Main Entry: en·abler

Pronunciation: \i-ˈnā-blər, -bəl-ər\

Function: noun Date: 1615:

one that enables another to achieve an end ; especially : one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior

food ADDICTION

Food addiction manifests itself in the uncontrollable craving for excess food that follows the ingestion of refined carbohydrates, primarily sugar and flour substances that are quickly metabolized and turned into sugar in the bloodstream.

Due to those uncontrollable cravings, a food addict's quality of life deteriorates when he or she eats sugar, flour or wheat. It can deteriorate physically, emotionally, socially and/or spiritually.

If any of the following symptoms are familiar to you, you may be a food addict:

Physical Symptoms of Food Addiction

• Do you think you cannot control your intake of food, especially junk food or high sugar foods?

• Have you tried different diets or weight loss programs, but none has worked permanently?

• Have you found yourself vomiting, using laxatives, diuretics, or exercising a lot to avoid a weight gain after you have eaten a lot?

Many food addicts are obese and have tried numerous methods for weight control (diets, drugs, surgery, etc.) yet nothing has created a permanent solution. Other food addicts have never been obese. Their physical weight has been controlled by extreme measures such as excessive exercise, purging through vomiting or laxatives (bulimia), or the severe and unhealthy limiting of food substances(anorexia). No matter which version of food addiction fits you, all of these symptoms become more severe with time and eventually lead to physical problems that can create an early and sometimes painful death.

Emotional Symptoms of Food Addiction

• Do you find yourself feeling depressed, hopeless, sad or ashamed about your eating or your weight?

• Do you find yourself eating when you are upset or reward yourself with food when you do something good?

• Have you ever noticed after eating sugar, flour, or wheat that you become more irritable?

Food addicts notice that their emotions become more severe, intense, or unreasonable when eating the addictive substances. For many food addicts, emotional life may deteriorate into despair, depression, or thoughts of suicide.

Social Symptoms of Food Addiction

• Do you eat in private so no one will see you?

• Do you avoid social interactions because you feel you do not look good enough or do not have the proper fitting clothes to wear?

• Do you steal other people’s food?

• Are you more interested in what food is served at social gatherings than looking forward to the warmth of being with the people attending?

A food addict’s social life is affected by intense obsessive thinking about food. Making eye contact with people and taking an interest in developing friendships or intimate relationships become secondary to locating and eating addictive foods. Food addicts often hide or steal foods and eat in secret.

I thought I read my post carefully before I hit the send button. Lol. I guess I start an addiction transfer thread about breast and internet porn. Lol.

Don't mind Butter, he has boobs on the brain.

~Cheri

I failed with the lapband .. So thats really rock bottom .. Failing at something you believed would work. I imagined for a long time that I was so broken about food and eating... That I could even mess up wls.

I see it differently now. I have that same fighters spirit I just have better education, a better tool and the self awareness that crashing and burning uniquely provides. It is so easy...just sooo easy to regain. We'd all be wise to remember that.

I am going thru a tough time recovering from plastics. I realized today that I havent felt this low energy and disabled since I was 150 # heavier. Reminder of how depressing morbid obesity was and how small and limited my life was in many regards. I miss my active healthy life and want it back!!! 3 weeks... Just 3 more weeks

Don't mind Butter' date=' he has boobs on the brain.

~Cheri[/quote']

As if anyone didn't already know.

It is so easy...just sooo easy to regain......

I am going thru a tough time recovering from plastics. I realized today that I havent felt this low energy and disabled since I was 150 # heavier. Reminder of how depressing morbid obesity was and how small and limited my life was in many regards. I miss my active healthy life and want it back!!! 3 weeks... Just 3 more weeks

Regain is definitely easy! Great point.

As for the rest.....you know I feel your pain. It does not feel good to go back to that level of inactivity after living right for the last 18 months. I've been taking daily walks and I never knew how boring walking was until I started running everyday. I just keep telling myself it's only temporary....but the results of my TT are permanent.

I've only read a couple of pages of this thread -- great thread btw! Very thought provoking.

I have to say that I have deliberately chosen not to participate in a "live" support group and this is one of the reasons.

I have always liked that having a virtual support group meant that I could choose not to click on certain threads, or to quickly click off one if I didn't appreciate the turn it was taking. I have frequently navigated away from the ones that start out talking about a craving or a food obsession, because I don't want to "go" there.

i would consider myself a food addict, certainly in a physical sense. I have used my surgery as a way to detox, and I don't fool myself thinking that I couldn't easily go down that road again. I also realize everyone is SO different!! Some can be completely successful still eating food of questionable value frequently. Some will not be successful and will fall back into old habits. Some will walk the line forever. My hope for ME is to eat well (healthfully) and not miss the junk. I want to have no junk food cravings, I will not whine about being deprived, I do not want to eat things that I have to justify or forgive myself for. I lived that way for decades and I am done with it. Telling war stories about eating junk does not appeal to me.

My plan for now is to follow a clean eating plan until goal. Then I will maybe occasionally have a treat, perhaps, if I want it. I will have to test the waters on it. What I DO NOT want is for me to fall back into obsessing about food. And why do we call junk food a treat when it is so bad for our bodies and minds anyway?

When I see threads talking about things people miss or things they've "cheated" with, I don't want to read them. I don't want to go there. I neither want to condone nor crucify anyone who does it. I don't want to be a part of it at all. Because the reality I choose to pursue is one in which I'm not obsessed.

