Psychogenic obesity/’comfort eating’

Neither of us could ever imagine using food for ‘comfort’ rather than just satiation. This is in addition to our own physiological difficulties with eating.

At age 17, I stated, ‘I will never understand overeating disorders.’

At age 18, I stated, ‘I see it as the product of an inherent and undefeatable personality trait, and even if you can make it go, the trait is still there; the fat could easily come back, due to depression or other.’

At age 19, I stated, ‘[Obesity], although part of the body, is part of non-anatomical things to me, and my brain has this same approach to makeup and alcohol, so it’s clear my brain is lumping being fat in with this group of things, and it has its reasons.’

At age 19, I stated, ‘Just realised how much I’m doing to try and maintain my weight. My weight is like a paper fan that I have to keep blowing to keep moving, and if I don’t, it’ll stop. It’s extremely tiring.‘

At age 20, I stated:

‘Have you noticed many anorexics were actually fat beforehand, or at least overweight? I have 3 examples front and centre of mind.’

My friend replied, ‘Can you imagine being overweight? When I see fat people, it’s always totally alien. I always imagine what on earth it must be like.’

At age 19, my friend stated to another person:

‘I just can’t relate to people who don’t see eating or cooking as a complete chore and it being extreme effort to gain weight and not lose it.

It’s easy to lose weight, because not eating or cooking is such an easy and natural option. It’s so easy to sit at my computer and continue what I’m doing rather than to get up and cook.

Also, I can only imagine the sheer amount of food I’d have to eat in order to not be “skinny”. I’d have to endure months of torture and cramming my face full of food until I’m sick.

It’s impossible for me to envision someone who is overweight and hasn’t put themselves through some torture exercise that required tonnes of effort and exhaustion.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘Putting on 9 lbs (4 kg) would be a significant challenge for me. I’ve never put on that much in one go, in the last few years anyway. The most I’ve put on in a short space of time is 2 kg. I’ve lost 3 kg or more even quicker, when I got the flu lol.

My eating doesn’t change based on the amount that’s served. It doesn’t matter whether I’m serving myself or someone else is. When it’s me, I serve what limits waste as much as possible. When it’s someone else, I just eat until full, and the rest goes to waste.

I intend to pass 18 [body mass index] if possible, because that’s all that matters. All I care about is having some way to gain weight if I need it, when it’s physically impossible for me to now.

There was some Instagram anime-loving girl going on about the plight of overweight people trying to lose weight, whilst not being fat herself. I tried educating her in a comment; all I got was more emotional response. “It’s hard for them you know.”‘

At age 20, I sent a screenshot of an advert for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that stated, ‘The lightest way to enjoy all the goodness of Ben & Jerry’s, without the guilt.’ I remarked, ‘”Guilt”; it’s the fact this is how people live their lives, guilty about eating confectionery and craving low-fat options.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘They’re saying a sedentary male my age needs 2,400 calories to maintain his weight; so far, I’ve counted 1,773, 1,976 and 1,908 on my good days, and that’s assuming I ate every last morsel on my plate. I did adjust it for that, but I’ll never get it exact. And that’s only a sedentary male; an average male needs 2,500.

Then you have to ask yourself, how on earth are people putting on weight rapidly and getting obese, or even overweight? Those are my good days, the norm. If you count my recent days, they’re probably closer to 1,000 calories, hence I’ve been losing weight, but it’s so easy to lose weight, to slip into that decline, if you don’t keep up the effort.

My calorie requirements are closer to a female my age, if not that then a female child or a female elderly person, and then even with that given, you see how hard it is for me to put on weight, so how on earth are people getting fat?

It’s something seriously, seriously wrong. For that Instagram girl to even begin defending fat people for finding it hard to lose weight, I don’t even know where to begin. It’s unfathomable. Where does she muster that up in her mind? Where do any of these people? The amount of food they have to put into their mouths and swallow.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘It throws everything off, everything off balance. It makes [people] unrelatable in a fundamental area of my life, fundamental, numerous-hospital-visits, continues-to-affect-me-daily area, so I can’t be dealing with it. I just can’t. I’ll feel like whatever made them fat will cause another problem.

They have a capability that is totally beyond me. I don’t even know how to negotiate fat issues, the self-consciousness about it, the everything. It’s completely unfamiliar, off-limits territory for me, and it never will be familiar.’

