Eating disorders are more than the stereotype often reinforced during this week.

It’s eating disorder awareness week,  and having suffered from an eating disorder myself I always like to acknowledge it in some way.  To be honest this year inspiration is running thin. What with my current job destroying my mental health and meaning those eating disordered thoughts are creeping back in and this ME flare up which is relentless could god forbid I could just phone up and call in sick when I’m still climbing. That internalised guilt is real as well as internalised ableism.

Anywho on with the post!

I’ve been in the eating disorder recovery community for years, own recovery My own recovery starting in the summer/autumn of 2013. I’ve been through many a EDAW and had to deal with those before and after pictures. Before I knew better, I may have even participated in this trend myself.

But I feel as though these pictures, this type of awareness misses the point. It caters to the middle class white skeletal female version of what an eating disorder is. It caters to and perpetuates the stereotype which is not at all relatable or a representative depiction of eating disorders  as a whole.

This image and reinforcement ignores the fact that anorexia isn’t the only eating disorder, as well as that anyone can get an eating disorder. Anyone of any race, size, socio-economic background.

Most dangerously these pictures continue the misconception that an eating disorder is just about weight. This is damaging on all counts but most importantly on the likelihood of and the success of treatment for the disorder. I know myself, only a tiny part of my eating disorder journey was spent underweight and less of that was spent emaciated. I did have anorexia and further through my recovery compulsive exercise and orthorexia but this isn’t the case for the majority of eating disorder sufferers. Many more have bulimia, binge eating disorder or OSFED who may never become underweight or may be overweight. This misconception is also damaging for those who are underweight or who will in the future end up under weight. It can make everyone think they’re recovered when ED recovery is about so much more than weight restoration. An eating disorder is a mental illness, thus to recover the mind needs to recover and this can often take years.

Instead of posting images that focus on weight I believe we should take weight out of the equation and think about warning signs and symptoms of an eating disorder instead.

These can include:

• Being preoccupied with weight/shape
• Being preoccupied with food
• Denying themselves food
• Secrecy
• Going to the bathroom straight after a meal
• Constantly making excuses as to why they’re not eating
• Not eating in public
• Hiding food
• Becoming withdrawn
• Wearing different clothing than usual – i.e more baggy
• Overexercising or exercising with the wrong motivations in mind.
• Hoarding food
• Taking laxatives/diuretics

There are many others, but these are just a few from the top of my head.  I personally use a traffic light system to maintain my own recovery. Green – alls good. Amber – I’m showing a few personal warning signs but not really acting on them. Red – I’m acting on my disordered thoughts. I find this really helps me keep check on myself.

I hope this helps raise some awareness and explain some of the issues with focusing on just one aspect of a very complex set of mental illnesses!

Binging again?

Guess who’s back, back again.

Me of course. I always come back in the end.

Anyway today I want to write about binging, and more specifically the fact that I am binging again and what it is like to relapse into behaviours after recovery.

So over the summer I had a chronic illness flare up and lost weight. To below my set point and so of course my body is reacting. Leading to be now reactive eating/binging. Whatever you want to call it it is not pleasent and it does mess with my mood and make me even more bloated than usual. Which yes is possible. I’ve tried not having junk food around and turns out I then move towards binging on healthy food which makes me feel horrendously sicky the next day. Not ideal. And of course it’s cheaper to binge on bourbons than it is on Dates, Nakd bars and PB.

Binging was never a main eating disorder behaviour of mine. I did binge. When I was gaining weight in recovery an when I was really overexercisisng. But it’s never something I’ve turned to for emotional reasons or boredam. Or atleast I don’t think so. And that aspect of it I think is even worse and makes this whole fiasco more confusing. I’m engaging in an unhealthy behaviour, I have no control over myself with regards to food in the evenings and I have no idea why. There’s no reason for me to do it so why do I do it?

That’s the question that plays in my head every night after I’ve binged. Why? My life is better than it’s ever been. I have friends, I have drama, I have inapendence. The only hang ups I have with life right now are the fact that I’m doing a degree I don’t love and the need for a job or volenteering or something but being so anxious that these things are prevented in a variety of ways.

I have no reason to binge so why? And why can’t I stop myself or control myself? Sometimes it’s like there’s a devil on y shoulder egging me on. Telling me to carry on. Most of the time there’s nothing, no conflic between the rational me and that devil on my shoulder. I just do it because I’m fixated on food and I can’t control myself. I can’t help myself. I need to do something, but I don’t know what. I need to stop it because it’s a problem. It doesn’t make me feel good. Mentally or physically in so many ways.

