Obesity and addiction

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Originally Posted by limewave

That is my big fear! I've managed to keep off 160-170 pounds for 10 years now. But I feel like I'm one misstep from being morbidly obese again. I did go back up to 200 pounds when I was pregnant with my son (that's 200 pounds after I gave birth to him). It was a real struggle to lose weight a second time. My goal now is to get on the scale every day and try to maintain. If I go up 5 pounds, I can correct it before the extra 5 pounds turns into 10, 15 . . . 30.

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The good news is the longer you keep it off the more likely you will continue to keep it off. Data from the National Weight Control Registry indicates that the odds improve after a couple of years of weight maintenance.

What a loss! And ten years of keeping it off! Those who try to get you to eat against the rules you have developed for yourself can stick it! You should join the Weight Control Registry. Your experiences can provide valuable data for researchers. People are eligible after they have maintained at least a 30 pound weight loss over the course of at least one year. http://www.nwcr.ws/

I keep track of my weight daily using the Hackersdiet tools. It keeps a running average for you, which can help you catch slips early. Thirty days of daily data is a pretty robust view of where you are at, whether you are trending up or down or pretty much stable. https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/HackDiet/

I really appreciate the great answers here! I think it is very difficult for someone who has never been more than a little overweight to understand how it feels to live with real obesity. It must be a very real challenge if one has a type of addiction to have to face that addiction several times a day. There's no way of just avoiding food.

We all are hardwired to some extent to eat when there's food available, and to enjoy calorie-rich foods. But most of us who cycle also know the joy of movement, of getting fitter, of feeling your body work well the way it's supposed to. And everybody knows the actual physics of "burn more, eat less". On paper it's so simple. In real life it's obviously hard, otherwise we wouldn't be spending masses of time and money talking about it and inventing strange diets. But I'm also convinced that it's very much harder for some people, whether it's genes, psychology, habits, culture, metabolism or whatever. Willpower can get you only so far for a certain amount of time, after that a lot more things have to be in place to get you through.

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Originally Posted by limewave

..........................................Food is an addiction I still struggle with.

I hide food. I'll hide evidence of food I've eaten. Sometimes I'll eat an entire package of cookies, candy, icecream, bread, peanut butter, chips, (fill in the blank) . . . and then be so embarassed and humiliated that I run out to the store to replace the package before anyone finds out. Sometimes during those episodes I get the sensation of 'blacking-out.'

There are times I will eat and continue eating until it is physically impossible for me to put more food in my body. I eat when I'm tired, when I'm stressed, angry, sad, etc.

It's a comfort thing for me. A distraction. A way of shaming myself. Even a way to sabotage myself (I'm not good enough to succeed).

Finally accepting that this was an addiction and coming to terms that I would struggle with food every single day was a turning point for me.

It's a daily battle. Somedays more-so than others.

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Utmost respect to you, think many of us can relate to parts of this. :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by ClockworkOrange

Utmost respect to you, think many of us can relate to parts of this. :rolleyes:

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What ClockworkOrange said.

The honesty on this forum is amazing. I love that women feel safe to come here and talk about things so openly.

Thank you, TE women!

one of the turning points for me was the acceptance of responsibility for my own life along with a realization that whatever I decided to do was going to be for life, and not just to get to a goal. I had a great deal of support from my family at first, but lately since it is just DH and I, he has gotten very slack about his weight and sometimes brings food into the house that I used to like. Fortunately, over 5 years of slow steady dieting and a very regimented training schedule, I have learned to shed my compulsion to feel like I have any control over his actions, and I have learned to be a bit more flexible with my self so that if I slip, I just get right back on the horse.

It is not easy, but I find it much easier to deal with after five years, and the payback is that I am healthy, my % body fat is within the medically normal range, free from bone, muscle,joint and body pain, and have an incredibly healthy heart and disgustingly normal blood pressure ( for a 50 year old although I am 64) according to my Doctor.

Baby steps, baby steps, and try not to feel too smug when you succeed. Down 125 pounds in five years with another 10 or so to go .

marni

Great thread! Great to read your experiences.
I've lost a signigificant amount of weight and went from obese to the upper end of "normal" BMI over the last few years.

