[GlamourGirl827]

I've been a member of 3FC since 2008 I think. I'm on my phone so I can't see my profile info and I don't even know if my ticketed weight is accurate to now. I haven't been on in nearly a year. I wanted to post my story with the hope that it might help someone else.
I have had a life long struggle with food. Sometime around early elementary school I went from a healthy weight to very obese (not just chubby or heavy, but significantly overweight). I stayed that way until early high school when the eating disorder started, starving, binging, and constant obsession with how fat I was. On and off diets, excessive exercise and yo yo weight gain and loss...this continued through my 20s. I always thought I just lacked will power.
In my early 30s I got into running and still kept counting calories. I still went through periods of binging and when I'd fall of the wagon I'd regain. (I also had several pregnancies). I thought I was struggling with bouts of depression (I didn't realize it was a direct result of being continuously abused), and when I did, I'd eat more and gain. I knew I was an emotional eater, but I didn't really give that enough focus.
A little over a year ago, I got into lifting and significantly cut back on cardio. I also switched to looking at food by macros (carbs, fat, and protein) and watched the carbs, increased protein and fat. This helped a lot when I would fall off the wagon food wise, I noticed that lifting versus tons of cardio, allowed me to over eat more and not have that huge gain, like when I was doing all cardio (running). Also increasing my daily calories, meaning no more restricting, stopped part of the binging, especially night binging. In the old days I'd eat 1300-1500 cals a day. Now I eat maybe 1800-2000, I don't track as closely though. It's more about macros, rather than calories now.
But even with all that I still had this underlying "depression" that seemed to ebb and flow and I'd use food to soothe myself. I'd read so much how people that have an addiction are medicating some kind of negative feeling, but I just assumed I was just a person that was broken, for no reason, I would just have to deal with episodes of depression and food addiction for the rest of my life.

But during this time, the past few years I had also been working through and coming to terms with the abuse I endured as a child. Some was physical but a lot was psychological. This past year I was able to realize and accept that both my parents had Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and were severely emotionally abusive and neglectful. I had to come to terms with the fact that neither would ever change nor were they capable of parental love. (They continued to emotional abuse me right up until I went no contact.) And I had to grieve the loss of normal loving parents, and the childhood I never experienced.
And suddenly my relationship with food changed.
I looked back over my mental health, and recognized that times when I was at my worst (and binging the most), were times when their abuse had escalated because of various events/occasions etc.

A weight lifted when I learned this and went no contact. All my anger left. And when I reached the acceptance stage of my grieving, the depression left too. And I no longer get the same feeling with food. I'm embarrassed to admit that I used to look forward to eating, to binging. I looked forward to it, because it was my drug. But I just feel differently now. I eat when I'm hungry. My portions are much smaller (normal sized). I just stop when I'm satisfied. I only eat later in the evening when I'm hungry, rather than to feel better. I do still enjoy a sweet treat, but I don't look forward to it in the same way. I do still crave sweets a bit more right before that time of the month, but nothing out of control.

I hadn't even recognized I was being abused, as if you know anything about narcissists, the abuse is subtle. I was gaslit constantly and I am still recovering from that, and likely will be for many years. If you aren't familiar with gaslighting, google it. There is much to be found on how damaging it is just for an adult that enters into a relationship with a narcissist, so one can imagine just how destructive if is for a child raised by narcissistic parents.

