TW I am angry at my parents for letting me get into so many bad habits 😭

My Dad fed me sweets and chocolate like it was going out of fashion. Fell off my bike a grazed my knee? Straight to the shop for an ice cream and five bags of sweets.
The result? I hate sweet things now and have no interest in sugar, chocolate or puddings. So I think your connection is tenuous.

How old are you now OP? You know you can break this cycle of overeating.

My parents were relaxed with food. We didn't have a huge income so there wasn't loads in the house but I remember fruit, biscuits and crisps generally being available as snacks. Just because they were available though it didn't cause me to eat them all or to eat all the time.

We'd have breakfast, school lunch and dinner but again I didn't feel hungry enough to keep piling food on my plate.

It sounds like your appetite levels are out of sync with your body's needs. This needs to be looked at.

Book an appointment with your GP.
Plan a healthy week of meals.
Start some form of exercise that you can do for at least a couple of hours each week.

You're the only one who can fix this but you don't need to do it unsupported.

Of course agree.

As I said, we had mostly normal meals at home but no restriction on so called 'unhealthy' food either but just didn't have them all the time.

My parents were very present and we were super close.

There are people who are angry their parents restricted food as they feel this made them rebel and binge eat when they had the chance.
My parents didn't restrict my food intake, I also had a lot of freedom. I am a healthy weight now (was slightly overweight until I was 16) and I have never rage quitted a game.
I think you need to accept that you are who you are. We all have individual personalities which aren't fully shaped by how we are parented. That's why you can have siblings who are complete opposites.

I am going to agree in part with this. Some of the people I know with anorexia or bulimia did have parents very controlled about food.

But I equally now a substantial number of incredibly unhealthy teenagers, overweight flabby or flaccid. Eat terrible food and do virtually nothing but game to their free time apart from maybe the odd game of football.

I would argue that they have a form of eating disorder, of overeating, or addiction to terrible food.

I think they are going to feel as angry as the op is towards their parents at some point.

OP, this could be an answer for you.
Symptoms of Prader-Willi syndrome.....
...excessive appetite and overeating... emotional outburst and physical aggression
Got it off the NHS website.

I agree. People are really downplaying the influence of parenting imo. It "programmes" you for life. You can fight against it, obviously, as hopefully the OP is doing, but the reality is that it's an uphill struggle compared to your peers who reach 18 a healthy weight.

That's not to absolve the OP of personal responsibility, more to point out that the struggle for her is 10 times harder than if she'd entered adulthood in good health. It's a cop-out saying "we're all responsible for ourselves". We are, but we all face different challenges and some of us, due to a poor upbringing, face really quite difficult ones.

I understand how you feel.
I was born in 1951, and it appears that fat babies were considered healthy after the shortages caused by the second world war.
As a result of this, when rationing ended in 1952 I think it was, we went a bit mad.
I'm 5 ft 3 and weigh 10 stone which feels too much for me, but it's so hard not to clear my plate as we were taught to do.
I love my food but wish I could just eat smaller portions.
I think of food in terms of comfort, reward, being happy, my Mum's home baking.
It's not as simple as eating less.

@ThisPearlOP doesn't say if she has food issues now whether she's under weight or over weight. So I'm loathe to advise.

Sounds like your parents did there best, they are not perfect but only human. These days your parents might be able to get help, such as a counselling to combat your behaviour around food, that may have not been available back then.

Even in my fifties, I have never shaken of my mums influence of ' treats' being food that is bad for me.

I have over the years explained on visits to her, that I am trying to eat healthier or lose weight..she may even comment that I have put on weight, but a sentence later it will be ' do you want a cup of tea and a bun' or ' there's that cake to eat up'.

She gets very offended when I say no, and even acts like like I am being pompous or ' above my station' sometimes for declining constant sweet stuff.

I was parented like this and barely ate, was always really underweight and lived mostly off sugar. I still struggle with disordered eating now. I just often don’t feel hungry or forget to eat due to my adhd. Being on a schedule and eating for health, not calories etc has been most helpful for me but also taking ownership that I am fully in charge.

I have a family member whose child eats non stop and is really, really overweight as a 5yr old because she can eat anything she wants and their house is filled with crappy snacks. Mine was filled with crap food too but I just didn’t eat non stop. It makes me wonder if anything medically is going on or emotionally for a child to eat to that extreme. It’s also really touchy because if they had put restrictions on you, made you feel and about weight gain etc that would have led to issues also. It’s very touchy.

OP, this could be an answer for you.
Symptom so Prader-Willi syndrome.....
...excessive appetite and overeating... emotional outburst and physical aggression
Got it off the NHS website.

So what's your plan now?
What are you going to do to develop better habits?

