Eating as a Stim? /Breaking bad Stims?

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Two part question:

1. Can eating be a stim? A woman in my group has a daughter who eats 24/7 if allowed. She is asperger, not LFA, 23 years old.

So it is not like Prader- Willis, etc. She simply cannot stop eating. It's worse than bulimia and not Compulsive because she never stops and is never full. Yes, she does vomit or works out, etc to try to counter it, but is all messed up with appetite.

Has anyone here expereinced wide eating distubances?

This is scary to me because when I was a child I had huge food problems. I could eat like 5 foods. Then I got into chewing gum for hours and hours.......insane, really.

Has anyone else had "Oral Stims?"

2. Which brings me to my second question- can you break a dangerous stim? If you pick at a sore or bang your head?

How does one break a bad stim????

I don't know if I would say in my case its a stim but I have always had trouble with emotional eating since I was 11. Now that I know the issues of why I ate for comfort for so many years.. the bigger challenge is, breaking the habit. Once I can conquer that, then I will definitely have beat it all! But a stim? Hard to say. In my case anyway... but then again if I had eaten for comfort (more to not face my feeling)... maybe. Again hard to say.

I've had issues with emotional eating, binge eating. I used to chew a pack of gum at a time (the entire pack in my mouth) for maybe 30 minutes, spit it out and possible chew another pack. I don't really have any advice except that I was overweight and was tired of it so I started exercising and counting calories. I still struggle with eating sometimes, but after years of practice I manage pretty well.

I don't know if it is a stim, I certainly love to eat and have difficulties stopping, don't feel when i am full

I eat as a stim.
I eat because what my clinical psychologist and I have discovered as anxiety attacks, and when I feel like I have had waaaay too much caffeine, but I haven't had ANY, then that is adrenaline rushing through my body, and that provokes an anxiety attack. When, at this point, I EAT, it goes away. I am now learning that it will also go away if I DON'T eat. Wow, cool, huh?

I used to call myself a bulimic amnesiac. That I stuff myself then forget to throw up. (rimshot) It is funny and takes people by surprise. But really, I stim to soothe and comfort myself. Now, instead of eating candy, I am eating dried fruit. And water. I still don't feel 'full' but when I can't swallow anything more, at least I am stuffed with a good source of fiber.

Merle

I eat, because I love food. :O)

I loathe exercise, so eating (or worse, smoking) is one of my major self-regulatory activities. I grew up eating very narrow range of foods, and am still this way (just that the specific few foods shift over the years)-mostly like sweets, have no ability to force self to eat things that don't appeal to my senses.

I eat & smoke more when things are upsetting in my life, such as when I'm single & have no source for physical affection (don't intend to turn this into a love & dating post, but it's an influential factor). I consume "more than I want to" (on a conscious level) when alone for too long, I get skin hunger or whatever one wants to call it-craving for physical, comforting, pleasing contact from someone. I have the thought of "I'd rather be doing this (hugging, for instance)"-but have no one with whom to do that, so all I can do to/for myself is eat some more (even though it makes me feel ill & fails to meet my needs).

Along these lines, I keep seeing tv ad that I think is really messed up & sends wrong message: "Like being hugged from the inside" is tag line for Quizno's sandwich. Have no taste for such types of food, so ad doesn't affect my purchasing behavior-but just reading that slogan makes me mad. Implicitly equating food with love: one can't buy love, but one can buy their sandwich instead-as if that's any kind of substitute for human relationship/affiliation/interaction (assuming one has any interest in being around any other person).

LOL, "being hugged from the inside"! I remember a story from Weight Watchers where one of the women who had lost the weight and maintained it off 's kid was playing at a neighbors. Evidently he skidded on some gravel and skinned his knee and limped up and the neighbor lady washed it off and put on some neosporin and a bandaid. She also handed him a cookie and said 'here, this will make you feel better" and here was this kid, raised to see food as nourishment only holding the cookie to his knee, asking "when is it going to stop hurting??"

I remember feeling 'good' in a slender body, but who needs to fight off the boys and men all the time? Put on 40 or 80 lbs and they don't undress you with their eyes anymore, believe me!

Merle

Yes, I read your anecdote of how someone who thought they'd surmounted the struggle then passed it on to her child, unwittingly. Have heard/read many similar sorts of things happen to people near & far. Is a primal thing to seek bodily consolation & nourishment, and they get terribly mixed up (on natural, inherent level of humans being animals with needs, but also due to the broader cultural habits we create).

That this was so blatant, spelled right out, kinda' shocked me-that they'd say flat out: here's this food, it'll make you feel loved, at least physically.

So many areas of advertising play off pairing of these issues, but this particular one was a new wrinkle to me, 'cause it's not diet product nor health food, not clothing nor cosmetics-yet is marketed as physical, visceral experience akin to receiving a hug. That just seems like such a huge associative/conceptual stretch (even more so than all the other consumer items sold with a similar mindset/attitude).

Not to mention, makes me feel manipulated & lied to (no matter that I don't believe this ad-I am someone who'd like a hug from the outside, thank you very much) just a little bit more than the accumulated litany of ads I notice (mutter about & then disregard) already...

I think technically, for some people, eating could be considered a stim, if it's done for the same reasons most others would do the more stereotypical stims. But there are certainly other reasons that would cause someone to eat excessively, whether it be compulsive, boredom, emotional eating, high metabolism, hormonal imbalances, or any number of things. It's really an individual thing as to whether or not it's a stim, if you ask me.

Speaking for myself, I've eaten out of boredom and to relieve stress in the past. These days, there isn't a day that goes by where I don't eat at least half a bag of chocolate. Sometimes I polish off a whole bag. The main reason why I do it is simply because it tastes so good and once I start, I can't stop; chocolate isn't something I can do in moderation. I've never considered whether this could be a stim or not.

As for your second question, what I find works for me sometimes is to substitute a non-harmful stim for a harmful one. I personally have a lot of stims, so if one doesn't work for me or becomes harmful, I'll try using one of my other many stims to get the same calming effect.