Those of us with binge eating issues spend an awful lot of time in our heads – even someone like me who recovered years ago.
The combination of our inherent nature and our experiences means we’re inclined to rumination.
We’re also often disconnected from our bodies.
Abuse, trauma, body shaming – they all leave us afraid to inhabit our bodies. We struggle to find a sense of safety within. For respite, we detach and seek comfort in food.
“When you do start to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full after years of being on one scheme or another, you will most likely go down a size or several sizes.
Unless you have been eating drastically less than your body needs for years, your weight should stabilise at its natural set point, which will be lower than what you’ve achieved through dieting and bingeing”.
Susie Orbach, “On Eating”
When clients first seek help for their emotion-driven overeating issues, they often think if they can just lose weight, everything else will be OK.
In this way, therapy can be seen as another weight-loss initiative. There’s sometimes a sense of disappointment that we’re not focusing on weight during sessions and, as a result, some clients assume I’m anti-weight loss.
I remember the day I wanted to give up.
I was at home. It was a warm, bright morning and sunlight was streaming into the study. I was heading towards the door but, as I passed my desk, something stopped me.
A simple thought.
“This is too hard”.
I’d worked so hard to understand my issues with food and myself but, despite my efforts, I couldn’t make enough sense of them to consistently affect my eating behaviour. Although my bingeing had stopped, I was still eating when I knew I wasn’t hungry. It felt like an impossible struggle with no way out.
“What you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass” – Paul J. Meyer
It’s the adverbs that make this sentence so meaningful.
He could have said “what you imagine, desire, believe and act upon” but that doesn’t have the same power. Instead, Meyer colours in the specifics – we must vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe and enthusiastically act upon.
It’s not enough to hope for the best, plod along, see what happens – we have to want it, believe it and make it happen.
“I started each new diet with burning enthusiasm – this was going to be the diet to beat all the others, this time I was really going to lose weight and keep it off forever. I never did. Every single diet ended with me regaining all the weight I had lost, plus a few pounds extra. What I did lose, I had not intended to lose – I lost time, I lost energy, I lost me”.
Dr Cherie Martin, “Naturally Slim Without Dieting”
It breaks my heart when I see a young woman on Instagram hating herself for not being able to stick to her slimming club’s diet plan, dreading her next weigh-in and vowing to do better tomorrow. What will tomorrow bring for her? More of the same and, in all likelihood, a life-long messed-up relationship with food.
Perhaps you were once that young woman.
I was.
Continue reading “Expert Insight: What We Really Lose When We Diet”
Julie de Rohan 