My FUBAR Relationship with Food
My health insurance doesn't cover any sort of mental health professional, so let me be clear that I have never been officially diagnosed and I am not a trained psychoanalyst. All the information I'm about to flood you with is stuff I've just sort of figured out for myself along the way.
My biggest challenge in the battle of the bulge is partly what I eat but even more so how I eat. Clearly, I have issues with food. I am probably a carb addict. I enjoy a dessert here and there but for the most part when I binge eat it's on bread, salty, crunchy, or fried food.
Addictive personality is disturbingly prevalent on both sides of my family. Alcoholics, drug addicts, and gamblers, they're all there. I'm no paragon of virtue on the addiction front. I may be terrified of drugs, able to say no to the bottle, and capable of cashing out while ahead at the casino, but I do have a serious problem with food. It's debatable whether or not it's an "addiction" but regardless it's a very visible problem for me. I can eat in secret to hide my shame, but I can't hide the pounds of fat that result. It's a billboard for the world to see, one that I carry everyday.
A typical day off the wagon for me will consist of feeling no hunger all day, until about 4 or 5 in the afternoon when I'll notice the noise my stomach is making to clue me into the fact I haven't shoved anything in my face since I woke up (if I had my way I'd only have to eat once a day and that would be fine). So I'll mosey into the kitchen and find that none of the nutritious options I have thoughtfully stocked and prepared ahead of time appeal to me. This isn't about laziness, if it were that easy I'd have won this battle a few years ago.
This is where it becomes a choose your own adventure novel! I'll either chug some water until my belly shuts up and and I can ignore it for a couple more hours(compounding the problem when I finally do eat) or I go on the hunt for a quick and easy fix. I imagine it's like a coke addict hits up their dealer, only my dealer is the drive through. Take your pick, they're all a stones throw from my where I live and work, but you can be sure I'll order a large "value" meal and a few extras.
The entire time I am aware on some level that this is a self destructive negative behavior but that doesn't stop me. It's almost like an out of body experience as I'm inhaling 10,000 empty calories. It's called Binge Eating Disorder (BED, cute acronym huh? Sounds so harmless). In the moment it feels like I'm spinning out of control and even though I know it's happening and to stop it all I have to do is just put down the deep fried egg rolls, somehow I just can't. I want to, but I just cant.
So then there's this cycle of hopelessness, guilt, and shame. And the next day I do it again, always without any witnesses. Over and over, until my body just packs on the pounds because my metabolism is in starvation mode (yup, you can eat 10,000 calories a day and still confuse your body into thinking it's starving) because it's so confused about when or if or how much it is going to be fed again that it just holds onto everything. Turns out no matter how long it's been since your last meal your body can only use a finite number of calories and the excess is stored as, you guessed it, fat!
I think it's clear there's an emotional component that needs to be addressed in order to fully beat this destructive cycle. I just haven't figured out what it is yet. I still don't know the why. What came first? The chicken or the egg? Nature or nurture?
I have no major trauma in my past to explain this behavior. It could be that it's a behavior I learned growing up that made me this way. After all I did grow up in the school of "mmmmm Pepsi" and "Finish your plate! There are starving children in Africa!" and "Why are you sad? Here, have a cookie" It could also be that I became this way as child as a result of this behavior and it only got more extreme with age. Who knows? I don't. But I sure as hell aim to figure it out.
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