Protective over food

Has anyone else noticed how protective they are over their food? I noticed this tonight, my food is my food and i get pissed when someone else touches it. I spend so much time in the grocery store picking all of it out, so when someone touches it I get "only child syndrome" and every piece is mine. I seem to hoard my food and hide it through the house. It's not OCD or Pack Ratting, I'm just hiding my stuff from my parents. Anyone else do the same?

Yep. It used to really hurt my husband's feelings. Now he understands that it's not about hin - just part of my ED. Plus, I try to share with him more now.

I am indeed protective over food, especially over sweets, I will hold on to them over months, and never eat them. It drives my hubby crazy!

I'm like that over my diet food and pot.  I don't want any one else to have it, it's mine!

Yeah. And then I'm thinking in my head that I must look really greedy, which makes me feel really bad. Even if i'm not going to eat it, I won't let anyone else have it. And in the holidays I live with my mom, dad and sister, and me and my mom usually do the grocery shopping, but I'll buy all this 'safe' stuff, and i'll throw the biggest hissy if anyone touches it [my dad is the biggest culprit], so now my parents have allocated me a little tub in the fridge, and if its in the tub, they can't touch it. I won't even let them share my pot of peanut butter, so they have to buy a separate one for my sister!

I'm like that, in a way. I have 2 sisters who eat pretty much everything in site so when there is cake or something I eat ALOT because I'm so scared it won't be there if I want some later. It's a binge thing.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this. My parents and my boyfriend take it personal, and I try to explain to them why, especially when it comes to the 90 calorie Rice Cake packs. I buy enough for the week, so i make myself go to the grocery store on Friday's, and I'll find my boyfriend munching on them. Especially since diet food is so expensive. Nothing diet is cheap, even fruit.

 Were any of you emotional eaters or binge eaters too? Because i was. I'm trying to figure out if this is a side effect of the emotional eating

I was/am definitely a binge eater. I would eat for no reason at all, just because I was bored. I don't think I had ever actually felt hungry before. It sounds so gross now, but I just loved the feeling of eating.

I also had/have some protective issues over food. I would get so upset if someone would eat something of mine, and I would even get jealous if someone would get more of something than I would. I know it doesn't make sense.... and it scares/scared the crap out of me. I'm working on my "relationship" with food now so I don't really get those feelings anymore. I still don't understand it... but I think I'm overcoming it.

yesss....i get soo protective over foods, like veggies, fruit....even if we buy it on a daily basis....hah and yeah i get jealous if some one else ate it....why is that?

also, cereal was my binge food, i've gone cold turkey on it now....and whenever someone else is eating cereal it makes me sooo pissed off...so i have to lock myself in another room while they eat until theyre bowl is put away, otherwise......

and yeah i agree with sonini, i love the feeling of eating, and the feeling of full...and when i get hungry i love that feeling too....the extremes.....of being hungry or full....need to STOP.. but its gotten alot better, more normal:)

Sonini I was the same way... i would have to eat for an hour straight to feel full, but then i would feel grossly full; to the point I could throw up.

Its nice to meet people with food issues also, not that i wish them on anyone, but people I can relate to. I come from a family of skinny people. My mom was skinny up until she was 40, and all the women in my family on both sides are skinny. All of them eat half of a plate of food and can turn it away, while i feel the responsibility to eat it. I force myself to pull off half the plate of food and ruin the other half with water, mustard, pepper, etc.

and enimzaj I'm the same way, when i run from lecture to lecture to lecture all day i love the way i feel when im hungry and running on an empty stomach. (all of my professors wont let me eat)... ill try to go as long as i can without eating. I usually have breakfast and dinner, maybe a 100 calorie pack in between.

I actually got that way yesterday, and i didn't even notice till I read this thread.  I got a special box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts from Hawaii the other day.  My son (14) got one out of the box and I snatched it away and put it up. LOL He thought it was funny, but it got me thinking, how often do I DO stuff like that??

Plus I get really protective over my frozen diet meals and quick snacks.  They're not cheap and they're for me when I rush home for a short lunch.  If everyone else gets into it, I will come home and not have anything but junk to eat.  So I still eat and end up going over on my calories.  Luckily, the family is getting a little bit better and a lot more supportive. :-)

Why do you care? They make the crap everyday.

My mother was like this. I found it so annoying and insane to be this way and start fights over liking the same food.

It makes me think of bad dogs that get put to sleep for being snappy when anyone gets near thier food dish.

Nice  

Little harsh, ChopChop, but I can see your side, too.

I would set aside my stuff, and let the others in my family eat theirs, but then, I realized something- if my kids wanted to eat a healthier option from my "stash", that was a GOOD thing.  Why would I want to make them eat chips or other crap instead of healthy fruits and other options?

