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TDS Eating Disorders Megathread

I've been a binge eater all my life, and it'll be something that I'll likely struggle with for the rest of it. There is an aspect of self-medication to it; we learn to associate feeling full to being happy, even though it's a false correlation. The heavier and more out of control one gets, the worse one feels and the more then that one feels the need to overeat.

Like other eating disorders, it isn't rational, and generally doesn't respond well to rational thought. Supporting her by going with her to the gym and having healthy food around is a good start, but she quite likely needs professional help. Such things are usually symptomatic of bigger issues.

It's hard to be in a position like yours: you want to help her, but it's hard to be attracted to someone who is doing something so unhealthy to themselves. I don't think that you're necessarily being shallow, and I think that you're doing great in trying to support her. Therapy can help with the underlying cause, but it is an uphill battle. Addicts can quit their drug of choice; binge eaters have to still eat, just reasonable amounts.
 
51fifty said:
Good point, I do see how both addictions are similar. I used to use my opiate addiction as a crutch. Just the thing I dont understand is how how she can over eat (not binging I guess) regardless of how her life is doing. She is nearly done with college and recently got the job she always wanted, but still persists to eat far more than the average person should or could even though things are going great for her. My father has the same thing and is going to kill himself in 5 years or less from type II diabetes. I just cant comprehend how something so simple could be so rewarding even though it cause immediate and long term consequences.
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From what I have seen, depression tends more to affect people who are lacking stress in their lives. Stresses seem terrible to us as we live through them, and a life without them seems like an idyllic dream. However, once you have eliminated your external struggles, your mind will often turn on itself for lack of anything else to struggle against. Hence you become anti to yourself...depressed.

51fifty said:
I never let my drug addictions get serious enough to seriously affect my health, relationships, family or friends.
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This might be true for you but it isn't for the great majority of users or addicts. Addictions are very complicated in the way that they work inside of a person's thinking, going so far as to change their personality and their thoughts themselves. For example, most cigarette smokers will not recall their first cigarette with much fondness. But take that same smoker into the future and you will find someone that loves cigarettes, they will swear to it, they love how they taste and feel and they just couldn't imagine a life without them.

The point of this is that addictions are deceitful most to the person who is addicted. This makes it complicated for an addict to understand their addiction because they genuinely cannot think about it in that way.


Anyway, my advice with any addiction is to try and encourage the addict to see the beneficial, even addicting, qualities of not doing what they have an addiction to doing. In your case this could mean somehow letting her realize the positive feelings that eating healthy isn't really a sacrifice because it makes you healthy, which in turn makes you happy. In fact it makes you far more satisfied than any cycle of food or drugs could ever do. Once she at least has this idea planted slightly into her thinking then it can easily take over the current methodology she has associated with her happiness.
 
Regardless of many opinions that support the idea that food is "addictive", I don't believe this to be true. In fact, I do not believe one can be addicted to anything but a drug. One can be obssessed, even neurotic about a certain activity (eating, gambling, sex etc.), but I don't see these obssessions the same as drug addictions, and I believe it is important to make the distinction in order to better understand either. Binge eating, or over-eating, can indeed be a serious issue, and food/eating can be an obssession, but it is in our basic nature to eat. One must eat to live. We aren't born with the instinct to take drugs, but we are born with the instinct to eat. Because one cannot stop eating completely for any appreciable amount of time, eating will always be a part of one's life. Your girlfriend cannot simply give up eating, but by eating at all she fuels her obssession with food, and continues. Her eating practices and her views of food are likely askew, and she has become over-indulgent in an activity which is otherwise vital. When one is obssessed with something they have done all of their life, and which they will continue to do all of their life, one likely feels much more wrapped up in the obssession, and stopping might not seem feasible in her mind. Eating is a comfort we all know, drugs are an accquired comfort. I would suggest psychotherapy to help alleviate your girlfriend of this neurosis.
 
^^ Good post Alex, although I think there would be a fair few people who would disagree with you regarding your views on addiction ;) However, sometimes I think that giving titles to people's problems e.g. food addiction/food obsession/binge-eating disorder/whatever, isn't as important as acknowledging that something is wrong and then seeking help for the problem.


munki said:
I dunno what advice to give you. Maybe you need to be completely blunt and tell her you just are not attracted to her now, especially when she is continuing to stuff her face at the degree she is doing. But being blunt may not be received very kindly.
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No sorry, but I don't think that would be a good approach at all. I understand where you're coming from though.


