[awlass]

Anyone else out there was/is addicted to eating??

I belive its the worst addiction in the world. Even compared to Meth or Heroin.. You need food to live. If you stop eating completely, You'll DIE. If you eat continuously you'll DIE. Its a necessary part of life, and yet the addiction tells you that you have to have more and more to be satisfied, but the satisfaction NEVER comes..

For those who have had success overcoming or controling this addiction, i really would appriciate your advice and support.

[FireDust]

I truly believe that I have an addiction to food. I am afraid that I don't have a lot of advice to offer at this point, as I am still in the thick of this battle. I will say that the accountability of being here is helping tremendously. It is also a huge help for me to see how far many members have come - it gives me so much hope that I too can overcome.

[RoyalAthena]

I would say that I do. I thought after losing so much weight, the way I view food would change. It has and it hasn't. I know that food has it's place but still I use food to reflect my emotions. I eat mostly when I am bored or stressed. I find that instead of eating Doritz (the big bag) I eat popcorn or a small bag of sunflower seeds. I still need to fill that time with food. But just like people with other addictions, I know what triggers my food impulses as well as ways of coping with food. The last couple of weeks, I have talked myself out of several binges. This is a constant struggle for me BUT I am in a better place than I was last year. I am making progress with this. One day at a time.

[CatWuv]

From what I have learned, it is impossible to fight an addiction without first realizing why you overeat. Is it covering up emotional pain that you haven't successfully dealt with?
I don't believe that we are fated to be trapped in the cycle of bingeing/overeating for the rest of our lives. I have been looking for a way our for a long time and have seen vast improvement by finally addressing all the issues that make me want to eat too much.
Good luck!

[kaplods]

All of my life, I've felt the urge to eat, even when there was no way I could physically be hungry. Even when I was filled to bursting, I still felt that urge. When I wasn't eating, I was thinking about eating, especially when trying to lose weight.

Two things have substantially changed that for me. One was stacking my birth control. I knew that "that week" has always been by far, the worst hunger week for me. Even before Seasonique and other reduced period birth control, I had asked doctors about skipping periods by stacking bc, but they (all men doctors) weren't too enthusiastic about my trying it, so I never did, until I spoke to a woman doctor who told me that there was no reason for me not to try it. She also recommended a lower carb diet (and had lost almost 100 lbs on a modified Atkins herself). My primary care doctor had also suggested low carb, because of my insulin resistance, but my only experience with low carb diets was that they made me dizzy and sick.

To shorten this very long story, I found out that I'm not addicted to food. I'm addicted to high carb foods. I can't eliminate food entirely, and I can't even eliminate carbs entirely, but I can eliminate sugar, white flour and rice, and other concentrated sources of carbs. I'm still struggling with doing that, for a variety of reasons, but when I'm successful that urge to eat is gone. Even the psychological need to have huge quantities of food is also gone. It was so dramatic, I think in my head I still can't quite "get it" and am still testing the limits (and yes, the walls still are there).

I have fibromyalgia, and like many people with the condition, find that carbohydrates, especially refined or concentrated sources of carbs trigger flares of the pain and fatigue. Given the obvious physical improvement I feel when I control carbs, you think it would be easier for me to avoid them, but it is stil a struggle. The better I get, though, the better I feel and the easier it does get.

It took some experimenting for me to find the right carb level for me, and it's still a bit of a tightrope walk. Too low and the hunger is completely gone, but I feel sick and forget to eat (and get very cranky, which is a signal for hubby to remind me to eat). Too high and the hunger returns, and the fatigue, pain and brain fog of the fibro gets worse. Also, the carb level of foods is as important as my carb level for the day. High sugar carbs (even if they're natural, high fiber carbs) can be trigger foods for me, and easy for me to overeat. Squash isn't a binge food for most folks, but it can be for me.

I'm not "cured" or even "abstinent" yet. I still sometimes try to convince myself that I can have a high carb food if I count it in my exchanges. While this works pretty well with "good carbs" (by South Beach definition), when I try it with a processed or low fiber carb, raging hunger comes back and I tend to eat off plan.

I'm not saying that all food addicts are carb addicts, but it is something to consider. I'm losing slower than I've ever lost before. My metabolism just doesn't do fast weight loss anymore, but I've never gone so long on a downward weight trend, especially with such little difficulty. It's a new experience to be losing weight without "missing" the food.

I really feel that if I had found this in my early 20's, with my high activity level at the time, the weight would have fallen off effortlessly. As it is, it isn't falling off, so much as dripping off, but the effort is still very manageable, not the 90% of all my mental and physical resources just to lose weight as previous attempts required.

[awlass]

Thank you all for your support and thoughts.
Congradulations on the hard work and lost weight. I really like to hear the success of others, so I feel that Im not alone, and that there IS a way to fix my problem

[Lori Bell]

I found I was not addicted to food. I was addicted to food additives. Namely sugar (carbs). I have never seen a fat person who did not eat bread have you? I've seen a lot of fat vegetarians, but I have never seen a fat carbotarian. I truly believe that wheat (white/bleached flour) and sugar has made us fat. Wheat (white/bleached flour) has absolutely no nutritional value. To make it healthy it is fortified with vitamins. The gluten in wheat is addictive.

My son is gluten free and if I stick to his diet, I never have to stick to mine.