{"id":4588,"date":"2014-01-30T11:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harleytherapy.co.uk\/counselling\/?p=4588"},"modified":"2023-03-16T10:11:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T10:11:47","slug":"truth-about-overeating-case-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harleytherapy.co.uk\/counselling\/truth-about-overeating-case-study.htm","title":{"rendered":"The Truth About Overeating – A Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"overeating\"Who doesn’t eat too much, now and then? But when is overeating not okay? When is it a problem, or even an addiction? And can diets ever really <\/em>help with overeating<\/a>, or is there another way?<\/p>\n

Andrea M. Darcy<\/strong> shares her personal story of her struggles with overeating.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

You can end your struggles with overeating – my story<\/h2>\n

I was an overeater for sixteen years of my life. I never identified myself as having an ‘eating disorder’ because I didn’t make myself sick after binging.<\/p>\n

You might think, like I tried to tell myself for years, that maybe overeating is no big deal. <\/strong>But the guilt, shame, and double life it had me leading was very draining, and the truth is, I was addicted to food. I used it much the way an alcoholic uses booze — to numb out.<\/p>\n

And now, looking back, I am very clear that food addiction IS a big deal because it is a symptom of something much bigger.<\/strong> (And yes, eventually it did affect my physical health adversely, too, which wasn’t fun).<\/p>\n

And nowadays, there has been a shift in looking at eating problems. <\/strong>Binge eating is seen as the disorder of its own it really is — binge eating disorder<\/a>. So if you are struggling now, know that its taken seriously by the medical community and you can get the help I didn’t.<\/p>\n

How much was I food binging?<\/h2>\n

By the time I hit thirty, I had been binging at least once, usually twice, and sometimes three times a week or more for a good ten years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do I mean by bingeing? An entire box of biscuits, or an entire cake, in one sitting… or both. One of those rolls of pre-made cookie dough eaten raw in pulled off handfuls. Eating four cheese sandwiches with butter half an inch thick. And sometimes, when it was late at night and the shops were shut, the strangest combinations of anything that was still left in the cupboards – once I ate a pack of seaweed sheets for sushi slathered with half a pound of butter. Or I’d put butter, sugar and flour in a cup, mush it up, and eat that (yes, there is a butter obsession going on here!).<\/p>\n

I’d tried the usual advice of keeping a food diary, journalling, not letting any junk food in my house, cutting out sugar. Using visualisations and positive mantras, even. Nothing worked.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did I tell anyone I was overeating?<\/h2>\n

Here’s the thing, I’m a very active person. I also<\/strong> have ADHD<\/a> so exercise for me is a must if I ever want to sleep or function. So I tend to be slim. Meaning people thought the fact I ate a lot was ‘cute’.<\/p>\n

None of my friends or boyfriends ever figured out that I had a problem.<\/strong> Well, to be fair, one boyfriend was suspicious and asked my sister if I had an eating disorder<\/a>, but she laughed at him and he dropped it. (My family is the sort that refuses to see if you have problems<\/a> and if you try to talk about them punishes you for it).<\/p>\n

And in front of everyone, I was really into nutrition and holistic living.<\/strong> I didn’t binge publicly at all, only behind closed doors.<\/p>\n

In a way, I think I longed to be caught. For it all to end. But again, I grew up in a dysfunctional and unsupportive family <\/strong>where you keep your feelings under wraps. So I was terrifically good at keeping secrets<\/a>. Eventually I just gave up on ever changing and thought, well that’s that, I’m going to be a food binger for the rest of my life, sneaking out the garden when I’m seventy years-old to shove an entire box of cheap biscuits into my mouth!<\/p>\n

When did my bingeing habit begin?<\/h2>\n

I would say my habit of overeating<\/strong> began in university<\/a>. It was the first time I had an appetite. Because my family home was so tense and dysfunctional, I had stomach issues from severe anxiety and could never eat much.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have money to do anything nice for myself when I was down,<\/strong> but it didn’t cost much to get the sort of food I could eat myself numb on. Back then it was an entire bag of raisin bagels, a box of sugary dry cereal crammed into my mouth by the handful, a few packages of cookies labelled ‘low fat’ so I could tell myself it was okay.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t yet connected that I was overeating because I was sad<\/a>. At that age I was not yet that self aware, I was convinced I was ‘treating myself’.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Treating myself with food was a learned behaviour<\/h2>\n

\"Food<\/a>Treating myself with food was definitely a learned behaviour.<\/strong> I can see now my mother<\/a> taught me my habits around food. She came from a poor background, and I would imagine she learned from her mother as well that the one thing it was okay to treat yourself with, probably as it could be seen as a necessity, was food.<\/p>\n

