Has anyone experience of or knowledge about recovering from compulsive overeating?

[ohbugrit]

I confided in DH a few months ago. I then spoke to my GP. She suggested I contacted the charity BEAT. I did, and they said I needed to talk to my GP. They don't have any support groups or services in my area.

I'm almost in the right place to deal with it I think. But I feel like I need to tread carefully - it's like a magic eye picture, I can't afford to pressurise myself or try "too hard". So the books about it have stayed under the bed. I feel like I need an external framework of some sort.

Don't know if any of that makes sense. But I'd love any experiences or ideas.

Hello ohbugrit :)

I have suffered from this all my adult life- I think I have a bit of an obsession with food generally, and I can't remember a time where I didn't finish one meal thinking about the next. The overeating was done in secret and it happened often.
Last Easter, I confided in my DH, and decided to lose weight (I was a bit overweight). However, I hadn't (and haven't) confronted the issues I have with food, and one eating disorder turned into another- I gave up everything except salad and quorn, and made myself quite ill. I still had the obsession with food, just that I was obsessed with denying myself by this point. Still thought about it constantly.
I joined myfitnesspal.com (a free site that logs your calories) I saw from that that I was clocking about 200 cals a day :( so it made me realize I was unwell.
I'm still obsessive. I still think about it constantly. I have reached my goal weight and beyond, and I'm still not eating enough calories, and I still feel guilty for eating anything remotely unhealthy. But I'm better than I was, and that's due to one thing.
I faced it.
I faced that I had an eating disorder, or a myriad of them. I eat too much, or too little. I looked back into my childhood, and saw the reasons why, and I talked it over with family members.

I'm sorry you don't have the support you need- And frankly, I wish I'd have been more like you when I started tackling it, then perhaps I wouldn't have transferred the food obsession to no-food obsession- But maybe a thread would help?? We could help each other, and I'm sure there are more like us...

Good luck :)

Thanks for sharing and well done for facing it. I hope you can find your even keel.

A thread would be nice :)

So, have you thought of what the root problem might be? I was always bigger than the rest of my family, and my parents were always trying to nudge me towards weight loss... And then, when all this happened last summer, I found out that my mother had huge issues with eating too.

I've always put it down to what I suppose was bullying at school, about me being "fat". I wasn't, then, although I am now! Why eating became my way of dealing with it I have no idea. Call me crazy but I feel a lot of the blame lies with bread and refined carbs. It just makes me crave more, and from that a habit was born.

I'm with you on that one. I don't eat bread during the week, but do allow myself on weekends- And once I get one mouthful, I have to have more. In fact, I have just left a loaf to rise right now, and I'm already feeling guilty for eating it :(

I wasn't bullied for being fat, but I always felt bigger than my classmates. It was a very odd moment for me when my aunt told me that she never wanted me to know, but my mother did have eating problems (she was very very thin) and although I wasn't aware of those, I think that unconsciously I must have known there was some problem around food.

Are you an emotional eater, like me? I always tended to eat myself into a frenzy when anything crap was going on: Now I am the opposite and eat nothing when bad things happen.

Funny how you pick up on things even when they're unsaid, isn't it ...

Yes, I eat with any excuse - boredom, sadness, celebration, hunger occasionally even!

Hi obugrit - not sure if you are still picking up on this thread but I would love to chat with you if you are. I've just been through the process of admitting to myself, DH and my Mum that I have a raging eating disorder (compulsive overeating) that has blighted most of the last 20 years of my life. Saw a therapist for the first time last week and about to start group therapy later this week. I'd love to speak with anyone going through the same thing so I'm putting myself out there! I'm new to mums net btw despite having browsed for the last few years since having children this is my first post .