Issues with Over/Under Eating - Part 2 (Locked)

Kizzie · April 20, 2018, 08:59:42 PM

Please note that this thread is a follow-on to Part 1. It is also an "open" thread which means you don't have to keep to the first post, you can just add in your own thoughts/issues with over/under eating and not worry about hijacking the thread.

Sceal · April 24, 2018, 05:41:25 PM

I've tried to ask for help before in regards to the Unspecified eating disorder that I got. But everytime I ask someone who works with eating disorders, or with weight issues, or a doctor I end up feeling so alone and so not understood.
Perhaps I don't phrase my questions well enough for them to understand that it is a real problem for me and not something that "everyone does once in a while", or perhaps they are too hung up on things either being anorexic or bulemic and since I fit neither I feel that I'm not being understood or taken seriously enough.

Does anyone relate to this? Being in-between in regards to getting help with food?

Hope67 · April 24, 2018, 06:47:38 PM

Hi Sceal,
I do relate to what you said - my own personal relationship with food has been that I've binged on food and comfort ate - more often in the previous years - when I was in my 20's and 30's - I have got a lot better since being in my 40's and early 50's - but I still have a tendency to sometimes comfort eat to numb my feelings. Because I saw a documentary about bulimia and the negative effects on teeth and other things of vomiting, I am glad to say that I promised myself I wouldn't vomit up my food, and so I never did. But I do fear that if I'd not been put off vomiting, then I might have ended up with bulimia. Probably if I'd had 'bulimia' in a recognisable way then maybe I'd have been given some treatment to help and they might have seen the underlying factors - but as I've only been 'over-eating' and 'bingeing' - I've basically managed to keep under the radar in previous years.

I know you have been hoping for support with your eating, and I am so sorry that you've not been able to get the support from the people you've seen.

I appreciated what you said about other ways to cope with the over-eating - and I hope that you can find support with it.

Hope

Sceal · April 25, 2018, 08:17:18 PM

Thank you, Hope.
I've been reading your reply quite a few times.

I am glad your issues with food has gotten better than what it was. Although I wish you hadn't had to live through it. Bulimia and Anorexia does awful things to the body. It's good you managed to avoid damaging your teeth!

I will try the other coping mechanism, I just have to try and try again until I find something that works I suppose

Kizzie · April 25, 2018, 08:34:27 PM

I do think professionals are geared toward the extremes of over-under eating where things have become potentially life threatening. It's a little bit like emotional versus physical/sexual abuse - harder to see, grasp and ultimately treat.

I have done a bit of looking round in the clinical articles about trauma and over/under eating and do see calls for more research though so the link is being made.

Here are a few examples:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874765/
https://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(14)00257-1/abstract

In the meantime, much like CPTSD I think we need to keep talking about these issues among ourselves as we are doing here. Also, pushing, asking questions of and even educating professionals to raise awareness about the co-morbidities we suffer from - all good

Hopefully that will spark more research. treatment and services.

Sceal · April 26, 2018, 12:16:15 PM

Thank you for being so dilligent and for sharing your research with us, kizzie!

It does seem it needs more research indeed. It's just shame research takes forever and a day. I hope they have started

Blueberry · May 12, 2018, 10:47:48 PM

For me, but I suspect for others too, over/under eating issues are tied up with body image and body shame. I was criticised and made fun of for being 'fat' as a child in my FOO though I wasn't fat. I didn't realise that till I looked with adult eyes at old photos and saw e.g. an 11 year old with long, lanky legs. How did FOO see fat there?? It seemed that the only thing of interest was not having fat children.

In some of my recovery I've been looking at what else my body can do, other than 'be fat' or not. i.e. what else is my body good for? i've thought about that again recently as I cycle my 14 km to work 1-2 times a week and then cycle same distance home again. I know full well there are plenty of skinny or normal weight people who wouldn't consider that for a moment, even if they could do it. And others couldn't do it. I'm quite strong. I'm not good at sprints and I don't go particularly fast, but I do have stamina. Strength and stamina - I've always had them actually. FOO just concentrated on 'fat' and never showed me my positive sides. I didn't recognise my calf muscles as muscles till I was 13 years old. I thought it was all fat. (Life was a bit better when I was 13 so I had some realisations).

Kizzie · May 14, 2018, 07:11:04 PM

I look back at pictures of me and have the same reaction - why on earth did I think I was fat? I love that you are trying to shift your focus to what is good and positive about your body BB

I found more articles about trauma and eating issues - see attached. One in particular is about shifting thinking from weight loss to health at every size (HAES) which is in line with what you posted about BB - https://nutritionj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2891-10-9.

What the research says to me first and foremost is that we really must stop blaming and shaming ourselves and/or letting others do so. There is just a lot of evidence that trauma begets eating issues for a variety of reasons, not one of which has to do with us lacking willpower or being weak or anything related to character.

Second, there is such a clear need for trauma informed professionals to help us with comorbidities such as this.

