1. "In OA we are encouraged to take a good look at our compulsive eating, obesity, and the self-destructive things we have done to avoid obesity - the dieting, starving, over-exercising, or purging." Here is a First-Step inventory of my compulsive eating history.
A lot of my early compulsive eating is blurred by the haze of the sugar high. Or perhaps I should say "glaze". I remember not being allowed sweets because my mom was worried about my weight. It wasn't consistently enforced, though. It was like her own warring opinions on whether she could eat sweets spilled over into what she permitted me to eat. But here are a few compulsive overeating memories:
I would sneak into the pantry when people were busy/sleeping/away to steal food. My favorites were fruit snacks and granola bars. The best was the "Fruit O's" from Costco - fruit snacks in a huge container from Costco. I knew I could take one or two of those a day without being caught. Granola bars were another love, but I knew I had to take those slow. I would take one bar a day. There was a very strict order to how I ate my closet foods: 2 Fruit O's, 1 granola bar, 1 of this, 1 of that. It depended on what we had at the time. Gold fish had to be smuggled one handful at a time. If the container went missing I would get caught and I'd either get lectured or in actual trouble. The number of items became just as important as the theft of the food and it's consumption. No matter how much or how often I smuggled, I always wanted more. It called to me and I craved it, but I knew I had to wait until the next day or they'd notice the food was disappearing too fast. Thankfully my brother was assumed to be the one doing the eating. Eventually he hid the food in his room to keep me out, which upped the stakes. I only could sneak in maybe once a week to get the food then. Even now, when I go to fast food restaurants, I find that I get a list of foods I want: 1 of A, 1 of B, 1 of C, 1 of D - the ordering of the food is part of the ritual, even when I ordered far more than I could possibly consume.
I remember being excited about the food come the holidays. It was the one day I knew my mom wouldn't chase me about how much I ate - until the car ride home when both parents would scold me in front of my brother. I would make the obligatory round of hugs and then settle next to the appetizer table. I would eat non-stop until dinner. Then I'd eat a plate of two of food at dinner, maybe sneak back for more appetizers. Then I'd get one of everything offered for desert, after I snuck in plenty of cookies, fudge, and whatever else was sitting out for deserts. The sad truth is: I can't remember much about the holidays other than eating and hoping my parents weren't watching how much I was putting into my mouth and body.
In elementary school I used to offer to put anything people wanted to give me into my yogurt to eat it. I wanted the food, so even if they put tuna salad in my cherry yogurt, I'd take it. Mostly it was things like Oreo cookies [yum] or half eaten sandwiches. I ate anything people wanted to throw out. I never fished in the school trash cans [although I did in the kitchen trash can at home] but I was a mini garbage disposal for anything and everything no one wanted. My friends eventually started bringing extra food for me.
In college I remember thinking constantly about food. Classes were the things I did between meal times. I loved the cafeterias because I could get as many plates as I wanted, and if I went alone I didn't have to worry about anyone following me. Mostly I didn't think about people watching me eat then. I was out of the sight of my parents, which to me meant I was out of the sight of everyone. I frequented the vending machines in my building - I think I stopped on the way to and from every class for something, usually those little doughnuts. Once I had a car, my food adventures were usually in the form of 4 or 5 large meals a day at fast food as well as the dining halls. I went every Tuesday to a Thai food restaurant where I ate until the point of pain. I also always had snacks in my room to nibble on between meals. This part is a bit fuzzy, because I didn't pay a lot of attention to what I was eating when. I have always been a grazer so I had meals I paid attention to, and meals where I just grazed along without paying attention to what I was eating.
In grad school I think I lived on pizza, sub sandwiches and chips, and fast food (including an awesome fast food Italian restaurant that had cheese covered baked lasagna that I would eat with garlic bread sticks - carb
After grad school I got the gastric bypass stomach surgery, which severely limited my ability to binge. They literally sewed off part of my stomach and rerouted my intestines. So once I was recovered enough to eat normal foods, I would still go to the restaurants and order all my food. The ritual was still in place. I just ended up throwing out most of it. I would eat a bite or two of everything and make myself ill, but I would do my best. I often grazed on my meal all day long - one monstrous breakfast-lunch-dinner mishmash of a meal. Eventually I managed to eat back on most of my weight since there was nothing that caused the infamous "dumping syndrome" for me.
When I joined OA, I had gained back some - but not all - of my gastric bypass weight loss. I gave up certain "trigger foods" but binged freely on the others. It was retaliatory binging. I took away french fries? Then doughnuts it was! I took out doughnuts next, then I went to those little fruit-jelly filled pies and cookies. Eventually I gave up and went back to before. Then I came back and tried it again - with the same results as before. Before I started with my current sponsor I had a two week long binge that was pure hell [described here]. And I haven't compulsively overeaten since.
Now to move on to the memories involving restricting/anorexia/bulimia:
These three were always lumped together for me. I remember in second or third grade hearing my mom talk about how she dieted as a kid: hard boiled egg for breakfast, and she kept lunch and dinner each under 200 calories. So I did the same. It stunted my growth and I stopped growing at age 10.
In sixth grade I started the anorexia. I would skip every meal I could get away with. It was not that hard to get away with: I would tell friends that I was eating at home, and family that I ate with friends. No one paid attention to what I ate at school, so I didn't have to worry there. Sometimes I ate at school because I liked the food, but it depended on the day. I think it got bad when I was between sixth and seventh grade, actually. During the summer months. When I had to eat dinner with my family, I'd squirrel the food into my cheeks and spit it out into napkins [because I wasn't smart enough to think that people would notice]. I just pretended it was gristle. My mom wasn't inclined to feed me sweets, so that was never a problem. When I couldn't get away with the gristle ruse, I'd rush to the bathroom and spit out the food in my squirrel cheeks. My parents obviously knew what was going on but chose to do nothing about it. Eventually my friends at school held me down at lunch time and force fed me. Once I was eating it seemed that this phase of my life had ended.
Bulimia became something that popped up intermittently with my binges. I can't really remember much about the bulimia, except that it took me a while to figure out how to make me puke since my gag reflex isn't very sensitive. After my weight loss surgery I was lucky that as soon as I overate I would need to vomit. So the purge just took a few extra bites of food and out it would come. I often used that route to get more food, but sometimes it was a way to clear the binge.
Eventually I would alternate as an adult between binge, purge, and restricting days.
Compulsive exercising hit me around eighth grade. I wanted to be skinny so I signed up for every sport my school offered, including cross country. Later I ran for the love of running, but at first it was all about the burning of calories. In grad school I exercised five to seven days a week as a means of telling myself that I was working on my weight and clearly it wasn't my fault that I was fat.
I can honestly say I've tried just about every diet over the years: calorie counting, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, HMR, Liquid Only, Slim Fast, Lean Cuisine, not eating after 6/8/10pm, skipping breakfast, eating no breads, eating no dairy, eating no red meat, vegetarian, alcohol only, eating no pasta, eating no snacks, eating five small meals, etc.
