I am definitely a binger and have a food addiction (I've memorized the calories of everything, its a compulsive thing for me to know the calories of everything I eat). I can't stop thinking about food, and it is affecting my life.
I need to somehow get rid of this food addiction.... not sure how... any ideas?
I'm thinking I need to visit CC less for starters :( I go on several times a day and could easily spend hrs here.
But any ideas on how to get me to stop thinking about it?
I feel so controlled by it... :(
The first place to go would be your doctor. You say in another post that you're underweight. You wake up in the middle of the night needing to eat because you're so hungry. If it's affecting your life so negatively then it's gone beyond normal boundaries and needs some kind of treatment. Your doctor can refer you to specialist help.
Until you can get to your doctor, yes, it would probably help to stop feeding the obsession. You can't un-memorise calorie-counts but you can stop visiting CC. Find other things to occupy your time that you find interesting and absorbing.... learn a new skill, perhaps or take up a hobby. Thoughts about food would then take a back seat.
A final idea... use the obsession constructively. The best chefs in the world could be said to be 'food addicts', for example. But they use their obsession about foodstuffs creatively and positively... to make fantastic meals rather than to make themselves sick. If you know the calorie-counts and health properties of everything then you can quite easily make sure you get the 2500 cals a day to gain the weight you need to gain..... you can choose nutritious foods.... and better nutrition combined with sufficient energy would then mean that the bingeing and the neuroses would start to fade away.
I already do see a doctor.
Anyone else have any advice relating to how to break free from the food addiction/obsession
i think the advice you got from jane was pretty good. if you want to stop indulging in an obsession about food then a good place to start would be to discontinue calorie count. i also think she is right about putting the obsession to good use.
i was afraid of food and i recall her giving me similar advice about making the experience of creation and ingestion of food a good one. i am now OKAY with food. i have a bmi of 22.5 which is NORMAL and OKAY. there is no golden cow when it comes to fixing this - its about trying different things, new hobbies and seeing what works.
I doubt its so much an addiction to the food itself as to the compulsive nature of counting it all. A lot of people who end up having eating issues have OCD issues too.
Get off this site. Start with a week "holiday" and see how you feel. That might be all it takes for it to feel a little less crazy inside your head. Its hard, I mean, i've set up parental controls on my computer to keep myself off of sites like this, but its worth it. There's so many more valuable things that we could be doing with our time, you know?
Find something to get wrapped up in that doesn't have to do with food. Paint, sketch, go play on the swings, go hiking, clean out your laundry room, learn to juggle? I dunno. just stuff that takes at least a couple hours and gets your mind occupied.
