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Read Part 1 here
In the height of my ED, my IBS was only an issue when I ate, so I tried not to. When I went into recovery and had to eat, my symptoms went into overdrive and I was sick no matter what I ate. Although I was telling myself I was improving, I was still restricting (to a lesser degree) and when I felt the need, would try to make myself sick. To avoid suspicion, I would sometimes eat my allergy foods (i.e. bread) to force a reaction. After about 3 months, I realised I wasn’t reacting anymore. I had put on about a stone, was eating regularly and was chock full of meds. And I was able to stomach food I hadn’t eaten in 4 years.
Cut to 2 years later and I started seeing a dietitian to push through the next hurdle of recovery. Besides addressing my eating patterns and my vegetarianism, she gave me a list of foods to avoid. These low-FODMAP foods were not the extent of the restrictions I had put on myself previously. Basically, I don’t eat apples, mushrooms, onions and honey and I keep white bread to a minimum. As it turns out, my symptoms are highly correlated to my stress levels – which fits completely with my history of depression and anxiety. When I started to get these under control, my IBS was a lot easier to handle too.
The reason I decided to bring this up had to do with the current exam period. I hadn’t been experiencing any symptoms for a while. Like the reading week before it, this reading week had driven me into a frenzy of thoughts of failing and ideals of perfection. An added bonus of the Spring Semester was a stressful work placement and an almost constant string of rehearsals in the period leading up to the exam. The culmination of this was a week of alternately restricting and binging on a daily basis.
Soon, the tests were upon me but I felt prepared. I knew my shit and went into Anatomy to give a sigh of relief that the questions I felt particularly strong at had come up. One hour in and half the questions done, I felt a stabbing pain in my gut. I tried to ignore it but eventually I caved and was escorted to the bathroom. I got sick, felt better and headed back to finish off what was to be a kickass exam. My insides had other plans and I only lasted fifteen more minutes before I called uncle and left the exam hall, test unfinished, to get sick. Disgusted and disappointed don’t begin to cover how I felt that day.
Whether I like it or not, food is always going to be an issue. IBS doesn’t go away, it just fades into the background before rearing its ugly head in times of crisis. My eating disorder seems to follow the same pattern and the two have become intrinsically linked. Maybe if I didn’t have IBS, I would have never restricted a food group and become accustomed to not eating. Maybe if I had never had an ED, my IBS wouldn’t have exacerbated as badly as it did. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. With both conditions, the disease does not just disappear. You find ways to live and ways to cope.
To be continued…
I talk about my history of ED a lot here. What I have never really gotten around to is talking about the other issues I have with food.
When I was 11, I started getting sick. At least 5 times a week, I would have no choice but to take to my bed with stomach spasms, pain and all manner of symptoms. No body had any idea what was wrong with me. I was afraid to go to parties, to leave the house, to do anything in case I got sick while I was out. It was around this time that I started to withdraw and become introverted, partly due to my illness, partly due to first episode of depression. This continued for five years with no change.
Various visits, tests and misdiagnoses later, a gastroenetrologist diagnosed me with IBS. Although I now knew what I was dealing with, I was still frustrated; IBS is a diagnosis of elimination – basically, nothing else was wrong with me – and it was a chronic syndrome i.e. there is no cure, only remissions and exacerbations.
To counteract this, I decided to cut out all wheat, yeast and various foods out of my diet completely. My sickness episodes (while still ever present) decreased dramatically and I also lost about half a stone in a short enough period of time. I was also starting walking and eating healthier in general and I was happy that I was able to be freer with my social life and was looking better. I was still dealing with depressive and anxiety episodes but I had come a long way from my earlier days.
When I decided to quit self harming (another story for another day), I took up binge eating instead. When I gave up the wheat and other foods, I switched to tracking the ingredients in food. This turned into tracking the calories and then reducing calories. The more stresses I had in my life, the more stringently I kept to my “diet”. The less food I ate, the less I was sick (there was nothing in my stomach to make me sick) but overeating, and even normal eating, pushed my body to such an extreme that I was put off eating properly again for days.
To be continued…
First go read this about the proposed fat tax in America.
