[biancasimone]

(really long post!!!!!! i got a little carried away... )

This is a really interesting topic. And I think everyone has different reasons they have turned to compulsive behaviors for food. Probably for me, food was a link to happy times with my family. Grandma (dad's mom) was always cooking and always in the kitchen. Grandma (mom's mom) was always cooking or sewing. Grandpa (dad's dad) was always playing the piano and singing. Grandpa (mom's dad) was always working or telling jokes or eating! Might be why I love cooking, singing, playing the piano, and telling jokes ;-) As I got older, I 'drew' that link in my brain that food = happy, and I think that's how overeating started for me. I was not too athletic, and a little on the shorter side, so puberty hit me like a mac truck. I was a chubby before and then HOLY CRAP LOOK AT HER. I defaulted to food and music when things got bad. I used joking (about myself mostly) as a defense mechanism. Overeating started to happen a LOT for me when dad's mom died. She was like a best friend/loving confidant/cool wise person and a lot of people talked (and still talk) about how I am so much like her. When she died I got depressed and just went straight to food. I guess you could say I used food as a coping mechanism, but I think I just used it because I could cook and cook and cook and eat and eat and eat... just to be using my hands without thinking.

When I graduated high school (before she died) I was about 220 lbs. After my first year of college I was about 200-205 (exercising regularly with a cute boy in my calculus class and with another good friend from high school!) After my second year of college (the year she died), I was about 250. When I graduated school, I loathed the desks because I weighed about 330 lbs and could barely squeeze into the desks. I would get pressure marks on my belly and on my legs if the class was longer than 50 minutes.

Last year I joined this forum and decided that I was sick and tired of being fat. Changed my diet to include more fruits and veggies and less sugar and flour. Exercised at least twice per week. Lost 30 lbs in about 4 months. It was awesome. Now I'm pregnant (and happy!) but I have to keep myself in check. I was steadily losing weight at the beginning of the pregnancy (exercise!) but I have slowed down (long story and by golly I think this post is long enough!). I have been slowly gaining weight the past few weeks, but recognizing it's okay if I gain a little weight HEALTHILY because it's for the baby. I know that I can down the whole buffet without blinking but I have to recognize that pregnancy is not a free pass for "any food I want to have when I want to have it!!!" I know that obese women are at a higher risk for pregnancy complications. I know I don't want to be the 'fat mom' who can't even play with her kids at the park. Mostly, I know that I want to live a long and healthy life so I can see my children's children's children (at least!) :-)

I don't think compulsive eating is a conscious "choice" ... I don't know that anyone tells themselves "I'm going to eat this whole box of fried chicken and then feel crazily guilty afterward" before they do it. I think it's the result of NOT making a choice. It's because you don't tell yourself "I will have one piece of chicken so my tummy stops grumbling. If I'm still hungry after that, I will have something to drink. If I'm still hungry after that, I will eat some veggies." It's because you don't recognize those situations when you go on food autopilot and eat everything. It's because you don't replace your bad habits with good ones. It's because you aren't keeping yourself accountable or in a group where everyone keeps each other accountable.

Sorry for the extra long post!!!!!

[Tohisha77]

thank u guys soooo much 4 your responses
i guess i have 2 be an adult and make a choice at how i handle those 'binge feelings"

but i think the hardest is when im at the point that i cant even look at a picture of food without it being a trigger.(thats when im off my meds)

now im on effexor and its been helping

[kaplods]

I used to think I was a compuslive overeater, food-addict, and that because most people (even fat people in my family) didn't have my food-eating compulsion, that it meant there was something seriously wrong with me emotionally/mentally.

My eating often did seem outside my own control, sometimes almost as if the real me were being gagged, restrained and pulled along, kicking and screaming while the "invader" had control of my body, eating all the foods I "didn't want to."

