Binge Eating

Binge eating is the compulsive act of over-eating, I would call it an addiction. I don't use the word 'addiction' lightly, as I'm well aware it has the capacity to ruin lives. I'm lucky (?) to have never been addicted to drugs, alcohol etc. but I was addicted to food. I know this because I sought it to self-medicate. I used it as a tool that it was never intended to be.

Imagine trying to unlock a door with a noodle and doing it over and over and over again for the majority of your adult life. Addictions are in their very simplest forms, trying to fix your feelings with a substance that isn't capable of fixing anything.

People with addictions are fearful, we run from our feelings and we run so hard and for so long that we forget which feelings we are afraid of. All we know is that ANYTHING is better/less terrifying than those feelings. And unless you've felt that paralysing fear, you won't really understand how powerful it is. I once pushed a needle through my grown-over labret piercing just to not feel my feelings. It really fucking hurt. Pain is sometimes preferable to feelings.

I feel like I should also mention the obvious; that addiction to heroin is not the same as one to food as it isn't physically addictive. Although there have been some studies done on the effect of sugar on the brain, I don't think that what I went through is on the same level.

I would now consider myself a recovering binge eater. It took me about 25 years to get here and I genuinely thought I never would. I'd tried Overeaters Anonymous (OA) a handful of times but never really committed to having a Sponsor. I had tried all the diets, all the versions of restriction - just everything. I was fucking exhausted. My eating disorder took up 95% of all of my thoughts, I was always thinking about food. I was thinking about how to get it, fighting with myself about when I ate 'unhealthy foods', feeling guilty and obsessing over it constantly. I would steal food from my family, hide and steal money from my partner and inhale junk food in my car on the side of the road so that no one could see me. I would eat so much food that it was physically painful, wait till I could eat again and then eat some more. There was no pleasure in food, I was just trying to figure out how to get more of it, without anyone noticing, all day, every day. It was my biggest shame and I was completely conscious, silently screaming at myself to stop and being incapable of doing so.

I'd love to write that I found the 'fix' that everyone could use to recover but I just don't think it exists. I ended up on the brink of completely imploding my own life. I was totally broken. So I gave up. I stopped fighting and trying to figure out how to 'fix' myself and let go. I let go of my ego enough to ignore the cheesy and religious side of OA, and began working the steps. I didn't go to many physical meetings but I did go to online ones and I found myself a sponsor who lives in the U.S and I began talking to her regularly.

She guided me through the steps and I slowly began to navigate a way through them that I was comfortable with. I'm an Athiest and OA is not, so it was tricky but not impossible. I read The Big Book, which is pretty old-fashioned (it was written by a white man back in the day) and I chose to ignore the sexism and find the intention behind the differences in values. Not easy.

I've since been asked by a few people about how I got through OA as an Athiest. I now direct them to Russell Brand's book 'Recovery'. It takes you through each step of AA with thoughtfulness, humour and most importantly without the religious dogma that puts so many of us off. I wish I'd done my programme with that book but my Sponsor was my Russell Brand and she was amazing.

I worked the steps, I took my time and I tried to be kind to myself. It took me quite a few months but I still remember the day I realised I hadn't thought about food. I was driving in my car and it suddenly hit me. I was so happy and shocked that I had to pull my car over and rang my sister in Melbourne to tell her. She is a recovering Anorexic so has an implicit understanding of the importance of such moments that no one else in my life has. Her support and understanding has been more than important to me - no one is less judgemental than someone who is a recovering - insert eating disorder here -. 

Those moments grew from there and I haven't binge eaten in a very long time. I chose not to count my days of sobriety, mainly through fear of failure. But honestly, it doesn't matter to me how long it has been. It doesn't mean that I'm skinny or eat super healthily all the time either. All that really matters to me is that my every living moment isn't filled with that shitty voice anymore. I don't think about food constantly and I feel like a huge burden has finally been lifted from my shoulders. I found my recovery when I learnt how to stop fighting with myself, and slowly let myself feel what I was so afraid of.

Presto Diet - Day Three

My partner showed me a video of Penn Jillette talking about his weight-loss. Said video is here.

I bought his book 'Presto' and started upon a reading rampage. His book is funny and I definitely don't agree with everything he talks about but the main pretence made sense to me.

