How To Balance Healthy Choices After An Eating Disorder & Dysmorphia
Tricking your brain, avoiding bargaining, and practicing self-compassion.
Trigger warning: Mention of body dysmorphia/restrictive eating.
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With the pandemic entering its second wave and folks using terms like “The Quarantine-15,” I find myself facing down familiar adversaries: Dysmorphia and a long-dead eating disorder, which still sometimes manifests as “Did you work out enough to eat that?” And “Good job you forgot to eat until 1 pm, that should help you lose a few pounds.”
When I was 17, I had an 18-year-old friend buy me green tea diet pills from Walgreens. Stretch marks began showing on my body. At work, at the front register, there was a mirror faced opposite of me — I would pull my shirt tight around my stomach to see how much it protruded in between customers. I would cry on shopping trips with my mom in the dreaded fluorescent dressing rooms where no flaw went undetected or unscrutinized. I begged her to buy diet foods and I wouldn’t eat most of the day, show up at the gym, and pass out after 5 minutes on the elliptical.
This was the mid-2000’s, long before body positivity and conversations around fatphobia. I had a health teacher spend an entire class warning us against eating muffins.
Although we are still combating Instagram influencers and multi-level-marketing companies that promise shakes and pills that “melt off the weight” despite the mountains of evidence that these companies are a new breed of social media scheme sludge, I do see change on the horizon.
We’re seeing anti-diet movements as a new wave of social justice movements. Dieting and the pressure to diet and achieve unrealistic standards, for all genders, is an issue of unequal access and oppression. And before I go on, I do have to address the fact that access to healthy food is a big factor in whether folks even have the option to make healthier lifestyle choices. We still have a considerable gap to address in America. Socioeconomic status directly determines whether someone develops a disease they cannot afford to treat, nevermind maintain a standard of wellness determined by a privileged class.
I am also not a physician or psychologist; this is not meant to be diagnostic nor is it assumed that any of these can properly address the complexities of all eating disorder experiences. This is really meant for folks in the aftermath dealing with the residual ooze of dysmorphia and disordered eating.
So, how do we do it — how do we both honor our bodies and engage in the activities that sometimes trigger disordered thinking around food and self-image?
Intuitive Eating
Anti-diet movements encourage a move away from “moralizing” food; i.e., “Oh, this cupcake is so bad!” Because when we assign morality to food, we’re really speaking about ourselves when we consume that food. “I had a cupcake, I am so bad.”
As a society, we perpetuate this idea of “purity” as a virtue; the fewer GMOs, the more organic, the raw-er, the better. Fat is bad, carbs are bad, sugar is bad — these sentiments are not really about us, they are about us and our enjoyment of food.
So intuitive eating tells us to eat when we’re hungry, to listen to our bodies when they send us a message.
Some of the pillars of intuitive eating include:
- Honoring your hunger
- Challenging the food police (intuitiveeating.org describes the food police as “the station located deep within your psyche, monitoring the unreasonable rules diet culture has created.”)
- Cope with your emotions with kindness
Keep The “Tempting” Foods In The House
One of the reasons restrictive eating — and binge eating — tends to be cyclical is because of the age-old psychological fact that the more we tell our brains they can’t have something, the more they want it.
When folks begin diets, “restricting” or “cutting out” certain items is usually first on the agenda. And we’ve all been there; the first grocery trip after the promise of no more beer and ice cream, we quite literally increase our chances of experiencing panic, depression, and obsessive-compulsions.
I find that keeping one or two items from the category of food that I crave (for me, it’s sweets) in the house! I know I can snag a cookie when the sweet tooth starts to ache, rather than sitting with the craving, feeling badly, and having no way to soothe myself.
More, Not Less
One of the best tools I learned in therapy is the idea that I can keep the things I like (as I mentioned above,) but I needed to look for the gaps that did need to be filled — I was pretty deficient in vitamins and proteins. The solution to that wasn’t to take anything out, it was just to buy a box of spinach and protein powder and maybe some vitamins too.
Anti-dieting isn’t meant to be unintentional; it’s meant to be unrestrictive and thoughtful.
Every Sunday, I find a new meal to prepare in bulk. There are no rules or restrictions for what it is. The gap in my life that I’m addressing here is not eating enough which usually ends in too much take-out or not eating at all. For me, this doesn’t work. So I cook for the week and know that I have something there — as well as my cookies.
Self Compassion
Here’s what it sounds like to me.
You need to eat. You deserve to eat. You do not have to earn the right to eat.
This also has to do with the language we use, as I mentioned earlier. I avoid using words or phrases like “cheat-food” which usually only goes to imply that I’m doing something “bad” or “wrong” when eating.
No More Bargaining
Going off this idea of “deservedness” with food, I have found myself qualifying my crave-foods (alternative phrase for “cheat food,” what do you think?) If I don’t work out on a day that I have a craving for chocolate, guess what — I still get it. And on a day I work out? I don’t give myself more because “I earned it.”
Reflect
If you’re thinking about or beginning to make a change in your diet, ask yourself: Is this change subtractive, or is it facilitating change that will enhance my health? Am I taking something away from myself, or am I changing my choices to include more of what I’m missing?
The distinction matters.
