Addictive Eaters: What's it like to be obsessed with food?

At her thinnest she was a dress size 6-8, but at her heaviest was never more than a 12-14.

The eating was done in secret.

"I went through four or five years of it getting more extreme," said Katie, now 28, and from Edinburgh.

"I would control my eating and have anorexic thinking and exercise excessively. Then something would switch.

"I would eat something that in my head I didn't want to eat - like a packet of crisps - and that would be that.

"I'd start a binge cycle and I wouldn't be able to stop.

"I started eating foods that I didn't even enjoy, like cakes from the supermarket that I thought were rubbish.

"I would find myself in the middle of the night in one of our local shops buying those foods. I would want a bit of savoury, a bit of sweet, a bit of ice cream - a bit of everything.

"Then I'd take it all to my bedroom and sit down on my bed and I would eat it all until I was either sick or passed out because I'd eaten so much.

"It was eating to the point of blackout."

When she looks back at her childhood, Katie remembers "always loving food".

She looked forward to family meals, and was nicknamed the "human dustbin" by her sister for polishing off any leftovers.

Katie, Amy, and Jane shared their experiences with the Herald ahead of a public awareness event in May organised by the Glasgow branch of Addictive Eaters Anonymous (Image: Gordon Terris/Herald&Times)

It was only when her teens began that she remembers becoming "obsessed" with her weight and developing what she can now see was a dysfunctional relationship with food.

She said: "I knew that I wanted to be skinny, but I also wanted to eat.

"I hid food. I would eat normally in front of people, but I was secretive about food on my own. I did strange things.

"Like there would be cake in the freezer that I'd know my Mum wouldn't notice I'd taken, and I would have some defrosting in the microwave and be eating the rest frozen.

"Looking back I can see - normal people probably don't do that."

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During her adolescence, patterns of overeating were joined by smoking, recreational drugs, and alcohol.

"I used all these different substances to alter the way I was feeling inside because I just wasn't coping with life.

"My emotions were like a rollercoaster - I would be fine until I wasn't fine. Then it would be like the end of the world."

At first she blamed her family - convinced that they were behind her compulsion to eat.

In her early 20s, she moved in with a friend, but it unleashed a downward spiral instead.

"There was no one to behave in front of," said Katie.

"At that point that I could maybe go two or three days with no binge.

"My life was consumed, from the moment I woke up in the morning to the moment I went to bed.

"Just obscene amounts of food. I could have a huge fish supper in the evening, and go to make myself a cup of tea and think 'I'll just have a slice of toast' and that would be it - I'd eat the whole loaf.

"Then I'd think 'I'm going to bed', but the next thing I know I'm putting my clothes on over my pyjamas and going to the supermarket or the garage to buy the sweets, the chocolate, the ice cream.

"It got to the point where the only good thing left in my life was my boyfriend and I was so paranoid that he wasn't going to love me anymore if I carried on putting on weight.

"I'd always managed to somehow keep my weight down but I lost the ability to exercise. I just couldn't do it anymore.

"I'd given up. The food had won."

Members of Addictive Eaters Anonymous hold weekly in-person meetings on the outskirts of Glasgow city centre every Tuesday evening (Image: Gordon Terris/Herald&Times)

The turning point finally came five years ago when a helpline operator for the charity, Beat, suggested she reach out to Addictive Eaters Anonymous (AEA).

The group dates back more than 40 years and was founded on the same principles first set out by Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1930s.

It is underpinned by the concept that people can be "problem eaters" in the same way as problem drinkers or gamblers, and relies on the same structure of peer-support, group meetings, and a 12-step programme of recovery. 

Today, Katie says she is "completely free of the obsession".

"I don't think about food any time except when I'm preparing or eating my meals," she added.

On May 4, the Glasgow branch of AEA will hold a public meeting to share stories of recovery.

It is open to anyone, including those worried about their own or a loved one's relationship with food.