When I finally got to the bottom of my struggles, my addiction resolved. I still enjoy food, but it's not the same. I have commented to my husband that food doesn't give me the same thrill it used to. Sometimes I miss it, since now when I have negative feelings for other reasons, I don't have an escape.
I do still lift weights, though I've slacked a bit over the holidays. I try to count macros, but I've been laxed with that too. Honestly since healing I am just generally more relaxed all around, and it's wonderful. I was able to recognize that much of my shame about my weight came from my dad's critisism of "fat women", and how they were "slobs", etc. So the drive for me to get thin to be worthy of love has begun to dissolve.
I'm currently a size 8 (ok, tight 8&#128540 and I would like to lose a little before summer, but I no longer feel like a worthless loser of I don't. I am not a slave to food or my body anymore. I still don't like "depriving" myself, meaning if I want a cookie, I'm going to have a cookie lol...but it's not like I want the cookie because it's going to make me happy, nor do I think about it all day, and one is enough, I don't need a whole bunch. And if I don't get to eat a cookie, I'm ok with that too. And probably the biggest change, I don't feel the same when eating it. I no longer get that "high" from eating/or while eating. It's not a fix for me anymore, because I resolved the issues when I realized the real cause (abuse, neglect, gaslighting).

I'm finally happy. ❤️

I don't know your story, but maybe mine will help someone. It was emotional wounds all along. Getting away from my abusers and reading A LOT about their disorder and connecting with other adult children of narcissists helped me heal. And I no longer need to medicated those wounds with food. If you haven't considered the emotional aspect of binging, it's worth looking into, or if you have, maybe you need to keep digging.
Hope this helps ❤️

[Pang]

Love this story . Thank you for sharing. I'm a true believer in compound lifting. Though some of my lifting buddies believe that being massive is healthy. My understanding is the heart can't tell difference between a 250lb fat person and a 250lb muscular person. My approach has been to do both walking and lifting.
There is definitive facts that walking briskly for an hour or more after you last meal of the day triggers the brain to release enzymes that use more fat as fuel than glycogen (sugars).
So I'm on board with you 100%.
What my experience was a little different. I was in a car accident where I became sedentary. Long after my injuries healed I remained sedentary. I knew I could go to gym , but I didn't. I quit working and my life collapsed around my sloth.
I saw a documentary about fasting. I was inspired by just the doable no matter how small the effort was. At least it was something even if we're just squeezing a stress ball. I kept at it. I would fast 2-3 days a week and on the other 4-5 I would do the doable. Eventually I became strong again . After all that I learned I simply putting too much emphasis on the exercise and not enough on my foods. I read and read and read and I still read.
My current understanding is
I have quit smoking,drinking alcohol,avoid risky activities. I exercise , walk , eat fish, have lost weight , and practice fasting.
BUT
If I don't eat the health foods instead of the low with nutrition foods. I'll have the nearly the same morality rate.
So my focus switched. I like being fit and trim . No I love it.
But I switched to include my health at the cellular level as well.
I found your story to be an inspiration. I hope to hear more from you and others.

[Guinness_Lady]

Thank you so much for sharing your story! It gives me hope that my relationship with food could look like that too one day. I'm very glad you manged to free yourself from that negative influence and find things that work for you. Funnily enough, I've never heard the term "gaslighting" before, but it fits my ex-boyfriend's behaviour perfectly. The more you know..
I think most binge eaters look forward to binging in a sense. At least I do, which makes it so hard to stop doing it. You gave me some hope today, thank you for that.

[Palestrina]

Originally Posted by GlamourGirl827

When I finally got to the bottom of my struggles, my addiction resolved. I still enjoy food, but it's not the same. I have commented to my husband that food doesn't give me the same thrill it used to. Sometimes I miss it, since now when I have negative feelings for other reasons, I don't have an escape.

Wonderful to hear this news, I'm definitely inspired. I'm especially glad to hear you come back and share real change instead of some fast and hard diet. For those of us who eat and binge emotionally there are underlying reasons for it. Binging serves a purpose, it is rewarding and if it wasn't we wouldn't be doing it.

So let me ask, now that you don't have an escape or you don't crave the escape that food provides, what do you do? How do you face those negative feelings? That's my biggest challenge.

[GlamourGirl827]

Originally Posted by Palestrina

Wonderful to hear this news, I'm definitely inspired. I'm especially glad to hear you come back and share real change instead of some fast and hard diet. For those of us who eat and binge emotionally there are underlying reasons for it. Binging serves a purpose, it is rewarding and if it wasn't we wouldn't be doing it.