The strange thing about it is that it was and still is so easy on the one hand and so hard on the other:
"All I had to do" is make healthy choices and be active. Eating 3 to 4 meals a day, not eating sweets, picking up cycling, running, HIIT.
And the weight came off.

I still have to think about my food choices every day, every meal. I enjoy being active, and I am very active, but it doesn't regulate my appetite. I am always hungry. I could always eat more. If I have open access to food I shouldn't eat, it will end in a binge. In fact, sometimes I can't avoid binging, so eat unreasonable amounts of vegetables and salad so that the binge won't affect my weight. I have to be alert when I go shopping, because what I have at home, I WILL eat. If I am not at home where I have control over my food choices, I often can't stop eating when I should or eating the wrong things.

The strange thing is that the same people who judged me because of my weight before, mostly family members, keep forcing food at me now, even though they know how I struggled. They often say "now that you have lost all that weight, it won't hurt" or "you can eat what you want because you are so active" - which just isn't true. People often don't want to hear the truth (especially people who struggle with their weight themselves often just want to hear about an easy fix). I have learned to throw out food that I shouldn't eat and to get back on the wagon if I fell off.
But like Limewave, I constantly feel just one step away from regaining my weight.

I think it is clearly an addiction. It was significantly easier to stop smoking than to eat right. It's like being addicted to heroine, just that unlike with heroine, you can't just stop eating. You have to constantly keep the balance between nourishing your body and hurting yourself with food.
Food is so much more complicated than just eating when you are hungry. There are so many occasions where it is a social norm to eat and to eat certain things, to a degree that it can be an insult not to eat.
I think to people who don't have the problem, my struggles to manage foodintake will sound obsessive and unhealthy. And while I am fully aware that my relatioship with food is unhealthy, I have to manage it somehow, and obviously much more restrictive than people with a normal relationship with food.

I was thinking that one of the most interesting points in this discussion is how not only obese people have a difficult relationship with food. Normal-weight people can be obsessed with food too, and I don't mean this in a judgemental way, just that for some people more than others it is necessary to pay extreme attention to what they eat and how they eat, to maintain a healthy weight. Obesity just makes it more visible to others.

It's not that I'm incapable of binging, and I do need to keep up certain good habits to eat well over time, but once I have those habits I do "just... eat". If I eat something out of the norm like a very rich restaurant meal it usually affects my appetite, I might feel queasy or not want to eat for a long time, it doesn't trigger a desire for a lot more of the same type of food and I don't need to actively choose to eat less the following day. But this is very closely tied to activity and exercise for me.

I wish there was a lot more research done on appetite. Hunger is a very strong feeling, and almost impossible to ignore. Now that most of us have unlimited access to food we need to know a lot more about how to balance our natural desire to eat while it's there with the more subtle signals of "enough".

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Originally Posted by lph

I wish there was a lot more research done on appetite. Hunger is a very strong feeling, and almost impossible to ignore. Now that most of us have unlimited access to food we need to know a lot more about how to balance our natural desire to eat while it's there with the more subtle signals of "enough".

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There is quite a bit of research. As a formerly obese person I especially was interested in how hormones which regulate appetite go way out of whack when you lose weight, with not enough of the hormone which suppresses appetite and too much of the hormone which increases appetite. Then there is the effect of behavior conditioning on appetite. If you eat in certain circumstances when that circumstance occurs you might feel hungry. Food and the triggers that stimulate you to eat both elevate dopamine levels in the reward areas of the brain. If you have reduced dopaminergic activity in the brain you may overeat to compensate. A genetic deficiency in this brain chemical may very well drive you to addictive behavior from overeating to drug addiction and even gambling. Interestingly, this is often reversed in gastric bypass patients. Bypass is a far more effective way to lose weight and keep it off than a diet, as drastic as it is.

Certain types of food can drive the appetite up, specifically, sweets and starches. Insulin is important in regulation of appetite.

