Finding your reason for food addiction and obsession

[jane_vsg_ayla]

There is something to be said for trying our best to make ourselves unattractive or unnoticeable. I lost a lot of weight once many years ago and got a little scared for a bit - thinking "wait! I got fat for a reason! now what do i do?" But having my own kid and trying not to pass on bad habits so he doesn't have a lifetime battle on his hands as well is all the motivation I need right now!

Oh, and words do stick with you no matter the age. I was 3 years old when my grandmother (who raised 4 kids on her own in the projects where "dinner" was bread and lard if they were lucky) walked me to venture almost every day in the summer. She would tell me that I made the tar bumps on the road when I walked because I was too fat. Makes you just want to slap some people

[ACE]

I want to thank you all for sharing with me because underlying issues i think are going to make us fat again if we don't solve them or if we don't at least recognize that we have them. i didn't expect so much on this little question but it is very helpful to see that i am not the only one who is trying to identify these issues and face them.

[PlatinumPink]

My mom suffered from bulimia as well as my older sister. My mom would hoard food in her closet so I couldn't get to it. So, I always wanted 'the good stuff' but always just had bread or ramen noodles to eat. When I had the ability to leave as I got older and eat things I liked, I always ate it like it was a last meal because they were new things to me that I had never eaten before. As a teen I only ate one meal a day, that was the meal at school for lunch, because my mom wouldn't make food and kept only bread, butter, ramen, and tea in the house. During the summers when neighbor kids would invite me over, I'd binge on all the good varieties of food they had. When I became an adult and had a job and a car, on my own, I could never decide what I wanted because everything was always so new to me.. So, I would pick 2 or 3 items and eat them all. I've never really learned how to cook now that I am older, and when I try, it never turns out very well. I always fall back on starchy carbs because it is what I am used to.

[JeanAng]

hi there! my food addiction started when i was about 3 years old (that's what my mom told me) as a menopausal child, my brother was 21 years old when i was born, i was born normal and my weight normal until i reached 3 going 4 yrs. old when my mom got worried about me being a skinny baby...so she fed me with lotsa lotsa stuffs, all my family members wanted to have a squishy baby so they fed me with all i wanna eat, i was spoiled with food. My mom was growing up living in a one day one eat family and she strived hard to raise her parents and siblings and she didn't want her kids/family to experienced it. so there, i was fed, i stopped drinking milk on milk bottles when i was 8 yrs. old...she gave me like 4 vitamins that i take everyday. my dad's a great cook so he asks me what i wanna eat and he'll cook it for me...my parents loves to feed people with love and food. They get mad when our workers won't eat or their kids won't eat a lot. when i say a lot, i mean A LOT! We are rice eaters...(well,almost 100% Filipinos are rice eaters) so yeah, i indulge myself in rice, meats, sodas, sweets...everything i could think of because, my parents are supporting me in my food. so it goes on and i got more addicted with food when my boyfriend took me to restaurants and buy me foods...we've been together for almost 5 years now, and the 3 years was he kept feeding me...LOL! spoiling me with food...and he told me that since i love food he'll give me what i want...which is FOOD! Take me to restaurants every weekends...take outs. mc donalds, kfc...everything i could think of eating. and then on our 4th year he saw something and stopped feeding me (he still feed me HEALTHY FOODS though)but he explained why he's stopping me and wants me to eat a healthy. and live in a healthy lifestyle coz it's gonna be bad for me and he doesn't wanna lose me. and so i was like "okay but you can't just stop me like that..." so we took on a month diet but i got so addicted to food that when my boyfriend's not around i buy food myself and endulge to it. i wasn't aware about the consequences until i got problems with my knees and i couldn't walk like a block or so coz my left knee would kill me. My mom got worried and she asked me if i have any ideas on how to lose weight...her friends told her about diet alternatives...we tried everything but it just won't stop me from eating...i lose weight and gained two times i lost. imagine that. so my niece told my mom that there's this surgery called bariatric surgery and if we find a doctor we can go there and have me check... so months after months of searching good surgeon here in the philippines we found one, and so i went there, he checked me and my bmi was 48! so the doctor told me about sleeve gastrectomy...it's not much complicated like the bypass...but it has very good results with most of his patients in india, korea and philippines...so i said i'm going to that kinda operation. i told him that my knees are bothering me when i try to work in a threadmill...i have trouble sleeping so a month after he scheduled me with the surgery...

[sleeve-me]

so much here thank you for sharing all - i see parts of me in so many of the connections i am tired right now but plan to write my story soon, thank you all what a blessing to have you all be a part of this learning and growing site,

[ACE]

I am so amazed that one of my first posts has become such a long thing. I never imagined to hear so many stories but then again i seem to be a catalist for this stuff lately. i hope this has helped others like it helped me and is still helping. every post i read makes me reexamine my food addiction more and more and i am realizing new things with each new post. thank you all for sharing

[yogagrl75]

Hi Grace.
I think it's very important that you began and continue with a therapist. Good for you.
I too believe/know my food issues stem from my childhood. Several factors, my parents were alcoholics. I was sent to my room all the time. I often felt there would not be enough food, so I too hoarded food in my room. Weird stuff as well, bacon bits, tubs of icing, cake mixes. I would eat them from this hidden plastic tub I kept with the hoarded food. I never realized the problem with it until I was older in therapy. My parents found it and thought it was funny.
I too was molested by my biological brother from what I believe was ages 5-7, but I can't quite remember. I think that I'm afraid to be pretty and attractive also in fear of attracting the wrong attention. I have also worked on that over many years of therapy.
So, alcoholic parents, horrible childhood, molestations.....time to be free of all of that!!!

