I had one friend who was a couple hundred lbs too large. He said that he thinks he developed an eating disorder when his father was stationed in the middle-east when he was a kid, and he got kidnapped on the way home from school. After that, he started thinking if nobody could pick him up, he couldn't get kidnapped again...

I also think I'm seeing a pattern, just from myself, and what I've seen in various posts over the last week I've been here... the eating is all about having control over something in our lives... yet at the same time, we manage to lose control over it, and it controls us.

I can't really blame my slip back into fatdom completely on trauma, but it seems I stopped caring and worrying about my weight/food when my car got stolen in August 2003. I found an old spreadsheet that kept track of my weight, and it was quite diligent for years and years... and then it stopped... in July 2003, and didn't pick up again except for a couple of random weigh-ins in 2005. Also at the time, I was going through a relatively painless divorce, but whether we're still good friends or not, it's still the aspect of "major failure" that bugged me.

Does anybody else have any confessions/worries that they think might have triggered an "I can at least control this in my life" overeating pattern?

--Janis

i don't overeat because i feel it's something i can control but because there are times i feel i have so little joy in my life it's the one thing that can give me instant satisfaction

also i find i always want to be doing things with my hands and mouth. i have a lot of restless energy. i got told by the doc to cut back on my water consumption as i was drinking ridiculous amounts lol!

to me people who use eating as a way of control usually go the opposite extreme ie anorexia. that's certainly what any of the literature i have read says on the subject.

also if you went to OA they would tell you at the first step to admit powerlessness and that you are out of control with your eating and unable to control it - food for thought

Lately I think my dieting has helped to control my depression because I feel that if I can't control these emotions I can at least control my eating and begin to control my weight. I've already nearly gone down the anorexia path and I know now that I have to eat to lose weight, so I do, but I eat good things and I feel good about it.

When I was very depressed, though, I ate junk food like nobody's business. Now I'm learning how to control this.