Amy*, who established the Glasgow branch eight years ago after moving to the city from England, stresses that anyone experiencing "disordered eating" - including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and obesity - can seek help.

"We're not rigid about people's labels," she said.

"It's anything where you wake up and obsess about eating, obsess about food. Whether that's dieting, eating, or not eating."

AEA is open to anyone experiencing 'disordered eating', including anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and obesity (Image: Gordon Terris/Herald&Times)

Her own story began when she was around six. Now 60, she grew up in a middle-class household with immigrant parents and a family ethos that "food was love".

She remembers being a "gregarious and extrovert" child, but feeling "very low" whenever she was by herself.

She said: "Those feelings disturbed me from a very young age, and a I remember using food to make my discomfort go away.

"I would eat secretly in the larder, or I would nip to the shop and come back and go upstairs to my bedroom and sit on the bed and eat lots of sweeties.

"But I knew it was a problem because if I couldn't get my hands on sweeties or chocolate or jellies, it would be a carrot or an apple.

"I would eat anything because I had learned that eating made my fear and anxiety and my feelings of not being heard go away. And I enjoyed it."

By the early 1990s, Amy's weight peaked at 26 stone.

Diets had failed. Appetite suppressant drugs had failed. Antidepressants had failed. She felt "full of shame".

She turned to AEA and her relationship with food suddenly made sense for the first time in her life.

She said: "Some people are not normal around gambling. Some people are not normal around drink. I'm not normal around eating.

"When I eat, my body automatically craves more. I have a predisposition to use food in an abusive way.

"Once I accepted that it was an illness of the mind, followed by a craving in the body, and an emotional and spiritual illness, that calmed me down a lot.

"My life started to make sense."

Today, Amy is a slim nine and a half stone. She has maintained this healthy weight, and way of life, for the past 12 years.

"I love my emotional freedom. My joy. My size 10 clothes. I love being slim. But most of all, I love eating my meals and not having them control me," said Amy, who concedes that maintaining her recovery means abstaining permanently from certain foods - such as crisps, biscuits, and chocolate - which could derail it.

But without AEA, she believes she would be dead.

"My sister died of this illness - she was morbidly obese, 32 stones. I've got a cousin who is currently in critical care - she is 36 stones. I have a cousin who died a decade ago, he was 42 stones.

"It is a family illness. Why would I be any different?"

People with addictive eating have described patterns of eating in secret, seeking emotional relief in food, and bingeing to the point of 'blackout' (Image: Gordon Terris/Herald&Times)

The experience is echoed by Jane*.

The 26-year-old from Glasgow remembers "always wanting more" as a child, but the obsession with food truly took hold in her late teens.

"I was severely depressed and the only thing that would get me out of bed was the thought of going downstairs into the kitchen.

"I dropped out of work, out of university. The career I was in, that all fell apart because of the eating."

When her parents came home from work, she would sneak out of the house to continue bingeing.

She said: "I would buy something in Tesco - but not too much. Then I would walk to the next cafe and buy something there, so that it looked normal and no one would see I was eating huge amounts.

"I would walk the streets, just eating.

"Food would soothe me. That's where I got peace and comfort. But that only works for a very short period of time.

"Once you're onto the third bar of chocolate, it isn't pleasant anymore, but I'm still doing it and feeling sick and ill and in physical discomfort from the amounts.

"I was desperate to stop."

At 21, she found AEA, and today feels "totally released" from the compulsion to overeat.

She said: "The idea of it being an addiction - that lit something up inside me. I thought 'I'm just the same as a drug addict or an alcoholic', but it's with food.

"That really made sense to me.

"I know what's wrong with me today. I know that the root cause is mental, emotional and spiritual, and there's a solution. I was ready for the solution."

*Names have been changed

Glasgow Addictive Eaters Anonymous will host a free public information event on Saturday May 4 at Ignatian Spirituality Centre, 10.30am-12noon

Details of weekly meetings can be obtained by emailing info@aeauk.org or calling 0330 1333 615