It's not about control!
Perceived incompetence and disordered eating among college students
“One study found that individuals who generally restricted their dietary intake ate more after they had “failed” on a laboratory task (Heatherton, Polivy, Herman, & Baumeister, 1993). Another study found that the same effect existed for women exhibiting symptoms of bulimia nervosa; in this study, the authors found that eating more after induced failure on a laboratory task served to improve the mood of those who had failed (Kisler & Corcoran). Both studies concluded that women overeat after failure as a means of coping with negative affect. Additionally, it appears that women with disordered eating are more likely to pay selective attention to their failure experiences (Mansfield & Wade, 2000). Clearly, the concept of failure also shares a relationship with immediate eating patterns.”
The concept of perceived incompetence is distinct from the related concepts of ineffectiveness or task-specific failure, because it refers to a sense of inadequacy in a specific life domain, as opposed to a broader global sense of inadequacy or more specific failure on a specific activity.
Disordered eating may reflect an attempt to cope with negative affect inherent in feeling incompetent; some researchers have found that engaging in such unhealthy weight loss behaviors serves to increase affect ([Kisler and Corcoran, 1997] and [Stice et al., 2000]).If someone is not able to perform satisfactorily, or feels incompetent, in one area of his or her life, that person might be more likely to engage in unhealthy weight loss strategies as a way to maintain adequate self-esteem. In fact, it is possible that self-esteem acts as a mediating variable in this equation; feeling incompetent may lead to a decrease in self-esteem, and engaging in “successful,” albeit unhealthy, weight loss may serve to increase self-esteem by allowing the individual to feel that he or she is competent in the eating domain.
For me, it is less about not being enough but about being “too much.”
Too verbal, taking up too much space, too demanding, too needy/not-needy, too competitive, too threatening, too strong-willed, expectations too high, too rigid, too controlling, too sensitive, too dispassionate, too imperfect, too much, too much, too much.
I feel shame in just being and am, therefore, always too much … even when there is hardly any physicality to ascribe. It’s like the schoolgirl feeling like she needs to dumb-down for the boys in the classroom … to feel more OK. It’s more of a perceived failure/inadequacy to sense that you are a “success” in an eating disorder … a discomfort quelled by further self-denial and self-punishment, which only makes you more “successful” … and launches the infamous vicious circle. But that’s just me.