love me fiercely.

I’ve been a compulsive overeater for a long, long time. It’s hard for me to admit this in a place that may be seen by people who I know well, but don’t know about the crazy things I’ve done with food. But I’ve come to peace with the fact that it is as much of a disorder as anorexia or bulimia. It’s time it gets talked about more. Joining Overeaters Anonymous almost three years ago has helped me to recognize that there are a lot of other people out there dealing with the same issue.

I’ve done pretty much all the things it talks about in OA literature: I’ve eaten food off the ground, from the garbage can, food that was stale, spoiled, dirty or just plain gross. All in the name of stuffing myself so full that I didn’t have to think about the rest of the shit that was going on in my world.

Not only do I eat food that’s unfit for eating, I tend to sneak food so that no one else can see how much I’m eating. I remember sneaking around my house when I was little, secretly making hot rolls drenched in butter, pretending that my mother wouldn’t notice if we went through the whole bag in a few days. I learned how to remove the lid from the cookie jar in a way that didn’t make noise, and I perfected the art of making bags look more full than they actually were, so that no one would suspect I’d been sneaking chips/cereal/fill-in-the-blank of any bagged food. You know how most teenagers refill their parents’ booze bottles with water? Well, that was me with the food. Always analyzing, always calculating – how much can I eat but still avoid the shame of getting “caught”.

It only got worse when my parents got divorced, my sister went off to college, and I had a car all to myself. My mom and I had opposite schedules so that we were never able to eat meals together. I lived 20 minutes away from the town where I went to high school, ran cross country, and worked at the mall. So, naturally, it was only logical that I would eat all my dinners at restaurants in town. Only it stopped be logical when I became so obsessed with finding the “perfect” meal. What could I eat that night that would make me feel better? My decision-making skills quickly failed me, and soon I was stopping at two different restaurants because I couldn’t decide. I lied to my co-workers at the mall so that I could go to the food court by myself and buy an extra order of fries, stuff them down my throat in the bathroom, and return to work with a normally portioned meal.

Cross country kept a lot of the weight off, but soon even that didn’t work. My mom and I joined Weight Watchers my senior year of high school — little did I know that it would be the first of at least 25 times I would join the weight loss group. I hoped to get skinny (aka lovable) by the time I went off to college. My senior year was spent with a long distance boyfriend, who I was emotionally, and even slightly physically, cheating on in an effort to like myself more, to feel more desirable.

College came and went. Always the over-achiever, I gained the Freshman Forty instead of the Freshman Fifteen. My relationships were miserable, my weight went up and down, and all through it I binged. Binged and binged and binged. Looking back, I’m so very grateful that the few times I tried to make myself throw up, I was unsuccessful. I never thought I would be glad that I’m “only” an overeater, but my heart goes out to my fellow OAers who fight both the bulimia (or anorexia) and compulsive overeating.

After college, I moved up to Seattle to be closer to my sister. More bingeing, more dieting, many more promises to “start fresh tomorrow” or “get my act together” on Monday/next month/after the holidays, etc. I’d been in Seattle for almost two years before I finally started seeing a therapist. She was the first one to ever officially diagnose me with binge-eating disorder.

There’s a lot more to say about my history with this disease, and a lot more to say about the journey I’ve been on since identifying that maybe, just maybe, I’m not some completely psycho, crazed girl who doesn’t deserve to be seen in public because of how much she eats, the way she can’t stop thinking about food, or for how much her stomach sticks out. If you’ve been on a similar journey, or think you might be one of us, I’d love to hear from you. Because you know what? We’re not alone anymore.

{photo credit: chrisie.b}