I have an eating disorder

Whenever somebody talks about eating disorders, they always think about Anorexia or Bulimia. There are, however, other eating disorders that are often missed by health care professionals.

I have Binge Eating Disorder. It’s not been diagnosed officially by my GP but I know I have it. When doctors see someone like me, they just see someone whose obese, they see the symptom, not the root cause. One time when I begged my doctor for health, he just suggested that I cook cauliflower cheese, as if I asked him what I should have for tea tonight. That’s not even a healthy, well balanced meal.

I understand that not everybody who is overweight (or underweight for that matter) has an eating disorder. For some people dietary advice and encouragement is what they need but you’re not going to help an anorexic person by just telling them to eat more, it’s well understood to be a psychological condition in a way that binge eating disorder is not understood. The right kind of help is important and I don’t think it exists in the UK.

Losing weight will be great for my health, confidence and self esteem but it won’t make my eating disorder go away. The cause is not physical, it’s psychological.

I can pinpoint the day when it first started. It was my first day at high school. I was nervous, like most kids are and the high school my parents chose wasn’t the one where most of the kids from my primary school were going to. I did know some people there, like my next door neighbour whom was in the year above and a friend from primary school called Warren.

Warren and I were both football mad. He was a blue, I was a red but it didn’t matter, we loved to play football anytime we got the opportunity and we both always wanted to be the goalie. I was always coming home with my pants baked in mud, to my poor mothers disgust.

Anyhow, it was lunch time on the first day and we headed together to the school canteen, Warren went up first and I was behind him in the queue. He got sausage, chips and gravy, so I ordered the same. We sat down at a table and another kid still in the queue made some sort of joke about the fat kid eating chips. I was mortified and humiliated. I just wanted the ground to swallow me up.

From that day on I refused to eat in the canteen. It filled me with dread just going in there to queue for lessons in an adjacent classroom. In fact, for the most part of high school I didn’t eat at lunch time at all.

It wasn’t the first time I’d been publicly humiliated in school for my weight. The first time I went on a diet I was just six years old. Mum would take me with her to weight watchers. I think she must have had a word with the school to ask them to watch what I was eating at lunchtime in the canteen.

One day, after everyone had been served, the dinner ladies shouted out “anyone for seconds” which they did often when there was food left over. This was the early 1990s. There were no Jamie Oliver inspired healthy food drives, it was chips, beans, pie and mash, turkey drumsticks, apple crumble and custard, random gruel that nobody could quite identify but we were assured it was edible. I joined the queue and the headmistress of the school shouted at me in front of the whole school to go sit back down. The intentions were good but I was a very shy, sensitive boy and those two incidents did a lot of psychological damage.

Would I have been overweight as an adult anyway? Probably. It’s not an excuse, but there certainly is a genetic element to my weight if you look at my family tree, obesity is rife. All I can tell you is that it made a bad situation significantly worse.

I never ate breakfast anyway. I’m not a morning person. Give me a choice between five more minutes in bed or breakfast and I’d choose bed every time. I just wasn’t hungry in the mornings. Of course, with no breakfast or lunch, by home time I was starving.

Sometimes I’d walk to a chippy not far from school and buy a chip barn and a jumbo sausage and I’d eat them secretly whilst I was walking. I’d even hide it in my blazer pockets if somebody walked closely by. I’d then get home and eat my tea, which would be a full adult portion at least. As I got older, I’d be cooking for myself, my brother and sister as my parents both did long shifts so we’d often be home alone. Portion control wasn’t my strong point and the food either came out of the freezer or a tin.

Food was my comfort. I ate when I felt low. I ate when I felt high. I ate when I was bored. I ate when I was sad. Often in secret and alone. I could eat two family sized bags of crisps and two large chocolate bars in one sitting and on a regular basis as my mood spiralled because of my weight.

Over the years things have got worse. The first time I did the VLCD I was very strict with it but towards the end I worked out that I could actually binge eat after the weigh-in and I’d have enough time to undo the damage and still lose weight by the next week. I would eat 4 prepared sandwiches (often triples), a “sharing” bag of crisps, a pasta pot, a couple of king sized chocolate bars, a pack of pork pies. Basically anything I could get hold of that I could eat in secret in my car, then discard the evidence in a bin before going home.

