Thank you Glo Bar Lovers!
Together we sold a whopping 1100 Glo Bars yesterday! As I mentioned 10% of my sales will be donated to Haiti Relief via The Humanitarian Coalition. That would be a donation of $212.00!!!
I will be presenting the donation receipt on the blog tomorrow.
Binge Eating: Why You Shouldn’t Feel Ashamed
Each week I receive emails from readers who are struggling to let go of an eating disorder. A large number of these emails are emails about binge eating.
Binge Eating, or compulsive eating, is often triggered by chronic dieting and involves periods of overeating, often in secret and often carried out as a means of deriving comfort. Symptoms include:
- periods of uncontrolled, impulsive or continuous eating
- sporadic fasts or repetitive diets
[Source]
I wanted to take a moment today to discuss my experience with binge eating as I think it is a topic that is often swept under the rug due to feelings of shame and embarrassment.
If you have read my series on Binge Eating (The Unspoken Issue Part 1 and The Unspoken Issue Part 2), you may know that I struggled with it for many years.
My struggles with binge eating began shortly after I started to restrict my food intake. Before this, I had no prior problems with binge eating. I struggled with disordered eating for many years. I would starve myself, over-exercise, and count calories obsessively. It is no surprise to me now that I also struggled with strong urges to binge. Typically once a week (on the weekends) I would get the urge to binge. Sometimes this binge would consist of several hundred calories and sometimes over a thousand. However, the amount never mattered, it was the feeling that was associated with it.
I felt completely out of control.
Afterwards, I would feel so ashamed, I would cry, and I would vow to restrict my intake the next day- and weeks after. During this time, I was also dating Eric and I remember being so scared that he would find out. I was so ashamed I couldn’t tell him because I was worried what he might think. After a few years of dating, I finally got the courage to tell him why I was in a bad mood, and I just told him that ‘I really overate and now I feel badly.’ Of course, he didn’t quite understand the gist of what I was telling him, and I couldn’t expect him to because I wasn’t fully honest about it. It really put up a wall between us for a long time.
It took me a very long time to realize that I would always have problems with binge eating as long as I was still depriving my body of what it needed. In an evolutionary psychology course we learned that it is an adaptive response for our bodies to seek out large amounts of food when in a deprived state. It makes total sense to me now that my body was just trying to get food in any way possible!
You can only deprive your body for so long before it acts out in protest. My weekend binges were in fact a protest against my weekday deprivation.
My body had ENOUGH.
And so this cycle continued for a long time. It is such a hard cycle to break because after a binge the guilt is so high that the only comfort you can think of is feeling empty again and restricting your intake. The cycle repeats itself over and over and the person who struggles with it, sinks deeper and deeper into isolation.
I am here today to tell you that it doesn’t have to be like this. You don’t have to live your life with cycles of deprivation and compulsive eating. It is possible to beat it and to eat in a steady cycle.
How did I beat binge eating?
Two things were pivotal to me beating Binge eating:
1) I sought counseling for my eating disorder.
I tried and tried and tried to beat it on my own but I couldn’t. It is so powerful and the emotions and habits tied to an eating disorder are extremely hard to overcome without help. I always, always encourage anyone who is struggling to seek out a counselor. It was a major turning point in my life. The counselor I saw in university made a huge impact on my life. To this day, I remember fondly the nice things she said about me. I should write her and thank her, actually.
2) I stopped restricting what I ate
I honestly do not think that I could have beat binge eating if I didn’t stop restricting my intake. This took me a long, long time to realize and I hope to be able to save some of you some time too. When I finally stopped restricting my intake, I allowed myself to eat when hungry and I stopped counting calories and weighing myself. The hardest part was that I still suffered from binges even though I was not restricting my food! You know why this was? Because old habits die hard. My body did not want to trust me. I had deprived it for so long that I couldn’t be trusted, so even though I was now eating enough food, I still struggled with binges now and then.
This was extremely frustrating for me and I will admit, I relapsed a few times because of this.
However, the body CAN learn new tricks. It took me about a year to finally stop the binges even when eating normally. My body finally learned to trust me again and it didn’t feel the need to ‘store up on food’. I know for a fact if I was still restricting my intake, I would still be struggling with binges. It is an adaptive response, don’t forget.
Another thing I had to realize was that the goal weight that I wanted to be was not realistic. It is obvious to me now that the weight I wanted to be at could not be achieved in a healthy manner because obviously I had to starve myself to get there!
Ultimately I had to pick one of two choices for myself:
1) To starve and try to achieve my goal weight and struggle with binges and all the horrible emotions that come with an ED,
OR
2) To let the ED go and to give my body what it needed. This meant that I would likely gain some weight and I would have to learn to love myself as I was meant to be.
This was no easy task, but I chose 2.
I can confidently tell you today that I am happier than I have ever been in my life and I know I would not be at this place had I not decided to turn a new leaf. Am I as thin as I once wanted to be? No, but I can tell you the happiness I now feel is better than any other feeling in the world.
We have to realize that each and everyone of us are different. Our bodies are different. Some people are meant to be muscular, some bigger, some smaller, some taller, some curvier, some shorter.
We have to find out where our body will be happiest. I believe that is one of the hardest things for a woman to figure out, but once you do you will never go back.
We are all beautiful in our own UNIQUE way!
Updates
- Steph is running the NYC Half Marathon and is raising money for TnT Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Feeling generous? Visit Steph’s Fundraising Page to make a donation.
