“I guess I’ll just go eat my feelings now.”
It’s a common catchphrase you’ll hear me jokingly say. And a common jest for many others too. Using food to deal with feels. But what do you think of when you hear “eating disorder”? A Youtube montage of sad, skeletal waifs set to Sia’s “Breathe Me”? Meant to be a deterrent, but really acting as more of motivation for aspiring anorexics? While that’s not wrong, it’s kinda only half the picture. There’s everything from bulimia to breatharianism to binging. Today’s topic? The latter of those three. Greedily turning sustenance into human stuffing and eating anyone who tries to get in your way.
While I’m no stranger to this realm of turning my paunch into a pantry as if an impending Armageddon’s coming and I might never eat again, what I’ve come to learn is this: it’s one hundred and everything percent one of those terminologies you can lump together with any other kinda “addict” habit to induce pleasure, comfort, or simply the avoidance of some suffering beneath the surface. When I myself started digging beneath that surface stuff for other reasons, the binging was significantly mitigated – along with much, much more. I’m talking a lifetime of yo-yo weight numbers that looked (in scale numbers) like a sine wave and (in real life) like Lady Gaga body between 2008 and now. Since then, what’s worked for me has also worked for a lotta other folk. (Following their advice is the only reason it did work.) Still, I’m always open-minded to what different approaches others are taking to manage their malfunctioned nibble inclinations. So, that’s why I read a HuffPost article on a woman’s story about it. While her reformed outlook on avoiding band-aid treatment meds and her decision to finally see a shrink were all very good, it’s a bummer to hear her say at the end not that she has quit beating herself up about it – but that she’d like to get to that point. And that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to stop.
I get that. None of us can predict the future.
But if anyone out there suffers the same as this chick (or I) have, here’re a few tips that’ve helped me:
1.) Avoid falling for your own excuses.
Start by also avoiding saying them out loud.
You know that silent reaction you get when you tell someone why you’re not losing weight? (“I have this disease/ I had surgery five years ago/ I don’t have time to exercise/ I’m eating for two in case I get pregnant again…”) Yeah. No one believes you when you’re saying them. And deep down you know that. Which only makes you nervous about being judged. Which only makes you want to eat more later.
2. Change your personal rules now so you won’t feel bad later.
Diet is tricky. Unlike drugs or alcohol, which you don’t need to survive (though an alcoholic or junkie will try their hardest to convince you otherwise), you can’t quit food for long before you either die or… die. So, what I was taught (and finally took to heart) was change my own rules. You know those “trigger foods”? The ones that set off an entire binge on an otherwise normal, civil, no-desire-to-morph-into-a-werewolf-and-facially-decimate-the-fridge day? Every damned time? Okay. Now, think of yours. Now, think of it as being like a crack rock. An allergy food. One where your ass swells full’a fat for the next month. It might sound extreme – saying to quit your sugary vice – but I suppose there comes a time where you have to ask yourself: is it really making me happy enough to keep in my life if I’ve resorted to scouring the internet for other sufferers whose advice I’m probably not gonna take?
There’s an upside though, if you follow through. And that’s that the cravings eventually start to subside. Personally, I found that quitting processed food (though a fckkng laborious chore, initially) was the golden key. Because after getting over the hump of craving ramen noodles, overly salted soups, and chocolate covered whatevers – like all withdrawal – that feeling ended within a week. And suddenly… I craved something new. Natural sugar. Sweet, sexy, fruit.
(Yes. And I choose to sit on it with my face hole.)
Here’s the kicker. Not only did I drop over ten pounds between then-me and now-me, but I eat like a fckkn rhinoceros who’s with child. All day long. As much banana and persimmon and other miscellaneous fruit I want all day, and then a vat of vegetables burned and drowned into a delectable tomato soup at night.
The kicker behind the kicker? My energy level is like natural crack that you don’t need to quit ’cause there’s never a comedown. I run, at minimum, twice a day and don’t want to do the kinda stuff that makes you feel like sitting about and binging. I 100% agree with this chick saying she’d wanna do entertainment-level stuff to make the binges more comfortable. That only becomes cyclic ‘cause you’re eating the sorta stuff that makes you lethargic enough to sit around and watch T.V. or read for too long. On a healthier plant based diet, you get the totes opp of that.
