09
Aug

Control is Feeding Your Food Addiction – a mental path to recovery

Topic / addiction and recovery, disordered eating, mental health

I am a control freak.  I am also a recovering addict.  (These two things are not mutually exclusive.)

They say the first step of the 12 Steps is the hardest one. They aren’t kidding.

“I admit that I am powerless over my addiction, that my life has become unmanageable.”

So far, I have leaned back into Step 1 no less than 138 times. I have to continually revisit it, remind myself of it every day.  After that much practice, you’d think it would get easier.

It does, but not a whole lot.

Not one time have I recited step one that it doesn’t pinch a little bit.

I hate being powerless.  I hate being not in control.

As I’ve learned (and still learn every day), control is a paradox. It contradicts itself. The more you try to have it, the less of it you have. What you attempt to control soon controls you, dominating your thoughts and feelings and life.Read More

17
Aug

How to Recover from Addiction – 4 Truths that will Change Your Life

Topic / addiction and recovery, disordered eating, mental health

Not too long ago, a Facebook post by James Fell ran through my newsfeed.  (If you don’t follow him, you should.  He’s pretty great.)

Here’s what he had to say.

james fell sugar addiction

The comments were, as you could probably guess, reactive.Read More

03
Jun

Fix your Habit – 5 Tips to Hold Back a Binge

Topic / addiction and recovery, disordered eating

It’s allergy season.

I live in the sagebrush dotted hills of Yakima Valley in Eastern Washington State.  ‘Having allergies’ is no small thing.

We are a city of farms and crops and flowers and trees, so pollen.  We’re practically a desert, if it weren’t for irrigation, so dust.  Also animals, “because farms,” so dander.  Once the scorching summer sun comes out in full force the weeds take off like wildfire, which means more pollen.  The ragweed kind.

omg allergies.

To be fair, I don’t suffer as bad as some, but in my old(er) age (wtf total bs) I have developed a Goliath histamine response.  From late April until late June, I’m Seven Dwarves all by myself – sneezy, watery, sleepy, cranky, runny, itchy, bitchy, and for the most part a completely unpleasant person to spend time with.

When my allergies get really bad, I stop listening to people when they talk.  I spend half my time at work staring into space, the other half blowing my body weight in boogers out my nose.

I can’t focus, I can’t pay attention, because I’m too busy wishing I could shove a puffy pipe cleaner down my throat and out my schnoz (like the crazy-eyed middle school kid did with spaghetti in the lunch room), then grab both ends and give them hell, just to itch the spot inside my head that doesn’t stop itching for three months.

ALLERGIES.

I can hear you now.

[“Um… just take an allergy pill.  They do make those, you know.”]

Yes, yes they do.

Trouble is, I’m also an addict.

PILLS are a problem for me.Read More

14
Jan

How to Stop Overeating – Pasta and Poker – You Don’t Have to Eat it All

Topic / disordered eating, mental health

pasta

Have you ever played poker?

I love to play.  My dad taught me at a young age, and I grew up playing cards with uncles and cousins.

In the game of poker, there’s a term called “pot committed.”  All things considered, between the hand you’re holding, the other players you’re betting against, the stack of chips in front of you, and the amount of your stack you’ve already pushed into the pot, “pot committed” means one thing.

You HAVE to play.Read More

05
May

How to Avoid a Binge – Willpower isn’t Enough, but Intelligence Can Be

Topic / disordered eating

Today I was at the grocery store, tasked with the purchase of candy for my kids’ candy bucket.  We don’t keep a lot of sugar in the house, just a small, 2 quart container full of their favorite treats, but it is where they go to pick their dessert and the occasional sweet reward.  The bucket holds caramels, mints, tootsie rolls, and random, fun size bars.  (Although my idea of fun is way, way, one million times bigger, it works for the kids’ tiny bodies.)

Our candy bucket was getting low, and so I promised them some more variety.  “Next time I’m at the store I’ll check.”

As I entered the candy aisle at the grocery store, I was feeling pretty good.  In fact, I felt almost nothing.  I was strong and sound of mind and spirit, I wasn’t hungry (always a plus), and I looked for a bag of candy like it was a carton of eggs.  No emotion, no dilemma, no chaos.

Then I saw the stupid cinnamon bears.

DAMNIT.

Read More

07
Apr

How to Eat to Live, not Live to Eat – 5 Tips to Eat Without Emotion

Topic / disordered eating

Someone once told me, “You binge and starve because you don’t understand food.  Food is fuel, it is not emotional.  You can’t feel food.  Stop making it more than what it is.  Stop making it harder than it needs to be.  Just eat what your body needs and leave the rest.”

My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.  My ears caught fire.  Even now as I write this, I rage.  Outwardly I replied with “….um okay, whatever,” but in my head I was stabbing this person in the neck with a sharp cookie.  “CAN YOU FEEL THE FOOD NOW?!”

I can.  I always can.

Those in the WLR community know the rule.  Weight loss and healthy living are 20% exercise, 80% diet and nutrition.  Pretty simple.  The rule is not based in observation or opinion, but in scientific fact.  No matter how you feel about it, food makes up 80% of your weight loss success or failure.

No matter how you feel about it.

As a disordered eater, therein lies the struggle.

I can work out.  I lift heavy free weights with the big boys.  I am happy to play pickup games in the gym all day long, ride a bike, crank a jagged rock face.  I can work and sweat until Niagara Falls runs off my face, darkens my shirt, and soaks my underpants.  I can run lines, run intervals, use the stair mill until I can’t lift my feet off the floor.  I grew up doing farm work – cross fit and the content of Spartan races are what we called “weekend chores.”

Working out is easy.

Eating right is hard.Read More

27
Mar

How to Eat Healthy as an Anorexic Bulimic – 3 Tips for Eating Like a Normal Person

Topic / disordered eating

No, this is not a “how to” article on starving and binging.

[I can hear you now, with either a nervous or nonchalant laugh.  “Oh haha… yeah, I figured.”]

Except if you’re anything like me, you would have read the title of this article and said “OHMYGOODNESS REALLY?!  I CAN DO BOTH?!”

Yeah, no.  You can’t.

Believe me.  I’ve tried.

Until very (very very very) recently, I have always TRIED to do both.

Me Out Loud:  “I want to be healthy, and I want to eat healthy.”

Me In My Head and Guts Whisper Voice:  “…while starving and binge eating whenever I want.”

OH I TRIED SO HARD TO DO BOTH.  And it never worked, and I always ended up sad, frustrated, angry, and softer around the middle than when I started.

I have tried every diet.  Every program.  Every tracking system, every food journal portion method pie chart food scale perception shift food focus known to all the humans EVER, and I just couldn’t do it.  No matter what I did, I could not stick to anything.

I couldn’t remove the emotional pull of Ana and The Binge Monster from my every day food intake.  Read More

06
Mar

How to Love My Body, Without Fight or Flight

Topic / disordered eating

Today was shower day.

I hate shower day.

I have been an anorexic, bulimic, body dysmorphic for as long as I can remember.  I remember intentionally overeating at my seventh birthday.  I remember testing to see how long I could go without food when I was eight, faking a stomach ache to ensure I wouldn’t have to eat dinner.  I remember hating my body before I even knew what all my parts were for, feeling fat inside my still-from-the-little-girls-section jeans.

The sexual abuse started at age six.

The physical abuse started at age seven.

The scars and stains that you cannot see, the ones I’m JUST NOW starting to see myself, are still there.

I really, really, REALLY hate shower day.

On shower day, I have to get naked.  Despite every attempt to the contrary, I have to strip off all my clothes and spend a good ten minutes with my own skin.  I have to look at my body (all of it), I have to touch my body (ALL OF IT), and for that showery, shivery ten minutes I am unable to hide from what I know is there, but what I so very much do not want to see.

Ugly, fat, gross, hated, disgusting, stretched, flawed, dimpled, brokenness.
Read More

23
Feb

How to Set Weight Loss Goals You’ll Actually Hit – No More Crash Diets

Topic / disordered eating, The Body Image Project

In my life, I have set goals no less than one hundred thousand times.

That sounds like an exaggeration, but I’m not kidding.  One hundred thousand times.  At least 33 years, times 365 days, times 10 goals a day.  That’s at least 122,275 goals in my life.  (and yes, i did the math. i heart math.)

I was born a chronic overachiever perfectionist.  And, like most overachiever perfectionists, goal setting is in my nature.  I set goals for EVERYTHING.  How much I’m going to eat, and by when.  How much I’m going to weigh, and by when.  How many workouts this week, and how much weight for each exercise.  How many books I’ll read this month, and what kind of books, and how many words.  What classes I’ll be able to take.  What grades I’ll get in those classes.  What time I’ll get to bed.  When I’ll get up.  What time the kids will do which things.  What I’ll do for a job next year, and how much I’ll make, and when I’ll get my next promotion, and what tasks I’ll complete by when in order to get it.

For most (normal, not control freak, not obsessive) people, that probably sounds exhausting.

To be honest, sometimes even for me it IS exhausting, but it’s what I do.  I love goals.  I live for and through my goals.
Read More

11
Jul

How to Resist a Binge – Find Strength at the Tipping Point

Topic / disordered eating

YOU GUYS.

I think I beat the Binge Monster.

Even if just one time, that’s saying something.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping. I was in a rush. It was almost dinner time. I had three kids with me. They were hungry. I was not thinking clearly or straight because I was REALLY hungry, because I had missed lunch, because I had been eyebrows deep in numbers for six hours, because work, because “the SBA loan refi needs to be done two weeks ago.” I was wrung out.

I put milk, eggs, cheese, meat, meat, vegetables, meat, vegetables, fruit, and more vegetables in the cart. Then I looked at my list.

On my grocery list was “black licorice.” (Gross.) It was not for me, it was for The Mister. Mostly mindless, I pushed my kid-loaded-full-of-vegetables cart down the candy and cookie aisle.

You see where this is going, I bet.

Hungry + Tired + Stressed + Candy-Cookie-Aisle = TROUBLE.

Even for someone that is not bulimic, that’s a recipe for bad choices.

Read More

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