Family Secrets

More apologies! A week between posts! School is keeping me busy, but only one month left.


So I survived the week... Monday-Thursday consuming the bare minimum of allowed daily "points", per his restrictions. Thursday was an interesting day. My brother being home from university for the week, I started to fill him in on most of these problems. And I discussed getting "in the zone", feeling out of control, not being able to stop, and it being such a high to eat food, but then it's followed by such a crash, and all that foolishness that goes along with this. At one point he started to laugh. Why was this funny to him? What he said next shocked me, and still shocks me. HE DOES IT TOO. What? This is a man who is a varsity athlete at his university, this doesn't make any sense. But he went on to say how he was studying eating disorders in class and when they discussed binge eating and compulsive eating, he realized he fit into these categories. He said how when he is out drinking with his friends he longs to be home eating, getting the high through food rather than alcohol like his friends.

Then he said about last weekend when he came home drunk and ate my DQ. When he got home, he went on a binge and ate himself to sleep. He didn't even remember eating the TP until I asked him about it, then it all came back to him. So he was just as upset as I had been because he knew it wasn't a drunken eating fest when he was home, but another moment of losing control, and not even remembering it. That's scary stuff, and I can't believe my own brother does this. He is good at hiding it and he is obsessive about eating healthily (when he's not binging apparently), and will even criticize others for not eating right. And I had no idea.

His weaknesses are similar to mine, anything sweet, desert type things, he identified PB as his #1 vice (weird), anything fried/junky (I never usually binge/overeat real food, just desert type things), etc. Basically anything goes for him. So this isn't just something that affects women, my brother is a victim as well. And I have had other men email me through this blog as well who feel the shame of hiding this dirty little secrets.

We made a deal to call each other when the urge strikes to talk it through (although I didn't take him up on this this weekend - see next post). I do feel good having discussed this with him and am glad to have someone else who understands this.

Who do you turn to for support?

xo *N