Pictures of Compulsive Eating: The Early Years

Ever since I read in the Brown Book about someone collecting pictures to document their history of compulsive overeating, and since I got up to this in the 30 questions I have wanted to post a photographic history on my blog. With everything else that has been happening I haven't had the chance to do it yet. But here's the first installment.


I don't remember much about those early years. I do know that I my birth weight was birth weight of 3260g or 7lb 30 oz. This is not particularly high in a normal birth, but it is very high for a twin, and was considerably larger than my sisters 3150g or 6lb 15ozs, despite the fact that I was 1.5cm taller than her. This might not seem important, but there is data linking high birth weight to obesity later in life. I have also always carried around guilt about being the "dominant twin" and starving my sister in the womb, and stopping us from being born so that she was in trouble before the birth. I know this is irrational, but that's how I feel.

Most importantly, it shows how from the very beginning my identity as the "chubby one" was established. That is what I always was. My twin sister was always incredibly skinny and petite, bordering on underweight, and I was bordering on overweight. I can't ever remember being made to feel bad about my weight at this time. Most of the time I was proud of the fact that I was in bigger sizes in clothes and shoes.But it doesn't really go with the fairy princess image that you want at that age. I always felt like a clumsy oaf. This was partly due to my undiagnosed neurological disabilities. But that doesn't change my experiences.


There were all the usual things that can set us up for a bad relationship with food: food being associated with good times at grandma's and my birthday, going out to eat nice food being a very special treat because we were poor and couldn't afford it, My Mum always going on about not having enough food to eat. I did the naughty things that today would be associated wtih a compulsive eater: pinching a treat here or there, looking forward to eating at parties and at my grandma's house, etc. These are all things kids normally do. In fact, my mother tried her best to help us develop healthy habits. We were never rewarded with lollies, instead we were rewarded with dried fruit, but still the assocation was set up. I can't say that I had an early childhood particularly conducive to compulsive eating.

But there were warning signs of a genetic predisposition even at that age. One thing that I loved and was play dough. They put salt in home made play dough to make it distasteful to children but it wasn't distasteful enough to me. I used to regularly eat play dough, even when we were out at Sunday School or Play group. Even this could pass as normal, but what was not normal was the lengths i went to to get my salt fix. I would eat play dough even if the other kids were watching and laughing at me; I would sneak play dough to my room and keep it in the drawers for later. I even went through my drawers after months and months, found stale play dough, and proceeded to eat it.

Someone in the Brown Book said that they were born a COE, and it looks like I was too. Whenever I don't feel powerless I think I should just think about playdough.