I can’t stop buying food!

[Hopefullynottheorangecreme]

All of my adult life my weight and eating has been a struggle. I’ve been overweight, I’ve been underweight. I’ve struggled with bulimia both vomiting and laxative abuse. And I’ve restricted and starved to the point of being underweight.
I am now for the first time in my adult life pretty content to just be. I got myself some professional help as I was so alone with it all and it has always been something I kept very well hidden and felt very uncomfortable about and it really has helped.
There are times when I want to binge and times when I want to restrict but I am now using other distractions.
My only issue now is that I spend money on food that we don’t need SO OFTEN.
I’m hugely against food waste so it all gets eaten eventually especially as I have 2 hungry growing boys and have people over regularly to eat.
But for example this week I said I would only buy lunchbox bits in (so around a £15 spend) as we have a freezer full of food, food cupboards about to burst plus other boxes of crisps/treats in cupboards tucked away for weekends. I’ve ended up spending
Around £120 on food between different shops to the point I’ve struggled fitting it into the cupboards, fridge-freezer.
I’m so embarrassed by this as it’s so greedy to buy unnecessarily when many people struggle for food but I just can’t stop!
I used to hide high calorie foods in a big bag and always have it full when I was struggling and depending what was my issue at the time it was for different reasons.
If I was binging/purging it would be to binge on and if restricting it was a test to myself to know I could have my favourite foods to hand but never eat them (again I’m very embarrassed about this).
I think part of the excessive shopping is because I fear a disaster happening, having no money and not being able to feed my children and also I just fear food running out in general I think but this is ridiculous now.
I have enough food in the house to not need shop most of summer so I intend to try but I just was hoping for some advice or thoughts from anyone who has ever been the same or similar to this I suppose?

You say you fear disaster or not being able to afford to feed your children....so why don't you open a saving's account and put the money in there instead of in the pockets of the supermarkets?

That’s a great idea thank you!
I do actually having savings accounts for both of my children and my own savings account so maybe when I walk past a shop and feel like I “need” to go in and buy some food I’ll put £5 into each of the 3 accounts instead 😊 I love that!

Have not having!

I think what I would do is go through everything and make a list and stick it inside each cupboard so you KNOW what's it in there. A sort of tally chart that you can cross off as you use things. Then you've got more control over knowing what you have. I would see it as a bit of a hobby, "how little can I spend this week" and beating the last weeks spend, thus utilising what you already have in the cupboards.

I'm wondering if you need some counselling or behavioural therapy. I often buy food as treats. We're a bit skint atm so if we stay in and don't have a big day trip then we're saving money and instead I think we deserve deserve a treat. I need to stop this because I need to loose weight and buying random food treats for the weekend does not help. I probably have a bad relationship with food. Sounds like you do too.