I have Google Alerts for the terms “compulsive eating”, “overeating” and other similar keywords set up on my email. If you’re not familiar with Google Alerts, you set them up for any phrase or word to be emailed the top news stories and articles on those topics every day. It’s interesting for me as a compulsive eating coach and someone who has healed my own binge eating and overeating, to see what the world is saying about the topic. Mainly, I’m usually amazed by how most articles on compulsive eating are essentially written as such:

But what if they’ll notice I’ve gained weight? What if will they think when they see I’m still not thin. They’ll know I don’t have it all together if they see that I’m struggling with my weight.

Many of us are very afraid other people noticing our extra weight. We’re afraid they’ll notice we gained some, we’re afraid they’ll notice we haven’t lost any, or we’re just afraid they’ll notice we’re not thin. We are afraid not just about others noticing, but of them silently judging, or, even worse, commenting on it. We may be afraid, too, of the reactions of competitive people who might get some twisted satisfaction out of seeing us “fail” in regards to our weight.

Many of us who have struggled with compulsive eating and weight have a pretty mean voice in our heads that is either ever-present, or comes out to take swings when the scale moves up or we ate that donut. It might be slightly critical or judgmental, or it might be flat-out abusive. The voice can differ from person to person, but the common denominator for most of us is that whatever the precise kinds of things we say to ourselves, the voice is anything but loving.