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An eating disorder as common as it is unknown brings together dozens of people in Zaragoza every week to overcome their addiction to uncontrolled food intake.
One day I realized that I was literally raiding the cupboards in my house looking for food at all hours. I needed to cover my mouth no matter what, to silence that constant feeling that eating gave me pleasure.. When she ate she didn't feel, she didn't think. It is another addiction.” This is just the shocking beginning of the testimony of Marisol - fictitious name -, a compulsive eater who admits to having eaten food "up to 40 times a day".
It is not an isolated case. Marisol's is just one of the stories that the walls of the Association of Anonymous Overeaters of Zaragoza have heard since it was created in 1988. Theirs began when their marriage broke up. “I had always eaten well. I've never had one before bad relationship with food. ‘Good eater' they told me when I was a girl. But personal problems, without being aware of it, caused me an anxiety that he was not able to calm except with food. I went from binge to binge, at first spaced out over time, then continued,” says Marisol. “There came a time when I didn't care about eating yogurt, any caloric food, junk food, fats... anything was fine. It was totally irrational,” she confesses.
Un action and monitoring protocol "similar to alcoholics anonymous” and “a lot of personal and constant work” were the keys for Marisol to get out of the tunnel. “You don't stop being a compulsive eater overnight, but you learn to live with it and control the situation,” says Marisol, who assures that another of the essential issues for her has been the meetings that are held every week in the entity. “You hear other stories, you feel understood,” says Marisol.
Stories like that of an association user who, in a moment of anxiety, “came to take discarded food from the trash, another who even ate unthawed food, or there are even those who recognized having gone into a supermarket, bought a can of legumes and eaten it cold in the car with the help of a credit card as cover.”
The dreaded moment of shopping
These testimonies are just some of those that Julia - her fictitious name - has been able to hear since she joined Compulsive Overeaters Anonymous in 2003. She attributes the beginning of her addiction to “the burden” that, at a certain point in her life, “working, having school-age children, housework…” entailed. “I felt like I had no time for myself and the only thing that satisfied me was eating. You start little by little. One binge a day, two, three... until there comes a moment when you realize that the first bite opens Pandora's box. Then it's already non-stop,” says Julia.
She spent longer than Marisol, “about five years,” eating compulsively. “I went to psychologists, I did acupuncture and thousands of diets. You only think that you have gained weight, you constantly blame yourself for everything. But Food prevents you, at all times, from concentrating and getting out of that wheel.. If I managed to lose weight with some diet, that also served as an excuse to then eat again and gain the kilos I had lost and a few more,” says the affected person.
Family mother, Julia I dreaded the moment of making the purchase. She explains that it is an intake “that you practice in secret” and that her children and her husband were not aware of the importance of her addiction, so it was she who assumed this domestic task. “Going down to the supermarket was a real trap. He filled the cars to the brim, without any sense. I have spent all the money I had on food."recalls Julia, who, resignedly, says that Now it is her daughter who repeats patterns. "This is a nightmare. We have received an expense of 6.000 euros that he acknowledges having invested only in food.” “So now it's our turn to help her,” he says, sighing and almost with tears in his eyes.
These are just three of the “hundreds of cases”, they point out without giving exact figures from Compulsive Eaters of Zaragoza, which have passed through the entity. “Anonymity is essential for us. Many times, Not even the families of those affected know their addictions”Julia points out. “Our job is to help those who are having a hard time with food, that's why we consider it important to let people know that we are here -https://www.comedorescompulsivos.es/-. As with all addictions, you can also get out of this”, concludes Julia.
