What a can of worms for me! Funnily enough I was just thinking of beginning such a thread in the past few days. So thanks Halo for beating me to it.

I have seriously issues with emotional eating. I binge eat constantly and feel so guilty for it. I have absolutely no self-esteem, so much of it hinges on my appearance and since I eat while feeling emotional distress, I have gained over a stone in the past year. I lost a stone last summer...gym 3 times a week, incredibly healthy eating. But I hated the gym-I just forced myself to do it. And once people started noticing my weight loss I felt huge pressure to keep it off and to continue to lose weight. Now I abhor looking at myself-in all honestly I hate my body. I don't expect anyone to find me attractive. And while I want to lose weigh it would involve looking at myself and I don't want to, it disgusts me too much. While losing weight I obsessed-I constantly counted calories and felt huge guilt when I "violated" what I felt I was the calorie limit. I even tried to make myself sick a few times around the point when I was losing weight which shows how unhealthy my "healthy lifestyle" was. I feel so stuck with it. I continue to eat any kind of food now as while, for a split second, I think "no, I need to lose some weight, I'm not really that hungry", I do think of it as my only comfort sometimes-sort of like alcohol.

Mrs. P

Hi Halo,
I've had a long and interesting relationship with food. My family is big on self-medicating and food has been my drug of choice. Ironically enough, the reason I went into therapy in the first place was because every time my husband and I tried to discuss my weight problem I melted down. I kept pushing the eating problem aside because I wasn't ready to deal with it. I've tried different weight loss programs and a number of years back was really successful with a program called "Weigh Down" which focused on learning to listen to your body to control your eating. You eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full. About a year and a half ago I decided to go back on it and then realized that in order to recognize both hunger and fullness I had to be present which I was just learning to do. I then found the best book I've ever read on the relationship between emotions and food, called When Food is Love by Geneen Roth. This book provided a major breakthrough for me because it helped me recognize some of my emotional patterns both with food and men. Something clicked and almost effortlessly, I took off 60 pounds (and need to take off another 150). But when I lost enough weight to really see some changes in my body size a lot of stuff kicked up about my attractiveness and sexuality. It led to a lot of good, albeit embarassing work and more major breakthroughs. I've since gone back to overeating (I think they're long engrained habits and hard to break) and put back on half the weight. But I'm hoping to get back on it. But there was a definite connection between me being present and feeling my feelings because the overeating was a way to hold down the emotions I was trying not to heal. I highly recommend the book especially for anyone who has experienced any kind of abuse in their childhood. The author did and clearly understands all the different reasons why we overeat for emotional reasons. I actually cried through most of the book because finally I had found someone who understood what it was like.

AG

Thank you for your replies.

Every time I try and look after myself and stop emotional eating, the obsessing about sex rears it very ugly head and I feel really scared and frightened. If I stop obsessing about sex, stop being anxious and stop emotional eating then all the demons start to come out and that is the one thing I will avoid at all costs. So therefore I just go back to chocolate and anxiety and obsessing.

I really can't wait to get to my therapy appt (it is in 12 sleeps). It will have been 12 weeks without any therapy and before that the therapy I was getting from my old T was not good therapy anyway, in fact it was harmful and damaging.

At the moment I have had a chocolate biscuit and an iced coffee with ice cream drink and even though I am not hungry I am desperate to eat chocolate and more chocolate just to calm myself down.

I have heard it referred to as "filling the void" or filling the black hole. Sadly though it is getting harder and harder to fill.

My goal is to be content, happy, eat when I am hungry, have a calm head and not be obsessed about sex.

This thread really hits a nerve with me. I have lost and gained the same 60 pounds too many times to count over the last 10 years. I wish I could figure out how I allow this to happen. I love to lose weight and improve the way I look, but for some reason I revert back to old habits. It's almost as if it is out of my control. The last time I lost weight (last year), I suddenly got this feeling that the weight loss was over and I was about to start gaining again. Sure enough, it happened again. Like I said, It was almost out of my control. I would love to understand what's going on with this.

I think there is a definite connection between emotional state of mind and weight - at least between people susceptible to emotional eating. I lost about 30 pounds when i left high school, by eating better and exercise. I kept it off with relatively little effort until my marriage broke down and then i put it all back on, as well as developing bulimia. I have that pretty much under control atm but binge eating is still a problem for me, especially when i'm down - so i guess it's more emotional eating than anything. its like i hate myself so much and am so disgusted by myself that i punish myself by eating which i know perpetuates the cycle even more. i am reading a book 'the gabriel method' by john gabriel and it talks about a lot of this stuff. like that gaining weight is a protection mechanism and that the way to overcome it is to accept and be happy with oneself. i am not far into it but it might be of interest to fellow over-eaters.

a

Yup, I've got this one too. Chocolate chip ice cream with malt powder is my #1 comfort food, followed by anything crispy and salty (chips, popcorn, french fries). My weight has yo-yo'd up and down by 40 pounds since my second daughter was born 6 years ago. I have the most success with Weight Watcher's points program and have managed to keep most the weight off...at least the top 20lbs...but I definitely eat from an emotional place. I haven't lost weight as a result of therapy except the month surrounding the termination. I couldn't eat anything but chicken soup for about three weeks and I lost about 15 lbs but that's not the way I'd want to lose weight anyway. Maybe once I really get grounded with the new T I'll move toward more healthy eating.