51fifty said:
Just the thing I dont understand is how how she can over eat (not binging I guess) regardless of how her life is doing. She is nearly done with college and recently got the job she always wanted, but still persists to eat far more than the average person should or could even though things are going great for her.
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I do the same thing with alcohol. In fact, I don't really ever have anything particularly negative going on in my life. I suffer with depression though so that dictates my alcohol abuse a lot of the time. I've also suffered with eating disorders my whole adult life, and I can tell you now that depression and food abuse/misuse often go hand-in-hand. So even if things are going well for your girlfriend on the outside, on the inside she may still be having a really hard time, hence the binge-eating continues. It's a really hard cycle to break. You feel like shit, so you eat, then you feel happy, but then you feel like shit again (for whatever reason), so you eat again. And so on and so forth.

As Dave said, eating disorders are not rational and cannot usually be dealt with using rational thought. Your girlfriend really should consider seeking professional help with this, otherwise the cycle is going to continue and get stronger, and it will be harder to break.
 
Eating disorders are worse than drug addiction. You need food to survive, and eating food isn't frowned upon, so the rationalization to not solve the problem is that much harder. It sort of reminds me of how a lot of people said I was a better person on heroin. There's just no winning with some people.
 
Alex000 said:
Regardless of many opinions that support the idea that food is "addictive", I don't believe this to be true. In fact, I do not believe one can be addicted to anything but a drug. One can be obssessed, even neurotic about a certain activity (eating, gambling, sex etc.), but I don't see these obssessions the same as drug addictions, and I believe it is important to make the distinction in order to better understand either. Binge eating, or over-eating, can indeed be a serious issue, and food/eating can be an obssession, but it is in our basic nature to eat. One must eat to live. We aren't born with the instinct to take drugs, but we are born with the instinct to eat. Because one cannot stop eating completely for any appreciable amount of time, eating will always be a part of one's life. Your girlfriend cannot simply give up eating, but by eating at all she fuels her obssession with food, and continues. Her eating practices and her views of food are likely askew, and she has become over-indulgent in an activity which is otherwise vital. When one is obssessed with something they have done all of their life, and which they will continue to do all of their life, one likely feels much more wrapped up in the obssession, and stopping might not seem feasible in her mind. Eating is a comfort we all know, drugs are an accquired comfort. I would suggest psychotherapy to help alleviate your girlfriend of this neurosis.
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I don't know. You walk an arbitrary line when you start to talk about natural and unnatural consumption. Most of what makes up a modern diet can hardly be considered natural. Things such as refined sugars would be hard to differentiate from many 'drugs'. The same goes for a lot of highly processed foods which use various artificial techniques to make themselves tasty to humans. The caloric density of 'fast foods' for example, have been studied and shown to cause addiction.

Before the discovery of fire humans would have spent the majority of their waking lives chewing foods, much in the same way that other primates do. In other words, from an evolutionary standpoint, there is very little that is natural about the way that we eat.

Where am I going with this...

I guess I just mean to say that the distinction between a modern diet and drug use is not as clear as it might seem. Yes eating is an essential part of living and drugs are technically not. The important part though is that the way that we eat is not only not essential to living, it can also be addictive.
 
I've noticed sugary foods can trigger binge-eating with myself which usually goes in combination with boredom. When you raise your blood glucose level it can give you a sensation of been high or a 'sugar rush', when that drops back down there can be a strong cravings to eat something sweet again, it's also hard to feel full because these foods are mostly made up from simple carbohydrates which your body breaks down very quickly. It becomes a cyclic motion of eating to satisfy the cravings, coming down.. feeling depressed and doing it all over again.

I'm not suggesting this is the cause, it sounds like theirs some deeper underlying issue present here.. but the type of food consumed can definitely exacerbate the situation.
 
^Definitely. Even greater reason to stick with whole foods. I rarely ever eat fast food anymore, but processed food is a whole other problem. It is simply a lot cheaper to eat unhealthy garbage, and arguably tastier, depending on a lot of factors. In a related note, I don't find crack to be tasty or healthy.
-Well put batman.
 
DexterMeth said:
It sort of reminds me of how a lot of people said I was a better person on heroin. There's just no winning with some people.
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I think there are some people who thought I was a better person on heroin, but that just gives me a fuck you incentive to be an even better person sober.
 
That was pretty much my line of thinking on it too. Even if it was as cheap and readily available as alcohol and tobacco, I would most likely not be doing it anymore.. just like with medical cannabis in California. I'm not against the use of either, even for myself, I simply don't feel like using catalysts in a bag much anymore.
 
Seffy said:
Calling someone 'out' on this doesn't help, it makes it worse, it's very much a dissonant reaction. To understand it, you have to understand the cycle of shame. E.g ; You mention that she is overweight, her reaction will be to feel ashamed and to quell the torrent of emotions she eats more food to try and stop it then continues to feel ashamed. (Just to add, shame is what causes cyclical reactions, it is separate from guilt)
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No sorry, but I don't think that would be a good approach at all. I understand where you're coming from though.
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I dunno. My bf was pretty blunt about my excessive drinking and I STOPPED. Granted, it wasn't the first time I had heard someone complain about my unhealthy habit but sometimes it takes a harsh reality check to really acknowledge that you are not doing the right thing, especially if it comes from someone who is very important, like OP is to his gf. Of course it doesn't feel good to be called out, but it gets to a point where trying not to hurt someone else's feelings is not doing anything but enabling. The fact that OP is embarrassed to have her as a gf and has restarted his own addiction is huge.

