Odd and interesting to me that peanut butter seems to be such a recurring theme here. Honestly, I have nothing short of whild cravings for the stuff at times and can, if I allow myself, eat absolutely horrifically and humiliatingly huge amounts of it, and all without losing the desperate craving feeling that sparked the eating in the first place. Honestly, I can eat a revoltingly huge amountand have to force myself, with varying degrees of success, to just eventually stop eating it, even though I don't feel like stopping.
And I am not a binge eater per se, though frighteningly... God, terrifyingly!! find myself feeling as though I am developing some tendencies in this area in the past couple of months. My eating issues occur mostly at night, usually when I am greatly distressed, sometimes only semi conscious/aware of my surroundings and often interspersed with brief restless bouts of semi sleep.
I find myself overeating, often anything i can find/whatever is quickest/easiest, and definitely driven by some sort of compulsion to do so and a sense that somehow it has become a bit of an unhealthy grounding strategy for me.
Sorry, I guess i've gone off topic, I know this thread was about lack of eating and i am implying the opposite here I suppose, but I have become increasingly worried about my eating habits and their interaction with my mental/emotional state of late, and for some reason this is something I have felt too awkward and humiliated to bring up with my T or anyone else (other than a fellow patient at my recent hospital stay, who shared similar experiences).
In truth I have had low/medium level issues with food for most of my life, have gone through periods of starving myself as a blatant life control strategy, have grossly overexercised in combination with starving (close to anorexia teritory, though probably never quite all the way there), have never maintained what I would call a healthy or balanced diet, tend to go for long periods (mostly all day) without eating and then will often eat to excess at night, and have, I believe, done permanent damage to my metabolism as a result.
As a further complicator, extreme anxiety will sometimes make me uncontrollably nauseous/unable to eat, and I have also had an unrelated medical condition in the past that caused me to feel intense pain and nausea for long periods of time after eating, which not surprisingly led to all sorts of negative associations between eating and feeling sick and caused me to again starve myself, even when I knew it was doing damage to my body.
Oh, and as a final clincher, I often find that eating actually makes me hungrier, not necessarily immediately, but within a short space of time afterwards, and can trigger the classic low blood sugar feeling for long periods of time and the feeling that I need to eat more, even though it doesn't help. And medical testing in the past has determined that it isn't actually low blood sugar, or anything else that could be detected, at all.
God, did I really just confess to all of that?
Perhaps I should start another thread re this, but if anyone has any thoughts, I would greatly, greatly appreciate them. This is causing me irrational fear and dread right now, and while I am probably blowing it out of proportion to some extent, I am aware that the problems are getting worse, and now is definitely the time to be taking some control and perspective if I'm going to.
I also know that I am putting on weight, not quickly but definitely steadily right now, and know enough to know that my negative body image issues aren't contained at all well and are in the process of stirring from their provisionally dormant state. I am terrified of becoming obsessed about this...
Feel as though so much in my world is falling apart...
Maddog