Blueberry · May 15, 2018, 04:06:10 PM

Thanks for the link, Kizzie

______________________
I'm doing some contract work of my more difficult type today. Done the easier stuff too. But the difficult type, well, hm... Not finished and I really want to eat. It is time I had another meal, but that's not quite what I'm craving. I'm craving particular items. I remember now often putting off doing my homework by eating. I used to feel ashamed of putting things off, of not immediately leaping into my homework only to realise that some children don't. It wasn't just me. I could have done with a parent at home to help me get settled with homework and do it. I've noticed since that some children need that.

Of course some had it far worse, you can always find people who had it even worse than you, but after school I got back to an unfriendly, often cold house, and in my memory it's dingy too. And certainly my room, in which I was doing homework in latter years, was really cold. Excuse for going into other part of the house: to get food or make myself hot drink. I could have done with a parent to provide a simple meal and some emotional warmth. There wasn't either, though M wasn't doing work outside the home at that point, she just wasn't there. In eating disorder therapy, we heard quite a lot of "What do you really need?" Too sad now to write what I needed then. I can imagine, but I don't want to go any further into it.

B1 would've been there most of the time too, with his physical aggression. I could've done with protection from him.

Kizzie · May 15, 2018, 05:16:21 PM

I am sorry you are sad BB

No need to respond to this post, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

Quote"What do you really need?"

It's a great question, the question I'd say. In my case I'd say simply "comfort and relief from pain." It was all I had at the time. I'm sure there are some fairly complex/sophisticated psychological and physiological interactions that take place between trauma and eating/not eating, but I do think it's that simple in the end.

What to do about it though? There doesn't seem to be a lot of data/discussion about this yet from what I can see (but I will continue to look around). I wonder if again the answer is something as simple (and complex) as reduce the pain, reduce the need to eat/not eat?

Elphanigh · May 16, 2018, 12:33:52 AM

Thank you for continuing a thread where we can post about this stuff. I under eat or don't eat at all when I am stressed/triggered/etc.... This means I haven't eaten a full meal since Friday at lunch, it is now Tuesday. That is the better part of five days. I think part of me does it because when I am triggered into emotional flashbacks I am trying to be perfect so no one can find flaws. I find flaws in my weight, even though I am technically just above where healthy is for my height. I was underweight my entire life, naturally because of my metabolism, and then because of an eating disorder I developed late in high school.

Either way it is something that has always been attached to my trauma and I am finally willing to admit some of it.

I am sorry that is not more of a response to both of you, but reading the question "what do I need" really made me think through why it is I under eat

ah · May 16, 2018, 09:48:48 AM

I think for me it's about feeling helpless, choosing what / when / how much to eat gives me a false sense of control over uncontrollable surroundings. It's also on a spectrum, it can be just eating one thing for 3 months at a time till I can't look at it anymore (I used to call these "food attacks". Once I vanilla ice cream and whipped cream for 3 months, another time it was only scrambled eggs with corn). On the extreme end I don't eat at all. Nowadays I struggle every day with the desire to just not eat anything. But my whole life I've had to watch my calories: I calculate how much I ate that day making sure it wasn't far too little.

I always under eat. I don't think I ever ate enough, except on extremely rare occasions when circumstances were nicer, then all of a sudden my body gained more weight and to my surprise, I found out it could. When abuse began all over again though I lost the extra weight right away and went back to my usual weight.

Part of the reason I probably dislike food is because meals were always such horrible times in my FOO. We'd all sit down and F would berate 1) the food, 2) the people. Usually me, because I was the stupid little kid who fought back and paid for it every single time. Siblings and M sat like statues, looking down at their food, saying nothing. Stupid me had to be baited every single time. Usually it was done by attacking one of them, I always fell for it.

He always snatched food off others' plates but with me he maybe enjoyed it even more because it wasn't just to take the food away from me, it was also an effective way to goad me into responding.
He wasn't beneath spitting or throwing up food back onto my plate and ordering me to eat it, either.
I guess food was linked to trauma. It stopped being just food and became a trigger.

There's also what stress itself does to appetite, maybe? Eating more/less as a result of chronic stress? But for me it's mostly a way to punish myself, not deserving anything good.
It's sad because it's one of the most basic ways to feel pleasure. What's more basic than enjoying food? That's how deep trauma goes, maybe. The most automatic, survival instincts are warped.

Blueberry · May 16, 2018, 03:59:43 PM

Quote from: Blueberry on May 15, 2018, 04:06:10 PM
"What do you really need?"

What I often need is rest and sleep. So eating is a futile effort to give my body more energy. Just for the record, I feel like succumbing to it now.

If it's taste I'm craving for some reason, sometimes putting perfume on close to my face so I can smell it helps. Smell being a similar sense to taste I suppose.

Boatsetsailrose · May 16, 2018, 09:27:50 PM

Hi ive binge ate since childhood. From what I gather food and the m and d relationship are so interlinked.
It balloooned into binge eating disorder on huge scales when I put alcohol down some yrs ago. I've had long abstinent periods over the past 3 yrs in a 12 step recovery programme
see * foodaddicts.org
However I am currently in relapse as I just don't want to face my life and my inner world ....

Blueberry · May 16, 2018, 11:28:36 PM

I used to be in OA, also a 12 Step group, but idk I go crazy now in 12 Step groups. I get triggered whatever one I go to (AA open, CODA, EA), so I don't go to them any more. I know they work for some people, but they don't for all. Glad they help you Boatssetsail