At age 19, my friend stated:

‘It’s so easy to just not eat. Not eating is a relief. I’d select that route any day. I just can’t, because I’d starve to death. It’s the fact they can’t help eating, whereas I can’t help not eating.’

I replied, ‘Exactly. Eating is a chore. It’s no different to washing the dishes or showering. It’s a chore.’ My friend replied, ‘Yes. It’s a chore. It’s not something I want to be doing, like showering or taking tablets.’

At age 20, I sent a YouTube video titled ‘I Didn’t Go Outside For 30 Days And This Is What Happened’^[1] and remarked, ‘The fact he got fat from being inside and was eager for interactions with his dog.’

At age 20, I stated, ‘I still raise eyebrows when girls claim they’re fat even if they are normal, because you and I would never be able to claim we were fat. It would just be ludicrous.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘Remember that old woman who drank only Pepsi?^[3] It proves what I’d already established: when people go on about how certain foods are just “bad” overall, including soft drinks, it’s because people are taking them in excess.

I could easily live on Pepsi like her at the amounts I’m taking it now. It is helping me, because it’s a major source of sugars and carbohydrates that is keeping my weight where it is, which is still not changing.

All the effects they go on about with coke are obesity-related, basically, except the teeth ones. It’s always “linked to diabetes and heart conditions”. It’s because you’re fat.’

At age 20, I stated, ‘The bigger question is what on earth fat autists are doing, since you’d think with all their sensory issues and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder …’

At age 19, my friend stated:

‘It’s unreal how much people eat. I’ve seen people in buffet restaurants with a skyscraper plate, literally. I should have taken a photo that one time. The woman’s plate was a circular-based pyramid.

A fat life is a social life. I’m trying to imagine someone like us who is fat and loves food and stuffs their face but is exactly like us in all other ways. It’s hard to imagine, because it means they don’t have that sensory issue, plus they’d have a point of relation with people, enjoying food.’

I replied, ‘Correct. It’s not possible. I know, because of how fundamentally averse I am to it. You don’t need to postulate these people who are “like us on every level but x”, because they are impossible people. It doesn’t work.‘

I continued in a voice message, ‘You know, I noticed something: when I read these diets of obese people, it doesn’t really click to me how much it really is. I always have an underlying feeling that I could actually eat something close to that or that I could, at least, eat enough to get fat.

And that unlocked something in my mind: it made me realise that the real issue is not that I feel like I couldn’t, in any case, eat as much as fat people eat, necessarily; it’s more that I don’t understand how they can’t settle for less.

I don’t understand how they can’t cope with just a normal amount of intake or, indeed, my level of intake, because I feel nothing. I don’t feel starved, necessarily. What I mean by that is, I don’t feel gravely in need of more food to fill a personal taste, a personal addiction, if you like. No, it’s just a practical one. The only reason I’d want to increase my intake is a health-based reason.

But you know, these people: I’ve worked out that that’s the thing that I don’t understand about these people. They can’t cope with as little food as we have, and they feel like they have to consume and gorge that much food, and that is what I can’t understand.

I mean, if you put that much food in front of me, imagine if I had a personal cook or a personal oven right next to me at all times, a personal stash of food; imagine I was not busy working on the computer all the time, and I just had loads of time to do nothing.

I could probably eat a good portion of what these people eat, something like that. I don’t know the specifics of it, but it doesn’t sound like that much that they’re eating. Obviously, if I didn’t have my [physical] eating issues, I’d be able to eat a lot more.

But it’s the fact that that’s what they eat every waking day and every hour, and then you just clock in your mind that it’s an addiction that they have and that that is their norm; that is their way of life, and even with all the hustle and bustle of daily living and all of the duties and responsibilities they have, they still manage to fit all of that in, and it shows how much of a part it is of their life that they’re going out of their way for so much time of their day just to get that fill, that amount of food, just to meet that quota, that intake, and that’s the part that blows my mind.

That’s the part that I don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone could waste all that effort, how they could make that such a fundamental part of their day.

That’s just mind-blowing, you know, when it takes so much less effort just to be like me, so much less effort to just have my level of intake and not have to worry and bother about all of that rubbish about sneaking food or hoarding that much food, spending that much time eating it, just all of that hassle and effort and pain and suffering. There’s no point.

But you know, these people: they have a drive. There’s something in there that’s making them need it, and that’s the part that’s just completely alien to me.

