Five years ago, I went to the doctor with severe and unexplained weight loss, my GP at the time said “you just have to eat more nuts,” which, considering I had lost 10kg in only two months, was a negligent and nuts thing to say. In fact this patronising response meant I stopped trusting the doctors and didn’t go back and get help and so kept losing weight and landed up nearly dying of anorexia. It wasn’t the doctors fault. In five years of training the average UK NHS doctor receives a mere few weeks training on eating disorders and so when presented with a case like mine, which I was in denial about and hid behind big layers of clothes, the medical profession was out of their depth. They should have weighed me, taken an ECG and my blood sugar and cholesterol level, but they did not and as a result I nearly died. My eating disorder drove me nuts and in recovery I had to embrace the nutty situation and gain weight, not lose it and fight to get healthy and stay healthy.
Weight gain is nuts. We live in a world where the radio adverts are always talking weight loss and trying to get “couch to 5k” or “fit by 30” or getting people to “lose a little bit from around their stomachs.” Everyone is talking “getting trimmer” and fitter and healthier. Everyone is trying to lower their cholesterol and eat more vegetables and yet whilst they all ate less, I had to eat more. The average person must consume a certain amount of calories, fat, sugar, protein, fibre and minerals a day. I won’t write the specifics as it varies person to person based on age and height and activity level and more active people have to eat more. If you are overweight you must create a calorie deficit to lose weight. If you are underweight you must create a calorie surplus in order to gain weight. For someone who never counted calories before (it was actually a weight loss app that a young nutritionist put me on “to track calories to ensure you eat more” that underestimated my calories and helped with my rapid weight loss when I first got ill) I had to ensure I was eating at least a quarter more than everyone else in order to gain weight.
In recovery I ate a lot. I called it “consciously overeating” rather than binge eating at first as it was. I consciously increased my meal plan size to eat more food. However everyone kept pushing me to eat, telling me everything would be amazing if I recovered, as it “bang” all the feelings behind the anorexia (for a disease supposedly shallow, it is caused by deep feelings) disappeared and the sun would shine out my derriere when I reached a healthy weight. I gained the weight but didn’t fix the feelings and so (as they say in anorexia treatment) “we repeat what we don’t repair” and so I kept getting anxious and losing my appetite and relapsing and losing the weight and then feeling guilty so secretly coming downstairs at night and binge eating to “quickly regain the weight and fix things” as I felt guilty for putting my family through the stress of anorexia. The binge eating was a self punishment, using food as a way of hurting myself, a weapon of my destruction. It was eating fast, without thinking and it was dark and painful and took me to some very low places. I felt powerless to stop it and I feel quite ashamed of it now. However I realise now it came from a good place, I was trying to stop my family worrying about me and so this makes it more redeemable and means I can forgive myself for it, in the same way I can forgive myself for the anorexia illness which, for a disease supposedly about control, was so out of my control.
I stopped the binge eating by getting professional help with a dietitian and therapist and going on to a meal plan which took my weight up steadily by x calories and xkg a week. My brain of course went spiralling. It told me that I would get “used to these huge portions” and would eat and eat and never stop and that I should throw away all my nice clothes as my “destiny” was to be fat and that I would be as big as Gilbert Grapes mum and “why fight it, its what you deserve for all the worry and stress you caused with anorexia.” My brain hates me sometimes, it can be so cruel! I am not fat-phobic, but I am scared of feeling a failure and in our society today we judge people based on weight I am afraid and I didn’t want to feel judged or worth less than anyone else. I also recovered to be healthy and obesity is the absence of health in the same way that anorexia is. All weight and food extremist behaviours limit happiness and limit health and life. I aimed to get healthy and stay healthy. In my eat pray love of recovery, I taught myself to cook and experimented with lots of ingredients and flavours and tastes (I thought sensibly that if I had to gain weight I might as well enjoy it positively) and I learnt so much food wisdom on the journey. I learnt food is a gift and what you eat is the single most important decision you make for yourself in a day. I stopped my anorexic thinking and am at peace now with food and my body, cooking like an epicurean sybarite and sensually enjoying the blessing of food with herbs and spices and creatively trying new recipes and flavours. I use my cooking to bring together the people I love, cooking up a storm and enjoying their happy faces when they get pleasure out of my food.
For me mindful eating played a big role in making food a pleasure again and restoring a positive relationship between myself and food. It taught me to recognise hunger and full signals again and separate out food and feelings. By slowing down and savouring my food and “eating like a food critic” and “cooking like someone is critiquing my food,” I really embraced the full experience of eating food and to see more than just its nutritional content. I learnt to really link the senses to my food, the tastes, the smells, the textures, the feelings of it in my mouth and the colours and appearance of the food. I learnt to think about my posture whilst I was eating, the environment I ate and to eat therapeutically, making food a joy rather than a punishment. I learnt to be thankful for my food, especially if it had travelled far or had had lots of preparation time, to be grateful for the people who helped get the food to my plate and for all the effort involved in the supply chains, from packaging to transport to growing the ingredients. I learnt to really think about how lucky I am to have food in the western world whilst others go hungry and, working at food banks and soup kitchens, how privileged I am to have food variety and good nutritious food. Thinking about food mindfully helped me to stop undereating and feeling guilt for eating or overeating and seeing food as a punishment forced upon me (when anorexic I was pushed a lot to eat more and so food lost a lot of its appeal for a while as nothing is good if it is forced upon you). I learnt to enjoy food, to love food and most of all to appreciate food and I will be forever grateful for learning this.
From anorexic to binge eater to connoisseur…the ABC of my food journey.
The Food Anti Extremist 