So let me ask, now that you don't have an escape or you don't crave the escape that food provides, what do you do? How do you face those negative feelings? That's my biggest challenge.

It hard to explain because there's so much involved in what I had to heal from. The physical abuse was actually the easiest, because its obvious to identify, and society is very clear about defining it and supporting victims of child abuse when it comes to physical abuse.

Narcissistic abuse is very damaging because the child grows up being told that everything is normal, but we feel all the feelings associated with a life time of abuse. I was literally not allowed to have negative feelings as a child. My negative feelings not related to my parents (like a bad day at school) were ignored, dismissed and shamed. And NEVER could my negative feelings be about my parents! I was never allowed to be angry with them or upset by anything they did. I was punished, shamed, yelled at and belittled/ verbally abused for feeling hurt or sometimes I was just ignored. Even when clearly hurtful things were done or said to me, I was demanded to get over it immediately and any indication that I was not 100% happy was met with even more intense verbal abuse, put downs, sarcasm, and blaming me. These were very clear offenses that any normal child would be upset about. I was not allowed to be unhappy, ever. I'm over simplifying this for the sake of not writing a 30 page post, but I learned very young to eat my emotions.

I read somewhere that people with binging issues are almost always dealing with issues stemming from very early childhood because that is the only "drug" we have access to at that time.

I had to learn not to be afraid of my negative emotions toward others or just towards a situation. This took years. I couldn't even express the slightest bit of annoyance with friends. It was deeply ingrained in me that negative emotions = other person exploding in anger, tearing me down, turning it around why I was wrong for being upset.

Second I had to learn to identify the emotions. This is harder than it sounds. If I felt the urge to retreat from someone, or say something mean, I had to ask myself why...and what am I avoiding. Am I mad? Hurt? Jealous? I had to parent myself the way I parent my kids. Because my parents failed to teach me how to identify and express my emotions, I often didn't even know what I was really feeling.

Then I had to learn to express the emotion. I'm an avid reader, so I looked up information for how to express feelings. Most of the stuff I found was aimed toward children. Stuff like "When you do____, I feel_____" I had to follow very scripted statements for a while, and I still do sometimes.

At this time I started to realize the damaging effects of being gaslit. A simple example would be, a parent yells at a child and calls them hurtful names. The child feel badly. They are hurt and angry with the parent for calling them names. A normal parent (hopefully wouldn't even call their kid names, but for the sake of this example) would later validate the child's feelings that are normal in response to being yelled at and name called. The parent might say "I know it hurts your feeling when I yell." Also a normal parent would then take responsibility and apologize. "Even though I was mad, I should not have yelled at you or called you names, That was a very hurtful thing to do, and I'm sorry I did that."
My parents would yell and name call, then they'd either pretend it never happened (which was really confusing), rage at me for being upset about it or tell me I was over sensitive and to get over it, Sometimes they'd flat out lie and tell me it never happened, or I was remembering it wrong. So I would feel the normal feelings associated with being yelled at and name called, but then I was shown or told my feelings were wrong, and that I had perceived the entire event incorrectly, or I had incorrectly interpreted the way they were treating me. (I felt I was treated poorly, but then my parents acted like the treatment was normal and I was the crazy one for feeling hurt or unloved.)

Having this done from birth, creates an adult that does not trust their own judgment of human interactions. Because I had been trained to not trust my own perception and judgment from birth, I was easily manipulated and I would accept the blame for everything, even things that were not my fault.

