Eating disorder

Open Feeding

Posted on by Rachael

Open feeding is a concept where food is accessible by multiple people at a time. Examples include restaurant buffets, family-style meals, and potluck type situations.

It is a place where people feed. It’s a place where people can eat anything that is available. The social norms of these places and or situations are; You can eat anything without judgment. No one will think it’s weird if you take seconds, fill your plate to the brim and eat every last bite, and or shove chip after chip into your mouth. If you are eating at someone’s home, you often eat more because you feel guilty or you want to make someone else feel better if you eat their cooking.

Several years ago I stopped going to buffets as a personal choice in my ED recovery. I remember eating at them as a child, and later with my dad when we would have visited after not seeing him for a while. It is a place that has options, and you can go through and eat as much as you want, and indulge in all of the options, with as many plates as you want. It’s a food addicts heaven.

Family meals, and potluck type situations have been really hitting me hard in the anxiety department for the past several years. These environments give permission for the ED to come out in safe non-judgmental, overeating accepted areas. It comes out like a fucking monster. It almost becomes its own being that has been awoken after a long slumber. Hello world, let me judge the fuck out of how much you’ve eaten, and what they have eaten. I look around at other people, I take inventory around me. I look at people’s plates, I look at their bodies, I calculate and create excuses. I did it before I became vegan and I do it now, only excuses look different than they did before.

My brain becomes a mess, and I fight myself and judge myself. It’s a battle in my brain, fighting to keep control when in reality I don’t feel like I have any at all. My anxiety is high, my teeth are clenching, and I surrender to alleviate the pressure that I’ve manifested myself.
What probably has pulled me in (other than the obvious food) have been social anxiety (even in my own family), feeling awkward, self-hatred, not knowing what to say to people, the fact that people have made special food for me… And I’m sure there are more, but these are the only ones I can think of at the moment.

What hasn’t helped: putting my silverware on my plate as a signal that I’m done. Shaming myself over and over again, mindful eating, judging myself or someone else for their food choices (it’s none of my damn business anyway), eating more, or drinking more alcoholic beverages.

What has helped: Self-parenting. Consistently I’ve come back to this concept of self-parenting. It essentially is self-soothing, telling yourself you are safe, you have had enough, you are okay, you do not need to eat anymore. Putting my napkin and my silverware on my plate and saying out loud no more.

What I will try to remember for next time (if we can ever meet in person again): Excuse myself to the bathroom or go outside for a few minutes, get up to get a glass of water, and ask lots of questions about the people around me. Those are what I have so far anyway.

Either way, it is important to be gentle with yourself. You are human, you are wonderful and you have got this.

Moving on.

Posted on by Rachael

Right now, I feel fairly raw and newer in my skin than I ever have.

I am in the process of letting go of all of my knowledge about weight loss and food I’ve ever known, and letting go of expectations of being skinny, weight loss, and how I will get there. I am in a place of uncertainty, excitement and my motivation is no longer about a “how will I look” result.

***on a side bar, my motivation before was driven on this idea that I wasn’t good enough, thin enough, pretty enough… whatever enough… the motivation was always to make myself better, or look better for someone else. . When we get to the “better” state for someone else, there will always be something to continue to change right? Who is this someone else exactly, and what are we trying to achieve here?

I started this Blog (I know I say this a lot), to talk about my process, and what is happening right now. As a place to see the growth over time, as someone puts in the work along their journey.

Rarely do we hear about the process and the journey, and we usually when we see people who are at a different place in their journey from our own we usually see the before and after picture and gather some of the journey, but rarely do we capture how hard it was to transform into whatever their after picture is.

We wish, we hope we dream about being where they are, wherever they are. We drool over their bodies, because we also want the admiration from people. We also want to stop that negative cycle and self talk I’ve talked about so much. Like I said before, we have been conditioned to not like ourselves and we have to be something were not. We are conditioned to believe we are not enough, exactly as we are.

