Confessions of a recovering binge eater

Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I hadn't grown up with a mother who enjoyed seriously disordered eating. She bounced between anorexia, bulimia, binging without purging & compulsive exercise. Some weeks she wouldn't eat for days, others she would binge for days on end, trying to hide the purging. Then there were the diet pills and the refusal to take her meds (diagnosed bipolar - but she's fine. No really. She's fine! She doesn't need meds... she doesn't think so, anyway!). She would bounce from 100 pounds to 230 pounds in what felt like the blink of an eye.

It was a cycle, and that cycle of binging, purging, starvation & compulsive exercise colored my perceptions of what a healthy relationship with food was. Growing up, I thought the binge without the purge was healthy. I thought only anorexia & bulimia were eating disorders, and that everyone ate excessively when they weren't "dieting". I thought watching what I ate was the wrong thing to do, because if I did, I would be following in my mom's whacked out foot steps and I would be destined for an eating disorder & possible death.

Nearly every day, without fail, dinner was grilled chicken or fish with plain veggies with a salad starter (until the 2nd divorce & then it was whatever I made). There was never junk food in the house (which is another story entirely!), there were never sweets, or anything to snack on other than fruit. Food choices weren't the issue in that house, it was the portions.

I didn't realize until recently that I also had an unhealthy relationship with food. I modeled my relationship with food after her whacked out relationship with food. Or rather I rebelled against the anorexia & bulimia that almost killed her when I was a teenager (2 surgeries & 3 weeks in ICU), and picked up on her binge eating cycle... without the purging. (honesty check: I tried the purging, but couldn't bring myself to do it - I HATE throwing up & always have. Ick).

When I finally flew the coop, I still made meals large enough to feed a family of 4 with hungry, growing boys, and ate the vast majority of it for dinner that night. I would eat a huge bag of tortilla chips & salsa as a snack when I got home. There was ALWAYS junk, because I'd never been allowed it before. Veggies were eaten in public, but rarely at home, because it was HER kind of food & I wanted to be nothing like her. I managed to keep my weight kind of in check (170-190ish) for years, but when I moved to Florida, it spiraled out of control & I finally found myself standing on the scale, looking down at a number that scared the beejeebers out of me.

247.2 pounds. I weighed 247.2 pounds. That's more than some FOOTBALL PLAYERS! It scared me badly enough that I ordered NutriSystem the next day. I lost about 20lbs the first month & felt great about that, but the soy did bad things to me, so I eventually quit. I found a doctor supervised program locally & started the expensive & restrictive process (low carb, low cal, low fat - average of 500cals a day, and yet another story to be told!). I lost an additional 56lbs in 3 months, hit a fabulous 171.2lbs (size 10!), and felt like I could do anything. But the demons in my head were vicious, and I started binging again- 40lbs came back on in under 2 months - it felt like the blink of an eye!

I spent most of the last year and a half in a vicious cycle - exercise, binge, eat right, binge, binge, binge, binge, diet, exercise, binge.

It's just recently that I've realized how unhealthy my relationship with food has been, and that diets, in the traditional, restrictive sense, don't work for me. They make the binge monster growl, and I've finally figured out that I can keep him in check by simply allowing myself a little of whatever I want - no food is off limits, nothing is forbidden. I can eat chips or ice cream if I have a little craving. I even had a slice of pizza a few weeks ago. Just one slice (it was kind of big). In the past I would have eaten most, if not all of the pizza in one sitting, but because it wasn't a "forbidden food", I was satisfied with my one slice.

It's everything in moderation now, and I haven't had a binge in over a month. I'll never know what life might have been like growing up with a healthy relationship with food, but I'm learning what it's like as an adult. And I like what I see!