Hi Angel and welcome.
I've had a lot of time to do personal evaluations and I've also been headshrunk. My binge/compulsive eating (it seems) stems from the basic fact that I was never around anyone who had healthy eating habits.
I lived with baby sitters, when I was small, who were overweight themselves. The woman (she was SO sweet) loved to bake and any ill could be fixed with a cookie, a piece of cake, etc. I then moved to my grandmother's, who made anything that came from a box. Banquet chicken, mac & cheese, fish fingers, etc.
After that I moved in with my biological father (during high school) who was an alcoholic
and had no idea about running a household. He would let the food supply dwindle down until there was vodka in the freezer and mustard in the fridge.
It would stay that way for a couple of weeks until he got a bee in his bonnet about shopping. THEN he'd go out and spend $300 on food!
So, half the time I was gorging myself on hamburgers
at school because there'd be no food at home or gorging myself on the feast he'd brought home from the store
because I didn't know what to eat first! A lot of the time during the summer I'd grab 'food' from the local 7-11 or eat at the local university's student union when I was hanging out with friends.
Then there was my mother, who lived in a different state. I'd see her about twice a month (she was in the airlines) but she ate (and still eats) like a bird. Pick and peck at stuff because food basically bores her.
I was also an overweight child.. *gasp* a whole 10lbs overweight at age 9
- so my pediatrician, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to put me on a 1,000 calorie a day diet.
My father's girlfriend never saw anything wrong with telling her nieces that they could have french fries as we went through the drive through at the local Mickey D's but *I* couldn't because it wasn't on my diet - right to my face and in front of them.
Talk about giving a child a complex!
After I went away to college, I stayed at about 140-145lbs (5'3") until I moved into an apartment on my own. Then all **** broke loose.
I self-medicated my depression with food, my stress with food, my lonliness with food, etc.
I also didn't have to wait on anyone to buy food because I could get it myself. So, in the emptiness of my apartment I'd stuff my face full of whatever I wanted because there was no one there to tell me I couldn't or to see me do it.
Until my doctor saw me balloon up to 208lbs!
SHE is the one who (thankfully) diagnosed me and sought a second opinion from a psychiatrist - all off her own back. They both concurred to put me on prozac.
Despite the bad press the drug receives(d) all of that helped and though the help of a clinic I lost about 90lbs.
I kept this weight off until I moved to England whereupon I had a different problem... I couldn't afford decent food!
My fiance and I were saving for our wedding and basically ate anything.. *ta da!* in a box or a tin! (Would you eat it with a fox and then look like Gunga Din?) It was like a Clive Barker version of Dr. Seuss! So, it was back to the boxed chicken and fish fingers and all the carbs that my body doesn't do well with. I had to crash diet a month before my wedding (I ate 5 cans of Weight Watchers soup a day) just to fit into my wedding dress! I did it, but the weight came back because we were still dirt poor. Two years later when we separated, I moved into an apartment by myself, in a foreign country, in a foreign town and the old habits steadily returned and, of course, so did my weight.
So, here I am at age 34, suffering with binge/obsessive eating - still. I live alone (again), I'm depressed,
I'm stressed out about career decisions,
I left all my friends 4,000 miles away and my lurking disorder doesn't help at all. I'm now on a meal-replacement program to help me lose weight (and hopefully break some old, nasty habits with food), which thankfully is working wonderfully.
That is... when I let it.
I had a two week bought with bingeing, but thankfully I've gotten past that now.
I don't know about sexual abuse and binge eating, however I think that any abuse, rather it be physical, emotional or psychological can impact a person and plant the seed for an eating disorder. My father never physically abused me in any way, but going without food in the house and his constant alcoholic-fueled boughts of shouting did my head in.
I think deep down inside, I binge because of a few things: 1. because it gives me a sense of control that I can buy and eat whatever I want and no one can say boo to a goose because I live alone.
2. because I'm very sad, angry, depressed and mentally beaten due to several years of struggling to make ends meet and because of people who said they were my friend and then left me to stand alone when I needed them most.
3. because it's basically the only sense of pleasure I get out of my life at the moment and I have nothing else to do.
4. because it's an ingrained behavior that I haven't been able to rid myself of or adopt the tools to manage it.
I don't think that a person has HAD to have been abused or HAS to have low self-esteem in order to binge eat. I think a lot of it is due to the chemicals in our brains - mainly seretonin - not functioning properly. It also becomes a source of entertainment, instant gratification and something to do when there is nothing else. Also, some people just simply like the taste of food
and, for whatever reason, they just can't quit eating when they're full because it tastes so good. I binge for that very reason sometimes, but I think the problem is much deeper, stemming from some innate, buried fear that the food won't be around anymore like when I was younger. For others it may stem from an overbearing parent who berated them about all the starving children in Africa and why they MUST clean their plate - even when the portions were too big to start with.
It's a very complex problem, but I hope that has given you some idea and insight.
Take care.
Alisha
*Why* are you a binge/compulsive overeater?
