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This has been an interesting thread, hearing everyone's story of how they became overeaters. Growing up we ate only our meals, nothing in-between. There was only enough food for meals, and never leftovers, and my parents couldn't afford snacks. They were only for special occasions, like a cake for someone's birthday. When I got my first job I started eating lunch in restaurants. I gained weight so fast. As I look back, I realize I was eating a dinner-size meal for lunch. They had things that my mother had never made and it tasted so good. After I moved into my own apartment, I didn't keep much food in the house and I slimmed down quite a bit, but now I'm married and the food is there and I seem to graze all day. So I would say, it's the availability of food.
Yesterday, after our father's day cook out, I wanted ice cream. We didn't have any. I kept picking at leftovers, even though I wasn't hungry. I think if I could have had some ice cream I would have satisfied my craving and I would not have been picking at the leftovers all evening. I should have just gone for a walk.
My relationship with food has been messed up from the beginning. To make a long story short, my exstepfather was a terrible person. One of his rules was that we had to clean our plates. I had no control over how much or what I was given and not eating it meant a spanking and/or sitting at the table for hours.
My grandparents house provided an escape from that most weekends. And while I know they did what they did out of love, it was all terrible foods. McDonalds every weekend, chocolate milk every morning, and tons of ramen noodles. My whole family is obese and it was never questioned.
Then, when I was 13, I wasn't allowed to eat food I didn't buy or help pay for. That meant foods I could store in my room and buy with the money I made babysitting. Obviously, this was all cheap processed garbage. Whenever I had a chance to eat real food, I ate as much as I possibly could.
Breaking those habits has been hard and I worry I'll never have them completely under control.
Garnet, I really like the honesty in your blog post. You're not just crying bad genes or metabolism, but confronting the real source of your excess weight (overeating, as it is with all of us).
Garnet, I really like the honesty in your blog post. You're not just crying bad genes or metabolism, but confronting the real source of your excess weight (overeating, as it is with all of us).
F.
Thank you.
I've wasted a lot of my life trying to escape the fact that I am fat because I've spent most of my life eating too blasted much. Sure, there are other contributing factors, but it always boils down to too many calories.
Well there are a lot of reasons I over eat. I was bullied a lot in school for having a learning disability, and my weight. One such time I had a shirt on and I was on the bus waiting to go home, and one of the boys I rode with walked up to me and said I didn't know sea world sold shirts with you on them. The shirt I had on had Shamu on it. So I guess food has always been a comfort to me.
Now that I've stopped dieting, I realize, for me, there's a difference between overeating and OVEREATING (i.e. binging). I still probably eat a little more than I really need to for someone of my activity level. That's just because I like food. But I don't overeat by much and it doesn't worry me. The REAL overeating--the binging--is caused by dieting and all things related--i.e. stressing about my weight, etc. That, I no longer do, but I started it when I was around 14.
Last edited by surfergirl2; 06-20-2013 at 12:20 AM.
Uncontrolled anxiety and depression and dieting. The more I binge, the worse the anxiety and it's a vicious cycle. I also think my medication makes me crave carbohydrates more than I ever used to (Zoloft) I used to be a normal eater and grew up in a normal eating household with normal weight parents.
For years I had all kinds of theories about messed up psychology and even positive stuff, like family showing love w food, etc. And then I discovered that it was all basically solved (sadly I doubt this can ever be 100%, I will never be a person w a naturally healthy relationship w food) by changing my chemistry. Now I really truly believe that it's a chemical food addiction and doesn't have much of a psychological component at all.
I did, though, spend decades in that addiction and I ingraining those behaviors and neural pathways and there is a piece of me that really believes that food can make me feel good (though it almost never does). So in a sense that stuff is psychological.
I'm definitely not trying to make excuses, it is what it is I was just thinking about why I overeat so much.
When I was a child, we were very poor for a while. I remember eating soup beans all the time. I won't touch a bean now. So when my Mom became a nurse we had more money and were able to buy more food. I think this is when I started to pig out. When I was full, I would keep eating for no other reason because I could.
Here I am 15 years later trying to beat my want to binge.
I think there is something to this... you don't have food, and then you do...
I grew up poor where food was grown in the garden, and lean a couple of occasions in childhood. As an adult, no matter my situation, I could always afford healthy food. I was borderline anorexic for a few years after a breakup fight in the grocery store, and I couldn't shop long enough to buy much food for several years. Then I had a period of unemployment where I had not enough money for food. (Had a friend who snuck me food from her pantry when her husband wasn't home.) I rationed my food just to eat enough not be be hungary, and I had these fears of wasting away and starving to death that REALLY scared me. Needless to say, something flipped in my brain with the scarcity of food, and the anorexia was gone. Once I had steady income again...I ate to the point of feeling full just because I hadn't had that during this period. Feelings of "not hungary" or "satisfied" were not enough--it had to be till full almost panful. And that started the overeating, where I ALWAYS felt like I needed to eat until I was very full, almost to the point of pain. Gained 70 pounds.
I'm definitely not trying to make excuses, it is what it is I was just thinking about why I overeat so much.
When I was a child, we were very poor for a while. I remember eating soup beans all the time. I won't touch a bean now. So when my Mom became a nurse we had more money and were able to buy more food. I think this is when I started to pig out. When I was full, I would keep eating for no other reason because I could.
Here I am 15 years later trying to beat my want to binge.
I think there is something to this... you don't have food, and then you do...
