Probably around the age where I had a lot of time spent in my home. I used to play outside constantly but the more time I spent inside and the later I stayed up the more I over ate. I am a seasoned food-aholic so I can handle tonsss. lol That's what I say anyways. I still battle it.. Especially since the heat has started to turn up outside... for some reason I am way more hungry than I normally am.
In high school, but my mum quickly nipped it in the bud by just not buying the kind of foods I would binge on (chips, chocolate biscuits etc). That woke me up and I became really healthy and active and stayed that way until after I had my now 3 year old...
Staying at home with her was great in one way but terribly bad in that I was right next to the kitchen all day long! Proximity to food and thinking "oh it's ok, go on, have one, it won't hurt you, who have you got to impress anyway, you're a SAHM" did it this time, and unfortunately there was no mum there to stop buying the crap because I AM the mum now!
I have had a problem with ood for as long as I can remember. I love to mix up cake batter and hid it in my room! It sucks that we can get addicted to something we need to survive. My husband has addiction problems that he can go to meetings for and has clean time. We dont get to abstain from our addiction!!
I was a normal weight toddler but I was the fattest kid in my grade school. I lost the extra weight on my own during middle school and have been dealing with the problem with varying degrees of success since then (now 48 years old).
my eating issues started after I gained weight in college. Actually, the food issues started when I tried to LOSE the weight I gained in college... diets = bingeing.
It's hard to tell you what age, but I know it happened when I'd be left alone in the house. I was a latchkey child. But I remember when my parents would go to the grocery store or something. When they were out, I would go searching & getting into things. My family was weird about food, anyway, and people would get their special treats & then hide them away, so no one else could get at them. I'd go looking for these stashed things. Also, after I'd learned to cook, I would bake things while they were gone. (I remember making soft peanut butter cris-cross cookies, in particular.) Which they liked, because there would be a plate of cookies when they returned. But in the meantime, I'd have tasted & licked & eaten all kinds of brown sugar lumps or sugar & butter mixture or cookie dough while making them. No wonder I wasn't very interested in the finished cookies.
This sounds like me. Anytime I was alone, I would search frantically through every known hiding spot. My mother always had food issues (former bulimic and at 5'8" and 125 pounds she still thinks she's fat) and they were passed along to me. We never had treats in the house except for when she wanted them and they were immediately hidden. If anyone touched them- she would go insane. But that never phased me. My food issues started when I was a young kid and ballooned from there. In middle school and high school, I would go to the diner after school or Stewart's (a local chain of gas station/convenience stores with amazing ice cream!) and pig out with my friends. Then, I would go home and eat dinner, pretending that I hadn't eaten yet. It didn't help that I would never eat lunch, so I would just binge after school. When I got my driver's license, I had free reign.
In college, we had a little cafe in our dorm because it was so far away from campus- and I would get a nightly grilled cheese and other horrible snacks. Then, I moved into an apartment and took food from my roommate. That was such a low for me- I've had trouble forgiving myself for that. It's in the past now, but I still think about it and what it said about me at that time in my life. It wasn't long after that that I left college.
Present day, I've been doing wonderfully. I just...stopped one day. Usually my binging got horrible around the holidays- any holiday. I would stock up on Halloween candy, Christmas cookies, Valentine's candy, Easter candy...or just random things in between and keep it hidden in my room. And it would all be gone in a day or two. But, I'm proud to say that now there is a large bag of mini Reese's, kit-kats, and Butterfingers in my closet that I have not touched, nor had the desire to. Well, I can't say I haven't touched it, because I will very occasionally grab a peanut butter cup if I have a chocolate craving- but that's been happening less and less. I don't think I've had one in over a month.
I've struggled with it for so long, but it all has seemed so easy to let go. I always thought it was impossible but it's been so EASY this time around. I keep expecting one day for me to just throw in the towel and go food crazy, but it hasn't happened yet. I'm just staying positive and making the right choices.
Whew...okay, sorry for the book...didn't mean to put my life's story on here!
That's a good question. I really can't tell. I know that my parents didn't know what a serving size was. So practically, I had been overeating (meaning just way too much) until I started my diet in 2008. BUT I can't remember when the emotional binge eating started. One thing I remember though is other kids teasing me on the school bus because of my weight. At home I would start eating chocolate until that bad feeling disappeared. I don't remember how old I was at that time, but not older than 12.
Thinking about it now, I'm sure it started in middle/high school. But I was always the smallest one in our family and my parents never focused on my eating habits like they did my sister.
Through activity I managed to stay at an even weight through high school. I gained in college, then lost it, then gained it, then lost it. I actually made lifetime membership with Weight Watchers in 2003. Within the year though, I had gained back half.
