Does anyone else fluctuate between bingeing and starving? Anyone else with a strange relationship with food?

[GetOrfMoiLand]

Thread yesterday about obesity got me thinking.

I either eat for England, binge and comfort eat, or in diet mode starve myself.

I have been like it my entire life, and also comfort eat a lot (in times of stress wolf an enormous amount of food). I have never been too bothered by it, however lately have had some stressful times and found the bingeing/starving has been a lot worse, and I have been hiding it from my family (esp. as have teenage daughter). So have been either buying a load of food from the petrol station and scoffing it in the car before going home, or i have been starving all day, then having a bowl of soup for dinner whilst telling DP and DD I had a big lunch so am not too hungry.

All the while I absolutely love cooking - cook from scratch a lot, eat out. But I am finding if I go out to eat, or binge, I then compensate by not eating for day, and living off coffee and bits of chicken.

I am trying to address it - I have moved the fridge, don't go buying loads of junk food anymore, don't eat whilst reading etc. But was speaking to DP about it last night and he was rather appalled by the hiding and starving and says that it seems like borderline eating disorder. I disagree, and just think I have a bit of a warped atitude to food - sometimes it is a friend, sometimes it is the enemy.

Is anyone else like this and how are you addressing it?

yes me!!!

or i start the day doing well,make one small mistake,such as pinching one crisp off a dc,then spend rest of the day with the 'might as well eat anyting' attitude!!

am struggling a bit too with atkins/sw/rosemary conley diet attitudes!

exercise does help me have a change in mind set.....alot less likely to starve/binge if i am in exercise mode...but thats my other problem

lone parent with 5 dc makes exercising difficult

i want to take up running,dd is 14 and will do it with me,but means i have to rely on dd1 being around to look after the boys! she's 16 and hardly ever around!

I used to run a lot - but that was when I lived by the coast and ran on beaches, I can't run on roads.

I am a member of a gym but to be honest I work long hours and I would rather spend time with dd and DP at the end of the day than go to spin class. Which is an excuse I know.

My dd is 14 as well and she came out running with me once and hated it!

I'm exactly the same.. and yes you have an eating disorder..

I only realised how warped my own relationship was when we discovered my now 16 yr old had become bulimic when she developed a HUGE bust and started to hate her body. She hid it well.. she almost drifted into anorexia but didn't have the control and binging started.. then self harm.. you get the picture. We were referred to CAHMS for her and in the process of talking to the psych and dietician I realised that while my eating patterns are much more subtle than my DD2s, they are nevertheless pretty odd.

I'm slim.. currentlyaslimmish 10, and you'd never know from looking at me that some days all I do is eat and others all I do is starve. The SATISFACTION when I have eaten very little, the hatred when I have had a decent meal. I hide it from the kids.. my kids just say I'm a wierd eater, but I feel so guilty because at some level I think my DD2 must have got it from me.

I am now making a massive effort to eat meals.. properly, with the family (all busy teens so we only sit down together to eat a few times a week) I used to weight myself daily but have forced myself to stop. It's as much as I can do .
I'm 42 now and I can't imagine ever just being able to eat food to fill a hunger..

I had a row with DP yesterday (over nothing - just a normal stupid row about who was going to do the dishes ) but for some reason I was pissed off. I ended up bingeing in secret (in the bedroom?) on a big bag of doritos and an entire tex mex dip. Then felt self loathing.

It has got worse lately - have had a load of issues with my mum lately and now we don't speak. It comes in waves, when I am happy I have a relatively normal attitude to food (still feast or famine), when I am stressed it all goes to pot. I also give myself strange challenges - when i was 15 I went a whole month eating nothing but frozen peas, just to see if I could. Kids I am similar to you in that if I manage to go a whole day without eating anything I am hugely proud of myself. Because of the doritos binge yesterday I am telling myself that I will have to not eat properly all week; i am planning to go out to lunch with dd today and I am thinking about how I can get away with not eating anything too damaging.

Written down like this it does seem bloody odd, tbh.

yes, this is me. Have managed to get the bingeing and puking under control now (mostly - although seeing my dad a few weeks ago sparked a relapse) but what I find I do now is mark most foods as off-limits so that I almost always end up feeling like I've binged/ strayed. Basically I always feel guilty. eg I'll start the week saying, right no carbs which means no fruit etc ... have an apple and feel as bad as if I've eaten a tub of ice cream. I'm never hungry which means that I am always panicking that I've over-eaten. Just being around food or thinking about eating it can make me feel bad. Often I have to get dh to run me through what I've actually eaten bc in my mind, thinking about toast/ dessert etc is tantamount to eating it

i was like that from the ages of 15 until about 25. the first steps in addressing it for me were 1. the acceptance that it was not normal and then 2. forcing myself NOT to diet, as the binges always came after falling off the fasting wagon as it was inevitably totally unrealistic

Hi all - there was a thread concerning these issues running in Mental Health a while back. Without wanting to scare anyone I would say it is a mental health issue as much as a dieting issue.

There are quite a lot of books out there on eating disorders and I got one called 'Overcoming Overeating' from Amazon. It is good but a bit 'academic'. Looking at another thread on dieting today concerning the same probs I saw a recommedation for 'The Idiot Proof Diet' which looks like covering the same ground but in a more humerous and human way.

Like radioblahblah says, dieting tends to cause a backlash which just results in more eating so it's a vicious circle. I have put on a stone this year so far due to some intense pressures in my life and I'm getting really scared of developing diabetes which runs in my family. I finally went to talk to the GP about it the other day, after putting it off and off, and basically cried all over her as soon as I sat down. She persuaded me to try anti-depressants short-term and I already feel calmer and think this would be the perfect time to take on board what these books are trying to say.

Hi...Beyond Chocolate is a really good one as well. I was dangerously close to bulimia a few months ago...fortunately, I have a daughter, and I DON'T want to pass along these weird food things to her. Beyond Chocolate really changed the way I eat/relate to food. I read it in February, and loosely followed their strategies. I am now trying to lose a little weight again, and find that I am much more sensible and healthy about it...I can actually eat a small bit of chocolate now, and NOT the whole bar...and I don't beat myself up if I overindulge. The weight is coming off, slowly, but I feel great about my attitude. Plus, I can honestly say that I have not reached for food in times of stress in probably 3 months.

Overcoming Overeating was a good one, too...as a PP said it is a bit academic. Beyond Chocolate was written by women who could have written all of these posts!!