Guilty binges

Wow I am on a roll today! Another entry to follow on from the last one this morning.

There are so many reasons why people gain weight; depression, comfort eating, laziness, illness, injury, post pregnancy, sedentary lifestyle. My own reasons are still not entirely clear, I certainly had my own personal problems that exacerbated my desire to over eat and I guess I used food as a crutch. The calculation is fairly straightforward as to why most of us gain weight. Increased consumption + decreased output = surplus. More often than not, that surplus ends up as excess fat.

We all have different coping mechanisms for stress and upset. Some people stop eating altogether, others over exercise, some distract themselves with OCD like symptomatic behaviour such as obsessive cleaning and orderliness and then there are those of us who use food as a friend. Food becomes this comforting experience, almost a release when you look forward to cracking open another packet of biscuits, a tub of ice cream or a multipack of crisps. Often these desires to over eat are attached to an immensely stressful experience or simply a bad day.

Emotional eating has found itself a nice place to settle it's large backside within society. Many weight challenged people out there will use food to seek solace and comfort within themselves, regardless of whether they actually feel hungry or not. The hunger trigger is totally overridden by this overwhelming desire to stuff food in our mouths, almost in a habitual fashion. People afflicted with this unnatural tendency to eat lose the ability to listen to their bodies natural signs. I don't know whether any official research has been done about this but I do know that this kind of eating behaviour affects our hypothalamus (the gland that controls insulin levels thus blood sugar levels, an integral and delicate balance directly linked to appetite and diet.) I have learned, over the past 4 years to listen to my body and have taught myself to know when I am truly hungry. Many medical professionals suggest that you should eat WHEN you feel hungry, whether that be 9pm at night or 3 in the morning. There are so many schools of thought about this and I know now that I am someone who prefers to eat 5 or 6 much smaller meals throughout the day, rather than having 3 set main meals which is traditional for many. This ensures that I am metabolising my food regularly and negates the risk of gorging myself on junk if I skip a meal.

The beautiful thing about it is we are all different, what might work for one person might not for another.

The binge of all binges

I am a recovering emotional eater. I will always be a recovering emotional eater, the difference now is that I am in control of it and it is not in control of me. I will never ever forget some of the binges I used to have, they have burned a scar on my memory that will never fully heal. Now I don't think I could stomach the quantities of food I used to get through. Here is an example (quite an extreme example but I never forgot this day.) I used to work for a social research company and so I spent a lot of my day driving from place to place so I could interview respondents. I used to clock up 37000 miles a year so my car became a second home. Whilst out on the road, I made the massive mistake of exploiting convenience food at garages and drive thru take aways and attribute this to my weight gain initially. Anyways, this job gave me the freedom to pick and choose what days I worked, essentially I was my own boss. On this particular day I got up and, yet again, felt fat, frumpy and down. At this stage I must have weighed around 280 pounds. There were many days like this back then, on reflection I was pretty depressed at times.

I remember catching my reflection in the bedroom mirror and feeling repulsed at what I saw. Volumous backside, shapeless trunk like legs, I have a naturally small waist when at a normal weight but this had been engulfed by a layer of fat. Pretty sad state of affairs right? I had planned to work this day but quickly turned off the idea. My partner at the time had already left for work so I was home alone. That all too familiar compulsion started to creep up on me, it was always there and lurking in the background. My own little appetite stalker! I wanted to eat and I did not want cornflakes or muesli. I don't even remember feeling particularly hungry but the urge was enough for me to go out and load up on junk food. Crisps, chocolate, French baguette, candy, hams, cheese, carbonated drink. That was just my supermarket shop! Before I headed back to my den of gastronomic sins, I made a stop at McDonalds and bought 2 sausage and egg mc muffin meals...2! If I remember rightly, I was able to polish those off before I even got home. I had become rather adept at dismantling the muffin whilst driving and pouring in the sweet and sour sauce. A skill? Possibly not!

When I got in I lay on the bed and proceeded to eat my way through my purchases. It never took me that long to finish and I recall I was always left with a horrible, sinking feeling as the various wrappers and crumb debris reminded me of my splurge. I was no different to a bulimic in terms of my eating habits, the only difference was that my binge did not end with a purge. Instead, all those excess calories ended up adding to my already expanding body.
Next stage of my binge was to get rid of the evidence. I stuffed everything in a bag and pushed it to the bottom of the kitchen bin, I was ever fearful that my partner would find out what a pig I had been in his absence and I felt embarrassed about it. He would never have berated me for it, he never once made derogatory comments about my size and was always supportive. I guess I felt like I was betraying him in some strange way so, by hiding the evidence, he never needed to know. The only thing I was doing was sabotaging my health.
When he did return home that night he had grabbed us a Chinese takeaway, per my request. I dread to think how many calories I consumed that day but those kind of binges happened regularly during that period of my life. Coupled with no exercise, you can see why my weight spiralled out of control.

Now I do still have my crisps and candy and chocolate. The difference now is that I am not only off setting the extra calories with regular cardio vascular exercise but the quantities are far reduced. Later on, I will outline in greater detail how I readdressed my eating and turned the tables on my appetite stalker.

Ta ta for now readers

L x