We know a lot about appetite, we just don't know enough about how to deal with it. :) Right now, bypass may be the best bet for the obese, risks and all. There are some promising avenues of research that might lead to better solutions. Yes, there even may be a pill someday. :) There are some things one can experiment with to see if it helps, such as:

--knowing the triggers which stimulate you to eat and break that connection.
--find new sources of pleasure and reward. Exercise may fall in this category. Good social networks of like minded people certainly are sources of pleasure and reward.
--eat more protein, less carbs
--High dose fish oil? Maybe increases dopamine and dopamine receptors

My hunch for me is that I am dopamine deficient. I struggle with controlling eating. I also struggle with controlling my shopping. I have to have a rigid set of rules about my shopping. For example, I keep a separate credit card for shopping and pay that card from a separate bank account. I fund that account twice a year in a pre-determined amount. That is all I can spend on pleasure shopping.

Goldfinch - interesting comment about the dopomine...back when I was still on anti-depressants (stopped in 2000), the only medication that actually worked for me worked focused on dopomine (not the more usual serotonin). I still deal with major spending issues - though I had it under control until I discovered biking :o

At this point controlling eating is much less challenging - as long as I track everything, I am lost if I stop that - I think it helps provide accountability. As a single woman who lives alone that really helps. It also helps knowing how much it cost me to go from size 23 to size 6 in clothing - and I can't afford to go the other direction. I got rid of ALL of my "big" clothing.

At least the spending is now under control - there isn't much left free to spend :o I like your solution and may adopt it.

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Originally Posted by lph

I was thinking that one of the most interesting points in this discussion is how not only obese people have a difficult relationship with food. Normal-weight people can be obsessed with food too, and I don't mean this in a judgemental way, just that for some people more than others it is necessary to pay extreme attention to what they eat and how they eat, to maintain a healthy weight. Obesity just makes it more visible to others.

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This is exactly what I was talking about. You just can't know what other's internal struggles are. And this goes for any goal each of us might have.

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Originally Posted by goldfinch

There is quite a bit of research. As a formerly obese person I especially was interested in how hormones which regulate appetite go way out of whack when you lose weight, with not enough of the hormone which suppresses appetite and too much of the hormone which increases appetite. Then there is the effect of behavior conditioning on appetite.

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I should have written "I wish I knew more about research on appetite". And now I do :p Very interesting stuff, goldfinch. Especially the gastric bypass bit (that was the surgery term I was looking for), and the effect on appetite. A bit scary too. Surgery is a drastic measure and has it's own dangers.

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Originally Posted by goldfinch

So, my opinion is that it is likely not helpful for him (or for me) to realize few people just eat. I am sorry, but mentally roll my eyes at that kind of statement. Instead, he can acknowledge that his struggle is significant and different and substantially harder than the efforts of those who were never as fat as he was.

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Perhaps it's not helpful for him (or for you) to know that other people don't 'just eat' but it IS extremely helpful to acknowledge that this is the case for many 'regular' sized people. There are those of us with fairly extreme food issues who never got to the extreme obese situation. I realize it's different, but I don't think that it should be dismissed as eye-roll worthy, if you know what I mean.

I've been overweight (if sometimes only slightly so) my whole life and I have quite extreme food issues. Bingeing, purging, hiding food, replacing food that I've eaten, eating in private, hiding packaging, hoarding, obsessing about what others eat, obsessing about what I eat, eating until I was in physical pain and even blacking out. I also consider myself 'normal', highly well-adjusted and quite confident in most areas. And yet I've always hated my relationship with food. How I never got more than just tipping the scales into obese is beyond me. I think having always been very athletic and living with a thin family has kept my overall weight gain at bay (for the most part) despite severe food issues.

That doesn't mean that just because I don't have to struggle to fit into an airplane seat that my struggles with food are any less severe than my aunt who was morbidly obese. I was just really good at 'hiding' and internalizing it because it wasn't as outwardly obvious.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I was lucky in that I was always athletic and lived an active life, so I managed to keep the worst of the actual weight gain at bay. I have cycled up and down the scale gaining and losing the same 40 or so pounds multiple times over the course of my life. And again, I have always hated my relationship with food. I hated the power it had over me (or so it felt). I hated the shame. I hated the physical pain. I hated constantly thinking about it, constantly desiring it and never ever actually feeling GOOD about it.