It took a long time to realize that I am not so much a compulsive overeater as a carbohydrate addict, especially of the sweet/salty/fatty combination that David Kessler talks about in his book, The End of Overeating. For me it wasn't traditional sweets, it was savory/sweet treats that ideally also included the flavor elements tangy and spicy - barbecue sauces, general tso's chicken, chili mac....

After my doctor recommended that I try low-carb dieting (but warned me not to go too low), I started experimenting with low-carb. I had never given low-carb diets much of a chance because I had always believed that they were unhealthy (reinforced by my own experience with "induction flu" that DID NOT go away in two weeks as Dr. Atkins predicted. Instead the headaches, irritability, dizziness and even fainting would get worse until I would give up in frustration and vow never to use low-carb diets again (and I wouldn't until I got desperate and then I'd try them again).

What I didn't try until my doctor suggested it, was experimenting with different carb levels. I learned that by raising my carbohydrates (the "good" whole food ones like sweet potatoes, wild rice, quinoa...) slightly, I could elimintate the unpleasant symptoms and still control hunger.

The hunger control was so astonishing that I was flabergasted. It felt like the "invader" who sometimes took control of my body had lost every bit of power. The monkey was off my back. I had full control of my eating.... as long as I kept my blood sugar in check.

I also learned that eating for blood sugar control MADE me sane. The carbs had been driving me crazy.

Not only was I more in control of my hunger, I was also more in control of my emotions when I avoided the high-carb, quickly digested foods. Carbs were actually causing the emotional instability.

When I read "The End of Overeating," I realized that my addiction to concentrated carbs and the carb/sugar/salt flavor combination was common to not only humans but also to lab rats and other omnivorous animals (and we can be pretty sure that lab rats aren't eating carbs to salve the hurt of emotional issues with their mothers).

Not all "addictions" (and perhaps very few) are caused by severe emotional issues. There are genetic, physiological, and environmental issues. And I strongly believe that carb-addiction especially to the salt/sugar/fat combination isn't rooted in emotional problems... eating that way causes the emotional problems and makes "not eating" a difficult challenge.

That's a very long way of saying that I think the question (is it a choice or not) has a very complicated answer. I think we always have a choice, but certain choices make other choices easier or more difficult.

I used to always diet on very high-carb diets (you know, the ones nearly everyone says are so healthy) and I could lose weight. I could choose not to eat... but it was always a constant, gnawing, white knuckle, skin-of-the-teeth, 24/7 rabid-ravenous hunger and food obsession, and "wish I could just die so I'd stop feeling so hungry" kind of choice. And what kind of choice is that?

Of course I gave up, because dieting was more miserable than just being fat. Dieting was more miserable than weighing 394 lbs, being nearly bed-bound, finding it painful to even wash my hair in the shower while having to sit, being unable to sleep more than 15 minutes because of pain from pressure on my joints in bed...

Yep, believe it or not, dieting was more painful than all of that.

Then I discovered that moderate low-carb, and avoiding intense sweet/salty/fatty food combos, made diet changeing tolerable and gave me my choices back (I of course had them all along, but they became easy choices not intensely difficult ones).

Old habits are hard to break, and I still sometimes want foods that can trigger the out-of-control feeling, but as already mentioned by other posters, I can make choices that make other choices easier (or irrelevant).

If I eat moderately low-carb, I don't have to fight a monkey on my back. The metaphorical monkey is always with me, ready to leap on, but if I keep good dietary choices, the nasty critter doesn't get that opportunity.

[Cemommster]

there are times I am well aware, and times I am in a trance.

[imnotperfect24]

Yes there are definitely times when I feel like I cant NOT over eat.. I try so very hard to stop but I just cant. But with that said I do think that with time I can over come those urges.. I have began to do just that.. Instead of eating say chips and dip (lots of calories that are not needed) I eat a banana and some low fat whipped cream. The banana and whipped cream totaled 135 calories instead of 3-5 hundred with the chips/dip and whatever else I would of been eating. The whipped cream makes it sweet so I want to eat it. Sooner or later ( I hope sooner!) I will go without anything at all.