As I step into this new un-adventured part of my journey, I have surrendered in a way. I have not surrendered to a higher power, and I’m not saying I’m powerless against sugar. Because that is bullshit. Seriously, it’s an excuse to not truly take care of myself. (I can say that I do better staying on track when I don’t eat lots of sugar, carbs etc. I tried that several times, I KNOW that if I DEPRIVE myself completely… It doesn’t work.) I have surrendered to myself, and the control, to the feelings of shame, guilt and living in the moment mindfully. Addressing the things, ALL OF THE THINGS.

I am de-constructing years and years of negative thinking based off of what other people have allowed me to believe about myself. I keep saying this statement to my therapist “Slowing it down the process even more” and when I say that I mean really… taking my time through the day and the things that I encounter. Not being willing to budge on my wanting to get better. This looks like… If I feel uncomfortable, instead of ignoring it (which would end up with me eating all of the scones like I mentioned in my last post), addressing it. Speaking my truth, and also talking myself through it in my mind. Giving myself a voice, not only out loud, but in my brain. My goal is to quiet that negative Nancy so much that all I hear is positive self talk when I encounter things.

If I KNOW ANYTHING, everything takes practice. It’s a slow process, and won’t happen over night.

Thank you for reading, I feel more grateful now than ever.

 

Parallels of two

Posted on by Rachael

I am not sure If I’ve written about this before, but with this food addiction stuff I’ve always felt like I was two people. The girl, the human struggling to be Rachael, and then the addict, something bigger and almost outside of myself that wants me to stay in this victim, shaming place with food, and my body.

Recently I have found even more parallels between these two that I wasn’t really expecting. Because I’ve been doing these patterns on and off for so long with weight loss and gain, I became really good at understanding what those felt like. It was late one night and I was on lots of cold medicine, but I saw the parallels between how I felt as a kid with my father and how I felt when I was totally out of control with my food and the spiral thinking.

Growing up I was always walking on egg shells and was always trying to make my father happy. I was always waiting for him to get angry, I got good at predicting his yelling, though it never stopped the way that I felt when it happened. I felt rejected, hurt, let down and left always dreaming for more. I quickly learned how to check out, and disassociate. It didn’t matter what you said back to him, he would make it your fault, he would harass and bully me.

I remember one time as a child, my mom was being yelled at, and I jumped into defend her. I remember his yelling switching to me, and me feeling all of those things I just mentioned which I did quite often in that house. I remember going into our computer room, locking the door, and sitting in the closet with my arms wrapped around my knees. My body felt shaky, or anxious and I felt like I did something wrong, or that I was the bad guy. I felt ashamed, I was to blame, and like I did something bad. Which eventually translated later to “I am bad”.

Of my lowest times, when I felt like I hit rock bottom with my food and body stuff… I remember I was about 240-250. I cannot remember exactly how much, and it doesn’t really matter the number, but it wasn’t my highest. I was in college, alone in my room, and I was sitting up against the wall, in the furthest corner in my bed, with my arms wrapped around my knees (as much as I could with a bigger body). I remember feeling full to the brim of food, anxiousness, uncertainty, starving for help, on the verge of a panic attack, scared, stress, fear and… well you know the feelings when you’ve lost control.

Both experiences, all though were different, were similar in how I was reacting. I essentially, just kept this abusive person with me all along with my body and food. I mean he did tell my mom once that I needed mental and physical help with my weight. That didn’t help my perception of myself and my body, at all.

Sorry for this long post… I promise I’m almost done. When I decided to stop the dv with my father, I stopped talking to him for a while. Because he couldn’t hear very well, he argued with me in email, IN EMAIL. I can’t remember what I said to him at the time, but it pretty much said “I’m done”. I tell people now that I stopped talking to him because I was tired of being abused as an adult. I was tired of having my expectations of him be shattered all of the time. I was tired of feeling like, maybe this time will be different and then allow it to continue to happen. I was exhausted physically and mentally. I had to change my perspective and approach in our relationship if I wanted anything from it, and of course my expectations. We can’t change anyone but ourselves.