Your body won’t let you sit still.
And, finally, the kicker behind the kicker’s kicker: Those rare days when you do totally feel like giving into torpor and binging land you zero reason to feel bad. Why? ‘cause A.) you’re only allowing a diet of healthy foods to binge on to begin with. B.) By then, your stomach’ll’ve shrunk enough that you won’t even be able to fit much in there as you did in nom marathons past, and C.) Water based foods mean you might go to bed looking like Santa – but you’ll wake up looking like Jack the pumpkin king.
3. Connect to a network of others going through it
(Not someone who doesn’t “get it”… or care.)
What was really smart on Sally’s part was that she finally got some help – by seeing a psychiatrist. While that’s an excellent first step, an optimal yes-and to this initial move in the right direction would be to make sure she’s got a network of people going through the same thing. This works best for any manifestation of any addiction or psych disorder for two reasons (At least. That I can think of. ATM). The first is that it’s less easy to take direction from someone who can’t identify on a personal level. It helps to have someone who’s either been there – or (even better) to have lotsa folk (and this is the second reason) so you’re constantly interacting with people who’ve both been there and are managing the overcoming of it, as well as those who are still dealing with it. Why? ’cause at least part of feeling-eating is either loneliness or solipsism induced. Where other-issue anxieties leave off, the guilt that you’re the only fat-ass in the world doing this compels you to carry on for comfort. If you have someone to call before or during those times – or even just a good personal story or funny anecdote to recall that a fellow binger’s said to you recently – it helps click your brain into a different think-mode.
Sometimes that alone can help prevent me from giving in.
4. Use the somatic symptoms to address the issue
I liked that bit she said about “getting an anxious feeling in her chest” that compelled her to overeat.
It’s great because it shows body-awareness (first step to a good mind-body connection to end bad habits). Also, it’s a similar symptom I get preceding an anxiety inducing social situation, a panic attack following a shitty train of thought I’ve involuntarily hopped on, and – yes – even food, still. My fix? It’s simple. It’s doing something you’re doing right now – except better. Breathing. When I get that feeling, 100% of the time it means I’m breathing like a coed with Ted Bundy on her heels. Shallow. Tight chest. Panicked. While that’d be good ‘n helpful if I really did have a necrophilic murderer chasing me, it’s not too helpful in the middle of an otherwise productive day. The method? A two step process I like to call “fix – not fixate”. Instead of saying, “Oh there’s that feeling again in my chest, I’m doomed; it’s all downhill and up-scale from here…”, try saying to yourself (or out loud if you hafta), “Oh, there’s that feeling again! That means my chest’s tight. And I should start breathing deep into my belly instead’a there.”
Does that makes sense?
Hmmm. Mayhaps I should clarify:
Step 1 is to “fix”: breathe purposely into your chest and tighten all those muscles on purpose you’ve been unknowingly tightening outta stress. Then, as you exhale, totally relax all’a that shiz above your ribs. And step 2 comes immediately after that: To “not fixate”. Specifically, not fixate on the formerly tight problem area where your panic’s taken up residence. Now that you’ve relaxed those muscles, we look to redirecting attention away from that area. By not focusing on where the bad feeling is – but where a good feeling does exist when you are normally comfortable – you bring your focus there (deep into your belly – by deeply breathing there) instead and will a better feeling into existence. (Protip: if you leave the room and close your eyes, this’s much easier – that way you don’t have the proximity to or visual of the food you’re about to pack in your maw like a car full of Mexican clowns.) Some spiritualists will call this “grounding” or “rooting”. You can call it what you like. I like to call it the free blanket-solution benzo that makes me wanna demand a refund from Big Pharma for all the fckkn money I’ve wasted over the years.
And if all else fails…
5. Watch an episode of Mike and Molly
The gods offered me an accidental glimpse of this one day on an almost-binge.
My adipose ammunition ended up in my dog Minnie’s bowl.
God is good.
Anyway, hope this helps one of you fellow reformative gorgers out there!