Crash-dieters, binge-eaters and those who nibble away their boredom.....

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

How about having a thread (ie this one) where we can come for support and distraction when our "psychological eating" begins to get out of control? Whether it's compulsive munching, dangerous crash-dieting or yo-yoing between the two, many of us know that our crap relationship with food is rooted in anxieties/depression/feelings of inferiority which some of us have been carrying around since childhood. Personally I find it just too difficult to battle these urges on my own. I also find that not being able to defeat the desire to eat makes me feel quite pathetic and low, which drives the vicious circle and makes my eating become even more dysfunctional.

Anyone else who feels like this about food, sign up here and we can give each other an arm to lean on when things get too tough to handle alone. The aim is to try and adopt a more measured and less psychologically loaded approach to slimming, moderate exercise and sensible eating rather than oscillating beween starvation and bingeing. No food diaries, no weigh-ins, no pressure - just somewhere we can talk about the issues that underlie our eating, identify our "food flashpoints", and aid each other towards a healthier relationship with food.

I'll start:

I am stuck in a pretty horrendous cycle with food at the moment. I lost four stone over a year, and went down to a size 12, which made me feel terrific and my confidence was sky-high. Over the last year I have put more than half of that weight back on, which is making me very miserable. My mother's relationship with food was similar and she was given to expressing disappointment quite openly when I gained weight, which set up issues of shame etc. I find it very difficult to overcome the feelings I have about eating/weight, which means that I crash-diet (virtual starvation) whenever I feel strong enough, and when I am depressed/anxious I binge-eat, I can eat more than dh suring one of these phases. I tend to think that anything momentous that happens in our lives, good or bad means that we "deserve" a big blow-out, and I find it difficult to relocate that feeling of being "treated" onto anything inedible. I'm hoping if this thread works, I will be able to come here when I feel like bingeing, when I am anxious/depressed and likely to start "abusing" food, and when I know I am crash-dieting and need to find a better way of slimming.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

[jessicaandrebeccasmummy]

ME!

i have a god-awful relationship with food. I yo-yo big time, either dont eat or binge.

At the moment, I am at the pick pick pick stage, as well as eating a main meal.

A day in my life is typically this...

11am - something crappy (chocolate/biscuits)
1pm - fruit
5pm - bit meal
7pm - crap
8pm - crap
9pm - crap
bed

its the same day in day out.

I hate it. I want to be able to eat sensibly, i want to be able to eat breakfast, lunch and tea with only fruit in-between but it doesnt work like that.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

Hi JARM it is a nightmare, isn't it. I find when I get on a major snacking kick, the more I eat, the more I crave. It's gross really, but the only way I can stop overeating is to stop eating entirely!! Which is not good.

Plus every time I see myself in a mirror/try and squeeze into something that used to fit me, I end up feeling low and running to the kitchen for something to much

I did find that having a "fruit amnesty", ie allowing myself to eat as much fruit as I wanted between meals, as long as I didn't gorge anything else other than at mealtimes, helped a bit - but then I ended up skipping the meals and having fruit instead.

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

Me too!

I pick in the evenings when im on my own and DC are in bed.
My problem is i often don't think about what im doing.Just get a few biscuits or whatever and munch on them.I don't think before hand do i want/need them.
Ive just had lunch.Crisps,cheese sandwich and now eaten a whole bag of white choc pennies.(gave DD's 2 each) and i don't even really like white choc.

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

'the more I eat, the more I crave' Now that explains me exactly.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

It's like a sort of snowballing effect I find - I eat something I nkow I "shouldn't" have, and it leads to something else, and then it gets totally out of control really quickly.

I think this might be a product of the linking between food/weight and shame - if I "break the rules" once, I feel as though today is lost anyway, I've failed again, so I might as well just eat. After that point, there's a sort of feverish desperation about the eating - as you say, with the white choc pennies when you don't even like white choc. Does anyone else think it's the success/failure thing that drives us from one "naughty" snack into a full-blown binge?

[jessicaandrebeccasmummy]

I was a skinny size 12 when I got married nearly 3 years ago. Since then I have gone up to a 16, back to a 14, back up to a 16 and now bodering on an 18. I feel like shit because Im so huge, yet I cant seem to be able to stop the crappy eating habits to get myself sorted.

Its CRAPOLA!

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

I lost alot a few years ago on WW. Had DD1 then DD2 now its back on again.I have lost 1 stone this year and its staying off so thats a positive.
My thighs are huge so 14 jeans are fine waist wise but not leg and 16 are too big around the waist.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

A good example of how emotionally loaded it all is - Sunday lunch today, dh is cooking - chicken breasts, mashed potato, veg and a tomato/basil sauce. I'm already sitting here clenching up inside about whether I should just have the chicken and veg, or should I have 1 spoon of mash - or should I just say "oh, it's Sunday lunch, normal people are allowed to eat it, it's not fair" (I find myself justifying my eating with "victim thinking" a lot - banging on about abnormal metabolism, other people eat more than me, etc). By the time we sit down to lunch I feel as though I'm going into battle

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

See i wouldn't even think about not having the mash.
I'd be the one eating the left overs too.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

I find it varies, according to which "state I am in" - there have been times when I've sat there with a pile of peas and carrots and a pint of water, and times when I have eaten more than everyone else and sent dh to the shop for pudding! I don't seem to be able to control which state I am in though, and I only have a hazy understanding of what does control it, IYSWIM. I am about a 16 now - last Christmas I was a small 12.

