3 Fat Chicks on a Diet Weight Loss Community - Where do you think your overeating comes from?

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- - Where do you think your overeating comes from? (https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/chicks-control/283244-where-do-you-think-your-overeating-comes.html)

Seriously if it were legal and possible and not prohibitively expensive nor neurotoxic I would use psychoactive drugs on a very regular basis. Can't do that and I don't have the libido to be a nymphomaniac nor the guts to get "into" adrenaline sports like bungee jumping or wingsuit flying, so what's left and readily accessible?

I was never deprived as a child, but I always felt like I "had" to eat NOW just in case there wasn't more later, which was absurd. (speaking of, someone upthread mentioned making "snacks" that were basically large meals, and I just flashed back to the "cheese toast" I used to make after school and how many calories were in it... omg, no wonder I'm fat).

When I got older, especially in university, I was completely alone. I was 3 hours from my family, my dad had died, I had no social life. Food was all I looked forward to because there was just nothing else.

I have an addictive personality and food has been a source of comfort for many, many years.

I know my overeating and seeking out food for comfort started young. I remember doing it at like 9 or 10 years old. I was hiding what I ate and how much I ate at that age too. And it just progressed from there. I remember my sisters commenting on how much I ate and how ashamed it made me feel and how that just fueled me to eat more.

Growing up, my parents actually tried to make sure we ate really healthy. We rarely had soda, things like donuts, ice cream, etc. were rare treats. We didn't get sugary cereal, etc. I think even though my parents meant well, it back fired because when I did get access to treats I gorged because I guess I felt I had to have as much as possible while I had the chance.

I also grew up with the mentality that good food was a reward or celebration for good things and also a comfort/consolation prize when bad things happened. One of the hardest things for me is getting out of that mentality...A lot of my being fat is related to having a rough day (pretty much every work day) and because of that, I deserve to have such and such. Then I will have a good day (pretty much any day off lol) and treat myself to something yummy.

I think it's my body, really. I do pretty well in most other areas of my life. I had to overcome addiction and learn how to manage money better, but I'm in my 20's so I don't think that's so weird.

I have managed to quit binge drinking, smoking cigarettes, doing other illegal drugs, quit spending all my money at one time and I've started going to college where I'm frequently needing to be disciplined and/or have motivation and willpower, even when I'm not feeling too up to it.

I can't honestly believe that it's all completely me. What I do believe is that I can still hack the system and lose weight. I most often can stop eating when I'm not full. I most often can count calories and I genuinely do enjoy exercise. What happens is I always break, because while I can lose weight, it's really really hard for me to stay on track. If I fall of the wagon just a little bit I am off for a while and I really haven't figured out why that is.

I kind of believe that I haven't employed enough mindfulness into my habits. I often catch myself eating while walking around the house, or in front of the tv, or behind a book, or in the car, or in front of the computer...I also think some habits are so old it's going to take more than the estimated 30 days to break them. Like, probably a solid six months will be needed. I've also had to learn to cultivate patience.

Besides all those theories I think the issue is incredibly complicated and, while I believe I will overcome my issues and lose the weight, I don't know if I'll ever fully understand why exactly I got so big or why it's been so hard to overcome.

One of my reasons for overeating is the similar to the OP.

My earliest reason is due to my grandma. She gave us seconds and thirds, everything we wanted, because we were her sweet little grandchildren. Lol. Since that made me learn to overeat from an early age, that's where my struggle started. Then my mom and My siblings and i moved out of her home into an apartment. We were really poor because my mom was trying to do things on her own without my grandmas help. So we struggled for 5 years eating very little. My mom became a nurse, we moved to a bigger place, and I just couldn't get out of that mentality of needing to eat everything put in front of me. Since then my mom got laid off (end of 2009) and we downgraded again, I'm a college student (19 years old) and still live with her, so it's back to poor. Even though she got another job (2012) as a wound care nurse, it doesn't pay enough. Everyone in my house is weird about food. We all try to eat it before someone else can.... We didn't even make groceries last month. So naturally, when we have food, we eat as much as we can. Not to mention my older brother hoards dishes in his room, so sometimes when we have something to eat, we have nothing to eat off of. Which means we still can't eat. So when my mom buys new dishes or my brother finally decides to bring them down, then we can actually eat. That's why we have to buy a lot of junk and finger foods. My brother hoards the dishes....
I have been makings conscious effort to control my over eating as of the beginning of June. (Since we have food, for now), though him keeping all the dishes in his room is still making this difficult.

But yeah, that's me and why I overeat.

When I was younger, my mother would reward me with food. "Oh you finished your chores? have some candy" I think its been so ingrained in me to reward myself with food now.

Food is the Good in my brain ....releases positive warm feelings of happiness ,comfort and everything is gonna be alright... And of course joy when we celebrate and soothing us when were saddened.

Biting into my favorite food takes me to my Happy Place in my brain.
The Stomach has been called the second brain....and it has used it's mind control techniques to control my behavior and responses for many years.
It can take a frown and turn it upside down....
Made my waistline grow....while I continued to shovel food down my gullet ....and told me to wear Sweats and my weight wouldn't show!
The second brain ruled my life for quite awhile....until I looked up and saw reality staring me in the face....I did look fat in Sweats....the second brain lied !

From starving my face off...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roo2 (Post 4771942)

The second brain ruled my life for quite awhile....until I looked up and saw reality staring me in the face....I did look fat in Sweats....the second brain lied !