I had attended like 5 alanon meetings, let go of my expectations. I grieved for months, and maybe still do today to an extent about what I would not get from him. It was hard, and since then I have taken the emotional piece out of our relationship and approach things tangibly, and factually. I let him know what is happening in my life, and do not engage any sort of emotion with him. Once, he yelled at me on the phone. I said… “Dad you can be angry, but you do not get to yell at me”, then he told me why he hated talking on the phone. I learned my lesson, while standing my ground at the same time.

A lot of this food and body stuff will shift in time, as I let go of the control and the dv aspect of it. I am seeking a new relationship with myself which includes building on positive thinking, being in the moment more with who I am. All of this is hard, and new to me, and I’m sure there will be plenty of grieving.. And I’m ready for it.

Progress Noted

Posted on by Rachael

More progress noted:

I can’t remember the last time I binged.

I haven’t said I’m cured by any means… But, I really truly cannot remember the last time I’ve binged.

I’m not sure when or why I stopped.

(Possible trigger moment, I’m going to talk about what happens when I binge, or why I do it.)

I think I stopped because I’ve been trying to take care of myself better emotionally. I think that binging comes when I feel mentally and physically exhausted, it’s the thing I do, after I’ve done other naughty things all day, usually it’s with foods full of sugar. The only way I can describe it, is that I am so Stressed out and I don’t allow myself to feel anything too deeply. It comes as a progressive thing, and usually starts with mindless eating over the day. It starts with me, eating something,  (more on the line of carbs because that is usually what is available at work most of the week) eating anything really, because something else happened. I believe I do this now out of habit.

I can remember a time recently where there were scones in our office and I was caught in this non-awareness loop. You know the ones… Where we are doing our life, and we are not present with what’s going on, like we check out. What happened was, I was feeling stressed out because of something that was happening with one of the youth I was working with at work.

Side bar: Actually writing this, triggers something I didn’t realize before… Which will tie into my next blog post a lot more (which I’ve already wrote on paper)… Ready for this one? I’m a little shocked myself. What I’m about to write you, is totally live and candid and I wish you could have seen my brain produce it. When I am feeling uncomfortable about a conversation I have to have with youth at work, I tend to check out and procrastinate with shoving food in my mouth. What happens with my body and my mind at the time, is I get so anxious and worked up (hence stressed out), and allow myself to check out of those feelings and use to alleviate them. The interesting corrilation though, is that these feelings that I have at this time, are very similar to the ones that I had as a little girl when my dad would engage in arguing with me. (I will address this more in the next post, I promise.

Going back to the example I was giving before, I caught myself mid scone, okay mid-3rd mini scone, and said… “WOAH, Rachael, what are you doing right now?” and I threw it away, and started to talk to myself positively. I can’t remember what I said to myself then, but I know I started to say things like:”You are safe, you are okay, breathe, and you will get through this. I started to create more of a positive dialogue in my brain about what was happening in the moment. With time, the more we practice, the easier self soothing becomes down the line. Also, if I spend time worrying about what others think, the harder it is to take care of myself right now, in this moment. And, why worry about something you have no control over or, in the real reality… we don’t know how someone is going to react, and worrying about something you don’t know, only keeps you trapped in those spiral thinking mind traps.

Going BACK to the binge piece, because I’ve been able to stop myself more and more in these daily traps, I think the binging stopped. It’s usually that when I allow myself to continuously follow through with those daily traps, that I would get home and be like “fuck it”, or intentionally do it because I cannot cope with what is happening around me at the time.

It feels good to be winning for a while. 🙂

 

 

 

Day 6

Posted on by Rachael

I missed writing Friday and Saturday.

It’s been a busy weekend, unintentionally.

Friday we were out with a friend for dinner, I ate a sandwich, mostly just the filling of the sandwich, and probably half the bread and a salad for dinner. I also had two drinks. Saturday came, and I can’t remember what I had for lunch, but we got our tree, set it up, and decorated it. We also put a new faucet in our kitchen for our sink. Well, we attempted to. Then my boyfriend wanted a new sink. So we bought one, and after taking out the old sink to replace it we found mold in the counter tops.

