Quote Originally Posted by Wahine View Post
But the more I think about it, the more it makes me wonder about when and how such seriuos food issues start. Mostly because I never want to end up in that boat.
From my experience, I think that food issues (the severe ones) start well outside of the kitchen.

I know that for me, my issues started with social and familial pressures. I wasn't who I felt I should be (or who I felt others wanted me to be) so I blamed my weight and therefore what I ate. From there I 'learned' to be ashamed of eating and of my body. Food was at fault, but it was also a way of punishing myself for not being in control. Add in a personality that was fairly obsessive about stuff and my issues grew. THEN, you throw in the entire 'low fat' concept that was touted in the 80's, fake non-food additives and then the convenience of highly processed fast food (either at restaurants or in 'snack' form) and a busy life and it was a vicious, vicious circle.

Anyway, I think it is a combination of factors. When I was younger, I had a good friend who was a severe anorexic in remission. We used to have lots of long talks about this stuff and I remember being totally stunned that we had so much in common but that we'd had so totally different outcomes. I remember thinking the exact same thing when I had a heart to heart with my obese aunt. We obviously share some of the same DNA (she was my dad's sister) but I remember being shocked that we had similar food, personality and body image issues. She had the added factors of being inactive and having a food pushing mother so her outcome was different from mine.

I would think that it may be possible that starting down the obsessive road of tracking every little thing and calorie might be a trigger for bigger problems IF there are already underlying or unresolved issues. I don't think that just getting crazy about calories (or points or whatever) is necessarily going to do it on it's own.