If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
Author Unknown
Thank you so much for this fantastic post. I have read all your blog post from the beginning on and they are really inspiring. You are such an admirable and gorgeous woman!
The line between binging sometimes and struggling with a serious eating disorder is really small. I realised that it became worse as I started to weight myself every day – 0.2 grams (sorry, not thinking in pounds ;-) ) more and I started to starve – and this leads always to binging, as you explained.
Therefore the most important part to overcome this circle was to stop weighting – I am weighting myself about once a month now – and this is soooo much better than daily.
Your blog was a huge help to find my way to healthy eating – thank you!
Thank you so much for sharing your struggles. It reinforces in me the knowledge that I am not alone, that others have similar struggles and the knowledge that these can be overcome is truly inspiring.
I can’t properly explain how your blog and the sharing of your personal experiences have helped me and merely saying “thank you” doesn’t seem adequate, but Thank You.
thanks for being honest, comforting..but most of all, thank you for being the inspiration that i think many of us need. everyone knows that they should accept themselves as they are..but it seems so much more powerful and possible coming from someone that actually knows how you feel.
HI Angela! cant say how refreshing your thoughts are! its so great that other girls out there also realize that being healthy is so important and will actually give you the energy to make the most of your life! thanks for sharing :)
Anglea – what a honest and eloquent post. Thankyou so much for sharing your experience, and allowing others to relate to it (including me!)
Angela
Again you’ve hit me with another topic that hits so close to home. It’s amazing how many people are out there struggling with it. I feel as if I’m getting better (way improved in the past year). Yet just the other night, I could barely think about the 20 minute tv show, since my mind was thinking “When will Matt (bf) leave the room, so I can go sneak another serving of ice cream?”
Thank you for being so honest.
Anne
What a great post! Thanks so much for sharing. I can identify so much with what you have shared! Eating healthy has been such a battle for me, so I am so thankful to relate with much of this, because it helps me realize my own potholes in my thinking.
Thank you for sharing your story. My sister had an eating disorder in college and reading posts like this helps me to relate to her better, and all girls really. Because in some small way or another, we all have an obsession with food–whether being “too healthy”, eating too much, eating too little, overanalyzing food…you get the picture. I’m still learning to love myself, and I’m by no means fat or overweight–my husband helps me love myself more every day! Reading blogs like yours helps me not feel alone in these feelings and really uplifts my thoughts. Thank you again.
This is a great topic and definitely hits home with (probably) all of your readers! Thank you for sharing!
For me over-eating and then binging was revolved around two things:
1. The sense of deprivation I felt due to health issues and not being able to eat certain food
2. Surpressing emotions
When i feel stressed, uncertain, tired, insecure, etc. I ALWAYS want food. It took nine hard months of getting real with myself and THROWING out the scale to listen to my body–but more importantly my emotions.
It’s not easy, because food keeps down the real issues that many of us don’t want to deal with. Dieting robs us of knowing what our body needs, wants, desires.
I love that you wrote ‘don’t feel ashamed’. The guilt and depressions after a binge (as you know) is intense.
Thank you for writing this. You are one of the reasons that I am on my path to recovery.
thank you so much for talking so openly about ED. your blog has helped me in more ways my attitude about myself, not being afraid of food, wanting to be fit, strong and healthy. i am currently putting back on the weight lost through retriction and have stopped bulimic actions. light bulb when i ate sat down took time to enjoy and cook my food the starving stopped. still finding it tough weekly weigh in with ED team to make sure am not loosing. one thing i would like to point out to the other ED learn about the side affects to the heart etc from diet and vomiting, really shoked me into stopping. thank you from LONDON
Beautiful post. Thank you for this!
Its such a treat hearing your story, even after having read it before. I am such a binger so its amazing to hear success stories. I start therapy next Friday! woot woot. (im a therapist hopper.)
thanks ang!
You inspire me more than words can tell. Thank you for helping Haiti and constantly working your a** off. You rock!
thanks for this post because this is something that I have recently been struggling with. Just when I think I am over binging–something bad happens and I binge again. Vicious Cycle.
Thank you for such an honest and inspirational post. You are an angel :)
Excellent post Angela! I struggled with anorexia in high school skipping breakfast, something small for lunch, and picking at dinner. To this day, I don’t feel hunger pains when I should be hungry so I have a very difficult time eating intuitively. Has anyone else had a similar result? It’s been almost 9 years since I developed ED. After I graduated high school, I began binge eating and after 4 years of college, I’m still not clean :-/
you loose hunger signals as hormones etc out of whack so yor body adapts for this nagative situation. to get hungeer signals back to “normal” have a routine where you eat somethimng roughly every four hours three meals/ snacks any order as long as you are getting your reqquired calorieseaten through the entire course of the day. my advice spread food out through day and night so you do not leave yorself open to long periods without food which trigger binges. its hard sometimes to eat when not hungrybut remind yorself that you are teaching your body and that you will be able to in the future have theose hunger signals working as they should do. good luck.
I understand those feelings all too well. I consider it such a blessing that I was able to escape from the clutches of my binge eating/bulimia/body hatred problems by accepting myself and giving my body what it needs. Thanks for posting this. ♥
This was such an inspiring blog post. It brought tears to my eyes, because I am trying to recover from just the same thing. Thank you for posting about this!
Angela, thank you for being so open and honest with your struggles. I started crying at work today as I read your words, relating to everything you said. I am so sick of hating myself and my body and have been contemplating therapy for some time. Your experience has motivated me to get the help I need and start loving myself again. Thank you so much for being such an inspiration!