I don’t blame you OP, I don’t agree with the whole “but now it’s everything in your hands”.

I had the opposite problem, overweight and put into diets since early childhood. Result? Never been a healthy weight in my life (besides a few months on the way down to an anorexic parenthesis in my 16).

Parenting has a HUGE impact on the relationship with food an it’s NOT an easy fix at all.

@ThisPearlOP

“I also watched TV non stop I was either at school or watching TV or playing nintendo DS and that WAS unhealthy i am sure because I would rage when I lost at games and stuff I remember having to fix it with tape because I smashed it up so bad when I got so aggressive during games I also had a ps2 that was already kinda old back then and I would throw the controllers I would yell and scream at everyone and I cannot believe I was like this I remember ripping my bed sheets and everything to shreds in a rage and that was 100% over some game no idea what!!!!“

this seems an unusual and extreme response OP, what do you think was going on there?

I agree @BangersAndGnash you should get counselling to explore what drove you to binge eat as a child, it could be the same triggers today.

Whats your point? Everyone has something from their childhood that they regret, wish they could change etc.

No-one forced the food in your mouth.

But your an adult now and in control of your life so can change it.

Your parents were clearly not doing their jobs, but at the same time it sounds like you had very disordered eating, perhaps some sort of medical problem that made you overeat to that extent. I had fairly free access to sweets and chocolate as a child, yet I was very good at self-limiting. Every year, my mum would moan because my sister and I would get about 10 large easter eggs at Easter (10-15cm tall hollow chocolate eggs), and - with free access to them any time we pleased - half of them would still be sitting around 2-3 months later, because we simply had no natural inclination to gorge ourselves. So I do think perhaps there was some other issue going on that made you gorge yourself to that extent, and perhaps your parents didn't know how to deal with it, or didn't know how to recognise it for what it was.

I do sympathise. There is tons of research now about how being obese as a child can impact your health and weight in adult life, and make it much harder to eat normally as an adult.

What did your parents eat? Were they overweight too? Did the people around you (friends, extended family) eat unhealthily too? Often, parents are doing what they think is best, or the only thing they know...

OP, were there other issues?

Why were you in your room on your own for so long? Did you have friends and go out playing etc?

Were your parents distracted by other problems, or recognising any problems you were having do allowing you to comfort eat, for example?

I feel so sad for the little girl that was you.

In your shoes I think I would consider counselling / therapy. Partly to look at what happened, but mostly how you can now be the adult for yourself and look after yourself now.

I wish you well.

It's not as simple as "they should have stopped you and everything would be fine how if they had" thats not how it works. My parents restricted my food and made me feel guilt and shame about being "greedy". This just causes different problems. All you can do now is try to untangle food from emotions and move forward.

It is so easy to blame parents. Given the way you ate there is no way they could have stopped you. If they hid food you would have found it. If they stopped your pocket money you might have stolen food. I speak from me and my friends experiences of binge eating. It is grim. If you still have problems with food you need to seek help. Your GP is your first port of call.

I do sympathise. I firmly believe my mother also completely fucked up my attitude to food and diet. Not in the same way as yours but still. But although that is not your fault how you deal with it in adulthood is your responsibility. Most parents are only trying their best. And if she was brought up the same it’s what she knows

Are you sure it's fair to blame your parents for this? I get they never told you not to but maybe they were attempting (and failing it seems) to teach you self control by letting you have freedom to choose. You appear to be the kind of person who cannot stop when they need to and cannot identify when they are full which is not uncommon in overweight people. Were you taught to always clear your plate as a child? I know a lot of people who were, also have trouble knowing when to stop eating. Contrary to a lot of overweight people I was a healthy weight right up until i left home at 18 mostly cos I was eating what my Dad gave me, we always had crisps, chocolate and sweets in the house and i wasn't told not to eat them but I was aware of the importance of moderation. You need to re-teach yourself and learn the signs of your body telling you it's full. By gradually reducing the amount of food you eat at meals and cutting out snacks you can naturally reduce your appetite. Seeing a GP if you really can't stop feeling hungry cos there maybe a medical issue.

OP, are you adopted? I know of a kid who had no off switch for food. His birth mother was a prostitute, drug taking, not eating properly person while pregnant. So the adoptive parents, who are very good parents, found that they had to be his 'off switch' as he would eat and eat and eat. It worked well when giving him fruit and veg! But they had to be his 'off switch'.
Maybe your parents assumed you would stop when you felt full.

Anyway, it's great you recognise the failings of your parents, and and you can be the master of your ship now.
Concerning the ripping sheets, throwing gaming controllers, sounds like you might have some sort of SEN. It would be worth investigating.
Best wishes to you moving onward with self repair.