I grew up poor where food was grown in the garden, and lean a couple of occasions in childhood. As an adult, no matter my situation, I could always afford healthy food. I was borderline anorexic for a few years after a breakup fight in the grocery store, and I couldn't shop long enough to buy much food for several years. Then I had a period of unemployment where I had not enough money for food. (Had a friend who snuck me food from her pantry when her husband wasn't home.) I rationed my food just to eat enough not be be hungry, and I had these fears of wasting away and starving to death that REALLY scared me. Needless to say, something flipped in my brain with the scarcity of food, and the anorexia was gone. Once I had steady income again...I ate to the point of feeling full just because I hadn't had that during this period. Feelings of "not hungry" or "satisfied" were not enough--it had to be till full almost painful. And that started the overeating, where I ALWAYS felt like I needed to eat until I was very full, almost to the point of pain. Gained 70 pounds.
This is such an interesting thread. I find it fascinating how we all have such different reasons for our obesity.
In my own case, my weight problems came from binge eating, and my binge eating was a direct result of too much dieting when I was young, combined with a "food police" mom.
We ate only healthy food in my house growing up. Skim milk, fish, lots of fresh vegetables and salads. My mom never let us eat sugary cereal or junk food. I'm old enough that eating fast food really wasn't a thing. Every once in a while we would go out to a pizza parlor for dinner, but mostly I was fed fresh home cooked food. The problem came in that from the time I was really little my mom was always warning me about getting fat, telling me that I might be getting fat, and constantly advising me about what to eat and what not to eat. On Halloween, she took my candy and hid it up on a high shelf, doling it out piece by piece-- which only made me crave it more. By the time I was in second grade, I remember worrying about whether I was the fattest girl in the class. (I looked completely normal). As I got older, I went through puberty earlier than many of my peers, grew boobs, and was tall. I couldn't fit into the styles that my middle school friends were wearing because I was tall. I had an athletic build, but I was in no way fat-- I was just a lot bigger than my peers because I was taller and more mature. At that time, I got seriously into dieting. I joined WW for the first time at age 12, followed it to the letter, and dropped from 138 to 120. I was ecstatic, but I could not maintain 120 (and no wonder, I'm 5'8" with a large frame, and I'm skinny at 145) That started for me years of yo-yo dieting and severe body image issues, then bingeing and some bulimia. Because I'm older, there wasn't much awareness of these kinds of issues back then. I think if I were growing up now, someone would have the sense to realize that I was messed up and get me some therapy, but back then, nobody really understood that.
Unlike many of the people on this thread, I actually don't think I have a propensity toward obesity. Nobody in my family is overweight and I was raised to eat healthy-- I love fish, veggies, salad, fresh fruit. I have no interest in fast food and never got in the habit of eating it... I maintained a relatively normal weight until I got pregnant with my first child. That tipped me over into the obese range, and after that, I sort of gave up... I kept binge eating, but I also developed the habit of grazing at home. Instead of yo-yoing up and down, I just kept going up, up, up.
In a nutshell, I think that something in my own psyche, plus a parenting style that put me at risk was what created my eating disorder. I think probably if I had gotten therapy in my teens or early twenties, when I still maintained a normal weight I could have avoided eventually becoming morbidly obese.
I blame myself for letting the problem go on and on rather than reach out for help once I was on my own. With my own children, I was very careful never to comment on their body sizes or shapes, not to food restrict them or food police them, and I'm very happy that my two daughters have grown up with normal body images and no eating disorders.
What is so weird about obesity is that if your parents feed you too much, it can cause a propensity toward obesity, and if your parents restrict your food, it can also cause a propensity toward obesity. Also, in terms of weight loss strategies, I think that is why we all need to find our own paths to weight loss-- what works for some people doesn't work for others.
What's more, I definitely think that genetics and heredity plays a role. I managed to maintain a normal weight for a long time in spite of eating stuff like entire boxes of double stuff oreos in one sitting, whereas, I see that other people can become morbidly obese just eating a little too much every day. My weight problems definitely originated in my head, not in my body.
I believe there are lots of reasons, but one that hit home for me was eating out of habit.
I always ate in the movie theater or while watching television.
I wasn't hungry. It was just conditioned in me to do this.
As soon as I realized it. I stopped and I started loosing some weight.
Binge eating comes from eating too few calories. Period.
I starved myself for a year and ended up binge eating /all/ the time. Three months of eating at a normal calorie range again (2,000+) I stopped all binge eating. The key is to reduce calories by a very small amount and do moderate but not excessive exercise)
Binge eating comes from eating too few calories. Period.
I starved myself for a year and ended up binge eating /all/ the time. Three months of eating at a normal calorie range again (2,000+) I stopped all binge eating. The key is to reduce calories by a very small amount and do moderate but not excessive exercise)
I don't think many people realize that binge eating is actually a symptom of restriction. It's a very difficult concept to understand and I didn't understand it myself until very very recently. I'd been told that restriction was causing binging many times but it made NO SENSE to me at all. I didn't understand how it was possible someone was restricting while eating everything that wasn't nailed down. But it is possible when your mind is saying "stop eating this, no don't pick up that donut, I'm gonna pay for this tomorrow on the scale, I'm such a horrible person, I can't believe I'm eating all this, I hope nobody sees me, oh well I might as well finish everything here so that tomorrow I can start fresh, I promise myself I'll never eat like this again, I'm such a slob, I deserve to be fat." When you have that dialogue in your head you're not doing yourself any favors, this is the dialogue that lights the fire to binge. It's a restrictive mentality which leads to binging.
