For me my early history of compulsive eating began with stealing food as a child. I remember in the old house, when my parents left us alone for a while, I would sneak into the freezer in the playroom and sneak pieces of candy - usually fruit-flavored hard candy or Bits 'o Honey. I just remembered that. I also remember trading parts of my lunch for other kids' lunch and getting their "good" stuff, like fruit roll-ups and Nutella. I never understood why those kids would want my boring carrot sticks or whatever instead of their sugar-laden desserts. All that said, I ate relatively normal at home and don't remember having too much trouble with food apart from the occasional stealing as a child.
The stealing continued throughout my teenage years, with it getting progressively more desperate. My parents left me alone more and more (increased responsibility), and I would start to look forward with eager anticipation to the times when they would be out of the house because it meant I could sneak food and watch forbidden tv. That started a pattern for me that still exists today.
In high school I went to an all-girls school so I didn't worry as much about what I looked like. The food was also amazing, so I ate a lot. Well, I don't have that much memory of what exactly I ate - when it was make your own sandwiches or soup in breadbowls I would probably have two. What I do remember is the cookies and pastries. Every day I'd get 5-6 and take them back with me and eat them throughout the afternoon. I also got pastries from breakfast, even though I wasn't supposed to because I was a day student and not a boarder. By Junior year I was stealing breakfast pastries most days. My weigh stayed relatively normal (maybe 20 pounds extra?) throughout high school because I was very into sports (tennis, skiing, hiking). I did gain a little weight and remember going on various diets. Slim Fast shakes, an all-banana diet, only eating white rice with soy sauce for lunches. It was weird. My parents weren't crazy about the extra 20 pounds (or the extra 30 my sister had) and encouraged us to lose weight. I remember them letting our little brother have dessert and telling us that we had to have air-popped popcorn or applesauce instead.
The summer after highschool I went on a month-long backpacking trip and lost all the extra weight (maybe 20 pounds?) and looked great in time for the start of college. When college started, I participated in a week-long backpacking orientation trip in which I was too nervous to talk really. I also didn't eat much (I'd gotten used to not eating much while backpacking) and refused to eat McDonald's on the way home (oh how times have changed!). My leader later pulled me aside and told me there was help for my "eating disorder." I was shocked and appalled. I didn't have an eating disorder! I just didn't like McDonald's!
I actually still don't think I had an eating disorder at that point, though my food was definitely not normal. In fact, on that month-long trip previously that summer, I developed a bizarre and socially unacceptable fear that we would run out of food before our next re-ration. I would panick when boys ate too much and try to keep them from eating too much. I myself hadn't eaten much and didn't see why they needed to. It made me totally ostracized. At the end of the trip, we did a bonding game where one person had to pick another person and make pantomime up. My person imitated me by pretending to snatch food from another group member. Everyone thought it was funny, and I fake laughed, but inside I was completely humiliated. It was awful.
When I started college I resolved to act differently around people if I wanted to have any friends. Interestingly, I didn't connect my poor behavior on the month-long trip with food, just with an inability to socialize properly. Its only now that I have the perspective that I can say that the bigger problem there was food. Still, my social plan worked, and I developed a pretty nice group of friends in college. Food became a problem relatively early on on campus. I remember there being donuts in the lobby of our dorm and sneaking by like 10 times to get one, each time feeling more and more conspicuous. By the beginning of the second semester of freshman year, my clothes were starting to get tighter. Then, most of the way through the semester, I remember having my first binge. I had broken up with a pseudo-boyfriend (my first) and was devastated. I couldn't sleep and for some reason (I can't remember the thinking now), I decided to stay up all night in the hallway (while my roommate slept) and eat. I do remember thinking that I could eat an entire bag of cookies and no one would stop me. So that's what I did. I went out and bought a bag of Pepperidge Farm fudge cookies. I still remember the exact kind. And I sat up and ate them. I guess to try to soothe my heart. I didn't make it all night - probably only til 1 or 2 a.m. But that was my first binge.
I actually don't remember binging again for quite a while. Most of my eating for the next year or so consisted of me feeling sorry for myself and buying sandwich plus chips plus cadbury eggs to make myself feel better. Still not a good reason to eat (and probably still too much food), but not an actual binge with the binge mentality.
Then came the summer after my Junior year. I was interning in Washington, D.C. and living in a dorm at Georgetown with 5 other girls I didn't know. I didn't really know too many other kids in the city, though I met a few, and I was lonely a lot of the time. To ease the loneliness (and give myself an "activity," I guess, I started going to the store in the Georgetown student center and buying crap. Loads of pasta and junk food. And just eating it. The first time it occurred to me that I could buy an entire cake for myself was like a revelation. I bought a pound cake and slowly proceeded to eat the whole thing secretly in my bedroom, knowing that it was wrong but also loving it. I would stop after work on the way home at a bakery and buy 3 1/2-price pastries an scarf them down while waiting for the bus. It was not a fun summer.
By the time I returned to campus for my Senior year, my binging was ingrained, if not habitual. That year, I did not binge that often, but I do remember buying massive muffins and cakes and taking them back to my library carrel while writing my thesis to ease the boredom, I suppose. I also was dating someone that year who called me fat. And he was right. I'd pretty much binged my way up to being well-overweight at that point. Wearing size 14, I'm guessing. I look massive compared with my roommates in photos.