It's only been the last month or so that I've begun to realize that I have an over eating problem. I think it really ramped up in Sept of 08 when I had to go dairy free while I was nursing my son. I don't think I've ever gotten over having to do "without" during that period. Since then, I have had a very difficult time with sneaking food, picking after the kids and even binging when the kids are in bed and DH isn't home.
I am extremely grateful for finding this site. This is the first time in a long time that I feel like I can "talk" to people who know what might be going on with me.
IDK. Maybe I have never had a healthy relationship with food. The first time I can remember over-eating... I was young, but I can't remember how old. It was Christmas time and we were visiting a friend of the family who was an amazing cook. She had all these homemade cookies... I had to have one of each and I even went back for seconds of the best cookies. (I counted - there were 13 different kinds of cookies) That night I woke up with a tummy ache and got sick.
Mom never kept junk food in the house, but she would bake a cake on occasssion or buy cookies every once in a while. I certainly wouldn't say we were deprived of good stuff. But my parents were there to tell me what to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat.
In high school, the caffeteria would sell the jumbo soft pretzels and the Otis Spunkmeyer cookies (3 for $1). So I would buy either the pretzel for lunch, or the cookies... or sometimes both. Healthy, huh? And I wasn't the only girl that ate like that.
Then when I thought I needed to lose weight, I would eat nothing but dinner. It was the only meal I couldn't get away with skipping (mom always cooked healthy - a meat, a startch and a veggie)
I don't really understand where all this emotional hang up on food came from... My sister is the same height as me and she is thin (aprox. 160 - 170 ish).
Then came college. I was 150 when I graduate from HS. I hit my heightest weight about a year after I graduated college... I had gained nearly 100 lbs. I think I was pushing 250. (I refused to weigh myself until I thought I had lost a few - and that was at 245)
I sometimes wish I could pin point one moment, one event, one whatever that started my over-eating... that started my emotional hang up on food... so I could work on undoing that one moment. But I guess it doesn't work that way... at least not for me.
February 9, 2002 - That's when I had my first binge. I was in therapy for anorexia, and I weighed 110lbs at 5'4" (up from 88lbs). I was 13 years old and in 8th grade. I strictly counted calories and exercised nearly every day so I wouldn't gain any more weight. I was at a sleepover the night before, and remember realizing that if there was some way I could just eat all that I wanted at one time and then just get rid of it with laxatives (not throwing up, because I couldn't make myself throw up), then this would be a perfect solution to my weight gain phobia. I remember eating Little Debbie Valentine's Heart cakes and ice cream on my first binge, and being so disappointed when the laxatives didn't work. I tried a few more times, and it took many more times to get the laxative dosage high enough to "feel" like they worked (the most I ever took was 14 exlax...). My mom found my laxatives and made me quit, but by that time, I was addicted to binging. I gained 25lbs by the time I started high school, and when I graduated I was 190lbs. These past few months, I have really tried to learn how to stop, and it's really hard, but I feel like I'm finally breaking the habit. There are few things I regret in my life, and few things that I wish I could take back, but if there's one thing I could go back and change, it's that moment where I forced myself to binge for the first time.
Like so many of you, I don't remember when I didn't have a problem with food. I was a latch-key kid, as well. I can't exactly pinpoint a time, but remember eating from a package of cookies, realizing how many I had eaten, taking the bag to my room to finish them and denying knowledge of the missing bag of cookies. I have struggled with binging for as long as I can remember. I also struggle with yo-yo dieting.
Last edited by lukesmom; 06-02-2010 at 05:55 PM.
Reason: verb usage
i would binge eat all the time when i was in highschool but i had speedy metabolism and never really gained weight from it.
then when i unknowingly became pregnant in november '09, things took a total turn for the worse. i ate like crazy and gained pounds and inches and probably packed on about 30 pounds i didn't know why. when i found out i was pregnant and then in january lost the baby...it was a miserable time in my life and i just continued the same eating habits and stopped excercising...i only recently gained to motivation for a lifestyle change. i'm tried of being uncomfortable and miserable and depressed...
im an emotional eater i was raped around the age of 10-11 and after that it was all down hill. i never told my parents so they never found out so i began to eat my way through middle and high school. until i met my hubby which we have a 3 year old((( the sucky part is my pregnecy didnt change my weight i went right back to my pre-pregnacy weight)). im over it now but im stuck with the gut.
but life is about moving on and keep going so hopefully i slim down with 3fc
I too can't remember a time when I didn't overeat. My parents always kept loads of snacks in the house like Hostess snacks and potato chips which I still love. I would hoard them, and try to outsmart my brothers who loved them too by eating the coveted snacks after everyone had gone to bed.
My mother, even after having 3 children, is a small woman who never gains even though she eats anything she wants. I developed the mentality that I could too, and I could- until I was about 22. From then on I have struggled, always binging when nobody is around. The worst was when I gave up having a roommate and got my own place.