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

Im not hungry i do not need a kids yoghurt or a packet of crisps!

[jessicaandrebeccasmummy]

ive jsut had some chocolate.

dinner is in the oven - roast beef, roast pots, brocolli and green beans - and Im asking DH to make yorkshire puds too.... and Im already thinking about banana custard for pudding.

And by 8pm ill be back on the chocolate!

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

Not alot of food in the house at the moment so not much i can pick at luckily!
I have no idea what im going to have for dinner.

[WideWebWitch]

Oh hello Greeny. I've wondered recently about having some psychotherapy or hypnotherapy or smoething, I want someone to help me not be excessive. I started to post on the bigfomos (whose thread has a similar theme) about how it's just greed and love of food and as I typed it something flew out of my head and onto the keyboard and basically, I started puttnig on weight after my dad died in 2001. Although I look at pictures of me then and I was only a size 14 and looked totally fine, just curvy but ok. It then wasn't helped by being pregnant in 03 with a BIG baby and I just haven't lost it all since being pregnant with her, which is bloody ridiculous because she's 3 next week.

I do love food, I love cooking and I love wine. I don't like exercise and I don't like denying myself stuff and I do like instant gratification in all things. So there you go, that's a recipe for lardiness basically. I've also had quite an odd few years since she was born. I was out of work for a while, then worked away from home and lived away during the week for 6 months, then got married to dh, then got the job I'd been doing, then relocated so changed houses, schools, nurseries etc, then work was a PITA and v v stressful and now it's all just starting to settle. But there's been v little time and I need to stop eating and drinking as a reaction to stress. I logically recognise that it doesn't help but I must somehow react to stress by wanting to eat/drink. I guess prior to 2003 I'd have had a cigarette (which equally doesn't remove stress or remotely help). I think for me I need to:

find other ways of dealing with stress
make time for exercise. I do like walking and used to walk at least 12 miles a week when I was a sahm in Devon
give up drinking until I've lost weight (I can do this when I try)
eat slowly. Dh and ds pointed out today that I finished WAY before everyone else, I totally hadn't realised that I bolt my food.

Eeek, will post this before I change my mind.

[MamaG]

me me me I want to join!

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

I had my lunch (some mash, pear for pudding so not bad) but now I feel really hard-done-by and miserable because I'm not full and I didn't have any ice-cream for pudding like everyone else. I keep having to shove thoughts of chocolate and biscuits out of my mind - and I am in that mood that means if I have one, will eat the lot. I am telling myself "it's only food, it will not make you happy", but it does, temporarily. I really think just cutting down calories by sheer force of will is side-stepping the main issue, ie WHY do we need to eat to feel OK?

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

Hello WWW, and MamaG, welcome to our dysfunctional eating clique!!

[ISawTortoiseKissingSantaClaus]

WWW I eat far to fast as well. I feel some of it is down to being so limited as a child.My Dad used to count the biscuits so he would know if anyone had had one!
A lot at the moment is boredom! I used to have a ciggy too. Nearly a year without now!

Only exercise i do is a lot of walking to and from school,pre-school,town etc. Its nearly a mile to town and i can't drive.

[Lio]

I'm in. See you all on this thread soon, and in case anyone is interested or wants to try it, I have included what I am doing about the whole eating thing below.

My story is probably not that different from lots of yours, but to be positive instead, I've just started a new cycle about three weeks ago:

I don't go down THOSE aisles in the supermarket, but I do buy ice lollies (Waitrose ones made just from fruit juice) and make jelly (again just from fruit juice and gelatine) so have something that supplants all the sugary rubbish, which is my addiction.

I eat loads still, but not bread because then I have cheese, and it is working - my trousers are less hurt-y.

[SantaGotStuckUpTheGreensleeve]

WWW, I can relate to a lot of what you say in your post. I love cooking and the whole idea of food, and I naturally don't like exercise - I've never been able to see it as anything other than a necessary evil - I simply don't enjoy physical discomfort, I don't like sweating and panting and being in pain. The only exercise I can really enjoy is hill-walking, which is a bit limited because ds1 is too big for a baby sling and too little for us to really walk far.

I bolt my food as well, and once I have "decided" that I am eating rather than starving that day, I become anxious about hoovering up everything I can - we went to a restaurant for my dad's birthday a couple of days ago and I was really worried dh would be mean and not let me order all the side orders etc I wanted to - absurd, because I wasn't even hungry.

I hadn't thought about psychotherapy, but I do know it runs a lot deeper than just being hungry and wanting to lose weight. It's a lifestyle, having this sort of relationship with food.

[Lio]

Greeny, I was typing while you were doing your post about not having the ice cream - is it worth trying the ice lolly thing? I think you are right and that eating does just feel nice! Oops, shrieking upstairs, toodle-oo for you.

[MamaG]

oh defo greensleeves. We went out for a meal last night and I was cross with DH because he didn't want a starter- I couldn't be the greedy pig who ordered one, and I wasn't even that hungry!

Ridiculous isn't it.

[WideWebWitch]

I don't even eat crap, not really. I haven't got fat on biscuits and crips (bar the odd packet of Wotsits). I have the odd square of 70% cocoa solid chocolate but I don't really eat crap. I eat mostly organic but I have too much olive oil, too much wine and bread and chicken skin and that type of thing. But hey, I don't suppose it matters, once it's fat it's fat, it doesn't really matter how it got there.