The binging didn't really begin in earnest and in a way that I could not stop until after college. That first year I was living with my best friend in Chicago. She had her own life and I wasn't much fun to be around, as I was depressed, unhappy about my job, totally clueless about my future, and at loose ends about everything in my life. I remember lying awake one Saturday morning thinking, "what the hell do people do on weekends after college? My life is totally empty!" So I proceeded to fill it--or me--with junk food. There was a convenience store in the basement of our building where I would go and buy junk food. Raspberry croissants, massive Kit-Kat bars, ice cream, cookies, cake. You name it. This was when the workday pattern set in of, around 3 pm every day, me thinking that I wanted junk food. And promising myself every day that today would be different. It almost never was.
By the time I got to DC a year later, my binge-eating was full-blown. My first few months here were spent in total isolation, sick (I later had surgery), lonely, depressed, scared. The best remedy (I though) was food. I binged almost every night for the next 3-4 years and made almost no friends in that time. It was the most miserable time of my life. I remember buying a dozen krispy kreme jelly-filled donuts, ice cream, a Chipotle burrito, and chips and eating most of it. Then finishing the rest the next morning. All I did was watch TV and isolate myself. A couple times I joined Weight Watchers, not realizing that I had an actual eating disorder at the time that wouldn't be solved by counting points. The first time was the most successful, and I lost maybe 20 pounds before I lost the ability to control my eating and binging. The second time I don't think I lost more than 10 pounds. I also tried Jenny Craig, which lasted maybe 3 weeks and cost me hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
I also went on what could be called the "romance" diet. I met the man who would become my first successful relationship about 5 years after arriving in DC. I was pretty happy at first and lost some weight. I have no idea how much I got down to, but I did lose some. I also didn't binge as much, because I was simply happier. I did binge when he wasn't around, though, and that secret eating and bingeing became a massive source of unhappiness for me over the next 3 years of our relationship. About a year into the relationship, my parents told me they thought I was depressed and should go on antidepressants. I listened to them and started seeing a therapist and got the drugs. And gained 40 pounds over the next six months. My top weight was 243 pounds. I don't know how much of that gain was because I was depressed or because the medicine simply made me crave carbs, but the weight gain was staggering. I'd never experienced anything like that before. I was beyond miserable and knew I needed to do something about it.
I went off the drugs about 8 months after starting them but still couldn't lose the weight. My parents decided it was time to send me to a weight-loss clinic, and they paid for it. It was a very, very low point in my life. I was 28, bordering on morbidly obese, poor because I'd spent so much money on food, and my parents felt like they had to step in and get me professional help to stop being such a slob. That was how I felt. I was also still depressed, mostly because of my weight.
I think I lasted a week at the weight-loss clinic. They wanted me to drink these shakes and take all these supplements. It all felt wrong. Just so wrong. But I wanted to lose weight and appreciated my parents (right or wrong) offering to help me. So I quit after a week, apologized profusely to my parents for the money they lost and then proceeded to do nothing (though not gain weight) for the next 6 months. That was when my friend asked me to be a bridesmaid in her wedding. I was happy but also horrified. By that time, I was a size 22, and I knew this friend would want us to wear some kind of couture/designer bridesmaid dress - in this case, Vera Wang. I just knew Vera Wang didn't make size 22 bridesmaid dresses. And there was no way I was walking down the aisle with the rest of her impossibly small and chic friends at that size. The bride hadn't seen me in a couple years and, I thought at the time, certainly wouldn't have asked me to be in her wedding if she knew just how big I was. I knew I had to lose weight. I decided to go on a low-carb (South Beach) diet and commit to exercising a minimum of 3 times per week. I had a lot of support from my then-boyfriend, and it was actually a pretty good time. I lost 50 pounds in 6 months, getting down to 190. Then I stalled. I think my body partly likes being at this weight and partly the fact that I finally told my parents about my efforts messed with me mentally. Also, I was never able to go more than two weeks on the diet without bingeing my brains out. The binge would only last one meal, but it did enough damage.
Since then (about two years), I've remained within about 8 pounds of that weight, but that includes relatively frequent binges. Which is why I've come to OA. But it's clear that OA is not a simple solution. As the literature says, many of us hoped there was an easier, softer way. But there doesn't seem to be for me. I've even tried OA in the past (maybe 3 years ago) without actually doing the steps or using the tools. And that's actually what I've been doing for the last few months since the end of July. But I haven't been successful at staying abstinent more than a week or two at a time since starting, and I think it's time to accept the inevitable. That I have to work it. It works if you work it, that's what they say. Even though I hate that expression. It's so Twelve-Steppy. Ugh. But if a Twelve-Step program is what will help get me out of this mess that is my current life, then who am I to knock it? I have a lot of pride and I hate being a cliche. But maybe that's not what I am. Maybe I'm one of the people who can overcome something really, really hard to overcome and can admit that I need to do whatever it takes to do that. I hope so. I want to be that person.
