You've got to hand it to Morrissey - not that the grand old master of fop ever had an eating disorder - but that he could express so well the attitude I hold towards something which consumed far too many years of my life.

As someone who has in the past practiced a rather severe form of personal historical revision ie. the deletion of all painful memories so as to believe themselves clean and white and pure, I very conveniently often forget that I ever had an eating disorder. They're rather embarrassing you see. Evidence of my failings, my inability to control my sharp and shameful secret.

Compulsive Eating - the uncontrollable behaviour of consuming enormous amounts of food in a short space of time in an attempt to stifle panic and pain.

There are a number of different kinds of eating disorders. Some people have just one, others have combinations of them. All are very destructive behaviours designed to unconsiously hurt oneself due to feelings of unworthiness.

Unlike anorexia, where you starve yourself in an attempt to control unwanted feelings, or bulimia, where you are binge eat then bring it all back up again and therefore remain 'normal looking' on the outside, compulsive eating leaves you just plain fat and ashamed. Not that there's anything wrong carrying fat around in this world, except that in this world's dominant paradigm - there completely is! To be fat is to be generally humiliated and be seen as less of a person.

Not that I am recommending either anorexia or bulimia to anyone - they are both hideous, life-threatening behaviours that crush a person's self-esteem and often their will to live.

Compulsive Eating, however, has its own particular shames. The shame of being able to scoff incredible amounts of food in record time. The shame of eating stuff that you wouldn't feed your dog but you are so desperate to devour that you do. The shame of then looking at your huge self in the mirror and hating desperately what you see.

The packs of meat pies, the packets of biscuits, the whole loaves of bread smothered in butter and honey and peanut paste, the tubs of ice-cream devoured and replaced so that no one knew that they went missing in the first place.

The replacement shop. Yes, I remember it well, sneaking down to the local supermarket to replace all the things that I'd eaten from the cupboard so that no one would know that I could eat such huge amounts of food.

I was out of control.

People who compulsively overeat ARE out of control.

LAYING BLAME

No one is to blame.

We are all to blame.

Society is to blame.

Unless you're a zen master or you have developed an absolute formula as to why things happen as they do, it is often hard to explain why one develops an eating disorder.

Yes, in some cases, the triggers are specific. Child Abuse in all its forms cause many people to turn to food later in their lives.

In my case however it just happened. There was no one defining factor that started the ball rolling. I always ate a lot, even as a little kid - there is a picture of me sitting on the loungeroom floor eating a packet of jelly crystals that had been spilt on the floor. I remember eating oxo cubes thinking it was chocolate - if it looked even remotely like food, I was into it in a big way.

Sure, things encouraged my behaviour. As I grew up, my father would call me fat and joke about it, as would my sister - but neither were aware of the impact of this on me and had they have known, they would not have persisted.

By 14, I was not eating with the rest of my family - I was microwaving my own vegetables. They had no idea - they just thought it was what young teenage girls did.

No one had any idea - not my family nor I. My body bloomed and I started to get curves I just didn't understand them - what were these hips about anyway? I remember standing in front of the mirror looking at my body and thinking - how the hell am I going to be a famous tennis player with breasts like these!

Looking back at photos, I swung from bloody twiggy to major chubster. I didn't know the official names back then. All I could see was the pear-shaped butt that the universe had so kindly chosen to bestow upon me.

I was trying to control what was out of my control.

I would be on my way to university fantasising about what I'd eat as soon as I got there - it would be the only thing on my mind 'I have to eat I have to eat'. I would get to uni and buy something straight away and eat it.

Then, one day, before going out with some guy, I was flipping thru a MODE magazine - god the models looked good, all thin and pretty. I don't know why, but I went into the bathroom and threw up. This started a pattern for a couple of years. So now I had bulimia too - but I must admit, I was never a very successful bulimic - apparently some women who do it find it very easy to throw up food and they can do it with ease - for me, it was hard. There is nothing worse than being a failed bulimic. Not only do you participate in the shameful behaviour of throwing up in secret, but you can't even work out how to do it successfully enough to throw off the kilos. Shocking stuff. So I gave that up after a couple of years.

The thing with compulsive eating for me was that after I'd do this huge binge, you reach this place where enough is enough. You'd lie down, absolutely unable to eat another thing. And then you get to the COOL PLACE. The cool place is that space where you know that as you can't get any worse, the ONLY WAY IS UP. This is the eating addicts haven when they momentarily have the belief that from now on they will be different - they will never again follow this pattern of behaviour. And at that moment you make the choice NEVER to binge again. You will be healthy. You will eat LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. And for two or three days you may actually believe that you're almost normal. Now, as soon as you get this feeling, I can guarantee you that things'll start to go wrong. By the fourth day, you are panicking again. And you continue to panic until you just can't handle it anymore and you have to eat and eat until you feel so completely disgusted in yourself that you have effectively deflected any emotional pain into the form of phsycial disgust.

Its a lot easier to be disgusted about your phsycial body than it is to face your pain.

BUT....at some point in your life - you do it.

The clearest I can get to a point at which when I started to heal was one day when I was at work and I was listening to yet another friends' problem on the phone and counselling her. And all of a sudden I thought ot myself - I am sick of solving everyone else's problems. I need to concentrate this energy into solving my own. And from that moment, a very slow, often painful but at the same time completely liberating journey began - where I began to draw my focus in on myself rather than project my care onto others - I began to give just little bits of it to myself. It took years - I continued to have my icecream binges for a while there - but I was in general starting to look at myself and not give myself quite the hard time as I had before.

PART 2 - DEALING WITH FEELINGS - COMING NEXT MONTH

- Neriman Kemal

For more information on Compulsive Eating and other Eating Disorders, check out the following websites -

Mirasol Something Fishy ANRED Inc.

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