ABSTRACT
I am 48 years old and have felt overweight for most of my life. Looking at photos taken in my youth, however, I am not sure why I was so worried – I was probably about average weight. I suspect some of my worry about weight may have stemmed from my early family environment where there was an intense focus on weight and eating. My father was a jockey, an occupation requiring a very low body weight. In the lead up to important races Dad would be ‘wasting’ – eating extremely restrictively and exercising constantly. To be supportive, my mother, siblings and I would go through this process with him – we would all diet strictly for weeks at a time. After the race Dad would feast, eating large amounts of foods that he had been avoiding during his race preparation. Again, the family would join him in this celebration. I think this pattern of wasting and feasting has influenced the way I eat and think about my weight ever since. After the birth of my third child, my weight increased significantly. I began dieting strictly to lose weight, much as I had during childhood. This strategy worked in the short term, however I began to experience times when I would binge on the very foods that I was trying to avoid. To compensate for this I tried to diet even more strictly. However, I soon began periodically eating enormous amounts of food and this process felt completely unstoppable. I have now given up trying to control my weight; however I continue to binge any time that I feel sad or angry. I have stopped seeing friends and going to my book club because I am so embarrassed about my weight. I have recently started seeing a psychologist who says she would like to begin treatment with me for depression and Binge Eating Disorder.