And -- my point is ---- the beauty of a message board is that you can choose to distance yourself from these things. Just click away.

This journey is something in which we are each responsible for our own experience. I could cry, whine, beg, borrow, steal, pay a lot of money, but in the end if I continue the old food addict behaviors I had prior to surgery, I will not achieve my goals.

I don’t think I’m a food addict, but it’s early yet so maybe I’ll change my mind as time goes on. I do know without a shadow of a doubt that I had/have some VERY disordered eating habits.

My father grew up very poor, in a house where wasting food was something that didn’t happen. If it was on your plate, you ate it. My mother grew up as the care giver, food preparer for a super morbidly obese father, who liked everything fried in lard and topped with gravy. These were the eating habits that were passed on to me as a child. Every meal had bread, most had gravy, and lots of it was fried. My mother never did learn how to serve normal sized portions so our plates were heaped full of food and my father insisted that it was finished.

Needless to say I was a chubby kid, and once puberty hit and I realized that boys didn’t like fat girls, I purposely tried to get fat. It worked…

Fast forward to my early 20’s, had a baby, married a guy who had to have rice at every meal and also insisted if we cooked it we ate it. That relationship ended, and eventually I ended up in a very bad relationship for 8 years with someone who used food to say I’m sorry. There were a lot of fights, so there was a lot of food. I surrounded myself with friends, all of whom were fat, and every get together was about food.

Thankfully, three years ago I finally worked up the courage to walk away from that relationship and this summer I decided that I needed to put me first, and do the things I needed to do for myself. It hasn’t been easy, these past two months, changing habits that I built up over a life time. I find that I always have to measure my food out, if I don’t I will eat too much every time. This makes eating at a restaurant very difficult for me so I try to avoid them. I eat too fast and there have been more than a couple of times that I’ve taken a bite or two even after I felt full. Then I get sick and say I won’t do it again, but old habits are hard to break.

So I don’t think I’m an addict, I don’t miss not being able to eat (maybe once I feel hunger again that will change) but I need to learn how to kick the very bad habits that I’ve learned over the past 38 years. It’s kind of weird; I’ve lost 90 pounds this year, half before and half after surgery and I’m finding my voice now. I don’t have my shield of fat to hide behind anymore so I’m having to find a way to be comfortable with attention, and learning to tell the toxic people in my life that it’s time to take a hike.

Probably way more here than anyone wanted to know about me, and I didn't stay completely on topic, but once I started it all came out! Thanks for starting this thread, very interesting and VERY informative!!

I love that you are finding your voice! I wrote in another post that my fat was a barrier between me and the world - it allowed me to justify uncaring behaviour in others towards me and stopped me from expecting more. But no longer...

You have had a tough time but if you are finding your voice, only good can come if it. Congratulations on your amazing weight loss to date!!!!

For me, I need tough facts and no pity when it comes to support from this site. I get enough enabling sympathy from people around me who have no clue how hard it is to stay on track. The pity sympathy just encourages my weak mind to stray further.

Around here, I want a swift kick in the derrière .. Not pity. I'm a grown adult.

So Laura, we have had the confessions thread and the enabling thread ... when are you going to start the Denial thread? I think it would be best started by someone caring and loving.

As GamerGirl so accurately noted, I do not have the literary skills to make such a thread and not come off harsh or judgemental.

Ah, the three horsemen of the Fatpocalypse.

Been there, did that!!!

http://www.bariatricpal.com/topic/246042-big-fat-people/?fromsearch=1

I don't know if we want to bump that thread up or not, so I'm answering here. The question: Food addict, or denial?

My answer is I don't know, but I don't think so. At least not based on the other answers. I am not a binge eater and never have been. I don't eat when stressed; in fact I can't eat when I'm stressed. I can have a box of donuts, bag of chips, layer cake (whatever!) in the house and I don't feel the need to eat it. I was a bit over fond of the wine, I believe (though I have had no trouble giving that up since pre-op) and I admit to loving food…but I would rather eat two bites of something good than a full meal of something that is not doing it for me.

I do suffer from hypothyroid/Hashimoto's. I also have a highly diabetic family…and have/had been diagnosed with metabolic syndrome. But people I live with and eat out with would tell you that I don't eat more than most people; in fact I eat less. I exercise regularly.

Am I just floating down a river in Egypt all by myself? I don't know. It's possible. What I believe is that there are underlying ways that our bodies respond to food and food cues that contributed to my getting to this point. I'm so new to the sleeve that I may come back here in 6 months and say, "Yup, I'm also an addict and here's why." But I can't honestly say that I believe that I am, yet. Not in an obvious way anyway.

Ah, the three horsemen of the Fatpocalypse.

I just snorted while eating my lunch...very clever

I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

I am a food addict. I have some of these traits and find myself fearful that I will give in. I can not eat 1 piece of candy without taking another. candy is a slider food for me. I will grab nuts our foods that I see when I'm not hungry. today I forgot (yep, I forgot) I had eaten breakfast and started eating some chili peanuts, knowing that I wasn't hungry. My excuse was that I had to eat before going to the office because I have a client at 1:00 and won't be able to get something to eat until after 3:30. That's total crap, I can take my lunch with me.....I can do paper work. So this is my addiction working for me. Gotta use my coping skills and stay on top of this. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes.......I AM AN ADDICT!