Compulsive Overeating Vs Instint

Stream of consciousness....

Do I suffer from compulsive overeating or an instinct to eat in a excess food environment? Neither? Both? What is the difference? Or is this excess hunger? Or just a craving? Is there a test to see which? Does it make a difference? Do any of these actually exist or is it all in my head because I am just a low willpower fat lazy slob?

If you think the later go away now.  There is nothing for you here.

How could one separate a compulsion from an instinct? Compulsion is something which may be learned, or developed at an early age, and firmly imprinted on the brain, but can be unlearned. It resides in the automatic, emotional, or the unconscious, unaware part of the brain, first developed, not in the recall part. Instinct is something we are born with, and develops and is strengthen from there. There has always been a few fat people in most populations. As a child, I was the most grossly obese child in a school of 700. But instinct is generally across a species or a breed. Nothing here yet.

Did I make a unconscious decision to overeat at some young age? Was that part of me trying to please a parent or someone with my ability to consume as part of security, attachment, where I said in my young mind, "I can eat all of that if you want me to." Mother was good at training animals, did she train me to eat? She was a lazy trainer, if she knew an "easy" way, she would use it.

In a visualisation, Mother and an Aunt speak, saying "sprinkle a bit of sugar on their food, and they will eat every bit of it. There is also a lot of competition between myself, sister, and 3 other cousins over eating, and between my mother and those aunts of getting us kids to eat up the food. There was 5 of us, I was the youngest, and there was just 20 months between the oldest and myself. 4 of 5 have weight issues and the other one was always on a diet. Could it be that it was all a result of a parental competition that I never corrected and it is all just imprinting on to the automatic response part of the brain? Of course, this would need to be combined with a physiology to handle excess food, which apparently I have.

Perhaps the first step in the test is to leave food on the plate at every meal. No more clean plates. That has not happened in years, except for some thing that really tasted bad.

I am powerless of this compulsion, instinct, craving or what ever it is.