And that’s why I say, even these people who are chubby, even these people who aren’t even fat, just have a bit of extra weight on them: I can’t help but wonder why they let themselves get like that, why they allow themselves that level of weight when they could easily just be normal weight.

It’s like, they’re not fat, but if they could be a normal weight, why would they let themselves get like that? And then you realise that it’s not a choice. You realise that there’s something wrong with them. You realise that there is an insatiable desire that they’re exercising and that it could get out of hand at any moment.

So even these slightly chubby people could end up obese, and usually, they do. They start off just with a bit of chub, and then they end up massive, and you know, that’s the thing. It’s an underlying, core issue that’s inside all of them that we can’t be dealing with.

All these chubby people who aren’t fat: they could easily just put down the knife and fork and lessen their intake and be like the body I would assume they want to be, which is just a normal, healthy weight.

But the only reason that they are that chubby, not even fat; the only reason they are that chubby rather than normal weight, rather than slim, is because they have an issue. It’s the only reason.

No one would want to look like that. No one would want to be that chubby and have that much weight, even if it’s not obesity, even if it’s not overweightedness, even, but just to have that ugliness of that fat.

No one would want that. The only reason it ends up like that is something they don’t want, a neurological disability that they have that could get out of hand at any moment, so there’s no point risking associating with that person.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘It’s funny how people immediately jump on the fact people like us are skinny yet don’t do the same for fat people, even when it’s worse for their health. It’s ok to tell skinny people to eat more, but it’s not okay to tell fat people to lose weight. The funny thing is, the opposite is probably true in the Eastern world.’

My friend replied, ‘Yes, exactly. I made the same observation. There’s a stigma for skinny people. Jokes are made about people not having any meat on them, and people get “concerned” about people being thin, and people get comments: “I’m worried about your weight”, “You look ever so thin” or “pale”, but never do you get comments like that about fat people, or such comments are rarely seen as serious medical concern, only bullying or piss-taking.

It’s like fat people are being protected. There is a bias for fatness and a stigma against people being thin.’ I replied, ‘I know the opposite is true in China and Japan for a fact, and the West threw a fit about it. I saw articles about it in a cynical way.’

My friend stated, ‘Yes. There’s a sympathy for fatness and a scorn for thin people. It’s like they all relate to being fat and not being able to help their weight and like it’s natural and unavoidable, but skinniness could only result from illness. That’s how they see it.’

At age 19, my friend stated:

‘Being fat is scary. How it happens is beyond me, totally impossible for me to imagine, against a fundamental axiom of my life and about my body. The sheer number of fat people and the pandering to fatness.’

My friend later stated, ‘The tan culture as well: that’s all part of it, the sun culture, the fat and eating culture. They’re all interlinked in this massive clump, the hating oneself and self-harm culture, the trusting others more than themselves culture.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘Type 2 diabetes is one of the stupidest diseases to ever exist, not necessarily because it’s caused by being fat but because it’s the body’s natural response to immense glucose intake.

It’s literally how the body deals with it. It switches priority to taking energy from fat, because it realises that there is too much fat in the body, so it desperately tries to use up that fat, and yet the fat people forbid it by eating more.

The body frantically tries to stop the intake by retaining glucose in the blood and letting it come out into the urine, which it never usually does, but the people just keep taking in more glucose, and the whole insulin framework gives up. The insulin receptors give up.

They decline to take in glucose, and they get conditioned to behave like that, such that even after a normal weight is achieved, they’ve remembered that behaviour [similar to long-term potentiation in neurotransmitter receptors for memory] and don’t take in as much glucose in the future. It permanently corrupts the entire insulin system, breaks it. It’s like their own body disagreeing with them.’

I then sent information on how fat cells secrete insulin-resisting substances^[4] and stated, ‘So it’s literally a natural mechanism in place to promote the acquisition of type 2 diabetes, because the body is trying to save its life, for crying out loud.

It’s trying to punish you for eating too much and make you stop. Only type 1 is the genuine disease, literally. Only type 1 is an actual malfunction of the body’s systems.’

At age 20, I stated:

‘Fat people would describe losing weight as putting in weight-loss measures; I describe it as slacking on eating.’ My friend replied, ‘Exactly. It’s a slacking. It’s an employing of less effort. It’s a laziness, laziness in terms of physical exertion.’

