The Secret Diet of an American Athletic Girl: Coming to Terms with My Eating Disorder
This article was tough to write, but I feel it was (and is) still very necessary to put out there. I hope you enjoy and learn from my story and my progress.
Last night, I finished a six-week, 11-hours-per-week outpatient therapy group for binge eating disorder.
If you know me, whether that be a close friendship or a passing “hi” in the hallway type of relationship, this news may be a little bit jarring.
“Binge eating? How can that be? You’re so healthy!”
And, truthfully, that’s why I hadn’t done much to remedy what I thought wasn’t a serious problem for years. Literally — years.
To fully understand the span of this problem, we have to go back to the start — hit that rewind button fam! We’ve still got remotes in 2018, right?
I’ve had problems with food, eating and health since I was 9 years old.
The summer before fourth grade, my parents and I went to Italy for a three-week family vacation. Being that it was summer, and being that we were in Italy, what better way to cool down than — you guessed it — gelato? Well, one a day would have been fine — even one every few days — but we went hard.
Three gelatos a day, every day, for three weeks.
I came back to start fourth grade 30 pounds heavier.
Perhaps luckily, I didn’t gain any more weight until puberty hit me like a speeding train when I was 12, and it didn’t all come at once. During this time, I was still playing sports — soccer, basketball, colorguard, and then working out at a gym and bicycling — but my diet definitely did not match my fitness. Subway was a huge part of my teenage years, alongside Yogurtland, TGI Friday’s, hefty Mexican food, Starbucks, Italian dishes, and the like.
It wasn’t until my bike accident at 17 that I really had to come to terms with how I could get more in shape and eat healthier. But, then, college started, and drinking started, and eating on my own (without my parents) started. I had been pescetarian since I was 16, but had still focused a great deal of my “diet” around pasta and Mexican food.
Finally, around when I turned 20, I was out of the dorms and tasked with doing my own meal prep, grocery shopping, and just overall trying to be healthier. By this point, I also wanted to start weightlifting, which was awesome — but, this time, the amount of food I was eating was a lot less than what I needed, and thus started the bingeing.
At the time, I wasn’t really sure what was happening. Sure, I was stressed, but how could I not be? I was taking 20 credits for classes, working 25 hours per week, working out for about 10 hours per week, and all the homework…wasn’t this just stress eating?
Well, it was and it wasn’t. You see, bingeing can occur from a lot of different factors — restricting, stress, anxiety, even joy. Psychologists and dietitians have determined that the causes of binge eating fall under three different topic areas — biological, psychological, and social/cultural — but the reason for each binge can really differ, or combine between these different topic areas. If
For me, the bingeing came during this time from stress and restricting, leading me to go up and down in weight with about a 10-pound difference, all while I was working out 2.5 hours per day six days a week, eating about 1,200 planned calories per day, and walking about 20,000 steps per day as per my FitBit.
After college, I moved back in with my parents in the Bay Area and worked at a summer camp for a few months, where morning snacks, lunch snacks, afternoon snacks, a full-on candy drawer and happy hours were a commonly provided occurrence. It was at the end of the summer that I joined a local gym, got a personal trainer, and realized that I was at my highest weight ever.
Although I hadn’t noticed the changes, it was painfully clear — my clothes were tighter, my face was pudgier, my workouts weren’t as in-depth as they used to be.
That’s when I decided something needed to change. And it did.
Over the next two years, I lost 30 pounds, got down to 18.5 percent body fat, and generally enjoyed my life. I was working at a great job, volunteering and hiking every weekend, and doing some killer stuff in the weight room.
Then, my life got uprooted.
I was accepted to my dream graduate program, and within a month needed to move cross-country. Moving to a new city 2,000 miles away from home was scary, especially because I didn’t know anyone in my program. To kick off the program in the summer, I went to a lot of happy hour events and a lot of bar crawls, which obviously changed my body too.
It wasn’t until the stress of the program got to me that the bingeing I thought I had left behind in undergrad came back — first rare, then more and more common.
Truly, my fall quarter in my program was probably the worst of the entire year. I was taking four classes and doing an internship, all while commuting one hour each way to and from class, and trying to workout at minimum five times per week.
It was also during this time that someone I had believed to be a friend turned into a very toxic presence, often goading me into bingeing when we were out with people or simply working near each other for her own amusement. I had informed her before I realized her toxicity about the issue of past bingeing; she obviously took that — and my stress — to create a hostile environment, even attempting to take my phone out of my hands one day to call my therapist, in the middle of our newsroom and dozens of people.
