Food addiction at university
University – the time of your life; a chance to meet new friends, learn new experiences, and become the person you want to be. I arrived at university confronted with a sea of expectation. I had an idea of what I wanted others to see and thus my self-worth was very much wrapped up in what others thought of me. My time quickly became a three-year mission to prove myself. To begin, my focus was to loose weight, tone up and eat right. People will like me once I am thinner, won’t they?
When I look back over my experience, although I had many enjoyable fun times, a dark black cloud obstructs my view. I developed an addiction to food as I became to rely upon it more and more as a coping mechanism. I needed something to silence the madness in my mind, and calm my inner turmoil of fear. My story of food addiction isn’t one of extremes as one may think of when hearing the term ‘addiction’. I have not yet been down the route of anorexia or extreme obesity for example but eating became my preoccupation, and I the more I ate or the more I tried to ‘control’ the more I needed to.
In writing this article I aim to offer hope to anyone who is struggling with the stresses and strains of University and using food, exercise or any other means of ‘control’ to cope.
I can clearly identify the point at which my seeming love of food crossed the line into active addiction. I can certainly remember times in my childhood whereby food was pretty special and exciting but the difference in this pre-addictive behaviour was that I could stop.
During my gap year between college and university, food started to become the highlight of my day, I just couldn’t get enough. Working in the idyllic rainforests of Costa Rica proved an insufficient distraction for me, food began to take over my mind more and more – what I was going to eat, how much should I eat, what combination of food did I need, what were others eating? How would I burn off the food? And how could I obtain more without being noticed? It became an obsession and the level of fear that came as I began to put on weight and out-grow my limited supply of clothes was immense.
Prior to returning to the UK I’d planned my list of excuses for the extra stones I was carrying and had my fitness regime and diet plans in place. To counteract the shame I felt I blamed others around me for feeding me the wrong types of food. In my mind I was able to justify my eating habits whilst travelling –I was in a foreign country, unable to communicate effectively and ‘needed’ extra food to manage all the physical activity I was doing. I thus figured it’d be a passing phase, something I could definitely manage if I applied enough willpower and effort.
Back in the UK I had hope that I’d be able to get ‘back on track’ and pick up the diet I’d left pre-travelling. My new goal – to lose weight for university. Within days of resuming the diet my binge/ starve pattern commenced. Overeating on hunger and emotion then reducing my amounts for the next meal to compensate, which to complete the vicious circle would lead back to binging due to the unsustainable amounts I was eating. I wanted to feel good about myself, I knew that I would be meeting new people and I desperately wanted to be seen in a certain way. For me, the size of my body was evident of my success. I had an image in my head of what I wanted to achieve and how I wanted to look and made up my mind that I would not be happy until I’d reached that ideal. The trouble was that my goal posts kept moving. Even when I’d seemingly lost weight and ‘toned up’ it still wasn’t enough.
More and more food took over my life at University. I used it to cope with everything, as ‘comfort’ for my lows and as ‘celebration’ for my highs. During my second semester of my first year it was touch and go as to whether I’d be able to continue. I was finding the pressure immense and coupled with my self-hatred my days very quickly became unbearable. I began using food secretly, hoarding huge stashes in my room and going to any length to be alone to eat. I would devise cunning plans of sneaking from other people’s stash, spinning elaborate stories to cover my tracks. I’d pretend to be out when people knocked and wouldn’t answer my phone if they called. Instead I’d close the curtains and consume huge quantities, sometimes crying uncontrollably, and would eat myself into blackout. It was all about me and the food. I began to feel guilt and shame with every morsal that passed my lips. My inability to ‘control’ and starve created a permanent feeling of failure that would accompany me from the moment I woke up to the time I went to bed. Nothing I did ever felt good enough. To the outside world however I was ‘fine’. Everyone knew me as happy go lucky, a successful student; on paper I was doing great! I went to extreme lengths to maintain that outside exterior academically, socially and physically. Inside was a very different story and my health was compromised with every binge and maniac work episode.
By the start of the second semester I’d realised that my behaviour around food, my overworking and life in general had become unmanageable. In response to this madness I started attending an eating disorders clinic, had weekly counselling sessions, and began attending a 12-step recovery group for people who compulsively eat. I was convinced that with enough analysis and talk I’d discover the route cause of why I ate, be able to ‘fix’ it and resume or rather re-establish a ‘normal’ relationship with food. Despite sporadic reprieve from my addiction I could only ever seem to hold it together for a period of time before the old behaviours, denial and dishonesty would re-surface.
