Questions

1. Write a history of your compulsive eating beginning with the first time you can remember food related events. Discuss how much weight you have gained and lost, what medical attention you have sought for the problem and your attempts at maintaining your weight losses.

These questions that I am going through come from an OA member.

I remember as a child always eating my yummy food faster than my brother. Then I would want his and I would beg him. He would just eat his slower and torture me. At one time I believed smoking kept me thin. I would also drink tons and tons of coffee to dull my appetite so that I could eat a very minimum of food (during a particularly anorexic phase). Unfortunately I didn't pass very good eating habits onto my girls. Drinking also helped numb feelings and distracted from eating but that became a very troublesome habit too and ended me up in AA. When my children were small I quit smoking, I wasn't drinking that much at the time and I ate and I gained weight. This was prior to my anorexic phase. My anorexic phase thrilled me to no end. My weight plummetted to my lowest ever. Then I started eating more and I gained a little weight. The last couple of years have seen me really develop strong cravings for sugar that I can no longer manage. My weight is creeping up and is now at the highest it has been since that last weight gain when my kids were small. I can spend tons of money in the vending machine at work. If I buy cookies at home, I will eat them in short order. The saving grace is that I rarely buy anything like that for home. I always have the intention to eat healthy and avoid what triggers me. If it is yummy and it is in front of me I will eat it. I don't know the meaning of moderation. Bread, granola bars, fruit loops, ice cream, maple syrup, so many good things. I can eat a bowl of yogurt with fruit and eat it and go yum yum but not want to eat more. I can't do the same thing with donuts. I can feel sick and still want to eat donuts. And I feel embarrassed when I eat too many donuts. What is a girl to do?

Craving is the cause of suffering

"Clear away the forests of craving

but do not attack and destroy the trees.

Clear the entire forest of craving

and you will see the Way to Freedom."

-Dhammapada v.283

I feel like a mass ball of craving much of the time. I quit drinking over 8 years ago after drinking had wreaked so much havoc in my life. That was a period of intense suffering both before and after but dealing with all the consequences made me determined to change my life. It was difficult to get through with each day but I was determined not to continue living the type of life I had been living. It was one step at a time in the first few months and now I live a much better life.

Unfortunately the ghost of craving has not left me. It has only changed forms. I continue to smoke and now that I have a horrible chest cold, I am very conscious of the negative impact smoking has on my health. I have also developed an intense craving for sugar which I mostly feel at work. I want to improve my health which isn't all that bad considering the things that I do to my body. However, I don't want to go through any suffering, necessary or not, to get to the other side. Right now it seems easier to put up with constant low-grade suffering rather than face short term intense suffering with the promise of great rewards on the other side. Somehow I naively hope that all my bad habits will just fall away magically and all will be ok. It hasn't happened like that yet.

The place in the photo is in a park close to where I used to live. When I had first quit drinking and was suffering the consequences of my drinking years, I used to go to that spot and sit in peace by the water. That place represented a pocket of peace in my life, a place where I felt "God", whatever God is. I liked the peacefulness evoked by water and I would seek out places where I could sit by the river or a creak. I could use a place like that now.