[yogagrl75]

awful. shame and humilation are worse then the whippping, in my opionion. I'm so sorry and glad you are on you are on your journey

[yogagrl75]

I think when we are restricted or prohibited from certain foods when we are children we just want them even more and in bigger quanties when we are adults. I think it's a subconcious rebellios thing. Now that we can do it (get whatever candy, fast food, junk) we are going to..and there is nothing they can do to stop us now. Little did we know we were punishing ourselves, but it sure felt good in the moment. I needed to realize I could have whatever I wanted....whenever I wanted, but that I didn't need everything and anything. Restriction leads to rebellion!

[msstori]

My story isn't much different from some of the others on here. As a child I grew up in an abusive home; mentally, physically, and eventually sexually. Food was a punishment,something I was not given control of. We were made to sit at the table until we finished all of our food, and more was piledon if I cried. I was beaten for eating a certain way (called greedy) or for asking for too much food. I was called fat for all of my grade school years. As a teenager I was told that I might as well have sex with him because no one else would want me as a fat girl. Sad as it is, he was the typical abusedchild who grew up to abuse.
Once I became an adult and on my own, food was the first thing I used to try to show my own control over myself. Only I wasn't in control at all. It became my confort as well as my enemy. I've used it for comfort, for stress, or any other emotion I wasn't equipped to handle a different way. I have been to enough therapy to say it is behind me, but I also know I have a lot of work to do to replace those habits assciated with each emotion and find something else to fill the void - something healthy. I will have to do the work for the rest of my life, my hope is that the sleeve will give me a different tool other than a shovel. So I can stop digging a hole and start living a quality of life I want so bad.

[phd]

Just chiming in....ditto to just about everything everyone said earlier. Food addiction is often borne as a defense mechanism after being abused (especially sexually but also emotionally, physically, mentally). I think, in the end, we're all trying to heal those wounds. Blessings to all.

[christine53]

WOW! old post, but I do believe with phd. I was hiding from ? Not any more

[tinoch]

An old post but being only 4- months post-op, I have been thinking a lot about these issues this past month and trying to figure out why I am overweight and struggling with old eating issues.
I am unusual because I had a good childhood. We didn't eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies but I was not overweight as a child. Diving team, skating, basketball, soccer, band, rode my bike everywhere. I didn't start to have a weight problem until I got my first real job after college and moved South.

[Lee6Lee]

Thanks for sharing...and helping!

[Froo72]

I've been trying to find out the reason for my food addiction for years and years. I have several theories, but I don't know that any of them hold any water. One is that my birth was traumatic - I came out face first, my lungs were filled with fluid, I wouldn't breathe, when I did, I stopped, doctor revived me, pumped out the fluid, and I was isolated till stable. When I was out of the woods, I was inconsolable, and as the story goes there was a nurse who took a shine to me because I was a cute fat baby (over 9 lbs). She never put me down, and happily fed me and fed me. I have to wonder if my first lesson in life was that a bellyful of sugar and pet milk (what they bottle-fed babies back then) sure was calming and to associate consolation and affection with being fed.

I could also say that mother was a bit of a food nazi. If I walked into the kitchen, she'd yell from the other room,"What are you doing in the kitchen?!!". If I said I was hungry, she'd say, "No food, drink a glass of milk." Which didn't make sense, because a glass of whole milk has just as many calories as a light snack, and doesn't satiate as well, but I was happy to get what I could. She would buy cookies and snack crackers for herself, hide them, and break them out after we went to bed. She had issues too.

My father was hypercritical and cruel. He would polish things off and when my mother asked who ate this or that, he would say that I did it, which led her to be upset with me. He was quite overweight and would mercilessly scold ME for being overweight. I got to where I didn't want to eat at the table because he would sit and conspicuously watch me eat and had something to say about EVERYTHING I ate and how I ate it, no exaggeration. He would get mad because I took oreos apart to eat them, or scooped soup noodles onto a cracker. He and my mother would get into yelling matches because she got tired of hearing him be an ass to me, which mad me feel bad, and caused resentment from my older brother and sister. I had other family members be douches to me too, not just make fun of me, but do downright hateful things that I would never think of doing to a kid.

I could go on & on, but I wonder sometimes if maybe it's just "in" some people. Not all addicts were abused or mistreated as children, maybe it's physiological or biological more than psychological. If it's not physiological or chemical, how come I'm not happy to pig out on kale and herbal decaf unsweetened tea? How come I have fiendish anticipation when I find out there will be cake served, but not broccoli? Maybe it was the sugar and pet milk that hooked me all those years ago, not the affection of a sweet old nurse. I know that I am better able to handle things when I "eat clean" (no refined sugar or flour or processed garbage), which I can't help but refer to as "being on the wagon", but just one bite of any of those things will send me back to them and to Helltown, I've been there more than once, I'm there right now.

I'm in week 2 of a workshop that is designed to delve into your psychological being to help you manage your weight, but so far I am not impressed. I'm not enjoying digging up painful memories, and have yet to reach the week where we find out how exactly all this self analysis is going to help, but I've pre-paid, so I will hang in there. lol

If anyone finds out why they're the way they are and how knowing that can be used to manage their addiction, please pass it on.

I don't know what causes it, I just know that I would do anything that effectively makes it go away.

Thanks for the opportunity to babble incessantly.