Overcoming Eating Disorders

This is a real life account of how I overcame my addictions to food and how you can do the same also. 

My obsession with food began at a young age. Although I grew up with both parents, my household was predominately women. My mother worked really hard to take care of herself. She exercised, she wore nice clothes and she always watched what she ate; maybe a little too much! 

My mum was a naturally slim woman, she had an awesome figure and was mother to three children. To me she looked lovely, she had smooth skin and curves in all the right places. But she (like many other women in the world) felt like her body was the wrong shape and the wrong size. She worked really hard at improving that which meant she was pretty much always on a diet. This involved cutting back fat, restricting what she ate, even going to the extent of weighing what she ate and journaling everything. And just to get this straight, my mother wasn’t alone in doing this, a lot of my friends mothers all did the same too, so for me this became normal; this is what women did to stay beautiful, right? I began to believe that if I ate certain things or ate too much then I would get fat. I also learned from my parents that food was as a reward system for good behaviour.  And so I began to treat food as a way to improve my emotional state. When I felt bad and emotional I would reach for those “treat foods” to make me feel better. Now, none of this was intentional on my mother’s part in anyway, it was merely the way my young impressionable mind was learning and developing a relationship with food. Our parents are our greatest teachers, and their parents are their greatest teachers. So these beliefs just keep travelling down the line, generation to generation. 

I went to an all-girls school where I learned pretty early on in my life how to compare myself to others. I was deeply insecure and unsure of both my sexuality and who I was as a person. I was bullied a lot, which I learned if I became a people pleaser I could keep this at bay. This ruined my self-esteem even further. I was so unhappy and my angst riddled life felt out of control. The only thing I felt I could control was what I ate and so I created a system that flipped between starving myself when I felt anxious and full of loathing, and binge eating chocolates, biscuits and ice cream when I needed to boost my self-esteem and find happiness. The problem was this only led to more feelings of self-hatred and so I would go back to starving myself. I learned how to ignore my hunger pains and tried to eat only a few mouthfuls of food as I was gripped by the belief system that eating too much was greedy. This behaviour went on for most of my teenage years, until I discovered that if I exercised I could eat more and train hard to get rid of all the calories I’d consumed. I trained hard and I trained every day, boosting my performance with fat burning drugs that made me feel invincible. But let’s face it, I really had no idea what they were doing to my health and at the time I didn’t care, because I looked good and that was my way of controlling all the deep rooted feelings of insecurity and self-loathing I was feeling inside. I felt that by controlling how my body looked I would be more attractive and that would give me the validation I needed to feel good about myself. But looking back now it was completely the opposite, eating disorders controlled me and it destroyed a big part of my life. I was so obsessed with how much I weighed and how I looked, I ended up wasting a massive part of my life on superficial things. I forgot how to laugh, how to play, how to sing.

I forgot how to appreciate all the good I had in my life. I forgot how to live.  I remember going on a beautiful holiday to Mexico when I was 24 and barely eating anything. I would spend most of my time in the hotel gym to make sure I was in good shape for my bikini. I was in the gym so much that I missed out on enjoying a beautiful holiday.

It was no surprise that my health took a huge nose dive in my thirties, all the years of restricting my food and water intake played a massive role in depleting my hormones and I ended up with pretty severe endometriosis. My illness really inspired me to start taking control of my life in a positive way and I began learning about healing with holistic methods. I sat a course with the CHEK Institute and was amazed as I began to learn in great detail about food and the affects it was having on my body. I learned that fat is definitely not the enemy, but a vital and essential element that we need in our diet for our brain function, hormone health and energy levels. I also discovered that my old friend, sugar, was a harmful toxic substance that was having a devastating effect on my health, along with table salt, pasteurised dairy and white flour. This information really opened my eyes and I really began to surrender to the fact that I needed to use food as a medicine and not punishment. 

I knew that I had to give up the control around food and slowly I began to become friends with food. I began to sit in a calm quiet place and bless my food before chewing it mindfully and slowly. I prepared myself for the fact that I may gain some weight now that my body was receiving food on a regular basis. My poor body had been starved for so long that it had gone into survival mode and was holding on to everything I ate in order to nourish my body. It took all the trust and the faith that I had to let go of the feelings of despair at this time during my healing process. I noticed that my emotions played a huge part in what I ate, in times of feeling lonely, angry, depressed or bored. I switched back to my old habits of binge eating and starving myself as punishment for what I had done. I felt at the time that this was a default switch that I had no control over until the day came where I finally realised I did have control. 

I found that if I became mindful of my emotional set point before I began eating, I could stop myself from reaching for comfort food. As these feelings arose I would resist the temptation to eat and breathe into the pain while asking myself; “what is it that I am really hungry for? Is this what I really need and will it make me happy?”  The answer was always a firm “no, it won’t”. This method was a great way of stalling myself and allowing myself to feel whatever pain it was that I was feeling. I really surrendered during this process and took up journaling as a channel for my emotions. I really put my heart onto paper and in time I discovered exactly why I was reaching for food, which emotions made me reach for fatty food and which ones for sugary food. Surrendering to the emotions set me free from the addiction as I learned about myself on a deep level and what it was that I was lacking and trying to replacing with food. I don’t want to fool you into making it seem all rosy though, it did take a long time and a lot of conscious effort and sometimes the addiction did win. But instead of beating myself up about it I would see my situation through the eyes of compassion and tell myself “it’s already happened now, just let it go and move on to a brighter day and another lesson learned”. When you surrender to your hidden feelings and begin questioning why they are there you can regain control over any addiction. An addiction is really a cover up for unmet needs and deep rooted negative emotions. Discover what these are and you will break the addiction down. 

When these feelings arise, try asking yourself the following questions;

• What am I feeling right now?
• What am I really hungry for and what am I missing out on e.g. play, enrichment through hobbies, nature, creativity?
• What is my body trying to tell me?
• What do I need to change in order to allow happiness?

Instead of putting so much emotion in and looking for happiness through food, try looking for more enriching ways to bring happiness into your life. Art or music lessons, dancing, singing, nature walks, mediation, yoga and pilates classes, bike riding or creative writing for instance. The world is yours to discover through rediscovering what it is that makes you happy, when you take the time to learn who you are and what your needs are, your life becomes so enriched that you won’t need food to fill that void. Take each day as it comes, celebrate your successes, surrender to the pain and look for the hidden messages your body is trying to tell you. It’s not easy but it is so worth it. 

Until next time,

Alison xx

If you are battling with food addictions and would like more help or information, contact me for a free consultation.