I knew it was wrong but I couldn’t stop myself from doing it and the more I tried to push back on myself the worse the binge I ended up having. I would make myself uncomfortably full and afterwards it’s like waking up as if it was somebody else doing it and wondering what the hell just happened.

Just writing about it now, actually putting the truth on paper, there’s almost a disbelief and disconnect as if I’m talking about somebody else.

Fast food and takeaways are my biggest achilles heel. After a stressful day at work, instead of going straight home, I’d go to the drive through at KFC or McDonalds then sit and eat it in the car.

It would be a double cheese burger, 2 portions of cheese melts, a box of 20 chicken nuggets, a large Big Mac meal, a large McChicken sandwich meal, a McFlurry, a chocolate milkshake and an apple pie. If it was KFC it would be a large 3 piece variety meal, a double chicken burger box meal, a large tub of beans, a snack wrap and 3 cookies. The meals all coming with large fries too.

Then I’d go home and either make an excuse to not eat tea or I’d eat that as well despite feeling uncomfortably full already. Sometimes I’d pretend I’d been out for tea with workmates. I would hide food. I would use black bin bags so my wife wouldn’t see it if she looked in the bins. I’d even disable the video door bell so she couldn’t see that I’d ordered takeaway delivery when working from home.

It’s not that I was binging constantly, it is a triggered compulsion. I could go weeks without binging or it could be every single day. It’s always hard to explain to nutritionists when they ask what your “normal” diet looks like. Do you mean the one when I’m in control or the one where I’m possessed by the spectre of a starving family of four? Which box do I tick for my diet is Jekyll and Hyde?

My wife does most of the cooking during the week and it’s normally a well balanced, relatively healthy meal like a chicken breast with green beans, carrots, peas and mash. OK, the mash isn’t great but it is properly portioned and if you took out the binges I would be a healthy weight.

When I was working in an office not far from home, I would bring in an apple or orange and a muller rice yoghurt for breakfast and for lunch I’d have a microwave ready meal like salmon with broccoli and new potatoes from the healthy living ranges then I’d have a 10 cal jelly and peach or some raisins as a snack in the afternoon. I do know how to eat healthily. I know how to track my nutrients, I used to use MyFitnessPal to track my meals.

I admit that things have been all over the place since my reality became working from home. There’s not the same routine to my day and I need routine. Routine is the best guard against binge eating but when I’m stressed everything goes out the window and the compulsion takes over.

I would like to think I’m at least a moderately intelligent person yet binging is such an irrational and stupid thing to do. Knowing that I’m eating myself to death doesn’t stop me doing it. I need to find a way, I need to replace binging with a healthier way to manage stress. Walking and the gym will help, I used to do an hour on a treadmill at the gym three days a week. That would be impossible right now but I will build it back up in time as I lose more weight. The endorphins produced from exercise make you feel good, I just have to remember that when it’s cold and wet and I’m struggling to find the motivation.

By nature I’m very boom or bust. I either put everything into something or nothing at all. It’s not a good way to be but it’s ingrained into my personality so I’m not sure I can change it completely.

I have been to weight loss courses where they try to teach you about mindfulness, triggers etc but these course last for six weeks. I’ve been dealing with this problem for more than thirty years. It doesn’t cut it. Ongoing support is what I need. I’m always going to be an addict, I can either be in binge mode or remission but it’s not something that’s curable, something that goes away. It requires constant work and it’s exhausting. Without applying constant path correction I will veer off course like landing a plane in cross winds.

Sometimes I feel like it’s all pointless, that I can’t beat it and that I may as well put myself out of my own misery. It just constantly grinds you down no matter how much you try to stay optimistic and hopeful. It never goes away and I get so tired of trying to swim against the tide.

I hope by speaking about it maybe we can get health care professionals to educate themselves about the “other” eating disorder. Maybe it will help somebody else going through the same thing and give them some comfort that they’re not alone and maybe by admitting it to myself I can get the support I need to keep fighting.