So to heal, I had to start trusting my judgment. If I felt that a "compliment" was really a backhanded one, I had to learn to not second guess myself. If I had the feeling that I was being treated poorly, I had to stand firm in that and not make excuses / explainations for poor treatment towards me. (This was mostly with my parents, as they were still verbally abusive towards me, cruel and treated me poorly). But once I started trusting my judgement of something done to me, I then allowed myself to feel those feelings. Example, I give my parent a gift. I find out a few months later they threw it away because they didn't want it. I feel hurt. Old me would 1.not tell parent I'm hurt. 2. would shame myself for being hurt i.e. They don't have to keep something just because I gave it to them, they have the right to throw out anything in their house, and I'm over sensitive for being hurt by it and I need to get over it Then old me would have an increase in binging over the days/weeks following until emotion was gone, but not recognize it was connected to what happened.

So by recognizing the emotion (I'm hurt that parent threw out gift I gave to them) and standing firm in my right to feel hurt (It is normal to feel hurt in this instance. It was a gift that came from the heart and it meant a lot for me to give it and they discarded it) then I could feel that feeling.

I hit a bump in the road when I realized that I can feel my feelings and express them, but I couldn't control that my parents still reacted abusively to me being rightfully upset at how they treated me. I actually continued contact (and being abused) until earlier last year my parent did this to one of my kids. Yelled, shamed, blamed, then lied about it! And that was it, and I went no contact. I will never allow them to abuse my kids. Since going no contact, I have felt that final step towards peace. Even though I recognized the was they were treating me, and knew they had a personality disorder, until I actually stepped away from the abuse, I was still not "there" with healing. I took seeing it done to my son to walk away. And walking away is what I needed to do to fully heal.

Now when I had a negative feeling, I identify it, label it, feel it, and if applicable, I express it to the person it involves. I don't allow people in my life that treat me like my parents. I can now recognize the red flags of narcissistic personality disorder fairly quickly, and I don't allow myself to build a relationship with those people. If its a coworker, I keep my distance. And I feel like I am able to make things right for me (and my lost childhood) by giving my kids the parent I wish I had. I can't go back and change things for myself, I can't undo the abuse I endured, but I can make sure my kids don't go through what I did.

Last night we order pizza, and I got a thin crust with some toppings. I'm down the shore but we order from pizza hut (I know, I know, my kids had a coupon from school for a reading contest) Anyway their slices are smaller, and very thin crust not like real pizza lol...and I easily could have eaten many slices. I always have with that kind of pizza. And I had two small slices, and just stopped. It just felt so different.

This whole process has taken me years. Its been nearly a decade since I realized my parents were not mentally healthy. I had to work through a lot of behaviors I had that I learned from them. I'm just grateful that I saw that something was off instead of being like them, and going into old age so dysfunctional. I'm also grateful that food was my drug of choice, and not alcohol, heroin, etc. Thankfully, when its food, one can still maintain a relatively "normal" life while working out the cause for the addiction. Not everyone is so fortunate.

I think if you got to the bottom of what is driving you to eat, you can resolve this issue with food. I never thought I would, but here I am.

Hope this helps <3

[GlamourGirl827]

Oh I wanted to add that I'm on my laptop and I can see my ticker now and its incorrect in showing my progress. I don't really go by weight anymore because since lifting for over a year I have put on about 15 ish pounds of muscle. My pants are a size 8 / haven't increased, but my weight has gone up. I'm about 170 now. Before lifting 170 would be like a size 12/14. Actually back when I last updated my ticker to that weight I was that size. I since lost weight to 155 and regained but pants stayed same size.

[Palestrina]

Amazing,thanks for sharing!

[abug]

Thank you so much for this.

I had a borderline mother. While it wasn't the same, I know what it's like to be shut down emotionally, and use food as comfort. There are other factors in my weight as well, but they are all emotional/mental issues. I honestly believe that the majority of obese people become so because of emotional issues, like being told you aren't allowed to feel. I suppose this isn't a popular belief, as abuse and mental illness are such secrets in our society, and we as a species always try to find the easiest way out. Focusing on the physical reasons is the "easy" way and looking at the cause is the hard way dealing with excess weight. But you found the right way out, the hard but successful way. I am so happy and proud of you for facing your truths. It makes me more hopeful that I can get through it too.