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Food is more than just food.

Best biscuit ever……

Yesterday, I had a strange realisation. It’s taken me almost 30 years to get to it, but yesterday I realised food is not just fuel. Food has no rules, no moral value and no foods can be ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Whilst reflecting about my relationship with food, I craved a chocolate Hobnob. I heard ‘HH’ stipulate, ‘but you’re not hungry’. It was this thought, I rewound and re-framed my life-time’s thinking. Food, although important for fuel and nutrition is also part of connection and ENJOYMENT. It’s always blown my mind that people have just been able to easily eat something, just because. But yesterday, I understood food can be eaten whenever. Whether we are hungry or not. If we want to eat something we can, without judgement, without compensating, because it’s just food.

I was feeling particularly reflective yesterday, because I felt really fucking sad. The fact the I felt sad, set off a whole chain of thoughts. But what made me grateful amongst it all, the fact I could acknowledge and identify that emotion. For years I have numbed my emotions, to the extent when I started to feel again, it took me a while to recognise what I felt. That’s pretty common I think amongst us who have eating disorders. I no longer associate with the nickname I have had for years and use to value, ‘the ice queen’. This is not me now. Nor do I want it to be. The fact it became at one with my identity is quite disturbing to me now, as I am a compassionate person. But in the depths of ‘HH’s grips I was an emotional void. I’d get angry, anxious & irritable if my routine was disturbed, or challenged but these were pretty much the extent of my emotions. Instead of returning to my old behaviours yesterday, exercising to the point of exhaustion, pain or restricting to the point of false euphoria, to numb out the events. Instead I went for a walk out in nature listening to a podcast and then had a cup of tea with a Hobnob.

I felt grateful. Grateful I have reached a point of mental freedom to enable me to feel. Being numb is not living. I was grateful I could feel sadness and sit with it. Feelings pass and are not permanent. But eating disorders are. Recovery although hard, is also temporary.

The next thing I’m working hard to reach, is body neutrality. There is so much talk about ‘body positivity’ at present. I believe the premise of this is great, but I also feel it’s a double edged sword. It’s general concept to love and accept your body, sure. Promoting acceptance by society of shape, size, gender or race is the main aim. But, I feel there’s pressure with ‘body positivity’ as a concept. It over values of the body image itself, rather than appreciation of the body’s functions. For me, I don’t know if I’ll ever ‘love my body’ but I love the things my body enables me to do. I think very few people eating disorder or no eating disorder love their bodies. So for me, getting to a point where I do not care, or have any value from my appearance will be sufficient, beyond that a bonus. But I feel it’s healthier to see our bodies as a vessel, a vessel that allows us to do what we desire. It does not matter what that vessel looks like. That’s what I believe the social media message should be, that’s what body positivity should be.

Interestingly my ‘negative body image’ didn’t truly start until I was in the depths of my eating disorder. Sure there were things I had insecurities with, but I think most people on this planet do have hang ups. But I can say, the negative body image spiralled and it took so much value. This value is incongruent with my own true values, i’m not a shallow person, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what someone looks like if they are a good human being. But the world becomes so small, consuming and out of alignment with our own beliefs. I really struggle with this aspect of my eating disorder, because on a bad ‘body image’ day it still has far too much space. Space that’s not relevant or part of me. However this is part of the divorce from diet culture and unlearning so many untruths that are so engrained in society. Most days now fortunately I am neutral towards my body, but i’m not where I want to be yet. I’m not where I want the whole of society to be, where body image is as relevant as yesterday’s weather. But rejecting diet culture and accepting ourselves is a start towards remodelling society’s beliefs . Ultimately change starts with yourself.

Weight gain in eating disorder recovery

Recovery belly

For most of us recovery means committing to weight gain. Learning to accept our bodies unsuppressed natural weight. Getting there has for me been far harder than simply just putting on weight. It’s weight we were never meant to have lost, our bodies didn’t want us to lose this weight but learning to accept this doesn’t happen overnight. We taught it that losing weight feels good, gaining weight feels bad. We taught our brains to believe “skinny = happy” but we know this isn’t the truth. I was never more unhappy than when I was at my sickest. My emotions blunted, isolated from friends, family and bound by strict rules that my life revolved around. No I was not happy. I was a ghost.

But that doesn’t mean accepting weight gain was/ is easy. It’s going against everything I’ve taught myself to believe is ideal. The weight restoration phase on ED recovery is a small part but is so painful because of our neural pathways and our beliefs and distortions.

Weight restoration is messy. I think if no one has told you, now is a good time to tell you. When you gain weight after waging war against your body, your body no longer trusts you. Whether this is from diet cycling, restriction, purging or over exercising. Your body likes to be in homeostasis and sits at a steady weight when left to its own devices. But when we intervene everything slows down, the body has a massive freak out. It thinks its starving (which in many of our cases it literally is) and when we start eating again the body is like, oh thank fuck. It holds on to everything initially in case we are cruel enough to inflict war on it again. The most common place this extra weight/ fat goes to is the tummy a.k.a the “recovery belly”. You can easily look 6 months pregnant. I look pregnant now. Staving off unwanted comments can be an unwanted side effect. But if this happens it’s because you are recovering and doing well so don’t give in. This is hard. My belly has been here a while and likely It’s here to stay for a while yet. I have made peace with it, doesn’t mean I don’t freak out when I see it in reflections some days. Today has been a hard day. But I know it’s keeping me alive and acts as a reminder to not go backwards and the progress I’m making. I know it will redistribute and if it doesn’t well then I’ll learn accept that too. I did a lot of googling when I started my weight restoration journey and so I expect with time my body will trust me once more, so long as I am kind to it.

