(TLDR in the end; it's going to be a long post with a trigger warning of addiction.)
I used to be a very active member of this community for some time, until the incident. I got banned for a week from commenting to posts in the sub because I told someone that there was no such a thing as food addiction. I tried to understand why I was banned(because food addiction is not recognized as addiction or treated by medical professions in my country or rest of the europe; I saw it as simply a difference of opinions and was shocked at being banned because of this.) but received a very rude response from the mod I was talking, I also got rude in return and that resulted as me getting banned from also messaging the mods for 30 days. I was so-sooooooo mad. I immediately unsubbed and I was telling about this to all the people around me; I was stuck between two choices: 1. try to gather all the scientific evidence against food as addiction and make a post to tell the mods to "f off" and do it in the rudest way possible; which would probably result as me getting banned from reddit as a whole 2. to just ignore what happened and lurk in the sub without commenting anything even after my ban was lifted.
I don't have anyone around me who understands the experience of being fat or the struggle of attempting thousand times to lose weight as much as people in this sub do. A huge part of it comes from actively engaging with people so lurking wasn't an option for me. I decided to be petty and go for option 1. For a few days, I did and I've found what I wanted. It's so uncanny that you can find statistics and scientific reports that supports your claim in a few dedicated hours. I've found and saved them, I also watched yt videos of people refusing that food can be an addiction. But after that, I got sidetracked with my responsibilities in my grad school and experienced such a big burn out that I deleted all my social media accounts, instagram, reddit, twitter; everything.
After a few weeks, I felt better and returned back to instagram but not to the others. I forgot about my petty solution but I guess youtube didn't forget my endless research and recommended me a video edited with a part of Gabor Mate's speech. I know him from his work on ADHD(something I suspect in myself but not diagnosed) so I trust him a lot. I clicked on the video thinking it would support me. The voice didnt say anything about food addiction but the person who edited the video put people eating to the video; that pissed me off. Gabor Mate didn't say anything about food, why bring that up? In the description box, the poster said that Gabor Mate talks in detail about addiction in his book "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts". I immediately downloaded the book with this evil gleam in my eyes, thinking that it would prove my point and he's a doctor so it'd have been another proof for me. The first part of the book was about people with drug and alcohol addiction, the things he has seen when he was working as a doctor in a facility. I felt compassion rise in me as I read it but the whole time I was thinking "what they are going through is horrible but it proves my point: how can their problem can be compared to what fat people like myself live?" Until, he started talking about his own, seemingly unharmful addiction: Buying concert records. To say that I was shocked would be the understatement of the century. The more he talked about what seperates a hobby, a passion from an addiction the worse I felt. The post is already too long, I won't bore you guys with the countless sentences I highlighted but I don't know how to explain what I felt.
I still haven't finish the book, the heavy feeling on my stomach won't let me. It's nearly 2 am at where I am living right now, I'm supposed to be sleeping because I have work tomorrow. But despite the fact that I don't really think that I had a lasting effect on anyone (I used to comment here a lot, I'm %100 sure that I said "food addiction doesnt exist" a lot of times before I got banned) because I'm just an insignificant stranger behind a screen after all; I can't shake this guilt that maybe someone who was feeling lost, trying to find support and understanding wrote to this sub and I made them feel like their addiction wasn't real. I can't shake this feeling enough to go to sleep so I opened a new account to make this post: I apologise. I'm so sorry if you came to this sub to search for answers and got the "food addiction doesnt exist" comment from me. I'm sorry if you read it written as a reply to someone else and thought about it. I'm truly sorry. I also owe myself a lot of apologies, for not seeing my 13 hours average screen time or endless binges on whatever food I had at home or countless empty notebooks that I've bought or the unread books I keep buying as what they are. I'm sorry for not seeing it sooner; maybe I'd have solved them much before if I did.
TLDR: I started to read/watch stuff to prove that food addiction doesnt exist; figured out the exact opposite and now my conscience wont let me sleep so I came to apologize.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/11fkiv3/an_apology/
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