Having all of these factors pulling me in all different directions led to monthly binges, which stopped when I went home for winter break. But — in facing this toxic person and other toxicity in my program at the beginning of the winter quarter, along with all the stress — led to weekly binges and sadness throughout the quarter, as well as some light weight gain and disgust with myself.
In February, I visited a dietitian at Northwestern for some assistance in what I could do to remedy the situation. She told me what was probably some of the best advice I could get, even if I didn’t want to hear it:
No wonder you’re bingeing — you are severely restricting what you’re eating. Your body needs more food.
Her comments were triggering, I’ll admit it, and — actually — led to a binge that very evening. But, she was right — and my reaction to her statement was telling: I needed real, professional help in a program.
My therapist set me up with a local group, where I would do outpatient therapy three times per week for three to four hours per visit. It was a lot to take in, and it almost had me run for the hills. But, I knew that getting this help now, instead of holding off for what could come in the future, was the best option I had.
I’ll admit — on my first day, I was nervous. It didn’t really help that the other mostly female members of the group thought that I was a therapist/dietitian in training at first.
For someone who’s pretty open with her feelings and emotions in one-on-one therapy and with friends and family, it was kind of a turn to be a group setting. I had had a much different experience that these other members — having previously written about diet & exercise, bingeing on “diet” foods, and ultimately just appearing different. Some members took issue with my appearance from the get-go…but, as I entered the group Sunday morning following a weekend binge with tears draining from my eyes, it was obvious that I had a problem like everyone else.
I felt like a failure for that first binge, and the one that followed, crying in group both times. Why was this still happening? I was here, wasn’t I? Wasn’t this supposed to help me?
Indeed, it was, my therapist and other members told me. But, I had only *just* started — there was a lot that I had to learn for how to approach these issues and reverse the behaviors that had become so commonplace.
The first decision was to stop drinking.
Now, as someone who has gone up and down along the drinking spectrum, this advice didn’t make all that much sense to me — cutting out alcohol entirely? How is that going to work long-term?
But, as I began to realize with my dietitian at Northwestern, my therapist and my new dietitian in the program, I had been labeling foods as good and bad and avoiding the foods I thought were bad. When alcohol was introduced to the picture — often in largeeeee volumes — the differentiation between good and bad and avoidance foods was thrown out the window, which meant most of my drunk nights often led to binges.
Although I wasn’t drinking much already, I severely cut what I had been drinking — which actually helped — and, when I did drink, I could determine then that my binges were more likely to occur and try to figure out a better way to get away from the potential of bingeing (even have a go-to plan in advance).
The second decision was to stop defining foods as good or bad.
Now, I had begun eating more after my visit to my dietitian at Northwestern in February, but I was still avoiding certain foods that I thought weren’t nutritionally dense. In coming into this program, it became apparent that there really wasn’t a point to doing that since it would hinder me in the long-run and wouldn’t give me a great chance of overcoming this disorder.
See, I love certain foods, like peanut butter, Ben and Jerry’s, and pizza, but just don’t eat them ever because they either (a) aren’t nutritionally dense, and/or (b) I binge them. I had cut them out completely for so long, but, when I tried to reintroduce them, had often binged them.
So, why not try to just try a little bit?
And that was my third decision, to reintroduce my avoidance or trigger foods.
About three weeks into the program, I realized that the peanut butter I had bought at the start of April was still in my fridge — something relatively unheard of during my bingeing periods.
Sure, I had had my ebbs and flows since I had started the program, but realizing that? That felt good.
Currently, I have another jar of peanut butter in my fridge — bought on May 8 — and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s — bought on May 9. I also made a pizza, which is a bit crazy for me personally — I’m more of a salad or vegan bowl type of gal for lunches, but hey, maybe it can be beneficial to switch up my old habits, right?
I haven’t binged any of these foods, and — because of the changes to how I’m eating more calories now — I haven’t had a desire to eat them, which is a HUGE change.
Now, although I just completed this program, and have already made some significant strides in how I look at food, I can’t say that I won’t ever binge again. Even during this program, it became clear that the path to remedying this disorder would not be a straight line.
But, I can say, that I have learned a great deal of good stuff.
Food is delicious, and doesn’t only have to be used for nutritional purposes. People who you may have never known before or thought you couldn’t relate to can be some of the greatest people you’ll ever talk to — celebrate those relationships. Therapy is so, so important for everyone, and should be provided for everyone, regardless of insurance.
Ultimately, the best thing I learned from this program? That I can do this.
Now that I have some more free time, I will make an effort to publish even more (haha!). To read my previous work, visit my profile here.