I remember being very little and if I was a \u201cgood girl\u201d<\/strong> my treat from my Mum was only ever something edible. Sticks of red liquorice, a pack of sugary sesame snaps, a bar of chocolate I was to ‘not tell my sisters about’. On the days that me and my two sisters were all well-behaved there would be a ‘group treat’, such as my mother opening a can of sweetened condensed milk and letting us eat it off spoons (yes, as a health conscious grown-up I now shudder at the thought!).<\/p>\n

What makes me sad is I can’t remember my mother ever doing anything nice for herself other then buying ‘special’ food.<\/strong> She never pampered herself with clothing or beauty treatments that weren’t necessities, or bought things like books, music, art. It was only ever food. And I can see I replicated that as a young adult. It never crossed my mind to save up and treat myself to a manicure or something nice for my flat.<\/p>\n

But I wasn’t just hungry, I was\u00a0starving<\/em><\/h2>\n

The other thing was that I was hungry all. The. Time.<\/strong> Sometimes it worried me, and I’d try to ignore how insatiable I felt, other times I gave in and off I went to the grocery store for more of those bagels and biscuits.<\/p>\n

I realise now that I\u00a0 physically starving all the time in those days because somehow the wires in my brain got crossed, and the emotional starvation I suffered from, coming from a family without any real support or proper parenting, manifested physically.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"how<\/a><\/strong>By now I recognised I had a real eating problem. And as someone who prided herself <\/strong>on being honest<\/a> and kind<\/a>, it also started to affect my self-esteem<\/a> as I started being desperate and deceitful.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I remember cramming stolen bits of food into my mouth standing in the walk-in fridge of the restaurant I worked at. I’d take home the day old baked goods that were offered, claiming they were ‘for my roommates’, then eat the entire bag myself in my room. The thing I still feel awful about is the way I would sneakily go through my housemates’ cupboards when they were out, stealing little bits of all their food. I remember squirting one girl’s chocolate sauce directly into my mouth from the bottle, and eating one spoonful of every flavour of her jam!<\/em><\/p>\n

I started to have physical side-effects of overeating<\/h2>\n

By aged 27, after years of this behaviour, I was still a slim girl. But now there were other physical side effects.<\/strong> There was of course the bad skin<\/a> and bloating. But the shocking moment was when I visited an osteopath for a running injury.<\/a> During the routine assessment he pushed on a very painful bit of my abdomen that made me palpably flinch.<\/p>\n

He frowned, and asked me in a carefully neutral tone if I had a problem with drinking<\/a>. \u201cI don’t drink at all,\u201d I told him, confused. \u201cThat sore bit was your liver,\u201d he told me. That’s when a little voice in my head whispered at me, \u201cIt’s the overeating, it’s catching up to you.\u201d I went home and cried.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I couldn’t stop no matter how much I wanted to<\/h2>\n

But I couldn’t stop.<\/strong> By that time I was living by myself, and my binges were increasingly expensive.<\/p>\n

I’d buy groceries that were to last the week and eat them all barring the vegetables in a night.<\/strong> It wasn’t even about ‘treat’ food by then, it was just about putting anything into my mouth until I felt comfortably numb<\/a>. Even if that meant all the healthy and gourmet food<\/a> I’d managed to stick to buying at the grocery store (I could only buy junk food from quick dashes into corner shops where I wouldn’t see anyone I knew, I was obsessed with keeping up my facade!).<\/span><\/p>\n

A party-sized tray of dim sum was suddenly for one, ditto the pack of smoked salmon. It was like I couldn’t open anything without feeling compelled to eat the entire thing.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember doing a budget one month and I’d spent \u00a3500 on food for myself, not including meals out.<\/strong> That was a shocker. I was literally eating enough money I could have bought a designer handbag.<\/p>\n

I finally end up in therapy<\/h2>\n

By the time I was 28, food couldn’t keep down my recurring bouts of sadness and I finally found myself in therapy.<\/strong> I didn’t even bring up eating at first with my therapist, as it seemed the least of my worries.<\/p>\n

And because I found it so terribly embarrassing. I didn’t at all relate to girls who starved themselves<\/a>, or puked each time they ate, and I didn’t want to be identified with such sorts. In my mind, I didn’t have a problem like ‘those sorts’.\u00a0 This was yet another way I justified it all to myself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given I also had terrible<\/strong> issues with relationships and commitment<\/a> and struggled with ADHD,<\/a> I also couldn’t bear to also have another problem to present, it all felt so shameful as is to me. So I didn’t mention it my food addiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A male therapist brushes off my eating issue<\/h2>\n

The therapy I was trying was called<\/strong> CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)<\/a>, with a male therapist that had come highly recommended by a girlfriend. It ended up being a good fit for my tendency to be very dramatic and only think in black and white<\/a>, making extreme choices in life that weren’t always good ones. CBT helped me to have a more balanced view of life<\/a> and be a more practical and less self-destructive.<\/p>\n

But it didn’t end up helping me with my eating issue, as the therapist brushed my problem off.\u00a0<\/strong>I waited until the fifth week when I felt more comfortable to bring up my overeating.<\/p>\n