A Spoonful of Nutella and Other Ways I Cope.
How to Live with Binge Eating, Postmenopause, and Diabetes — and Not Give Up
I’m 54. I have type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 2023. I have two daughters, ten and twelve, and an 87-year-old father who recently lost his wife — my mother. I also have a wonderful husband, who supports me in many ways — though sometimes he, too, runs out of patience.
I work at a university. In the humanities — in a system that sometimes forgets to pay us, and often forgets we exist. And somewhere between the last student consultation and a mandatory committee report, my body slid silently into postmenopause. My cycles disappeared, my sleep broke apart, and my patience thinned. Meanwhile, my appetite — for sugar, for salt, for comfort — got louder.
I eat — not only when I’m hungry, but also when I’m anxious, tired, resentful, restless, or simply trying to reclaim a moment of softness in a life that often feels like I’m bailing water from a sinking ship with a thimble.
Food offers something else — not a solution, but a pause. It doesn’t fix anything, but it takes the edge off just long enough to keep going.
And sometimes, I eat when I don’t even know what I’m feeling — just to create a moment where I’m in control of something, even if it’s just a spoonful of Nutella.
I also carry a solid extra weight. Enough that my physiatrist, during a spine check-up, looked me straight in the eye and said, “You need to lose weight.”
At least he wasn’t harsh about it. There was no judgment in his tone — just quiet, professional clarity, which somehow made it even harder to ignore.
Every time someone says that — even when I say it to myself — it lands like a red flag in front of a bull. I want to eat everything. Right now.
Somewhere deep in my lizard brain, food is still scarce. It’s an emergency. Nonsense. Food is everywhere. In clothing stores. At the pediatrician’s office. Even at the dentist’s.
Why are there chocolates in a dentist’s waiting room?
Is it a trap? Do dentists secretly want us to fail — or are they, in some twisted way, testing us? Watching quietly to see who eats the chocolate and who resists?
When I binge, it’s not because I’ve lost control — it’s because I’ve been holding it for too long.
It often starts with a small mistake at work: a forgotten agreement, a misread task, a missed detail. In the moment, I respond calmly, professionally. Sometimes I’m even surprised — Oh, did I really miss that? That’s unlike me.
I move on. But later, after the kids have gone to bed, something starts whispering. It’s not a dramatic voice, but it’s insistent.
You weren’t enough today. You forgot. You didn’t manage it all. You never really do.
I don’t always want to cry. I don’t even want to react. I just want the noise to stop. And food works.
For five minutes, it works.
Diabetes doesn’t care about five minutes of relief. It counts and remembers, tracks, charts and calculates.
Suddenly, nothing is neutral. A peach becomes a sugar risk. A slice of bread becomes a moral test. A single cookie becomes a question: Do you want health or comfort?
And sometimes, I answer: Right now? Comfort, please.
I’m tired of advice. Tired of wellness language. Tired of turning every bodily need into a decision tree. Some days, I don’t want to optimize or adjust. I just want to feel okay without having to earn it.
This is not a transformation story. I’m not writing to offer solutions or to reach a goal.
I’m writing because I need space that isn’t a task list. A place where I’m not a patient, a teacher, a mother, a daughter, a resource.
If you’ve ever stood in front of the fridge, aware of what you’re doing and doing it anyway — you already understand.
This is not a comeback.
It’s not a breakdown.
It’s just me — still climbing.
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