#compulsive eating

Longest I’ve gone since before my mom died in October. I had to talk myself out of it 4 times in the last week but I did it quickly and calmly.

Stopping this behavior is important to me because I can just feel how bad it is for my brain. It’s addiction. And it teaches me to cope with anxiety in unhealthy ways. It’s been a joy and a relief to find other better ways to nurture my brain. And it’s been healthy for me to process grief and sadness instead of trying to self soothe.

this article is dumb in a lot of ways because SciAm is a pop science outlet and food addiction research is still mired in stupid and incorrect science about obesity etc. so im not endorsing this article. i' only posting it because one of the scientists interviewed keeps saying that people who feel they are addicted to certain foods (or eat compulsively or have binge eating disorder, they dont address the differences or similarities in the article) "don't get high" from food "the same way" one can get high from drugs.

one of the opposing scientists points out correctly that nicotine also does not get you "high" in the sense of impaired life functions, she doesnt say so but i will say that nicotine is used by many many of its addicts as a performance-enhancing drug and not just to avoid withdrawals. and yet nicotine is extremely high on the addictiveness scale. caffeine is physically addictive and causes withdrawals when discontinued, it also doesnt get you "high"in the way she means.

secondly, i'm from a family of disordered eaters of all kinds, i dont think a single person i know who is related by blood to me has a normal relationship to food, and i have spent a lot of time speaking to and reading subjective descriptions of compulsive eating and food addiction, as well as observing it occur in my family, and absofuckinglutely it causes similar or identical feelings to many different kinds of drugs. theres a person in my Problem Glyphs inbox whose problem is a compulsive eating disorder that is fixated specifically on pizza, which they describe as being the only thing that medicates them effectively against stress and trauma. this is really common with super high-reward foods and drinks even if they dont contain psychoactive substances

so i dont know what the anti-food-adiction-defiition scientist thinks shes talking about. i dont think shes ever actually spoken to a person with disordered eating in her entire life.

as an aside, this is also how a lot of the most severe anorexics describe their processes of avoiding food, and this has long been accepted as an addiction process at least partially, because it satisfies the psychological compulsion, but we know 100% that fasting and even starving often triggers endogenous opioids and absolutely causes altered states of consciousness. this is described subjectively by ED patients as well as observed anthropologically, its part of the process of achieving peak experiences, flow states and trance states in every human culture in the world, but so is feasting on high-calorie foods with a lot of sugar and fat in them. monkey brain loves calories, thats why we're so good at finding and making food and surviving famine.

I work hard for my physical fitness, health and wellbeing.

And I'm in good shape. I'm no athlete, gym bunny or fitness model. But I'm happy with who, how and what I am.

But I'm also very human.

I don't find everything easy.

Food. That's my own challenge in certain ways.

Ever since finding out that I'm type one diabetic at the age of 14 or 15 (can't remember exactly).

I was stick thin at diagnosis. That's one very obvious symptom of being at an advanced stage. I was getting pretty close to serious problems, that would have led eventually to coma. Without trying to sound overly dramatic, if I had carried on without treatment, I must have only been weeks, possibly a short number of months from death.

Untreated type one diabetics die. That's it.

Anyway, ever since then, I have had a terrible relationship with food.

I piled a lot of weight on. My heaviest recorded weight was 184lb. I know that's not vast. But way too high to have any hope of taking care of myself, or of being healthy.

Fast forward to now. Missing out a LOT of the story. But the main point of my issues is a compulsive behaviour pattern. It has shown itself throughout my life in different ways since then.

And no matter how things are going in my life, I have had to recognise and accept that it is so deeply ingrained that I can't simply flick the "off" switch.

I eat healthy food. I don't eat anything that could be classed as refined sugar.

I stay ahead of the game.

But that ugly gremlin only stays relatively quiet. It's always there.

The new object of it's focus appears to be cheese.

Don't get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with cheese. Dairy is good. Dietary fat is good. Cheese is good.

But excess of ANY kind is bad.

And I've been pushing further towards excess for a while.

It has shown itself recently as a reoccurrence of a bloating problem.

Bloating has been an issue at different times.

But when I cut out the bad quality carbs, it went away. Then came the cheese. Too much of it each day.

And the bloating has come back with a vengeance.

So that's my trigger to get a grip of this one. As I have with everything else that tries to mess me up.

I'm not giving it up entirely. No benefit to cutting it out of my diet. But I'm going back to what I was doing before it all got a bit silly.

Weighing a small amount to go with lunch, and occasionally have some melted on my chicken for dinner.

Long post.

Apologies.

But this is where I share my whole health and fitness experience.

And that includes the occasional negative experience!

All part of my life.

A child who had been warned to control her sweet tooth, disobeys. She knocks down a beehive when she attempts to grab some honey and gets stung by an angry swarm.

The Dirty child. “Little Slovenly Peter Series.” 19th century.

One of the books I ordered arrived today.

Perfect timing. I finished my last read about an hour before it was delivered!

I don't expect miracles. Nor am I actually looking for miracles. But I just like discovering new ideas. Different ways of seeing things.

And hey, it doesn't hurt to look outside your own head when you feel you could use a little help with something.

Me: yeah but fries

Brain: