Disclaimer: This myTake focuses primarily on anorexia and bulimia nervosa, however there will be a take devoted to binge eating disorders in the future after I complete an adequate amount of research on the subject. The opinions and suggestions below are unlicensed, I am not a doctor and you should handle any illnesses with the appropriate assistance of a professional.
I have mentioned in many of my responses that I did at a time in my life suffer from an eating disorder, more than one as a matter of fact. The ordeal lasted 6 years on and off and still to this very day I have relapses and moments where I feel I could fall right back into the same self destructive habits. Even when I stumble and find myself in a dark place, I always manage to get back out again. I’m not going to get into the gruesome details of my personal story specifically, but I will say that my eating disorder wasn’t triggered initially by a desire to be skinny; rather, it was triggered by emotional neglect and a desire to feel release from things that I hadn’t been able to tell anyone, because for a long time … nobody would listen.
It’s true that eating disorders run much deeper than a desire for vanity or an insatiable gluttony, if you will. All of these disorders are often linked to deep rooted emotional and psychological issues where the prospect of food intake lies at the very center of the physical manifestation of these issues.
What are their two commonalities? An unhealthy relationship with food and a distinctive obsessive behavior pattern.
Anorexia Nervosa: An emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat.
Bulimia Nervosa: An emotional disorder involving distortion of body image and an obsessive desire to lose weight, in which bouts of extreme overeating are followed by depression and self-induced vomiting, purging, or fasting.
Binge Eating Disorder: The consumption of large quantities of food in a short period of time, typically as part of an eating disorder.
Each of these disorders is linked to a poor relationship with food, where the individual suffers from interpersonal psychological/emotional issues which they try to remedy with the controlling of food. Be that by starvation/restriction, overeating, or a combination of the two: overeating and excessively purging, fasting, etc. The most common mistake I feel people make when trying to treat these disorders is assuming that the issue is nothing more than a desire to look a certain way or a very simple issue of not knowing how to portion control. But take it from someone who has experienced multiple forms of eating disorders when I tell you that this simply isn’t the case.
I’ve known many people who struggled with each of these disorders in my life time, and all of us have one thing in common: we struggle to cope with our emotions. Anxiety, depression, self-hatred; all of them play a vital part in the manifestation of anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating. So it might seem easy enough to say that a little therapy is all you should need to recover, right? Unfortunately things aren’t that simple. It requires complete mental and emotional rewiring, which is a painfully slow process that can take years to completely overcome, and even then you can still suffer from residual thoughts and tendencies that never completely go away. But there is hope. There is a way to get healthy again. And I in this take I am going to list just a few things to keep in mind and consider when dealing with the slow process of recovering from an eating disorder – just a few baby steps in the right direction.
Treatment & Resources - It's time to save yourself
I went through a few programs, not all of them were helpful and then some were very helpful. I found revelation in an anxiety help group and in the careful teachings of a dietitian, along with personal support from a few good friends and help groups online. When you realize you have an issue, the first thing you have to do is make the decision to get help. Believe me when I tell you that it is much better for you to CHOOSE to get help rather than allowing yourself to become so far gone that help is then forcibly placed upon you. Make the right decision and reach out before that happens.
If you are a severe case, the fact of the matter is, is that you need professional help. You need intervention. My intervention was finally seeing a therapist and being sent to live with my father, because the situation I was in was not assisting my recovery due to its toxic nature. If you are truly a severe case then you need to find resources that will help you manage your eating disorder before it gets out of hand. It helps to have people there as a support system, be that friends or family, and it helps to find the proper resources where you will really receive the help that you need. I always recommend going to centers or groups that deal specifically with eating disorders, because not all resources (at least the free ones) will be as beneficial if the personell are not adequately trained to deal with people like you who have very specific issues.
For those who are not severe cases you do have more options of in-home prevention and treatment, but I STILL recommend professionals be involved as it is too easy for these issues to get out of hand. I still recommend therapy, support groups, and so forth. The only difference is the amount of time you may have to spend outside of your home.
At this point I always encourage you to surround yourself with support; if you feel you have no one, I recommend joining a forum or group online that focuses on the recovery of eating disorders. After that, the personal work begins.
Acknowledgment - You’ll NEVER be skinny enough
Don’t let that subheading throw you off. It isn’t an insult. It’s the truth. When you are so emotionally and mentally unhealthy, you will never ever feel like you have lost enough weight. I made it to my goal of being below 90 lbs at one point, and do you think I felt like I was suddenly skinny enough, and like I could just stop being sick and live my life happily, feeling beautiful? No. I didn’t feel skinny enough. I didn’t feel beautiful. I still hated myself, I was still sick, and I didn’t know how to stop at that point. Because I never dealt with what was actually wrong with me: my unstable mind. I tried to remedy it by giving into the bad behavior, and before I knew it, I was out of control.
Don’t delude yourself into thinking this disease will be temporary or that once you get to a certain size you’ll be satisfied, because that is not how it works. You will become addicted to the disease like a drug.
You will obsess over it every single day and you will never feel like enough is enough. You'll sooner be freezing in the middle of the summer before that happens, or worse; you'll be hospitalized before you'll be satisfied, because you were naive enough to trust in a mind that was already so distorted to begin with.
There is no point in using abuse tactics to try and get to a certain size, because it not going to make you feel happy. It is not going to make you feel beautiful, and it certainly won't make you love yourself. Because when you have a mind that is sick, and you have a mentality that doesn't KNOW how to allow you to love yourself ... no amount of weight you lose will fix it, because it isn't your body that's broken. It's you. Your mind will always tell you to lose more, deprive MORE. If you give into it you will fall into a vicious cycle of planning your next weight loss goal or determining how to maintain your miniscule size. So you have to either stop before you get there or raise a hand up so someone can pull you out of that hole before it's too late. You are sick, darling, very, very sick. Acknowledge this, accept this, and seek help.
Psychological Rewiring - Address the Actual Issue
What is hurting you, my love?
Let’s face it: none of us would ever have gotten to this place if we were mentally and emotionally healthy to begin with. Why? Because no emotionally and mentally healthy person would intentionally abuse their bodies, that’s why. It’s time to face those inner demons that applied the strings to your hands and made you push that plate away or stick your fingers down your throat like a puppet. Why do you feel the need to punish yourself? Why do you feel the need to be skinnier? Is it really just vanity? Or is it because you never had anybody make you feel beautiful; or is it because you were so overwhelmed with negativity that you felt you had no other way to release it; or is it because you can’t help but obsess over it, because you obsess over everything and micromanage it to relieve anxiety; or is it because somebody in your life hurt you so bad that you saw no other way to relieve yourself? Whatever the reason is, you have to acknowledge it and begin dealing with it.
I always recommend therapy or self help for those who don’t have the option. I was treated in hospital and at a free-agencies that specialized in eating disorder treatment and anxiety; I also found it in myself to begin opening up and finding the right people who would listen to me and try to understand. It’s time to start acknowledging the problem, the illness, and begin looking for a solution.
Emotional Rewiring - Food is not your FRIEND, but it is not your ENEMY either
Food is not a person, so it cannot be your friend and it cannot be your enemy. Personifying food is very common for those of us who suffer from eating disorders; you have a poor emotional relationship with yourself so you establish an emotional relationship with food, where you either restrict it or reject it (to reflect your self hatred) or you overindulge it and romanticize it (to imitate the happiness you feel you’re lacking, which follows with eventual depression). Food is not meant to be treated emotionally, but it’s hard to not relate it with emotions, considering it is often at the center of our celebrations and is often used as a reward system – a very dangerous social practice for those who aren’t taught proper nutrition and emotional care. Your first task needs to be breaking the emotional ties you have to food, which is easier said than done.
Something that helped me manage my eating disorder was looking at food objectively; making a meal plan, understanding its nutrition and treating it as fuel for my body rather than an emotional coping mechanism. It’s an incredibly slow process, especially if you suffered from severe deprivation tendencies, as eating a whole meal can be near impossible for some. It will take a long time to build up the strength to finish your food, but with the proper treatment and patience, it is possible.
Just take your time and remind yourself that giving your body fuel is not going to make you FAT; eating healthy is not going to make you OBESE; giving yourself the right nutrition will not make you UGLY. IT. WILL. SAVE. YOUR. LIFE.
Education - Learn what you need
Remember how I mentioned nutrition? Well it's time to learn about it. You need to educate yourself in the art of taking care of your body, especially when it comes to food.
You need to learn how to fuel yourself, treat yourself, love yourself and improve yourself in a way that is HEALTHY and non-destructive.
For me, it took a really long time, but after getting in contact with a dietitian and doing my own personal research, I began to realize just how complex our bodies are and just how much you actually need to maintain a healthy body. That means proper nutrition, supplements, healthy emotional and mental state, and controlled exercise (if you are at a healthy enough point to begin exercising). You'll need to go through your rewiring process before you'll be ready for this step, but educating yourself about how to properly take care of your body is without a doubt the most vital step in your recovery, as it will help you to manage your anxiety as well as improve your overall outlook on body positivity and care.
That's all that I have for this take ladies and gentlemen. I intend on doing more on the subject so if you have any questions or suggestions don't hesitate to leave them in the threads below. I sincerely hope that somebody found this helpful and I wish you all good health and happiness.
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