I used to be one of the masses who believed that education alone could save us. Save us from everything (including obesity) because obviously, ignorance is the enemy. And no, I am not promoting being an idiot. When it comes to being overweight, there always seems to be an underlying current of ‘they should know better’ and that once you learn the wonders of calorie counting and regular exercise, that is the matter sorted. If the deviant behaviour (e.g. eating) continues, a little bit of shame therapy (do you know how many blocks of butter you are putting on your body by eating that ice cream everyday?!) might just do the trick.
I don’t think anyone is under any illusions that their third bar of chocolate is doing them any favours. And of course, for your body to run at its peak of health, balanced eating and regular exercise is major component. But I know girls who eat like horses and are a consistent size 8. I know girls who are far fitter than most people I know and maintain an “overweight” BMI. So who here needs to be taught the education of weight loss?
I am pretty knowledgeable on nutrition and weight loss. I pay out of my own pocket to see a dietitian, I research on the internet and I have in the past lost over 60lbs (until I had some sense knocked into me and stopped starving myself.) I know how much I should exercise, how much I should eat, how much protein I need and which carbs are preferable. I am anything but ignorant on living a healthy lifestyle. So why am I still fat?
Well for one, I come from a family of women with big boobs and hourglass figures and no matter how much weight I try to lose, there is no changing that. That is just the way I am built. Secondly, intellect is not as strong as emotion (in my brain anyway) and after months of therapy, I am finally seeing patterns in why I do what I do. I do not eat because I don’t know any better. I have enough guilt, shame and logic to know better than to overeat. So why do I still do it? Because it calms me, because it soothes the compulsion, because when I feel like I am not good enough for anyone or anything then I honestly don’t give a fuck because what’s the harm in ruining already damaged goods? There are many a reason why I am fat, but ignorance is certainly not one of them.
Whenever I watch a weight loss show, I am struck by how often the presenter gives the impression of lack of knowledge and laziness being the black-and-white reason behind why so many people are overweight. I have yet to hear about the socioeconomic culture of fast food and lack of activity that overwhelms some areas due to poverty. I have yet to hear an address of the emotional issues that accompany the lack of motivation for self care. I have yet to hear of an approach other that calories in vs calories out. All I see is shaming people when they break and then comforting them when they cry before pushing them back onto the treadmill.
If weight loss were as simple as knowing to put down the fork then the obesity crisis would be a thing of myth.
It was Friday and I was mid-emotional breakdown, explaining to my therapist in exceedingly frustrated tones that I was sick of this shit – recovery and food and interacting with people and my weight and exercising and various other aspects of every little thing – there was no talking to me, I was convinced. Life sucked. It was some time after this hour or so of internal (and external) screaming, I had one of my trademark epiphanies.
There is a part of my mind that I do not identify with in the slightest, and yet it is probably the most ingrained part of me – the part that rationalises my compulsions away, that longs for instant gratification and the approval of others, the part that only sees one solution. More than one health professional has advised me to treat that part of my mind as an unruly child.
So how should one treat a child that is screaming and having a tantrum until she gets her way? Shame her, berate her, starve her, make her get sick, physically harm her, until one day she obeys you? Kids who live like this don’t turn out the ideal picture of health and contentedness – they end up more messed up than before.
Now, think about the child in the supermarket who is having a fit over wanting two chocolate bars. Does the mother slap her? No, she takes the chocolate away – not from a place of shaming or hatred, but from a place of love – all she wants is for the child to be healthy, not sick from overeating or too full to eat dinner. So she stops her child and explains – explains that the hungry child will get her dinner soon, explains that the tired child will have a nap, explains that the upset child will get hug. Because the mother, with all the wisdom and experience of life, knows that food is not always the answer.
Of course, at the age of 20, there is nobody holding my hand walking through the supermarket. But there is the side of me that knows what I need, that knows when I need to eat and sleep and ask for a hug. Its just a matter of that part of me, the part of me that is happy to be a mom to the people I know, to be strong enough to talk to that little girl who just needs someone to guide her along when things get tough.
And if I can talk to her mid-emotional breakdown, then I can learn to talk to her in the event of day-to-day discontent too.
