Food Addiction Support Group
An individual suffering from a food addiction disorder frequently experiences episodes of uncontrolled eating, or binging, during which they may feel frenzied or out of control. They will eat much more quickly than is normal, and continue to eat even past the point of being uncomfortably full. Binging in this way is generally followed by a period of intense guilt feelings...
That's the title of the memoir I'm writing about the next eighteen months. Seriously.
In 18 months, I'll be 60 years old. I think of myself as someone who's battled food addiction all her life, but the reality of it is that with a few short-lived exceptions, I'm actually someone who's mostly just given in to her food addictions her whole life. I've thought about battling it, I've belittled myself for not doing so, I've written grandiose plans for the approach that I'm going to start 'tomorrow'. I've journaled and made lists of what I've eaten and studied my triggers and read lots of books. But the honest and ugly truth is that I haven't done much about it until now. There really hasn't been that much battling. Until now. Now, I'm putting on the superhero cape and charging ahead.
Until relatively recently, I've gotten away with ignoring it. I've been fit and strong and healthy overall, and while I've always carried some extra weight, I've at least been blessed with proportions that are relatively flattering. Meanwhile, my eating habits have always, always been appalling. I lie about food, I eat in secret, I shove it in my mouth and barely taste it, I feed all my emotions, I use it as a disguise and a barrier........all the things. I've just kind of been able to still squeeze it into a costume the rest of the world sees as 'mildly overweight' instead of 'really messed up.' But, deep down, I know the truth. I'm a hot mess.
Things changes post-menopause (I got to that particular party kind of late, just about three years ago). Weight shifted - well, actually, it sunk. "Shifted" implies some kind of gentle rearranging, doesn't it? This is different; this is two boobs racing to see which one can hit the floor first, this is a brand new belly 'apron', this is thigh-chafing, and just a general feeling of leadenness.
My metabolism slowed down. I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a giant load of suck, let me tell you. Bottom line, my bottom line is widening beyond the point where I can ignore it.
I'm not motivated by vanity. I have no need to be any particular size. Sure, thinner would be just peachy. But what I want, what I am working for now, is health, and self-control. I recognize that many factors in life are outside my influence - the RA is a perfect example - but that's all the more reason to control the things I can. I want to be a better role model for my adult kids and for my grandchildren. I want to fix some wrongs in the world in my remaining years and I just feel like I need to get my own act together in order to be more effective.
My family doctor suggested a nutritional counseling class. I said, "Honey, I could write that book. Give me a pen and paper and I write out a 1600, 1700, 1800 calorie daily diet with proportionate carbs, proteins and fats." See, I know that stuff. I just don't do it.
Someone I chatted with online mentioned having more access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Know what I do for a living? I'm a musician, and I'm also, wait for it, an organic farmer running a fruit and vegetable CSA. I pack 50 boxes a week for my member families filled with just-picked berries, melons, leafy greens, etc. I grow them with love and care and pack them up every week. I write a funny newsletter with great recipes. Then I go to McDonald's while I'm on the delivery run. I sit in my farm van, stenciled with the farm name and a healthy-green-crunchy-sounding motto, stuffed with boxes of fantastic produce, and I shove a Big Mac into my face and cry because I don't want it but I can't stop eating it. Sometimes I wipe away the tears and go through the drive through a second time for an extra order of fries. This kind of s*** goes on all day, every day. I've had enough of it.
Well, I'll wrap this up because I needn't write the whole darn memoir here, you know? But I wanted to join the group, I wanted to make a sort of public statement about my intentions in the hope that it keeps me more accountable. I'm having my first hypnotherapy session tomorrow (I've had two preliminary sessions, just talking about issues, and based on the questions the theapist has asked, I'm excited about this journey) in the hopes that it will jump-start the process and help me unearth some hidden triggers. I'll report back every now and then.
But mostly, I wanted to thank all of you for your courage and honesty. I read a lot of posts when I came to this site last night, and I kept thinking "I could have written that one." Over and over again. It is heartening to know that I'm not the only one with this problem. I hope that i can somehow offer some support to all of you here. Cheers, and carry on, warriors.
Through trial and error, and more errors, and still more, I've found - well, not a 'diet' per se - let's instead say that I've managed finally to discover the proportion of carbs, protein and fat that works for me personally. I'm not sharing it, because it isn't necessarily YOUR answer. But there is an answer out there for you, and one of the things I've learned in the three months since my last post is that when you figure out your own ratio, all of the messed-up-head stuff gets easier. When I was eating incorrectly for my own personal self - even though that regimen may have worked for someone else - I felt sluggish and fogged up, and craved food nonstop. But each of us has a different answer. We are not all the same, or let's face it, this would be easy.
You do need - I needed - to make behavioral changes while trying to get my head straightened out. But those changes are extraordinarily hard until you've figure out what drove you to abuse food in the first place. I've used the analogy with alcoholism before, and it certainly has some holes in it, but it's similar to an alcoholic trying to stop drinking: if you just stop without fixing the problems that led to the drinking in the first place, you'll likely slip up, but you can't succeed if you only focus on those problems while you still have a bottle in your hand. It's got to be both at once.