I continued, ‘They describe weight loss as a hurdle; I describe it as what happens when the hurdle is removed. I describe eating as the hurdle; They describe getting fat as what happens when the hurdle is removed.’

My friend replied, ‘Exactly. It’s the polar-opposite mechanism. When that happens, it becomes part of the social mindset.

That’s the definition of the social mindset now. Anything that I’m at an extreme on will be presented in people with the social mindset as an extreme but on the opposite end.‘

At age 20, I stated in a voice message, ‘Obesity: you rarely see that in the animal kingdom.‘

At age 21, my friend stated, ‘Oh what the fuck is comfort food? No food is comforting. It’s an inconvenience.‘

At age 21, I stated:

‘”Comfort food” is one of the cringiest things ever to say. Currently eating and struggling right now as I type that.

I hate needing to eat, and hate needing to time it around my activities, needing to make sure I don’t stay awake more than 4 hours after I last eat in the day, or I’ll be too hungry to sleep, or getting hungry right in the middle of some crucial work.

I just hate everything about it. All that matters is tolerability, weight gain and sufficient nutrition for survival. That’s it, or, should I say, likelihood of weight gain, since it basically never happens; maintaining the same weight, then.’

My friend replied, ‘That’s like in the wild.’ I replied, ‘Exactly.’ My friend continued, ‘Animals have 0 fear of obesity, because it’s not on the cards. The focus is only weight gain and hunting for food, or they die.’

I replied, ‘Animals will go out of their way to get fat just so they can store it for desperate times when they’ll inevitably lose it or hibernation periods. That’s what I need, in fact. I need more of that reserve for desperate times, such as infection.’ My friend replied, ‘Yes. I had a buffer at 60 kg.’

At age 21, I sent a news article titled ‘Why China is clamping down on mukbang [eating-for-entertainment] videos’^[6] and stated:

‘Do it. They’re disgusting. Never known such a disgusting concept, watching the thing I absolutely hate doing, that causes me so much strife, also with all the atrocious hygiene they’d have, just a fucking nightmare.’

My friend replied, ‘Never heard of it.’ I replied, ‘It’s been all over the Internet for about 2 years now.’

At age 21, my friend stated:

‘“It’s hard for them you know” means nothing to me. It causes no reflection, no consideration.’

My friend continued in a voice message, ‘Basically, it means absolutely nothing to me. When someone says, “But they have a tough time”, or “But it’s really hard for them”, it doesn’t add anything at all. It’s just like a buzz, like a fly that’s just buzzed back in my ear again, nudged itself closer to me and away again, just to be annoying.

It means absolutely nothing when they say that. It doesn’t make me reconsider or reflect on it at all. It just pisses me off, because I think of this whole debate. I think of the fact that they’re saying that.

The thing is, I could not feel sorry for people who are going out of their way. I can’t feel sorry for people who are going out of their way to do something and then claiming that they can’t stop, claiming that they can’t lose weight. I could just never feel sorry for people who have some positive symptom, and they can’t stop it. I could only take seriously when there is actually a real barrier in place, when it’s the opposite.

I could never feel sorry for people who are employing effort to do something and claiming they can’t stop. I can only relate to eating disorders that aren’t based on some emotional reason where they’re not eating or refusing to eat based on an emotional, social reason or appearance or aesthetic reason. I just can’t stand it. Totally unrelatable, can’t relate to them.

I can’t relate to people who are going out of their way, employing effort and claiming they can’t stop. I can only relate to people who have actual physical problems, you know, like literally, their swallowing mechanism doesn’t work.

References

1. ^ The Infographics Show (2019-05-19). "I Didn't Go Outside For 30 Days And This Is What Happened - Funny Challenge". YouTube.
2. ^ Dr. Phil (2019-10-23). "Man Says He’s Been Living In His Bed For The Last 5 Years, Doesn’t Even Get Up To Go To The Bathr..." YouTube.
3. ^ Cripps, Jessica (2018-10-13). "Woman claims she has drunk nothing but Pepsi since 1954". mirror. (Archive version from 28 September 2020.)
4. ^ "Lifestyle causes of type 2 diabetes". Wikipedia. 2020-10-20.
5. ^ What I've Learned (2018-01-23). "Why is it so Easy to be Thin in Japan?" YouTube.
6. ^ "Mukbang: Why is China clamping down on eating influencers?" BBC News. 2020-08-20. (Archive version from 29 August 2020.)

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