Tag: compulsive eating

Gentle Reminder: Stay on Your Path

~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 28 Comments

The path to a peaceful relationship with food can be long and twisting.

And many things can try to pull you away from it.

Maybe someone at work raves about losing weight on the latest diet and you consider joining them for yet another “quick fix” attempt.

Maybe you go clothes shopping and nothing fits well or looks right, and you decide your body is to blame.

Maybe someone snaps a photo of you and your Inner Bully has a field day pointing out all your “defects”.

There’s one thing, though, that’s perhaps more disheartening than anything else.

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What’s the Cost of Comparing Ourselves to Others?

~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 42 Comments

“In 1995, TV was first introduced to Fiji showing many imported US shows.
In 1998, only 3 years later, 11.9% of the teenage girls were hanging over the toilet bowl with bulimia, a previously unknown behaviour”.

– Susie Orbach, “Fat is a Feminist Issue”

I haven’t forgotten this shocking fact since I first read it many, many years ago.

Until teenage girls in Fiji started to compare their bodies with women on American television, the eating disorder bulimia nervosa didn’t exist in their country. As the unfavourable comparisons began, so did the mental health condition.

We live in a world where we’re invited to compare ourselves to others almost constantly.

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Food for Thought: To Be Nobody But Yourself

A bunch of light bulbs lying on a table, only one is lit up.
~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 20 Comments

“To be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

– e.e. cummings

In a world that says we must compare, correct and conform, this e.e. cummings quote – written decades ago – has, surely, never been more relevant.

There’s so much pressure for us to look the same, act the same, be the same.

Sometimes it’s hard to assert our uniqueness because we risk rejection.

But there’s such power in being nobody but ourselves.

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Expert Insight: Dieting and the Fear of Famine

Two rows of empty supermarket shelves.
~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 19 Comments

“Our ancestors did not have a constant supply of food. When a large animal – a whale, a bison, a woolly mammoth or an elephant – was killed, everyone feasted, gorged… it might be weeks or months before another big kill, so large amounts had to be eaten quickly and then stored in the body for the times of scarcity that were sure to come.  

This is an ancient or atavistic memory that calls us to eat all we can now, even if we are not hungry, just in case there won’t be any food tomorrow… there is something deep in our primitive brain that still fears starvation, scarcity, famine.” – Jan Chozen Bays, “Mindful Eating”

Remember the panic-buying we witnessed when the Covid-19 crisis first hit?

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A World Without Dieting

A sign on a table top with "Menu" at the top, underneath are the words 6th May, International No Diet Day and the eatonomy logo.
~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 32 Comments

If dieting never existed, what would your relationship with food be like?

Just think about it for a minute.

How would you eat if you’d never learnt to diet?

Would you wake up feeling confused and stressed about food?
Would you feel guilty and ashamed about eating something you “shouldn’t”?
Would you still binge? Label food as “good” or “bad”? Hate your body?

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Food for Thought: Learning Just To Be

A pot of multi-coloured flowers on a windowsill with a sunny garden visible through the windows.
~ Julie de Rohan, eatonomy® ~ 38 Comments

“Finding the lesson behind every adversity will be the one important thing that helps get you through it.” ― Roy T. Bennett

Somebody tweeted the other day that if we don’t use our time on lockdown to learn a new skill, start a “side hustle” and gain more knowledge, we lack self-discipline.

I have a problem with this kind of thinking.

My bingeing days may be well behind me but, like many people who binge eat, I have a tendency towards busyness and achievement.

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