I've only ever done one diet before, the Liver Cleansing Diet - which my Mum and I did together when I was about 16 or so. I did it and lost a bunch of weight and got a crazy amount of comments and positivity from EVERYONE. It was stupid, because as soon as I began to eat like myself again (binges and all) I just gained the weight back on. Plus I felt like a fucking failure.

Recently I decided to go back to Over-Eaters Anonymous again. I'd gotten to the point of exhaustion with my bingeing - my obsession with food had taken up so much of my energy that I was barely able to keep the rest of my life together. OA is a strange place, you go there because you really don't want to and you keep going because you really really don't want to. It's that type of awful feeling, deep down in the pit of yourself that is just screaming to leave the room - and your rational self realises that sitting in a room for an hour with strangers, telling you about their lives and eating habits should not illicit that reaction. The only reason your mind is reacting like that is because it's trying to save it's addictive self. You and your body want to keep running yourself into the ground because the addiction is just that strong, it has been your coping mechanism for life.

That addiction has both helped and hindered me through almost my entire life, starting back when my relationship with food and my body went sour. Much like how most of my future romantic relationships would go, it was a one-sided, needy-as-fuck relationship. Food was my first love. My second was my friend at Primary School that I used to obsessively stalk whilst he played soccer on the field.

Needless to say, the unrequited loves of my life made me terribly unhappy and food was a comfort to my loneliness, anxiety (that one has become quite the fucking buzz-word lately hasn't it?) and fear.

So this book by a Magician who at best I find funny and at worst I find annoyingly arrogant, felt refreshing and interesting. It also sounded like an bizarre way to implement the Meal Plan which OA recommends as part of your recovery process. A bit like doing an experiment on my fucked up, self-abused body.


At the real core of it all, I don't want to think about food constantly, I don't want to be obese and have all these shitty health problems at 31 years old, and I sure as hell don't want to die early because I ate too much BK.

The Potato Famine part is tough (it's also pretty offensively named). I have done it for almost 3 days now and my obsessive mind has been obsessing about potatoes a lot. And then this morning I woke up and I wasn't hungry, I think mainly because I don't really feel like a plain potato or kumera. That's interesting to me - that because I've taken the choices and pleasure out of my food (it's for 2 weeks), my mind doesn't feel like eating and I can clearly listen to what the rest of my body needs.

So I feel okay, more okay than I expected to feel. Although Penn mentions that the third and fourth days are generally the shittiest for people, so I'm waiting for that. The headaches are shit, the hot flushes are annoying and the puffy face is too but so far that's it. In the meantime I see my weight has gone down - whether or not it's just water weight or something else I don't know but that's cool, I'm in this for the long run. I started at 106 kilos and I'm now 102, my goal is 75.

I want my body to be healthy and live a long time and I'm eating potatoes for two weeks, then a mainly vegan based diet until I reach my target weight. Once I'm there I'll be vegan most of the time and eat what I want every two weeks, for a 4 hour period.

Penn's book may be a money-making venture, it may have more jokes and ego than medical advice (he does mention that he is after-all not a Nutritionist but a Las Vegas Magician) but it has helped me because it led me to believe that with my naturally obsessive and extremist personality (much like his), I needed to make changes that go with my nature, not against it. I cannot eat like a 'normy' and I don't want to. I'm going to eat like a big fat Magician whose trying to heal his body, and so far I feel like this is working for me.

Watch this space...

Skinny me

My first beautiful day in Spring is being marred by some couple having a domestic next door. Meh. It's funny how some things just get under your skin and manage to irritate you.

Ugh I saw the worst film last night, 'The Ugly Truth'? Jesus. I even like both of the lead actors but it was just terrible. So incredibly predictable and not even comfortingly so. Katherine Heigl sure picked a lemon. The weird thing is though that she's not actually a bad actor, she doesn't have to just take all these romantic-comedy roles, she has proved her worth more than once over on 'Grey's Anatomy'. I guess she just wants a break from crying all the time but there are much less career crashing films to take on, so no excuses I say.

Meanwhile I've started calorie counting, crazy huh? I'm so not that kind of person but I've tried quite a few things to get over my afflictions with food and I haven't stuck to anything as of yet. Probably more my fault than the diet's but hey. So downloaded Perfect Diet Tracker and have bizarrely been enjoying it! I do like listing shit so not a huge surprise but it's quite satisfying to get to the end of the day with calories left to spend and not spend them. Although I warn you not to eat half a large pizza on this thing, the interface went bright red and made me feel bad. Twas a hard lesson to learn, like being told off by your loving teacher.