I’ve had a pretty turbulent time when it comes to my relationship with food, and one of the things that’s been a constant in my life is a slow, steady and invisible self-harm – comfort eating.
If I look back at my younger years, especially during my time in secondary school where I was horrendously bullied for the entire time by both other pupils and certain teachers as well.
I often used food to comfort myself because I didn’t have the emotional maturity or understanding to be able to talk openly about the bullying that I endured day after day, I kept diaries where I wrote things down, but talking openly about the pain, stress and isolation? Nope, I just didn’t.
My home life was also equally chaotic and I never really felt settled or secure because there were often random people either in our home or knocking on the door. At the time I thought these people were my stepdad’s friends but with the glory of reflection, conversation and hindsight now I’m an adult, it’s clear that these were people were not friends, but people picking up whatever drugs were being dealt by my stepdad at the time, there was often all kinds of evidence and paraphernalia around the house that I was naïve to and oblivious about, but my 41 year old brain now understands exactly what younger Toby saw back then.
By the way, this is the first time I’ve actually talked openly about this, about my upbringing/childhood but it’s something I experienced and compartmentalised for years until I started evaluating things and realising that it wasn’t a normal thing to be around and was very likely to be unsafe too – I will talk more about this in the future. But to steer myself back onto topic because I know that my AuDHD brain can go off topic without ever coming back to land and address the actual thing I wanted to talk about…
I never felt like I had any control of my surroundings, the people in my house, the bullying – but the one thing I could make choices about, which gave me the illusion of comfort, was food, seeking out things that I could control and choose, something that was mine and something that I knew would give me a temporary distraction from how I really felt.
As I proceeded through secondary school, my weight carried on rising and rising, untethered like an helium balloon, I’d eat and snack to distract myself from the pain and chaotic feelings. I’d bunk off of school by staying on the bus that took me in until it got to the city centre and would have already had breakfast at this point, usually much more than I needed to have but again, I was “in control”.
Once I got in the city centre I’d find more food, pastries from the Baker’s Oven (I think these eventually became Greggs), then maybe crisps and sweets from a newsagents, I’d then probably have lunch an hour or so later and have a big bread roll stuffed with filling, sometimes even two of them, with crisps and a fizzy drink, after this I’d head to the central library and used the internet on the public computers in there, this was in the late nineties, I’d just look up computer game things, or using the very early social network that existed back then called Uboot – which was a English and German social media site to talk to people that probably shouldn’t have been talking to me due to my age.
Eventually I planned to get on the right bus to get me home that would be the same one that would pick me up from school so it wouldn’t be obvious or spotted when I got home. Food became a comfort, a crutch, an ultimately a curse. After leaving school I started working and this is when I discovered the other end of the food control spectrum and became obsessed with losing weight, in really unhealthy ways and creating a relationship with food that was even more controlled but chaotic, I lost 6 stone in a number of months and at the time I celebrated this and also the recognition and congratulatory word from friends and family drove me further into controlling my eating, or lack thereof.
I was slowly able to remove those disordered eating habits over time, but again, the control element became comfort eating which then became self-loathing and then fixation on weight and losing weight – and repeat, repeat, repeat.
Over the last couple of years I’ve had a few changes to my health and some of these are definitely weight related, also for the best part of 5 years I had been living with undiagnosed (at the time) severe sleep apnoea, diagnosed in August 2025, I recently started using a CPAP machine and it’s really helped me with energy levels and tiredness, and also made me realise what I’ve been doing over the last 5 years because of this.
Being constantly tired and lethargic all of the time meant that I was always chasing for energy – comfort foods, things with lots of fat, salt and sugar – and they’d help me pull through part of the day but would always lead me into a massive crash afterwards, usually ending up with falling asleep during watching tv, cinema trips, etc – a horrid cycle of low energy, craving things to give me energy that doesn’t last and then burning out.
I also went through some incredible hard things in 2025 (I will be going a recap on this very soon) and this also reinforced the comfort eating aspect because again it became the one thing I could control, but all I was controlling was a slow and specific kind of self harm, eating myself to death.
In October I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic and this was another wake up call that I was really not doing well – I started CPAP in December and also attend regular group meetings to help me try to reverse my pre-diabetic status and it’s really made me look at my relationship with food, and because of the CPAP therapy, I’m not constantly tired and chasing quick energy fixes and I’m being more considered about what I’m eating and how much and it’s really helping me.
I’ve lost some weight already, slowly but it’s going down and I’m hopeful that this will continue going forward, I have considered things like weight-loss injections but I think I’m afraid of them, maybe I should talk to someone qualified to see if they might be suitable and supportive in my health journey.
But as of today, I’m looking forward to relearning my relationship with food and learning to be more aware of what my body needs (turns out it needed sleep!) and how to not go too far into controlled patterns of eating, I feel truly positive about this.