Doesn’t matter how much I hated how I looked at my sickest, I was still terrified of weight gain. I have had to and am working very hard on rewiring this fear. By challenging it every day. This has involved many melt downs, sobbing in the shower but it’s so much easier with time as your brain shifts with you. This takes a bit of time.

Ditch the scales..

Ditch the scales. They are not your friend. You should break up with this unloving/ non compassionate partner, it’s a one sided relationship. ( *There may be times where you have to be weighed for medical reasons) this does not mean YOU need to know your weight. If this scenario occurs request it to be blind, because no matter what the number, it will not serve your recovery but it will fuel your ED.

My relationship with the scales was messy, unforgiving. In my depths of my ED, I would live my days by the number in the morning. It would stipulate whether I was going to have a good day or bad day, whether I deserved to eat. I would weigh myself multiple times a day and go to great lengths to do it. In early recovery I used it as an excuse I was making progress. BULLSHIT, I was still using it as an excuse not to gain “too fast”, “too much” this is not recovery.

You do not need to deserve to eat. Eating is a necessity every one shares. Your weight does not define you. It is a number. It means nothing in relation to health, your worth. So ditch them. I binned mine. I have no idea what I weigh now. It’s not relevant because I am getting healthy. Sure in early recovery teams may need to know our weights. We do not. Be free and kind to yourself.

Ditch the things that are holding you back in ED recovery

Fitness trackers. These are not our friends in ED recovery. I do not think anyone with an ED history should EVER wear a fitness tracker watch etc. similarly to the scales my day revolves around steps, calories burned, moving raising my HR bla bla bla. Why would you need it unless training for an Olympic event? I don’t even really see the necessity for my patients because if they have problems with HR etc it’s monitored formally. So like my scales I binned my watch. It wasn’t easy but it will be liberating I assure you.

So I hope if this resonates you can make some changes and move forward. You deserve better. Your worth cannot be defined by a number.

Eating disorders don’t discriminate

Eating disorders affect any age, gender, body size, ethnicity and socioeconomic background

One of my main motivations for starting this blog was to contribute from the ground up in informing misconceptions surrounding eating disorders.

Look at the person to your right, look at the person to your left and in front of you. (If you’re currently alone try this next time you’re in a room full of people). Chances are one of those people has had some form of struggle at some point in their life with relationship with food/ body image.

If you’re like me, you had possibly never thought about what a person with an eating disorder looked like before you had one or supported a person suffering with one. Eating disorders affect ANYONE. The sad truth is, society has helped create an image of what an eating disorder should look like. Typically a white, emaciated, teenage girl with anorexia nervosa. Although I fitted this demographic, this is actually the rarity. I want to help change people’s understanding of this. I want treatment to be available to everyone, this happens with awareness of what an eating disorder really looks like.

A person in a “larger” body may be as unwell as the stereotypical emaciated person. Anorexia, can affect any size, weight and BMI cannot identify this. A person in a larger body is less likely to seek help when they are significantly impaired by disordered thoughts or physiological consequences of eating disorder. They can be as malnourished as a person who appears emaciated. Seeking help is harder, why? Because when a person in a larger body loses weight they are often rewarded by society, health professionals. Making it impossible for them to find help or feel like they need help. Health professionals carry their own biases and this needs to change.

Additionally anorexia although the most portrayed eating disorder, is the least common eating disorder. Binge eating disorder, Bulimia, OFSED are more common but talked about less. Why? Because often they are not the stereotypical image.

Globally eating disorders affect close to 1 in 10 people (10% roughly)

Eating disorders have the highest mortality than any other psychiatric illness. Startling.

Before I started recovery, I used to get angry with myself. I questioned how as a doctor I could possibly be having this struggle. I have seen first hand the consequences of eating disorders. Even in the thick of my disorder I treated patients medically, this makes me feel sad now. There was a constant dissonance within. It was like a DVD playing on repeat in my brain, you should know better, you’re a doctor, why don’t you stop? This highlights beautifully the grip an ED can have on someone. It is a mental illness. I could not stop. It was not a choice. It was not a diet “gone wrong” I didn’t like being thin, although I couldn’t stop. So how can we expect others to understand when we don’t understand ourselves.

Not only was I a doctor, I was an adult and in healthcare there is a stigma towards anything other than being 100% all the time, let alone suffering from a mental health problem. Not only did I question myself, how could I be so irresponsible as a doctor. I received the same judgement, confusion from those I chose to share my struggle with. They could not understand how a healthcare professional could behave this way. That made the inner disgust and struggle that the ED likes to feed on so much more powerful. This was not their fault, this is society’s lack of understanding of mental health full stop.

This, I hope highlights how EDs sink their ugly claws in, and become an unwanted hitchhiker. The sufferer may think they have control, but when challenged to stop behaviours, thoughts they cannot. It adds to shame when people describe eating disorders as a choice. Some EDs may have started from “good intentions” like a special diet for health reasons etc, but once the disorder develops, takes hold it is crippling. My ED was a perfect storm, I had the “perfectionism traits” genetic vulnerability and I dieted. I wanted to stop, I did know better, I couldn’t stop until I sought help. But once I knew it was an illness, even if others didn’t understand (they don’t have to) I could use it to my advantage and make choices towards recovery. EATING DISORDERS are not a choice, or a lifestyle. They are a mental illness.

The earlier someone seeks intervention for an eating disorder the better the outcome. That’s not to say that someone who has had an ED for many years cannot recover, because ANYONE can recover. But recognising signs you or someone has an eating disorder is the first step towards recovery. Understanding the diversity within eating disorders is fundamental to change.