As part of my January New Month Resolutions, I followed Sparkpeople’s January Jumpstart Challenge. My only goal from this was to get back into a routine of working out and to increase my fitness level to provide a base.
So for a month, I did a ten-minute video every day and at least 30 minutes of cardio five times a week. The videos were great for keeping me going – you don’t really get a day off but the video only days are essentially rest days and you don’t lose momentum for exercising. As far as cardio goes, I made my peace with walking, filled in some yoga from Dave Farmar and Yoga Download, started running again and got my kickbox on with Billy Blanks.
And as the month came to a close, I noticed my fitness increasing as I ran more and walked less when out for a jog, my ability to lift weights improved and my flexibility returned. My base is set – I can only build on this for February.
My plan is like this:
- Do one strength training video a day – keeping the momentum going works well for me without going over the top (See my video playlist here - this includes a stretching video for after runs and is missing my 10 minute cardio kickboxing [its on a DVD].)
- Build up a running base – I plan on doing 30 minute runs three times a week and continue to increase running time and decrease walking time with a goal to run the complete 30 minutes by the end of the run.
- Cross training – 2-3 days a week I want to include yoga (for bendiness) and walking (around college because I have huge long gaps between lectures to fill.) I also have workout DVDs to fall back on when I’m bored.
So this is the plan – a happy balance of fitness without going over the top compulsive exercise on my own ass.
As a side note, I am not doing this to lose weight – those days are over. Yeah, ED side of brain, I’m talking to you. What I am doing is following the dietary plan in Potatoes not Prozac by Kathleen DesMoiselles to try and balance my sugar sensitivity and mood swings. All going well so far.
Have a good day kids, more updates soon 
I am four days without sugar and I kind of want to die. Or kill everyone else around me, I’m not quite sure yet.
I do see the benefits. I do not have multiple crashes due to low blood sugar during the day. My binging has pretty much stopped (I know its only been four days but thats still a pretty big deal for me.) I need a lot less food to keep me full because I’m eating lots of protein and unprocessed food.
But right now, in the midst of it, it still kind of sucks. The headaches, the upset stomach, the mood swings. And more than all of them, I have to actually feel my feelings. Turns out that I have a lot of them. And they aren’t that happy that there is no sugar to placate them anymore.
So when anxiety, depression and panic sets in, what do I do now that I can’t suckle on a piece of chocolate?
For one, I’m being a total hippie and meditating a lot. Every morning. It keeps me sane until lunch at the very least and I am becoming slightly less uncomfortable with my raw emotions everytime I just sit down to contemplate and breathe.
I am back on the exercise wagon and have done something active everyday for the last three weeks. Sometimes it is a quick half hour going gung ho with kickboxing, sometimes its a run or a long walk, other times its yoga and on days that I am tired, it might be a simple 10 minutes of some ab work. But doing a little everyday is suiting me a lot better than going insane three or four times a week and utterly dreading it. And it all balances out to around the same amount of time (4-5hours) a week – its just that I actually enjoy it this way.
Last, but not least, I am trying to keep myself busy with the to do list I make every morning. 8-10 things to accomplish during the day so if I’m at a loss at what to do I can just look at my notebook and see that, “oh yes, I wanted to practice three sections of that piano piece” or “I almost forgot tidy my room.”
Hopefully by my next post, I won’t feel so homicidal. I’m off to nurse this headache and watch some Dr. Who.
In my life thus far, I can firmly say that moderation and I do not mix. I have previously mentioned my tendency to be very all-or-nothing in my thinking – and my behaviour is generally not that different. When I was told to reduce wheat (I was on a wheat free diet for four years) and, later, caffeine (I was caffeine free for just over a year) the easiest thing for me to do was to abstain completely. One cup of coffee led to another and on slice of pizza led to six. A diet was a starve, an overeat was a 2 day binge and a workout session lasted until over 600 calories were burnt and in the end, this led to my own little brand of non-purging bulimia.
This attitude has its bright sides – I have a strong work ethic and tend to persist vigilantly with a task until I am satisfied it is of a high standard – but it means that the whole “a little everyday” motto doesn’t work for me.