Conversations like this one actually really help me these days. It helps me to remember how I used to feel and how important it is for me to stick to my new habits. I've made such a huge change in my life that sometimes I forget what it felt like to be controlled by food (no, I'm not exaggerating) and how freeing it is to be done with that. The bad habits can creep back in when I am not thinking about it, so I do think it's important to remember and to be ever on guard.

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Originally Posted by GLC1968

Perhaps it's not helpful for him (or for you) to know that other people don't 'just eat' but it IS extremely helpful to acknowledge that this is the case for many 'regular' sized people. There are those of us with fairly extreme food issues who never got to the extreme obese situation. I realize it's different, but I don't think that it should be dismissed as eye-roll worthy, if you know what I mean.

I've been overweight (if sometimes only slightly so) my whole life and I have quite extreme food issues. Bingeing, purging, hiding food, replacing food that I've eaten, eating in private, hiding packaging, hoarding, obsessing about what others eat, obsessing about what I eat, eating until I was in physical pain and even blacking out. I also consider myself 'normal', highly well-adjusted and quite confident in most areas. And yet I've always hated my relationship with food. How I never got more than just tipping the scales into obese is beyond me. I think having always been very athletic and living with a thin family has kept my overall weight gain at bay (for the most part) despite severe food issues.

That doesn't mean that just because I don't have to struggle to fit into an airplane seat that my struggles with food are any less severe than my aunt who was morbidly obese. I was just really good at 'hiding' and internalizing it because it wasn't as outwardly obvious.

Anyway, as I mentioned, I was lucky in that I was always athletic and lived an active life, so I managed to keep the worst of the actual weight gain at bay. I have cycled up and down the scale gaining and losing the same 40 or so pounds multiple times over the course of my life. And again, I have always hated my relationship with food. I hated the power it had over me (or so it felt). I hated the shame. I hated the physical pain. I hated constantly thinking about it, constantly desiring it and never ever actually feeling GOOD about it.

Conversations like this one actually really help me these days. It helps me to remember how I used to feel and how important it is for me to stick to my new habits. I've made such a huge change in my life that sometimes I forget what it felt like to be controlled by food (no, I'm not exaggerating) and how freeing it is to be done with that. The bad habits can creep back in when I am not thinking about it, so I do think it's important to remember and to be ever on guard.

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Thanks you for your response. My comparison was with those who maybe struggled with a few pounds here and there or would push away a second helping because they shouldn't have it, not with an eating disorder. And I agree, you can't tell by looking at someone what there struggles are. Bulimia and anorexia are extremely difficult and life threatening issues as well. I just do not want to minimize the extreme difficulty it is for people to deal with obesity by saying that everyone has issues.

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Originally Posted by goldfinch

I just do not want to minimize the extreme difficulty it is for people to deal with obesity by saying that everyone has issues.

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Oh absolutely not, and I totally agree. I just think perhaps (and this is me putting my experiences into the equation, of course) that it may help some who are obese and struggling to know that they are not alone. That even if someone is not extremely overweight, they may still be able to relate and could very well be 'on your side' in terms of dealing with food issues. I don't think anyone wants to minimize the struggle at all.

I know that it helped me to learn that a thin, athletic coworker of mine was not 'naturally' thin and that even though she looked really lean and healthy, she was only that way because she planned out her meals and carefully tracked her nutrition and activity. It was inspiring in many ways to know that I could be her one day if I was willing to put in the effort that clearly she was making. And honestly, it made me happy to learn that despite what I originally thought, she couldn't eat just anything she wanted either! :o

Oh, and just to clarify, I was never diagnosed with any eating disorders. I would never have admitted any of my issues to a doctor at any point in my life (even now). No way. That's admitting to a weakness and I don't have weaknesses. ;)

+1 on ALL of the above. :D