The question is what? I am in a situation I have never really had to deal with to a large extent before and I’m stuck and desperate to change this.

 

Binge eating or does my body really need it?

The last few days I’ve been suffering eventually uncontrollobale urges to eat continuously. Or so it feels.

I don’t even know why. And it makes me feel mentally so horrible. Like I’m out of control.Because I am.

FAT  Because I am. Like I never was anorexic because I’m not controlled enough and I never have been. It just makes me feel so bad. And makesme want to give up so much. Makes me want to go back to starvation becausthat way 500 calories or 250 calories preferably will be the only option. The option to binge won’t be there. I won’t put myself in situations where I may binge and I will always be armed with gum and diet coke.

Most of all I’ll be in control once more.Notthis out ofof control whale. This BINGE EATER  I’m convinced into. This Binge eater who hates herself even more now she’s eating.

Starving has always been so much easier. The easyway out of all my problems. The lack of love I get from my family, the loneliness I feel from that and only having one friend. The worthlessness I feel from neverbeing clever enough at school and never getting good enough grades at college.

None of that mattered  when I was starving…. and now it overwhelmes.

The Inner Fight For Recovery.

Recovery from an eating disorder really is a fight. The battle within to overcome that demon inside and discovering happyness. 

After struggling for a few weeks, I realised… time to pick myself back before I end up physically sick as well as mentally. I actuall ate lunch yesturday. Thing is I had 2600 calories and all I feel is overwhelming guilt. Overwhelming guilt because of the out of control, fat. obease pig I will become.

My dad rescued three of the easter eggs yeturday. I ate one; that alone triggered me into giving thr large eggs to my brothers. I can’t be associated with chocolate. It can’t be mine. I’m too fat… too out of control. The fear chocolate creates is immense. Each time I take a bite I can’t stop… especially when it’s my chocolate. In my room.  I ate three cream eggs earlier and I know my calorie count isn’t drastically over but…. THREE CREAM EGGS! This is why chocolate scares me because I am out of control when it’s near.  I am so exhausted and so stressed sometimes reaching for that chocolate is the only solution. This is where my irrational fear of it stems from. The binge that often occurs when it’s around. 

Maybe the reason my mind is still so disordered is because I never took full responsibility for my recovery and I never recived the correct help. Since reaching a more healthy weight any time I was under my calorie goal it was justified in my mind with “Oh it’s only one day”. This attitude is not a good one, nor is it healthy. It’s the attitude that lets the disorder in. The excuse that invited it back.

1900 one day, you want to get lower and lower and lower. The lower you get, the sicker you get. The skinnier you get, the skinnier you want to be. You aim become lowest possible intake, skinniest possible body. The untimate goal is to be empty. 0 calories, 0lb but in reality you know you’ll be dead then. It doesn’t seem to bother you however. You think your the exception. At 20lb you’ll still be fat. When in the depths of an eating disorder the idea of death never occurs to you. It’s just never ending. Each goal is nevrer enough, upon reaching each goal you set another and another and another until eventually uou are so lost that you don’t even recognise yourself anymore.

This is why I need to be strict with myself. However much I am going to hate it and however much my eating disorder will scream at me and hate me for it. I will never recover calorie counting and justifying being low on calories “just once” or skipping lunch “just once” It never is “just once”. That “just once” excuse end up being for days, weeks, months on end. The “just once” excuse can soon send everything spiriling out of control.

This whole being strict thing is unfortunatly easier said than done. I want to feel free. Eat what I want when I want. But either my ED rejects that or it gets entangles with it and I end up restricting. I hate feeling like I have to eat because “I’m low on calories” almost as much as I hate eating when I’ve had “plenty of calories”. With my eating disorder negotiation is near impossible. If I eat one cream egg I may aswell eat the rest because I’ve failed now. It’s not even like I have to gain, this in itself causes more problems. Previously being over 2000 calories was not as much the end of the world as it is now becuase I HAD TO GAIN and I used that excuse to help me through the initial stage of recovery. 

So yes. I need to be prepared for a long, hard journey ahead. The journey to recovery. The fight for my life back. Freedom from my eating disorder. I have acknowledge the problem and take action or I’ll be stuck in ED hell for life. Recovery is possible. Not easy but possible. And as Toby Mac sings. When you fall, you get back up again.