Sometimes I forget how far I have come since struggling with an eating disorder.
From the age of 11 until 25 I fought the battle. A battle I thought I would never be free from.
Many times, I gave up and I accepted my fate. I told myself that I would, for the rest of my life, have this struggle with food, my body, and myself. I would always count calories. I would always cringe when I looked at my body in a mirror. I would always obsess. I would always binge.
And I would always be hungry.
Other people could eat enough food, but I was somehow different from them and less deserving.
Many times, I actually tricked myself into thinking that I actually wanted this way of life. Because the alternative, was foreign. And really scary.
And fattening.
But I was wrong.
I couldn’t wake up and eat breakfast like other people did (did they really?, I would wonder). I wasn’t like them.
But I was wrong.
For years and years, my breakfast consisted of nothing.
I couldn’t eat until after my workout was complete. I wasn’t like other people who could wake up and eat breakfast. I had to earn it first.
After my workout my breakfast consisted of this:
I could rattle off the nutritional information of an apple to you as if I was reciting the letters of the alphabet. I could for most foods actually. It was rare when I didn’t know the nutritional profile of a food. All of my thoughts were preoccupied by this.
Now, I’m not knocking the delicious apple here. It really is a great snack. For my active lifestyle, it simply wasn’t close to being enough fuel for my body.
I was hungry all morning long. I yawned a lot. No amount of sleep can cure an empty stomach.
When I decided that being miserable was getting old and I wanted to recover, breakfast was still the most difficult meal for me to eat. I managed to increase my food intake later on in the day, but for some reason it was so hard for me to have a healthy and filling breakfast.
Little by little, I managed to get past my breakfast fear. Green Monsters were a huge part of getting over this fear.
For once in my life, I had fun with breakfast. I was experimenting and making all kinds of crazy concoctions. I felt great. I had tons of energy and I was excited for breakfast again. My breakfasts have gone from being a small snack to a filling and healthy meal.
For breakfast this morning, I enjoyed Chocolate Pumpkin Vegan Overnight Oats!
Want to know another awesome benefit of adding pumpkin to your Vegan Overnight Oats?
It adds a ton of volume!
When I add pumpkin, I increase the volume by at least 30-40%. Pumpkin is also high in Vitamin A, C, Iron, and has 3.5 grams of fibre per 1/2 cup.
In this mix = 1/3 cups oats, 1.25 cups Almond Milk, 1/2 cup pumpkin, 1.5 tbsp chia seeds, 1 pinch pumpkin pie spice, 1/2 serving Amazing Grass Chocolate Amazing Meal Power.
Toppings included = Cranberries, unsweetened coconut, and 1/2 tbsp coconut butter mixed with 1/2 tbsp pure maple syrup.
Healthy fuel for a busy day ahead! :)
Have you ever dramatically changed the way you eat such as by increasing/decreasing your intake, switching to a new eating lifestyle, or breaking out of a rut?
Well it looks like you still think about numbers, given the stats on pumpkin that you rattled off in this post!
I understand that you’ve come a long way…but never forget people who eat nothing not out of choice, but from poverty, those who are malnourished not because they know so much about food and have practically unlimited access to it, but rather are underfed and starving…
Also, dramatic eating changes aren’t good for you. But your transformation was not dramatic, it was gradual, if I am correct – and that is good.
I used to think exactly the same things. When I saw a “thin” girl eating something I would tell myself “oh, well she must just throw that up later”. It just wasnt possible in my mind that someone could actually EAT without gaining weight.
I am so glad I broke out of that. I had given up, and accepted the fact that I was either going to let myself get “fat” or never eat again. It was either one or the other.
These days I eat more than my 6’3, 200 ish pound boss and I love every bite! :)
Until recently I’ve been able to eat whatever I want. I tried to keep my diet moderately healthy and I don’t overeat, but then I started having “upper right quadrant pain”. To make a long story short, I got a new Naturopathic doctor who put me on a liver detox diet followed by food challenges (still in the middle of that). Overnight I eliminated wheat, corn, eggs, dairy, beef, pork, nightshades, crustaceans, caffeine, and alcohol. After doing this for 5 weeks now I don’t intend to go vegan or raw or even vegetarian, but I do plan to eat very healthy. Plus it looks like dairy and corn will have to be eliminated due to allergic response.
I have never had an eating disorder, but upon gaining a lot of weight in the past couple years and a decrease in my exercise, I knew I wanted to change something. Then I found your blog. Seriously. It was THE inspiration for me to change it up with food & exercise and have fun with it! And I am!
It’s like you’re reading my mind from a few years ago! I stopped eating and started running cross country when I was 14, and for four years thought of almost nothing but calories calories calories, until my body was so starved that it pumped out hormones to make me binge all of the lost weight back. I’ve been getting better very, very slowly–only managed to finally kick the calorie-counting in the behind last month. It may take another year or two before I can really eat intuitively. And the real irony here is that this whole dangerous cycle started for no reason…at 14 I weighed only ten pounds more than I do now, and I think I’m pretty hot!
Thank you so much for this post. I can really relate. I used to not allow myself to eat breakfast and on days that I did I would have to workout first and even then my breakfast would hardly be classified as a snack (usually a small 60 calorie yogurt). That was about two years ago and I have made great progress since. You are always such an inspiration and I am motivated to stay on the right track by reading your blog :)
thank you for sharing this post! I have struggled in the past (high school) with these issues. I played varsity soccer in high school and remember eating only a diet coke and pack of poptarts all day long, and then heading out to 2 hours of rigorous practice. I lost a lot of weight, but wasn’t happy. It was a horrible feeling to be so fixated on weight and calories. Things are different now, and I’m so glad.
