control and disordered eating ...

being in control is my biggest struggle. 

on the one hand, i don't want to be the person to make the decisions, and on the other hand, i get angry when i feel like i am not in control. 

i want someone to tell me how to do things, and i don't want to be told what to do, 

sometimes i give over my power in passive aggressive ways ... for example, if we are driving, i will ask SC "should we take the highway, or go through the city?" that way, SHE makes the decision and if it is a bad decision in terms of traffic ... well it isn't my fault because it wasn't my choice ...

so what is it about control that i want to relinquish it as well as to keep it? what is it that makes me so angry when i feel like someone is trying to enforce their control onto me?

i asked CJ about her thoughts because we struggle with the same issues around food and control. she said: "if i could convince myself that i deserve to eat during the day, if i could convince myself that feeling full isn't feeling out of control, i might be able to eat three meals per day."


i want to talk about food. it is a bit scary for me to write about food, because it is such a huge issue for me. but i think that talking about it gives me power over it, and talking about it also takes the shame out of it. it makes me vulnerable and it holds my story up to the light. shame can't survive in the light, as AG likes to tell me. 

according to the university of cambridge, 

"eating disorders are often described as an outward expression of internal emotional pain and confusion. [...] the behaviours associated with food are maladaptive means of dealing with emotional distress which cannot be expressed in any other satisfactory way. [...] food is used as an inappropriate way of taking control."

the assumption about eating disorders is that the person wants to be thin. well duh, of course i want to be thin. but that has nothing to do with the ways that i (mis)use food. 

CJ said: "people have this image in their minds from the media of someone with an eating disorder - the image of the anorexic. in reality, that image is only a small fraction of the people affected by eating disorders. the shame of having an eating disorder is made more by not seeing media representation of your "type" of eating disorder. with anything else, if comes in all shapes and sizes."

so what is my eating disorder? 

food is my form of (false) control. when i feel like i am not in control, i use and abuse food to reassure myself that i make the choices. 

i play this game with myself. it's a game that i win by losing. i hold off on eating for as long as i possibly can. i don't eat, i drink tea to make my belly feel full. and i give in and eat when i am shaking and feeling faint, i have a few crackers or a piece of fruit - something to stave off the shaking. 

CJ said: "people seem to have this idea that overweight people sit around eating all day. in reality, part of the reason these people are this way is due to starving themselves so frequently that they completely stall their metabolism, making their body go into 'starvation mode' and any food ingested because stored. it's not an excuse for being overweight but it does serve to explain that if it were as simple as just not eating junk food/a lot of food, there wouldn't be so many overweight, unhappy, unhealthy people in the world."

i have been thinking a lot about my eating, and about food, and control. so i started talking to CJ about it, and about how much we think about it. she is so articulate that she has pretty much taken over this post. CJ said, "i probably think about it too much ... every time i purge, every time i go to bed hungry, every time i feel that sense of accomplishment when my stomach growls, every time i eat in front of friends, every time i binge, every time a kid laughs at me on the street, every time someone suggests a "great new diet they discovered" ... pretty much all the time."

thinking about food all the time is actually exhausting. thinking about eating, and not eating. thinking about purging, the actual purging, and thinking about how to hide the purging. it is all exhausting. 



be kind to yourself

xoxo

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