Eating is out of control

[JulyMume]

Please help me. I am overly eating everyday. I have put on 4 stones since birth of my last child who is now 5 years old. I can’t stop eating. I can have a healthy meal and feel full but then I eat junk food. I’ve tried meal replacement shakes which truthfully work as I don’t have to think about food but then as soon as I eat my evening meal which is very healthy like protein and lots of fresh vegetables I then indulge in junk again. It’s like I’m okay if I don’t eat but the moment food passes my mouth I want more and more. I puke up (not intentionally) and straight away stuff my face again. My stomach hurts in the night so much from the eating.

I don’t know what to do.

i am having therapy and they have told me it’s a common symptom of CPTSD to eat lots and have weight issues. They are no help. They keep telling me it’s normal but no help with how to deal!

I know I sound extreme but I feel so fed up I do feel like ending my life sometimes as I’m fed up of this awful feeling in my body all the time. I obviously will not as my kids will then have trauma and I don’t want to leave them. I love them but I feel I am destructive in my behaviour and I am spoiling their life by this condition.

I’m so sorry OP, you have some good advice on this thread, please don’t be ashamed to reach for support.

Do you only snack in the evening? Can you try to change your routine to make it harder? Brush your teeth earlier, go for a walk, go to bed much earlier. If you drink alcohol in the evening it’s a good idea to stop - it lowers your control so it’s much easier to reach for a snack after we had a glass of wine. It’s also very calorific.
If you snack on junk food, do you need to have it in the house? It’s not a necessity, if you don’t have bags of crisps or chocolate at home it will be harder to reach for it. Recovering addicts can’t have emergency stashes. Try snacking on vegetables instead, I bet it will be very hard for you to binge on raw carrots or sauerkraut.

It’s great to get to the underlying issues, but it’s also ultimately down to taking this minute by minute, small changes and single choices. Replacing one habit with another step by step. Making changes in your environment so it’s harder to reach for junk food.

The starting dose for mounjaro isn't meant to do anything, some people have appetite suppression but it's really just preparing your body for the higher doses.

Most people see significant weight loss on the higher doses.

I found your post interesting, as I am an alcoholic, and react to alcohol in a very similar way as you do to food. I could leave it alone completely for long periods of time, but one drink would set off a binge. That makes me wonder if a group like Overeaters Anonymous could be helpful at all?

I did also have issues with binge eating, but to a far lesser extent. What worked for me was breaking the connection between the urge to binge, and the "reward" (whatever it was the food was doing to my brain). I found that allowing myself to binge on foods that didn't "work", lessened that connection over time. For me that was porridge and ryvita, although this was some years ago, and there is more known about glycemic index now, so there are probably better options. I also had a set of rules that I followed - no sugar on an empty stomach was the most important one. Sugar on an empty stomach would always result in a binge. I also stopped snacking, as this could easily spiral out of control. If I was hungry, I would have a meal, regardless of the time of day. I found that eating something high in fat was a very effective way to curb sugar cravings (bacon and eggs became a bit of a go to at first, and then I started adding things like sweet potato and kale). Oh, and I always had to wash up and put everything away before making anything else.

I would forget about losing weight for now, and focus on identifying eating triggers, and on keeping eating restricted to meals only. The fact that the weightloss shakes work for you suggests that (similar to me!) hard and fast rules might work for you, and that it's when eating becomes unstructured that it can get out of control. And be gentle with yourself! This isn't a failure in you, and it's absolutely not about will power. Like I say, I am a sober alcoholic, ex-smoker, and ex-binge eater. I have no more will power now than I did when I was doing all of those things. But I do live free from them.

Don't buy junk food, if you haven't got it in you can't eat it.
Drink water instead when you feel like this.

I have PTSD too. Please be kind to yourself. You cant fix everything at once. Work on your mind and once you are feeling stronger it will be much easier to eat more healthily. Trying to lose weight whilst also overcoming PTSD is the equivalent of trying to cross the Antarctic whist carrying a rucksack full of rocks. Basically it's impossible. You are already doing something really hard. Don't make it harder.