This is such a beautifully honest post. I so often struggle with that same mindset. That I have to earn whatever I eat. I feel like I eat a lot at meals, and compensate for it by how much exercise I do, but then I feel like when I don’t exercise for it, I’m cheating myself. I hate that way of thinking! No one should need to earn food, it’s such a natural thing. Thank you for reminding me of this!
Wow, Thank you for being so honest. I think a lot of us can relate to that. I used to feel that way, and it is hard hard work to try and change your way of thinking. THe blogworld definitely helps. It used to be a day by day experience for me, but now I only have a bad day every once in a while. I. love. food. ;)
Wow ! I love this article, whenever you describe your past, it reminds me of my sister last summer. She was sucked into this huge whole of food & insecurities that lead to excessive exercise & not enough fuel. You’re truly an inspiration!
P.S — I REAAAAAAAALLLLLYYYY want to make your recipes, like i dreamt about them last night… not cool! But I cant get my hands not chia seeds ! Where do you get them !? I live in Halifax, NS. HELP HELP HELP . :)
Hi Tasmiah!
I live in Halifax too :) You can find chia seeds at the Bulk Barn, Planet Organic, or online http://www.superseeds.ca/ss1/index.html
This post really could have come directly from my mouth. So much of my life was preoccupied with eating as little as I could get away with (and complete ditto on the calorie memorization – even now, if a coworker asks the stats of a food, I can rattle it off from years of meticulous number analyzing and brooding.) One of the hardest things was embracing the fact that I actually like to eat (and can pack away a respectable amount when need be!!!)
Thank you for sharing this Angela. I am still a bit weary of literally putting the word out there on my blog that I have had an eating disorder but I do share I have had struggles with food and weight obsession. My anorexia made me live on 0-500 calories for weeks on end while exercising at least an hour a day and nowadays I can’t fathom eating less than say 1600 or so haha (I eat more though, I just don;t count anymore). It really is a bittersweet realisation… on one hand it is very sad I used to live like that and torture myself like that, yet on the other hand I sometimes just have to laugh about it; was that really me?! I LOVE FOOD :). and of course it feels great to have turned things around for myself.
My point is, I still do have some hard days (fat days…) where I start questioning the amount I eat, and it always seems like everyone around me eats less (especially the ones that are not disordered in their eating at all…) but posts like this then make me realize again: DOH. food is fun, food is love, food is live, and food is fuel :). so, thank you!
love, sabine
Chocolate Pumpkin VOO? How do you GO wrong?! YUM!
I have drastically changed some things in the past. I think this time though I am taking it slow and easy.
You really are an inspiration. While I’ve never skipped breakfast, I do make myself “earn” it first. I struggle with emotional eating and even looking at your delicious and healthy overnight oat concoctions cause me some anxiety. I think that I could never be as trim as you if I ate that. I hope to one day get to the place you are.
I think all of us has had food issues of one kind or another. I would try to keep all my meals to 200 calories. I would only eat about 1000 calories for the day and often much less. That doesn’t fuel much at all. My workouts were intense and sweaty. I was constantly tired and couldn’t figure out why. Then I read Thrive. It talks all about fueling your body. Once I started bulking up my breakfast I felt so much better. Those old thoughts creep back in from time to time. I find that I’m counting calories/fat grams or whatever without even thinking. Once I realize it I stop and ask…are you eating whole food? is it processed? no? then why are you stressing about it? Now I try to eat slowly until I’m full and enjoy every single bite. If I do decide to indulge in something sweet or whatever then I’m going to enjoy it. I’ve come so far in this respect. Thank God!
My eating habits have changed drastically throughout my life. From eating a lot of “junk” as a kid, to barely eating anything when I had an ED, to eating healthy, etc. I am happy now at my current state and I will do my best to keep it this way! When my ED was really bad I used to tell myself I will be like this forever”. It was a horribly depressing thought. I am so glad that I stopped believing that and proved that statement wrong.
Wonderful post, Angela. For many of us in this blog community, it’s hard to fathom a world where breakfast is the enemy (considering it seems to be the favorite and most celebrated meal of the day for most!) – whether we’ve never been affected by an ED, or have recovered from one. But that has been a reality for so many people… it is amazing to look back at an old eating habit from a much healthier, wiser perspective and be able to recognize the futility in that kind of restriction! Breakfast is a beautiful thing that SHOULD be celebrated :)
angela, you’re really such a bigger inspiration than you know. i’m in the midst of struggling to regain balance and a healthy relationship with food. my food struggles sound incredibly similar to your own. the cycle of eating, not eating, over eating and always loathing the sight in the mirror is unbearable. not to mention compulsively listing off nutritional stats of foods. it feels like my entire life is governed by food and eating. to see someone has challenged the power of an ED and won inflates hope into my chest again. thanks for this post, it was the perfect thing to read this morning!
Wow. What a great post!
Really ‘moving’ too, as it made my heart jump for joy; for you, and a little bit for myself too, I’ll have to admit – when I realized that what you were describing has been a reality for me too, for way too long.
But I love to think that that really doesn’t matter anymore; what counts is that today is góód, because it’s not like thát anymore.
So strange how you actually make yourself believe that it’s ok to live like that, because you’re special in a way – you don’t deserve what everybody, anyone for that matter, doés deserve.
xoxo
KillER photos lady!!! :) I made pumpkin chocolate VOO this morning…soooo delish! Over the past 3 years my eating lifestyle has definitely changed and I’m loving it! I never realized that you could be SO in tune with your body that you know if you need more fat, protein, or just a big glass of OJ. I’m constantly amazed.