Warning: What follows is quite long and involved! I invite any general commentary, anecdotes, personal experience, and advice :)
For some background information: 18 years old, female, healthy weight of 115 at 5'4. Currently taking a "gap year" before I start college next fall...though I am starting to question whether or not that is something I am able/willing to do right now.
So it's happened yet again. Crash, burn, wallow. Resolve to start my new diet tomorrow. Rinse. Repeat. Let's just say I'm tired, depressed, frustrated, and scared. While for the past 13 months my life has been consumed by food and what has proven to be an incredibly difficult (yet educational) journey in pursuit of "healthy eating," it was not until I recently read
this article on orthorexia that I began to wonder if I have a problem. I can't even begin to recount the number of books (upwards of about 60 or 70) that I have read on health, everything from raw food to paleo to macrobiotic, low carb to low fat, body alkalinity, and food combining, as well as the number of hours I have spent perusing health forums and websites (up to 8 hours or more a day). Yes, I have learned more about the human body, biology, and nutrition than I ever did in school, and I'm thankful for that. But all of these conflicting opinions have only made me increasingly frustrated and terrified of eating the "wrong" thing. I have struggled with (relatively) minor health problems my whole life, but it seems that in trying to solve these problems, I have only created new ones. I'm obsessed with food and health and it's taking over my life!
On an intellectual level, I have come to the conclusion that I need to take the middle path. Simply stated, lots and lots of veggies, enough complex carbohydrates, and some meat (I won't/don't do dairy). Eat when I'm hungry, stop when I'm full. So why am I finding it so hard to stop binging on things not even the ill-informed would consider healthy? It's come to the point where I know what I need to eat, where I'm done debating whether or not things like meat or grains are healthy, and where I need to just get with the program.
What may also be relevant to all of this is that from about the ages of 12-16, I experienced intense distress regarding the cleanliness of my room and my schoolwork. For instance, I particularly remember that if I didn't have time in the morning to make my bed, I would come home, feel desperately out of control, cry, and begin cleaning my room all over again. Then I would proceed to start my homework, which included writing and rewriting my notes from the school day until they were perfect (I didn't like pencil smudges). Back then, it's as if I felt the best way to have a sense of control in my life was to control my room and my things. Interestingly, it seems that by the time I was 17, I had outgrown these urges and now my room is as messy as any other kid my age!
Like with my room and schoolwork, it seems that I now use food as a means of attaining control. When I was younger, I never wanted to eat. I had more important and more fun things to do! But when I was around 14, my eating habits began to change and I found myself consuming enormous quantities of food, even for a grown man several times my size! I've always had a fast metabolism, so I didn't gain weight or anything, but all of the refined carbohydrates and sugar took a toll on my immune system and I found myself getting recurring bouts of sinusitis and respiratory infections. At the same time however, I found that by eating so much, I was able to get attention from my friends and others. And so food became a part of my identity as I unabashedly devoured my share and cleaned the plates of my friends'. I will say right here that attention had much more to do with it than actual hunger, which, when I later went through a devastating breakup that left me in emotional wreckage for more than a year, led me to think it was "cute" to say that Ben and Jerry were my new boyfriends.
But right now, nothing feels better than when I've been "good," counted carbs, avoided combining fat and protein, and abstained from dairy, gluten, grains, soy, processed foods, etc. Nothing feels safer.
After all, when one feels afraid of not only being hurt by others, but also by one's own body, living becomes a pretty scary thing. Add in a propensity towards perfectionism, an all-or-nothing mentality, and a need for attention, and well, there you have me and my life.
So where does this leave me? And what do I do about it? Right now, for example, after eating something I shouldn't have, I feel the urge to cut out foods, make yet another food list, and yet another eating schedule so I can feel safe and confident again. Am I simply supposed to recognize these thoughts as a symptom as my neurosis?
How do I find a middle ground if, to be "sober," I need to do something extreme, like cutting out a whole slew of trigger foods (foods that cause me to spiral into binge eating). The word "trigger" implies that when pulled, something deadly is unleashed, something of which I have no control. And so, the only solution is to control the trigger.
My question is, why is there a gun in the first place? By saying I have a problem, am I unwittingly creating a problem? Perhaps my bellybutton is the source of my problems. Perhaps it's simply a matter of too much time (currently not in school, not working, see friends like twice a week...though I am working on getting a part-time job because I'm going out of my mind at home!!!!!!!!) and too much self-analysis. After all, if there's one thing self-help books have taught me (and I've checked them all out from the library...almost), it's that reading about my problems aren't solving anything. What ends up happening with me is that, for instance, I'll be reading a book about eating mindfully while scarfing down my lunch. Um, hello? What's wrong with me? If anything it seems that self-help books only give me license to keep telling myself that I have problems. Now, that doesn't mean that I am saying nothing's wrong. I'm not saying that (yeah, I know about the river in Egypt), but what I am questioning is the effectiveness and/or healthfulness, at the deepest and most fundamental level, of some of the methods I have been using.
Perhaps to understand that I am already whole and complete, despite what I eat/look like, despite whether others accept me, that there really are no such things as "good" and "bad" foods, that eating one or the other of said category does not characterize me as either, and that in the grand scheme of things, all of this is really not that important, is all I need to set me free from food, from obsessions, from fear, from guilt, from this self-imposed cage I call "control!!!"
When I tell myself that "I can control my life and my health and be safe if only I can control what I put in my mouth," am I talking about true control, or is that only a false sense, broken at the first taste of any forbidden fruit? What is true control anyway? Is it saying "no" to the cookie, or is it doing either one of two things; eating the cookie and feeling satisfied or choosing not to eat the cookie because, hell, I'm not even hungry anyway?! Why do I have to eat the whole box, why is it all-or-nothing, black and white? Why has the urge to do so gotten so incredibly intense since I started restricting my diet? And where has all of this food-obsession come from? No one in my family is like this! All of them have a very normal, healthy relationship with food. Why, for instance, is eating only when I am hungry such a foreign concept for me?
Okay I've gone on enough. I need help. Thank you in advance for having the patience to read all of this.
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posted by youcancallmeal at 2:30 PM on December 6, 2008