicts find it helpful to share their "bottoms" with others.

I find this thread really interesting.
I never had an eating pattern when I was nearly 250lbs - I just ate.
I ate and ate and rarely stopped unless I was asleep.
It was totally mindless - every day I would have a slice of cake at work - sometimes 2 that I later realised had around 600 calories per slice.
It would be eaten in 2 minutes flat.
I would have my meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner in huge portions and snack constantly between meals.
Some of the food I was eating was pretty healthy - but the calorie content and portion size was out of control!
I used to put cheese, mayo and butter on everything.
I'd eat fast food maybe twice a week.
Then because I hated my job at that time - I would get home and drink wine - often lots of it!
Then I would eat late at night to not be hungover for work, sleep badly and inevitably be hungover the next day and the cycle would continue.
I used to sometimes log calories and I could reach 4000 calories a day easily.
The difference now is - I don't mindlessly snack, I don't drink midweek, I plan meals and practice IF.
Oh and I no longer have the soul crushing job that made me fat and miserable 😊

Y’all are amateurs. To this day I don’t know how I wasn’t many hundred pounds.

I started my morning with a trip to publix to get three or four cinnamon twist donuts, a warm loaf of white mountain bread (“ma’am it’s too hot to slice” “that’s ok” - because I’ll be tearing off chunks on the drive to work), a family size bag of M&Ms, and a big Lindt type chocolate bar or two. Sometimes I’d get a box of chocolate covered Entenmann’s donuts and a couple of varieties of Little Debbie’s along with my candy- oatmeal pies (oatmeal being healthy, right?), and Nutty Bars or Swiss Rolls

oh and I might get a family size bag of Doritos or Salt n’Vinegar chips if I was craving salt on top of sweets

If it was Cadbury’s crispy Easter or Xmas candy season, it was a bonus. Loved those crispy shells with a passion

I’d eat ALL of it at work, along with several Cokes, and fast food for lunch, Popeyes all white meal being the favorite, along with an apple pie or two.

I’d stop at Publix again on the way home and pick up a carrot cake bar or a key lime pie, more candy, and come home and make dinner. Id usually eat 1/2 the cake or pie. Didn’t want my husband to see me eating the whole thing although I thought nothing of eating the candy in front of him and the kids, him being diabetic and them probably too afraid to ask me for any in case I lost control and ate them, too.

The day after Christmas/Halloween/Easter was a highlight. Half price candy, you know.

I calculated once that I easily ate well over 10,000 calories a day.

it was boredom, frustration, greed, gluttony, lots of stuff rolled into one, which turned into a madness for carbs and sugar.

My husband has no idea of the amount I put away, and he witnessed a lot

even now there’s no off switch. Our daughter is visiting from overseas and I asked her to bring me some Christmas specialties. She gave them to me this morning and I’ve already polished off a pack of chocolates and almost a whole sack of glazed gingerbread.

I feel stinking sick, too.

Nowadays I usually savor what I eat, but can still get into this mode where it’s not about tasting or enjoying, but about putting hand to mouth, hand to mouth, whadya mean it’s empty?

Spring's post has reminded me of one of the hedonistic behaviors that contributed to my weight gain: Fun with sensory-specific satiety. Eat a sweet thing. Want a salty thing. Eat a salty thing. Want a sweet thing. Eat a sweet thing. Repeat way, way too many times.

I was at my heaviest in high school. I don't remember much, but I do recall hiding food and would eat the better part of an entire carrot cake with a friend and then trash it after a day or two to hide the evidence. Or an entire bag of Tostitos. Those were my vices- Carrot cake and Tostitos. One time the dog found the carrot cake under my bed.

My worst eating pattern, though, was probably in my early 20's. I was a healthy weight, but eternally trying to reduce. I would "be good" (i.e. starve) M-F then totally binge on weekends. My rock bottom was fishing chocolate snack bars out of the closet where my roommate stashed weeks upon weeks of Nutrisystem that she never ate. God, those were awful. I can see why she never ate it.

Also, those were in the good ol' fat-is-bad days, and I ate little to no meat (to avoid the fat, naturally). So my diet was almost entirely carbs. Not balanced at all. And I suffered from atopic dermatitis like nobody's business. Funny how my skin totally healed when I had enough fat in my diet. All of that was when tracking intake was a lot more cumbersome. It involved looking up foods in books and writing intake down on paper with a pencil. I used a lot of artistic license in those days. Lied to myself a lot. Lots of things (like the gargantuan muffins at my company lobby shop) were "100 calories." Yeah, right.

Weighing and logging everything I eat... is it a touch disordered for someone in maintenance a couple decades? I'll cop to that, actually. Maybe it is. But it is hella less disordered than I used to be and the least disordered in my adulthood so far, so I'm just gonna work with that. The online calorie counting tools make it sooooo much easier. Easier for me, anyway, than guessing and watching the scale to find out I guessed wrong. I often say on here if I found an easier way to manage my intake I would do that instead. I just haven't found anything else as effective for me that takes less effort.

I don't know what a drunkalog is, but that was cathartic. Thanks.