I have been married for ten years and my husband saw me going into binge eating flares for a number of weeks and up to two months, only to swear I will cut it completely from my life, doing that and ending up having it again.
It has messed up our relationship and my ability to function because each time I get into the binge eating phase, I am not working (I am a writer), I keep pushing deadlines, I stay in the bedroom all day, watching TV and eating in hide, and I then don’t want to have sex or go out with friends because I have nothing to wear and feel exhausted from being heavy.
On the other hand, when I lose weight and am active and not eating sugar, I become a completely different person. I am active, happier, productive in my work, social, fun to be around, and am more engaged with my husband and flirtatious.
Recently I have started overeating sugar again and my behavior again resumed to be distant, hiding and heavy. My husband said he cannot continue this way and asked me to go and see a specialist about it and we went together. During the meeting I filled out a questionnaire and she asked me many questions and her conclusion was that I am a sugar addict.
She explained that much like it used to be normal, even for doctors to smoke cigarettes, one day it will be unthinkable to eat sugar, at least at the quantities we eat these days.
She said everything we told her fits perfectly with the behavior of a sugar addict and she urges me to quit sugar completely and swear to never have it again. She explained the whole dopamine issue and why each time I do allow myself an exception it flares up the dopamine circuitry and that it will happen every single time if I continue doing it.
She explained that while it’s true that some people’s brains could definitely continue living while monitoring moderation, the brain of a sugar addict, which she really called Dopamine addict, is wired and built differently and the brain will never forget that many incidents of overeating.
Everything she said made sense to me and I do want to be free of this nagging compulsion that just won’t leave me alone. I am tired of going to sleep and thinking about what I will have for breakfast and how I will feel after that.
What I struggle with is embracing her language and accepting that there could be something like a sugar addict and that I am one.
What I really want is to neutralize it and actually see it in a somewhat positive way so that I will embrace it from a place of power and not powerlessness.
Would love help with that, how could I reframe this.