LOL I can totally relate to this one...

2 places:

1. I have an addictive personality and I get weird food obsessions (lately it's pickles, I can easily eat an entire jar in a sitting) I've eaten 5 bananas in one sitting, half of a medium pizza in one sitting (and then the other half about 2 hours later), half of a loaf of sandwich bread in a sitting, etc. just depends on what type of food I'm obsessing about.

2. Restricting. If I restrict food for an extended period of time, I will always end up breaking down and overeating.

I have an extensive history of self injury. After I went to therapy for that problem, I'll admit I just stopped going instead of truly working on the issue. I believe that I over-eat as a source of comfort or as many people have stated, because of my addictive personality.

This is something I wrote for my blog in February of 2012. At that time, I'd only been on Weight Watchers for a few weeks and had lost close to 20 pounds. The title was "How Did I Get So Fat?

Quote:

Sometimes, I think it is necessary to look back in order to move forward. Although no one has ever overtly asked this question of me, it has been implied. “How did you end up this fat?” Well, the truth is, I’ve always been heavy. I weighed almost 10 pounds at birth. There has never been a time in my life when I’ve fallen within a normal weight range for my age and height. I’ve never been able to wear “normal” size clothing. I remember when I was a kid, my mother got all my clothing from Sears Chubby sizes. I’ve got no conception of what it is actually like to not be overweight. When I graduated from high school, I weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 190 pounds.

Of course, being 30 pounds overweight is a long cry from where I am today at over 120 pounds from the high end of normal for my height. I am certainly a living testament to the notion that obesity runs in families. My mother was morbidly obese. My two sisters are morbidly obese. My brother has struggled with his weight for his adult life and while he is not morbidly obese, he is overweight. So how did all of us get fat? Well, one part is the genetic legacy from my mother’s side of the family. With the tall and skinny exceptions from my maternal grandfather’s side, the rest of the folks tend to be heavy set, with large bone structure and big bellies. Obesity runs rampant in that side of the family although many manage to avoid it until they get older and a few manage not to ever become obese.

That genetic propensity doesn’t explain it all, nor does it justify where I am now looking at those blasted 120 pounds. The biggest reason is that I’ve basically eaten like a pig for my entire life. I grew up in a household where food was an expression of love, a reward and an instrument of comfort. My notions about food are all tied up in that. Feel bad? Eat! Feel good? Eat! Feel really bad? Eat a whole bunch! Overeating became an ingrained habit that got worse as I aged.

Dieting* has never worked for me before. I shan’t go into detail about everything I’ve tried in my life. I will simply say that I failed at every single one**. The longest I’ve ever been able to stick with a diet has been these past few weeks on WW. Each dietary failure resulted in massive feelings of guilt, overwhelming self-disgust and weeks, even months, long eating binges. I also tried increasing my fitness level through various means. All those efforts failed too because I would go at it all drill-sergeant gung-ho, end up hurting myself and quit. Or, like an effort I made at swimming a few years ago, I tried doing it early in the morning. For me, early morning hours are guaranteed failure. I shan’t go into detail about that either, I’ll simply say that I always reach that morning, which becomes every morning, that I can’t get my rear end out of bed.

I finally reached a point in my life where I simply didn’t care to even try anymore. I had made up my mind that I would always being fat and so thhhhhhbbbbbbttttt to all that dieting and fitness nonsense! I’m going to eat whatever I want, whenever I want and as much as I want! So there!

And that attitude, ladies and gentlemen, is how I ended up adding over 50 pounds in three years to a body that was already well over 200 pounds. I was killing myself with food. Out of curiosity, I calculated the WW points for what I was eating on a daily basis. I was averaging over 40 points per meal, over 120 points per day. I have no idea what that translates into for calories and I don’t think really want to know!

I documented in my first blog entry how I ended up on WW. On a routine doctor’s visit, I registered 302 pounds on the scales. What I didn’t say in that entry is that for some time, I had just been feeling physically terrible. I was constantly bloated and stuffed. I was having trouble walking, and not just because of my knee. My sleep was troubled. Mundane house hold chores were becoming increasingly difficult. Not to mention that, well, OK, here comes some TMI, I was having trouble cleaning myself because reaching certain parts of my body had become a strain. Toilet paper on a stick, anyone? Oh and I was wrapped in depression and that sense of I’m a no-good-lousy-excuse for a human being.

So, I joined WW because I had to do something. I’d actually been reading about diets for months and WW always has high ratings and it’s supported by years of experience and weight loss science. Seeing that 302 number on the scale was like a shove on the back that pushed me here. I think it was a shove that I needed. I'm glad I landed here.

*Yes, I know. I’m supposed to consider WW a “lifestyle change” not a diet. Sorry, no can do. Talk to me about how my lifestyle has changed a few years down the road when I meet my goal weight and I’ve maintained it for a good long time. Until then, in my mind, it’s a blasted diet. Albeit one that is actually working.

**Well, that’s not precisely true. I did lose weight once in my life. It’s not a program I would recommend to anyone. It’s called the “Your Life is Garbage So Drink Mass Amounts of Alcohol and Don’t Eat” diet. Fortunately, I was able to get off that particular roller coaster after about a year.

Before deciding to lose weight, I would eat all the time. It came from my insecurities - it was definitely emotional eating. When I had a bad day/felt bad about myself/hated the way I looked, I would turn to food.