In my case, I had depression symptoms that led me to eat, and the things I was eating were contributing to my depression. I'd figured that out - so have you - but in my case at least, the specific things I was eating were causing issues for me regardless of the quantity, and I had not realized that.
I read my older posts now with a sense of amazement that I have clawed my way out of this. Some days now it's hard to believe that my life was once dictated by food: planning it, hiding it, eating it, regretting it, wanting more, loathing myself for giving in to it, over and over again.
Now, this part is really important: I don't look back with a sense of shame or embarrassment, even though my food addiction led me to some extremely poor choices. I look back at still-fucked-up Katie with a sense of compassion and a little bit of awe: she was a mess, she was a train wreck, but even in the worst of it, she took care of her people, she did the jobs she had to do. She kept trying,
Looking back at the weight I was carrying at the time, both literal and figurative, and the emotional and physical pain I was in, I am honestly amazed at how well, all things considered, I managed to do on a daily basis.
And this is perhaps one of the most important things i can tell you, fellow traveler: if I, now on the way to my goal weight, no longer obsessive about food, can look back at still-fucked-up Katie compassion, then that's really the way i should have felt about myself even in the midst of the mess. And that's how you should be feeling about yourself.
You are not hopeless. If you were, you wouldn't be reading these posts. You're still trying - you just having hit on the right combination yet. There are many puzzle pieces in the solution. Sometimes, they only work if used in a particular order. Absolutely no one in the entire world has your configuration of empty holes in the puzzle. My pieces won't fit yours, although someone else's solutions may provide you with inspiration, or might suggest an avenue for you to exp[ore. You just have to try one, maybe try it at a different angle, and then put it down and try another one until you get it right. And once you do, it really does fit into place easily.
You are not stuck forever where you are now. I began my serious healing process at the age of 58.5 years. It is now two years later. There were times when I felt that every waking minute of every day was spent working on this problem. I felt that i could not drive my car without fighting the temptation to stop for fast food. I felt that I couldn't go out to eat without overeating, I couldn't shop for clothes without hating myself, I couldn't run or exercise much because I was too fat, I had developing medical problems to deal with what were definitely connected to my overeating, I was avoiding friends and social situations - it truly was dictating my life. And I won't lie, the work I have outlined in this thread was grueling.
But it is working.
I learned that self-care is about much more than getting a manicure or taking time for a bubble bath, although those things may be important to some people, and that's fine. Self-care, which I had been interpreting as 'let myself have that chocolate' for decades, is actually about self-respect. I'm new to that concept, but I've got to admit, it's a lovely feeling.
If I could go back two years, to that terrible wonderful transitional moment when I wrote my first post, and give that 'me' advice, I would say: be kind to yourself. Respect your journey. Acknowledge what you've managed to do despite carrying this terrible burden.
And so, I offer you those same words today. Please don't give up. You are worth it. And you can do this.
Guys, I've had my first lapse in six months, and it was a doozy. I'm following a strict low carb diet now to keep my blood sugar under control. It's working. Sugar numbers are great, weight's going down at a good pace, and I have not had any binge episodes or abused food in general for a long time. I'm learning to like myself for who I am. I'm learning to relax a little.
I'm eating protein and veg and healthy fats and I have found that for me, cutting out all sugar and nearly all carbs actually seemed to deaden the impulse to binge on chips and sweets. Haven't had them, don't miss them, even managed two weeks away from home without an issue.It's amazing how many things you cant hink about when you're not always thinking about what and when you'll eat next.
But I heard about a very, very low carb ice cream, something that I could actually have and stay within my limits. It was hard to locate so when I finally found it, I bought two pints.
They sat in the freezer for almost a week, which is a miracle, actually; when I was in the throes of addictive behavior, ice cream never made it to the freezer in the first place.
And then I had the bad, terrible, awful day. A day when some big scary decisions had to be made, some big mistakes had to be faced and repaired. never mind the details, but this was big, big stuff.
And I got into the ice cream. By 'got into', what I actually mean is I ate a whole pint. And an hour later - I ATE THE SECOND PINT.
It was like a flashback to me at my worst. I mean, I used to do things like that fairly regularly. I've written here about it.
I know addiction is a lifetime thing, and we're never truly healed, we just learn to manage it. But until that day, I didn't accept that it was really true.
Now, here's the part you need to hear:
It was okay. That was the end of it. It happened, I felt like crap for several hours, went to bed, got up the next day and everything was back to normal again.
This is how 'normal' people live. Everyone screws up. Everyone hits the ice cream sometimes (or their equivalent of it, comfort-wise). It's okay. Once you've got your equilibrium back, you can mess up, even at a two-pint level, and it's just a blip on the radar. It doesn't mean all the hard work was for nothing, it doesn't mean that you're back where you started.
That was three weeks ago, by the way, and I've eaten normally since then, and even lost more weight.
In a weird way, I'm glad it happened, because in the back of my mind I've wondered what would happen if I slipped up, if it would just set the addictive behavior in motion again.
So I messed up. I know things now that I didn't know before. Having an isolated incident like that really helped me understand what emotions specifically are my triggers. I know now that I can't have that in the house. Ironically, the entire quart still kept me under the carb limit for the day, but that's not the point - it was binge eating, and that made it unhealthy for me.
But it didn't start the rollercoaster again. It was a one-off, and for that I am incredibly thankful