When eating is torment

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 36, 18 February 1986, Page 7

When eating is torment

Do you eat when you're not hungry, go on eating binges for no apparent reason, have feelings of guilt and remorse, give too much time and thought to food, is your weight affecting the way you live your life? I met a gal named Sue one time who was very much that way. It was a real problem for her which started in her childhood and snuck up on her. She felt unloved and rejected as a child and the only love she knew was food. As the years went by she became depressed over this and by the time she was a teenager, the pressure and the depression became too much. She tried dieting, but always came back to the food. By the time she was in the sixth form and weighed 14 stone she decided to do something about it. She was on a dietician's diet, which started well, but eventually led her to feel guilty over eating two apples in one day. She found herself looking in the mirror one day and hating herself and saying, "I'm too fat, I'm too fat." Later she realised that she had become anorexic and for much of her life after that, she moved from one extreme to the other. One day the cycle started

up and she went on a reai eating binge. She baked a chocolate cake, took one bite and before she knew it she had eaten the whole cake, plus another. The cycles reved up, the binging, the dieting. So did the depression, the self hate, the feelings of worthlessness and she found herself unable to make decisions. She hit an all time low one day when she went to the cake tin and ate every bit of it, and looked at herself in the mirror and said to herself, "My God, I'm no better than an alcoholic." It wasnt long after this that she read an article on Overeaters Anonymous (O.A.) and thought "My God, that's me." She found there were others like her, who took one bit and a thousand bites were tiot enough. The hardest part was to cut down to eating three meals a day while having an insane urge to eat constantly, but through O.A. she has found she doesn't have to be perfect. She can admit she is wrong, because the need to be right is not so strong. She no longer needs the depression tablets she took for 16 years. She has learned to see herself as one of God's children, neither the best nor the worst. She knows she has talent and intelligence, and

she has had many fine accomplishments. But her self-worth is not validated by any of these. She can love and accept her weaknesses as well as her strengths because they are part of her. She makes many mistakes as she reaches towards growth, but she no longer expects perfection from herself or anyone else. There are many people like Sue living in the Waimarino. If you can relate to any part of her storyand you want help, there is now an Overeaters Anonymous group starting in Waiouru at the Community Health Centre, or ring Sue at Waiouru 56-202 if you want to know more.

Don

Bater

Raetihi