Since finding mold in the counter tops, we had to rip them out. Because we didn’t have a sink, last night we ordered Mexican to be delivered. I swore I ordered chicken fajitas, which would have been fairly okay, especially if I didn’t eat the tortillas. What came was chicken enchiladas. I made a mistake. I ate them, and they had flour tortillas. I ate the beans too, just not the rice. That was probably my only hiccup of the day.

TODAY we bought new counter tops. I sanded the wall where the glue had been from the previous “back splash”, I then taped up most of the kitchen and painted the wall a beautiful shade of robins egg blue.  We ordered take out again… We mostly don’t want to do all of the dishes… in the bathroom, because we were un-sure when the sink would go in. We ordered Thai food, which was pretty easy to get healthy.

It’s almost 9:30, I’m physically and mentally tired. Our house looks like a tornado came through. All of our kitchen drawers are in our living room, our kitchen aid is in the craft room, all of the pots and pans are in there too, along with our food processor… Trash can, recycle bin.. All living in the living room temporarily. It feels chaotic. It is chaotic.

Food this weekend wasn’t great, but… it wasn’t bad. I still haven’t dipped into the Halo ice-cream in the fridge. I haven’t eaten any of the cheeze-its my boyfriend bought from Target today… even though I want to. I haven’t drank since Friday. I did treat myself to a diet coke today. Which is something I haven’t had in a long time.

Also… The coffee I’ve gotten this past weekend have been 1/2 calf americano’s and I add some artificial sweetener and some half and half.

I’m ready for the week, and am looking forward to having my house back!

No picture today, but I have paint in my hair, paint all over my shirt, and probably on my face. My hair is wacky and my feet hurt pretty bad.

Goodnight, more tomorrow.

 

Day 3

Posted on by Rachael

I really have to prep my day better with food. I am also coming down from the sugar and the carbs pretty hard.

I have been crazy cranky for two days now in the afternoon. And I think if I pack my morning and lunch with MORE protein, I will probably feel better through out the day.

Today I had a smoothie for breakfast, and a giant “Italian chopped” salad for lunch, and then I had some nuts with some cranberries for a snack during the afternoon with some kombucha. I became so cranky that I was really having a hard time focusing, and my head was hurting and I was growling… Well not literally growling, but complaining about everything. It was a busy day, and I didn’t have much time to dedicate to the work at my desk until about 4:20 or so. I stayed there til about 5:15, came home and layed in bed for about twenty minutes quiet, and with my eyes closed. At some point, around 315 I went to get a n/f 8 oz decaf latte. I don’t know about you, but for some reason coffee is something that can calm me down pretty quickly, it’s a really bizarre phenomenon. Coffee is the one thing that I can sit down, close my eyes and when holding it I tend to breathe better. It’s not so much about the coffee, as the ritual and the familiarity in that piece.

I got up after my little nap, did the dishes and ate some veggie burgers, veggies and about 3/4 cup of rice. I felt so MUCH better after dinner. I am pretty sure I just need to eat more, since I’m eating less calories at a time. It really just all looks different when you are eating better foods.

My water intake has been less than ideal, but I’m still drinking it.

I wanted to also bring up something that I admitted to my counselor yesterday. This idea that I think fat is bad, because it’s been ingrained in my mind for so long from being called that and treated so badly when I was younger. I have also been really obsessed with what other people eat, all of the time. The first day, I could tell you all about what other people eat, and then today when we were out celebrating a co-workers last day in her position I was glancing around the table and eyeing all of the people’s food.

My eyes stopped at several people’s plates, and I closed my mind. I breathed. I said… Rachael, it’s not something you need to worry or care about. I opened my eyes and focused on the people around me and the conversation, and engagement. The conversation I had with my counselor was more about if I’m judging myself with my own eating habits, that’s how I’m treating other people. The better I treat myself, the better I treat others. Less judgy and more open and positive.

Anyway, I’m so sleepy and I need a shower before bed. If you have jumped on board with me to eat better, and cut out the crap. Comment below with what has been working well for you! ❤

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