When did your battle with overeating start?
 

I'm curious to know when everyone else started battling overeating?

Mine would've been around the age of 11 or 12 when I started babysitting. I used to love babysitting because of all the amazing snack foods parents with young kids kept around. Of course I loved spending time with the kids I babysat, but once they were in bed, I was in binge heaven. I would eat chips, chocolate bars, candy, chocolate milk, puding cups, hot dogs...etc etc etc.

I remember once I hit grade 8 in middle school I was thrilled too because I was old enough to volunteer in the school cafeteria. Two or three times a week I had to go and serve lunch and in return I would get a free lunch of all the leftovers. We were able to help ourselves to whatever was left, so most time it would be hot dogs, burgers, nanaimo bars, soup, juice. That was the ONLY reason I helped out in the cafeteria...for the free food.

Once I got a job working full time when I was 16 my meals just went downhill. I would work evening shift so for lunch my mom would give me $2.00 and I would buy a pop and a bag of chips....every single weekday for lunch. Dinner I would eat at work and if I was feeling cheap it would be a pop and chips from the vending machine or I would eat at the restraunt in the store and always had chicken fingers and onion rings with a pop.

my overeating started in middle school i suppose. i was old enough to not have a nanny anymore, so i was left at home alone after school. before my mom would control my portions, but now i could eat anything i wanted and i took full advantage. there were also several fast food chains within (no lie) .25 mile from me. jack in the box, macdonalds, kfc, chinese food, hot dogs, even a buffet.. it definitely did not help the situation.

Oh man...I don't remember ever NOT overeating. I used to sneak food back to my room and eat in the middle of the night. :(

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.

I just saw your ticker! Amazing job. How did you do it????

babygrant, I'll PM you about this, as I don't want to highjack your thread, and I'm interested in other peoples' memories of overeating.

I became on over eater when I was newly married, our first year was awful, and I turned to food as a friend... I gained 45lbs in 8 months! Anyway, we worked realllly hard on our marriage, read books, talked about everything, and we have stuck together for 16 years, and it gets better every year!!!From year two til now it has been great! But the weight continued to climb, maxing out my weight at 235lbs after my last baby. I was never really bothered by my weight until last November when it struck me that I was actually being an unhealthy role model for my kids, and it had to change... and I am changing.

When I left home. My mother was very careful with my food choices (no pop or sugary cereals and only the occasional treat)...then when I moved out, I gained a bunch.:o It's all me and my bad choices and I think sugar addiction...

Wow. I guess literally from when I was in diapers.
My mother developed adult onset schizophrenia and my father was a drunk (not an alcoholic, it was his choice to drink and in later years he could have a drink or two and stop). My brother is 10 years older than me and my sister 8 years older. I was born during the worst time in my parents' marriage, and by the time I was 18 months old my father had dumped us 3 kids on his mother to raise.
So when I was very young, still in diapers, my brother, at age 11 would go to the store and buy twinkies and things like that to bring back to the house to feed us kids when noone else was feeding us. So from very early on I ate a lot of sweets.
We moved in with my grandmother who had raised her half siblings, then 11 kids of her own, and now was stuck with us. She resented it. She was mean, physically and verbally abusive.
Strong feelings were not allowed in our house. Strong feelings were either met with yelling/hitting or "here have a cookie/brownie and go calm down/be quiet".
Also, my father lived there for awhile and the only interactions I had with him surrounded food. Either pigging out at the big Sunday meals we all ate together, or on the occasions when he'd let me eat a bowl of "his" ice cream with him. Which of course later I started sneaking.
I don't ever remember not stuffing my feelings down. I don't ever remember not sneaking food. I don't ever remember feeling good about myself until I reached adulthood. I've had more self-esteem in the last few years than I've ever had in my life, but those old habits are soooo ingrained. I can do good when I can shake myself out of the mild depression that I've lived with all my life, and when things are going well. But major life stressors derail me for months or years on end.

During Bar Mitzvah season in seventh grade, I kept the same quantity of what I was eating, but the calories in all of that fried stuff was through the roof. Plus, I'm an admitted foodie -- Now I'm in high school, and I probably weigh as much as I did right before eighth grade -- working back towards what I was in seventh grade and fitting into MY Bat Mitzvah dress again. Also, I had a hard time making friends in middle school, and I guess food was something I knew would always be there for me and never judge me. So that was where I turned, I suppose. Now I have a whole cheerleading squad of friends cheering me on as I lose it all! :D

Food's always been a huge part of my life. A lot of my family is heavy, esp on my dad's side. Get togethers with them always involved a lot of food and since they lived a few hours away it was always special. We'd go visit and have all kinds of goodies that we didn't normally get at home. Caprisuns, candy, snack cakes, ect. At home my mom was never around and because there were so many of us kids she'd lock up her candy and snacks that we didn't need to be eating, but of course I figured out how to pick the door lock, or sneak in the window. Then when I got old enough I learned how to bake my own snacks. I guess food became a replacement for a loving family, not that my family didn't love me, they just weren't there 99% of the time. Ugh that's depressing :-P

I am only just beginning to admit that I have a compulsive eating disorder. Very scary. :( Just reading this thread, though, made me less alone and crazy.

To answer the question, when I was about 10 years old, I started to get “weird” about food. I stashed junk food in my bedroom. I’d get up in the middle of the night and binge. When I’d visit a friend’s house, I’d raid the cupboards.

I'm another person that doesn't remember not overeating. It's always been an issue for me, and only recently have I begun to take charge of it.

I've always done it as far as I can remember. My mum would always say I ate too much D: she tried her best to stop me but it didn't work. I was a fussy eater as a kid too.