I wrote in my resolutions that I wanted to forget fear. This initially came from the realisation that I tend to insult and mock the people I am starting to get close to – and that I do this as a defence mechanism – that I am afraid of being abandoned. When I got a-thinking, I realised another thing – I had long known that sugar is my downfall when it comes to food issues, but until now I had been too afraid to let this comfort go. Now I think I might just be able to kick the sweet tooth for good.
Sugar affects the same part of the brain as opiates do and in certain individuals can lead to an addiction of sorts. These people tend to be hyperglycaemic (blood sugar spikes,) be unable to stop eating once started and have poor sleep and sore throats on a regular basis. Ding ding ding, guess who has all three?
Today is the first time in over 6 years that I have gone 24 hours without eating anything containing sugar. My head hurts, I am a bit tired and lord knows that I may be an utter gowl for the next few days… But I have to do this if I am going to kick compulsive overeating. I gave up purging, I can give up sugar.
I just need to get my head in the game.
I have documented well that I have been a vegetarian for the last 6 or so months. I love being a vegetarian – my digestion has improved and morally, I feel it is the right choice for me. There are of course drawbacks – and these drawbacks have now been ponted out to me by my parents, my dietitian and my doctor.
The main problems are:
- The tendency for vegetarians to gain weight sue to a dependency on bread and cheese (I am already overweight so this is not healthy)
- Greater difficulty in getting protein without planning (Harder to sustain training, meals are not as filling)
- Greater difficulty in getting Vitamin B6 and healthy fats, commonly found in fish (Contibutes and exacerbates anxiety and depression)
So I am at a loss. I don’t want to eat red meat or chicken of that much I am sure. But I have promised to consider eating fish again. There are two parts of me fighting this out and I am not sure what to do.
Opinions are welcome
To all my fellow or former calorie counters, go read this NOW!
I beg, I implore, I plead that you read.
Monday will mark my third week of Overeaters Anonymous. That’s right, kids, I’m in a 12 step programme. Whilst therapy and my doctors have helped me make huge strides in my recovery over the last year, I felt there was still something missing. So I am currently going to online meetings, talking with my sponsor and working the steps to break free from this “spiritual malady.”
Spirituality is a hard concept for me to swallow. A self confessed atheist for about 8 years, it was this part of the program that I knew would cause me the most trouble.
I don’t know when this changed exactly, there was no “eureka” moment per se. But I feel there is something there. And I am finally start to trust in whatever that is.
I used to be afraid of God because of my fear and disdain for religion. When my morals clashed with that of the Catholic church, I believed that there was no place for me. And since I could only do what I felt is right, I cut myself away completely and depended solely on philosophy and science. My family is not strict Christian at all (my mom is a liberal Christian and my dad is agnostic) so I was always taught to be open minded and accepting of everyone. But like every other child in Ireland, religion and catechism is part of your school curriculum until you enter third level education. And the older I got, the more I found myself disagreeing with some of the principals of the Church (I particularly hate the homophobic nature of some Christians, as well as not seeing eye to eye about things like contraception, abortion, feminism, insert more liberal beliefs here….) It was all very black and white to me: I either was a catholic or I wasn’t. So I chose to not be.
I may not have been content in some areas of my life – my issues with relationships, my friendship problems, my self hatred and harm, my ED – but this was one thing I was certain about. Surely science would not fail me, even when it felt like everything else had.
Recently, my friend (full of alcohol and honesty) worried the hell out of me with some of her personal revelations, but instead of dwelling on it and trying to change her (which I know from past experience does not work) I put my trust that there was a reason for all this, that there was a bigger picture – yes, even that God will take care of what I am unable to. It is difficult to see your friend in distress and say no more than I love and support you. But I trust that that was all I, just one little girl in a big bad universe, could do.
I have no desire to return to my old church, and maybe I will never return to organised religion. But that does not mean I have to be without God. If I am meant to find a religion, God will guide me there. As regards my current confusion towards morality and sexuality, God will guide me. I know if I want to recover, I have to have this willingness.
I don’t know what I believe – or the where, how, why, who, when, of anything. All I know is that I am changing as a person. And that that is not necessarily a bad thing.
