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Robert's Story

As a kid, I was always taller and more thick-boned than others. Although I wasn’t in any organized sports, I was very active, always running around. In high school I was starting to gain weight. I wasn’t morbidly obese, but overweight. When my parents were working through their divorce, I started eating more out of control. Food provided me with comfort and was a way to find some peace. I felt secure when I was physically full. In my late teens, I would eat whatever was in front of me no matter what the portion size was. I would fill a plate with food and just eat it until it was gone. There was nothing in moderation. I think that distorted my concept of being satisfied. Food was just a pleasurable event.

Another thing that contributed to my overeating was Ritalin. In the late ‘80s I was diagnosed with A.D.D. [Attention-Deficit Disorder] and started taking Ritalin. I’m still taking it eighteen years later. One of the side effects is appetite suppression, so I’m not hungry when I need to be eating. When the drug wears off and I haven’t eaten well, I’m suddenly hungry. And when the hunger hits me, I make poor food choices-easily accessible food that will fill me up fast. If I make too many small poor choices it turns into a big eating fest. I don’t know why I do it. There’s this feeling of being out of control.

I sometimes feel that loss of control even when I go out to a friend’s place for dinner. They might serve me a piece of meat that I consider to be bigger than a serving size. That would be enough to trigger the loss of control over eating for the next couple hours. One part of me thinks, “So what? You just ate two servings of a piece of meat. It’s not gonna kill you. Just don’t eat so much later on.” But the other part of me says, “Ha! You’ve just proven to yourself that you can’t eat in moderation.” That makes me feel like a failure, which makes me want to continue eating and even binge.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been diagnosed with non-insulin dependent diabetes, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. All of those conditions are weight-related. Since I just turned thirty, I realized it’s time to do something about it. I mean I was always big, but around December I broke the 300 pound mark. So I decided to join a fitness challenge through work. We had two teams of six people per team and the goal was to lose as much weight and gain as much muscle mass as we could in twelve weeks.

In the past I’ve been to nutritionists and they’ve shown me the food pyramid and told me what and when to eat. But I was working nights at the time and just trying to eat around my work schedule was very difficult. The more I would think about what I need to eat and when my next meal was gonna be, the more obsessed I became. I would think about food non-stop. I would eat well until I would have a little splurge and then I’d think, “Oh man, this isn’t working.” Then I would give up and eat non-stop. So when we started this fitness challenge, I decided to go on Weight Watchers TM. They have internet tools that will do all the point counting for you and tell you the point value of each food. You can also see a graph of your weight and find out how many points you should be eating to achieve your weight-loss goal. So, for twelve weeks, I just ate within the point range that they told me to and saw my physician regularly. Since January I’ve lost over fifty pounds.

But now I feel myself going back to old patterns of behavior. Sometimes I think the urge to binge is always gonna be there. I don’t wanna gain back all the weight I took off. But feeling sad about it makes it seem okay to eat more, to use food for comfort like I did growing up. I think the only way I’m going to successfully avoid bingeing is to confront it and say, “All right. This is why you feel this way.” Then eat in moderation and find something else to keep me busy.

You know, it’s funny. As a full-time EMT, I have to make life and death decisions every day. That’s the way it is. Some stranger calls me into his life during a medical emergency and I can just ask a few questions, figure out what’s going on, what hospital to take him to, and then get him there. Yet making wise decisions about food is so difficult. The weight loss challenge has helped a lot. I’m still trying to determine what triggers the “out-of-control” feelings so I can work on avoiding a binge. But it feels good to know I’ve made it this far.