My weight issues started when we moved when I was 9. We moved from Texas to Illinois. We spent the winters indoors and I did not have as many friends. I ate out of boredom.

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.

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!

I'd say I was about 10, and I think that it first started with the family going to those "all you can eat buffets."

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.

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...

I'M READY TO BE HAPPY AGAIN <3

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.

My earliest food memory was when I was 4 or 5 and sneaking a box of cereal to eat in the basement playroom with my sister. I didn't have access to buying candy until I was about 10 and getting 35 cents to buy a candy bar was a thrill.

I grew up thinking that everything was eaten in 2s - 2 donuts, 2 candy bars, 2 cookies, etc. But I didn't develop full blown binge eating disorder until much, much later when I was in my 30s.

When I was 20. I had an unexpected pregnancy. Before I got pregnant I weighed 135-140, never had an issue with food. I gained quite a bit of weight but the real trouble came after my son was born. He was born with a serious heart condition and passed away at 23 days old. I turned my grief to food cause nobody could help me. I was in a serious depression. Six weeks later we concieved our second child. We had prepared for this family for so long and it was stripped away from us in an instant. So young I thought having another child would "fix me". She was a blessing to us, but I still continued to comfort myself with food. So for me it was two consecutive pregnancies and a extremely tragic event. This was my "trigger" and the excuse I used to continue many years of yo-yo dieting and overeating. I have never really been able to express this to anyone, so thank you for this thread!

Probably from about the age of 8 i was always given homemade dinners , and praised for finishing it.

I never was one for sweet things or junk. But i was soon asking for seconds :o

It's kind of hard for me to tell. I remember being about 4 and crying because my thighs were fat.

When I was about 8, my parents took me to a psychiatrist because they thought I was depressed. My doctor never really knew what was going on, and I was put on and taken off about 21 different medications within 3 years. Some of the heavier duty stuff, like Seroquel and Zyprexa (which I probably shouldn't have even been taking) caused me to gain a LOT of weight. At least, I thought it was a lot of weight. I was really about 5 feet tall and 130 pounds, but I guess in the 6th grade, being a size 11 in those teeny tiny juniors clothes is the absolute end of the world. I got called a whale by stupid boys. Looking back, my current doctor believes that most of my emotional issues at that time were hormonally related rather than psychiatric and those medications caused more harm than good.

I have almost ALWAYS subconsciously considered eating and being fat as an absolutely shameful thing. I don't think I've ever NOT been on a diet. The medications made me crave sugar. I didn't want my parents to see me eating (how embarassing! plus, my mother would scold me.), so I used to sneak boxes of food into my room and eat them, then put the empty boxes back in the pantry. Eventually the shame of eating the food caused me to develop bulimia, which then evolved into anorexia, and I've been alternating back and forth ever since.

At 20, I am still really weird about eating in front of people, and eating alone is ALWAYS a huge trigger to binge and purge, as is eating in my parents' house.

Sorry for the novel. It's always interesting to dig back into my childhood and remember where this came from.

Gosh, so many heartrending stories here! Thanks, everyone, for sharing.

My mom said that she couldn't feed me fast enough when I was a baby, as opposed to my older sibling, who was a fussy, difficult baby who didn't want to eat at all.

But I was normal weight until I was about age 8-10, then I began binge-eating and overeating.

hm.. lets see, my over eating started in 7th grade.. i was really popular.. a cheerleader and then moved to a new state... i ended up becoming friends with a girl and was friends with here for a few months then she started hanging out with another group of girls...( they didnt like me because i had a spanish name and i look white ( familys from spain ) so it was a racist thing ) a couple days before my birthday she and her friends ended up jumping me.. after that i was put onto depression mediacation alot of medication!!.. and was never really the same after that... i still deal with some things depression wise but im trying to get over it.. i know its been a good couple of years but thats when it first started. i never really told anyone bout that...

:eek: Why my scary face?? because I was a cute normal size baby/toddler. Then I was the maybe not the fattest kid in middle school but the only 'plump' 'chubby' one in my class. Went on a diet in fourth grade and lost maybe under 10 pounds..was maybe a size 14 through high school, but all others were tiny and thin. And I am 49 now. yoyoma, do you like motorcycles too? :D

I remember being very interested in food and eating from around age 6. I'd see commercials and WANT whatever they showed. Like, does anyone my age remember Miracle Whip, showing young adults on the beach, enjoying..Miracle Whip sandwiches. Which were just bread with Miracle Whip! I went to my mom and asked her for one.

My mom was extremely health conscious, we did not have store cookies or bags of chips just in the house, only for very special occasions, same with soda...maybe i craved it because we hardly ever had it. Not a good excuse or reason, I know!

Was also a latchkey kid from the age of about 8 or 9. Was not very athletic or I remember watching tv alot, and looking around the kitchen for something edible.

Thanks for sharing all of your personal stories. Hugs to everyone.

Hugs to nmgirl and bama girl!

Jenny

Wow so many stories I havent even got thru them all. But they made me think. I have recently realized my life is out of control and I need to take it back!

When I was young I wasn't allowed to have a snack when I got home from school and I truly was hungry. I would sneak a piece of bread to my room because anything else my mom would notice. Then at the dinner table i could eat as MUCH as I wanted. They always made fun of me for cleaning all the food out. Yet they didn't bother stopping me. I would also love to babysit and eat their junk food. So basically I would come home from school starved and then binge eat at dinner......I eat when im happy and when im stressed....but thats going to stop!

I've always loved my food but it seriously became a problem last year after I found out that my boyfriend had cheated on me, along with other personal issues. It was a very stressful time in my life and I had never been an emotional eater until then. Food was such a comfort, it still is. It's such a hard habit to break. :(