Drinking is different from binge eating, but it has some of the same self-soothing aspects. And there is a lot of that same shame which comes from drinking and the hangover aftermath.

She definitely needs therapy, or some sort of support group at the very least. There is overeaters anonymous that she could join, where she could commiserate with others who have similar issues. Focussing on healthier ways of feeling happy is another step.
 
Eating disorders are usually caused by self esteem issues, and the food is used to cover up emotions, e.g over eating, bunging and purging or being anorexic. It is extremely difficult to control, even to the extent of being stronger and harder to quit than drugs, although I suppose that all pertains to the person and their opinion.
 
Thank you all, there are a lot of insightful comments above.

We have talked about it a few times and I can see that the issue is of course more embarrassing for her. I think I have tried nearly everything in my power that's not offensive. We both know well that she lacks the will power not to eat junk food or finish all of the restuarant meal with 2 high sugar drinks. or came to my work last night to buy a $3.50 bag of hot cheetos which i know she will finish in 3 hours. It's almost exactly like when someone cant stop at just 2-3 beers a night and has to finish the whole 12 pack.

I would prefer going to the gym and working hard with her so she has someone to push her. But still I hear every excuse there is (I havent eaten for 4 hours) when the last meal was pizza or some othe horrific american food. I dont think overeater's anonymous would help because attending AA/NA meetings 6 years ago at my parents behest turned me into a complete poly drug user when all I used to do was smoke weed & drink. So I see it as if you treat someone as an addict they'll live up to your expectations.

I've been noticing how the "vicious cycle" works lately. Depressed about body, eat food (that shit is mind boggling to me) stressed out, eat food and so on. Guilty for eating such food, and after a stressful day massive cravings for unhealthy food. I cant keep up the charade much longer, it has been killing my sex drive. And she is starting to notice full well by subtle things like I like to drink more than ever when I have sex even though I rarely drink. That or make an effort to show everyone at parties It's basically the one thing that is holding back our relationship.

Is it possible for someone to get over that if they dont have a strong will power and has said a few times that it's the only short term thing that makes them happy? Can people like that be helped? The ones who have basically convinced themselves that they don't have the strength. Food is everywhere but I still don't see why some can't just stop eating until they're completely full. It's taking quite a toll on my self esteem when I feel embarrassed to have the biggest girlfriend at a social function and end up doing copious amounts of drugs and alcohol to hide my shame (as shallow as it sounds). Is there anyone that know's or has success stories that deal with self control when it comes to food? I feel I've tried as much as i can think of other than therapy and support groups.

Or maybe no one can help her but herself and I just have to wait until she gets there or we hit a breaking point. Therapy is my last option but I feel out of place to send her there and don't have the extra $100-125/hour. I feel horrible replacing the person in my life that has given me the greatest happiness with my opiate affair to curb my depression. the whole situation is weighing on me and I don't think we'll have another 3 months left if this continues at the same rate.

thanks again for the replies
 
51fifty said:
Is it possible for someone to get over that if they dont have a strong will power and has said a few times that it's the only short term thing that makes them happy? Can people like that be helped? The ones who have basically convinced themselves that they don't have the strength.
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I believe that everyone can be helped. But they need to want to be helped, otherwise it's futile.
But yes, even people with the lowest self-esteem and who feel the most powerless can be helped. Without a doubt.

51fifty said:
I feel I've tried as much as i can think of other than therapy and support groups.
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So surely the next step is for her to try those two things?? I know you didn't have positive outcomes with AA/NA meetings but that doesn't mean that your girlfriend will have the same experience. Everyone is different, especially with it comes to treating addiciton. You've done all you can to try and help her, so now it's time to hand the reins over to the professionals. What do you think?
 
51fifty said:
Is it possible for someone to get over that if they dont have a strong will power and has said a few times that it's the only short term thing that makes them happy? Can people like that be helped? The ones who have basically convinced themselves that they don't have the strength.
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Honestly this is the perfect place for a question like that. This is a drug-related message board. The majority of people here have issues with will power. I would estimate a decent 80+ percent of bluelighters have addictive or compulsive issues. I don't have time now to address all of your concerns but I want to say that it is very possible to overcome these inhibitions. You don't have to look far here to find people who have overcome compulsive and addictive issues. Also, the people who have succeeded in this are the foremost authority on the sobriety. That means that overcoming addiction is not only possible, but that it makes you more addicted to your natural self than the average person.
 
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