weak as a fat little kitty

At the start of this process I was having real trouble separating thoughts from emotions. I remember writing in my diary at one point, "Is the urge to binge a thought?" I couldn't quite work it out. I understand that in order to begin to feel differently about myself or my circumstances, I need to begin by consciously thinking differently. However if my head-space seems like an echoey cavern while my heart is full of pain, or my stomach is full of screaming, how do I deal with it?

It seems the answer is time. How boring eh. :)

When you start becoming conscious of how your disordered desires are linked to your disordered thinking, then you expect to be able to form automatic links that explain everything away quickly. It only works like that part of the time. The rest of the time you feel things and you're not sure why.

So I've had this recurring issue where directly after Group Therapy or a session with a therapist in the clinic, I get the urge to binge. It's strange - just after receiving a veritable truckload of encouragement and support, you want to get down to the chipper quicksmart and stuff in a burger. This has been baffling me since the start of the journey. Then, finally, I understood why this week.

A few days ago I had a session with a clinical nutritionist who specialises in eating disorders. She herself is recovered from Eating Distress. It was deeply helpful. (Some other day I will post up her advice for the healthiest way for the body to eat.) However it was also very emotional, because she understood. She got it. She'd been there. I left tearful, but armed with a lot of helpful information, and feeling very supported and motivated. And then I was struck with the overwhelming urge to binge.

Why?

Because the session allowed me to be vulnerable, and being vulnerable makes me feel fragile. And feeling fragile makes me look around for something that will make me feel strong. Food, while eating it for emotional comfort, has always in that moment made me feel strong. It's the very definition of a crutch. This explains why I have had the urge to binge after every single session at the ED clinic. It has taken a few months of feeling the fragility and simultaneously enduring the urge to binge to finally get some clarity.

Last night I found myself struck with grief about a difficult situation in my life that I cannot change. It basically involves someone that I love and with whom I have a complicated relationship in a long-term pattern of severe self-destruction. It has been going on for years. I have always used comfort eating as a way to cope with it. Last night, I cried and cried and cried about it. It was very unexpected and a little scary. But I am aware that all the blocked emotions of my life are currently making their way to the surface and have been advised to (where appropriate!) just let it come. To my surprise, the grief was not accompanied with the urge to binge. Amazing.

Thanks to those of you who are reading. It's great to have some companionship for the journey.

do-over

So today I took the advice of my therapist and got rid of my weighing scales. Anybody stuck in the dieting mentality will be thinking, "ooh, risky." That'd be me then. It was a terrifying decision. I know from the last time that I weighed myself (this morning, in fact, just before I put the scales away) that I am still obese, and yet I am making the decision to disregard the scales? Forever. Forever?

My therapist helped me to realise that I was rewarding myself for the courageous acts of not binging and actually sitting through and feeling the emotions that this raises, with numbers on a scale. She's right. She asked me what I was getting out of weighing myself every day. I had a hard time answering that. I suppose it was giving me reassurance that I was doing things right. She responded with the suggestion that perhaps seeing numbers go down on a weighing scale isn't always signalling that you are doing things right.

This highlighted for me that my motivation, despite what I have been saying, is actually to lose a lot of weight, rather than to gain full freedom. The irony with all of this is that with full freedom comes the body stabilising at a healthy weight, but that stabilising at a healthy weight in and of itself does not bring full freedom around food, thoughts and emotions. Basically I was working backwards and the destination might have been thin but it would not have been happy or healthy.

So I need to have a little trust in myself. I do not need to document every morsel that passes my lips for "accountability"...who am I being accountable to anyway? What I do need to do is to eat regularly - every 2-3 hours - and eat nutritionally dense foods. Treats are not a problem. Binging is to be completely avoided and right now, there are some foods that might lead to binging, so these are best avoided for the time being (bags of jelly sweets, large packets of crisps...that kind of crap).

One of my therapists said something in Group Therapy last night that made a lot of sense to me. "Unless you have a history of recovery, don't gravitate towards the past." So I've realised I need to lighten up about my weight. So I'm overweight. Big wow. I won't be overweight forever, and it already does not define who I am.

Time for dinner.