I don’t mean to blame my parents, though it will sound like it. They would pile our plates with adult-sized portions. And tell us to eat it all. If we didn’t clean our plates, children in Africa would resent us. Starving babies the world over would hate us for our inability to consume enough food to make the average child ill. I learned to eat past the point of pain. Eventually I was able to stuff so much food in that I became an embarrassment. Still, it was better than all the guilt of starving children. Better than enduring my mother’s accusation that I didn’t appreciate her slaving over a hot stove to provide me with a decent meal. Better than hearing my father proclaim me an ungrateful child for leaving perfectly good food uneaten, food he’d wished he’d had as a child.
To look at me, you wouldn’t think that I have an eating disorder. In the past, a few of my friends have watched me pick and nip over food and deduced that I am anorexic, perhaps bulimic. They were wrong. I have always been a “chronic overeater.” Usually when I tell people this, there is a lot of eye rolling and scoffing, even the rudely offered suggestion that I am fishing for compliments, but there is never belief. Until recently, I’ve never been able to control the amount of food that I eat. I had stopped buying snacks just so that I wouldn’t eat an entire box of cookies or family size bags of chips-in one sitting. I wouldn’t even walk down the snack food aisle in grocery stores just to ward off the temptation, for I knew the minute the snack went from my cart to my house and my house to the cabinet, opening it would soon follow. And I wouldn’t stop eating until the container was empty. It didn’t matter what it was: cakes, cookies, muffins, donuts, chips, pretzels, crackers ... I would eat every last bite. But don’t think that snacks were the extent of it. I had to play games with myself when it came to regular food. I wouldn’t allow anyone else to put food on my plate because they’d put too much and I knew I’d eat it all. A salad plate was the most common plate for me and a regular table spoon was my serving utensil. Servings of food were arranged on the plate in little piles that could not touch or next thing I knew, the plate would be mounded full. If I didn’t do those things, I’d eat well past the point when my sides ached, but I wouldn’t stop until the food was gone. Add to this disorder, a slow metabolism and you’ll see a recipe for weight disaster.
So why don’t I look like I overeat? Until I was twenty I walked everywhere as I didn’t have money enough for the bus. It was nothing to walk an hour or two to get to a destination. Even after I got my fist car, I didn’t always have money for gas so I’d peddle my bike to work. Then I joined the military. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to exercise—but that still didn’t keep me from gorging when I could. It has taken years to gain control, starting with the tricks I played on myself to finally realizing that food on my plate, whether I eat it or not, will not help starving children—unless they’re at the same table. Control over food has come in bits and parts, with knowledge that my parents weren’t trying to cripple me with food guilt. They had grown up without a lot of food at hand and it created this desire to provide for their children; while watching an obviously engorged lady lurch back to the all-you-can-eat food bar, I realized that was me, seeing the disappointment on my daughter’s face when she learned I’d eaten every last cheese cracker...
It is a long road, the road to recovery. I don’t know if I will ever be completely free of this disorder but this road is not a solo journey. My family and friends are helping me every step of the way.