Encouraging my family to eat from my stuff is an act of love, because I want the best for them and me.  If I have to share my food, or make another trip to the store, then that just gives me a chance to take them along and give them more education about food choices.

Thank goodness I am the only one in my family with a weight problem, but I let the kids eat my stuff anyway- even if they don't weigh too much, they could still always be healthier.

Maybe looking at it like this can help a little?

You never saw my mother freak out about this.

It wasnt like as posted above by others. Things would be thrown etc...over a slice of lunch meat that was sitting in the fridge about to go bad.

So yeh...much like those dogs.

I have *some* issues with this.  Mainly because I'm such a picky eater that I use to often go hungry when my family ate the foods I liked, usually before I ever got to touch it.

Now that I go grocery shopping for myself (my mom still picks some things up for me at costco since I don't have a membership yet) I still find the food I like getting eaten.

I usually don't mind as long as it's not the "last one" and if they ask me first.  That way I don't just wake up one morning and I'm out of half my food randomly, I can plan my shopping trips around what others eat.

My dad can eat nearly an entire bag of cereal by himself, in one sitting.  So if I pick up a fresh thing of cereal, it can be gone the day after I go to the store.  He says "we can always buy more".  But I can't even remember him ever doing ANY grocery shopping.  Sure he sometimes stops to get milk once a month if we're low, but he isn't running to the store everytime he eats something of someone elses.

I protest, but I don't freak out.

Well I shop healthier so there are good things for the family to eat.  They just have to put forth a little effort to prepare.  I buy things like that so I can grab and go when I go to work or when I only have 15 minutes to throw something in the mikey, eat, and vamoose.  The chocolate, I agree, I need to quit being so protective over but things like my special little meals to make my life a little easier when rushing to and from work, I would appreciate a little understanding from the family.  Nothing so bad as a fight, just exasperation over "Why don't you understand?"  Luckily, as I've said, we're all getting better at compromising and understanding each other. 

I can actually say I do the same thing! I bought about $70 worth of veggies, fruits, 100 calorie packs, etc. the other day, and when I was putting them up, I seriously debated on whether or not to hide everything I had bought in my room so my parents wouldn't eat any of it. I just get crazy when I spend so much money on that kind of stuff and it's not there when I go to eat it!

But then, I realized how much food my parents had bought me over the years and recently, and if they want to eat healthy, it's fine with me if i share. :)

Well, I don't do it in the same way all of you are describing...mainly because I have a dorm to my own at college, so no one to steal the food, and when I'm home in PA I'm often at my boyfriend's house, and thus don't really have any of my own food there anyway.

However, I really almost dread going out to eat at places where you order family style, and everyone just picks what they want as they go...oooh that drives me batty! I grew up as an only child for the most part, and maybe that contributes a bit?

My boyfriend and I like to refer to one incident that occurred last year as "the sushi incident" haha.  It was our anniversary, so we went to a really nice sushi restaurant, and I like to eat and enjoy my food a lot slower than he does...so we just ordered a bunch you know: "two tuna sushi, 4 salmon sashimi" etc and they bring it out in a big plate in the middle of the table....There was one tuna sushi left, and he said "are you going to eat that?" and (well, I was in a slightly pissy mood to being with..so this didn't help) I immediately freaked out saying "Yes I'm going to eat that!  that's my piece! we ordered to share it evenly that's mine!" haha.  We laugh about it now..but it really was tragic then!

I got slightly this way when we ordered dim sum from a Chinese place too...I ate WAY slower b/c I cannot handle chopsticks and slippery dim sum..and I was hoarding my food so he wouldn't touch it haha.

Why do we do this??  Odd.

omg! i'm just like that! it's been like 2 1/2 years now, i don't hoard foods from my parents but i do to my relatives.   i get really piss also when they touch my food, even though i didn't bought it, but because they know it's my favorite and only thing i eat, they should respect that and not touch it so i get really offended and threaten when they do. 

i didn't think i even find someone else with this.  it's like food insecurity even though i won't get hungry and it's not like i have to fight to eat.  i can't explain it.

what makes me crazy is I have a container of Starbucks icecream. I allow myself one tablespoon of icecream before bed, and i probably only had 5 or 6 spoonfuls. It was one of the really big containers. I came home one day and the WHOLE container was gone. My mother ate the whole thing and couldnt understand why I was mad. Besides the fact it was mine (and i know it sounds childish to say it was mine) its totally unhealthy to eat a whole quart (or pint, which evers bigger) of icecream.

I just spend 2 hours food shopping this morning, in a crowded market. and i asked everyone, do you want anything in particular, and they said no. i know im not going to be the one to finish off all the food in the house, and i wouldnt mind it if someone else would go buy it.