The Return of My Eating Disorder

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about going Paleo. Two concerned readers wrote in questioning my decision.

“Don't you have an eating disorder? That's probably the root of your problems. A restrictive diet is the last thing you need.”

Another commented, “Making a bunch of food rules for yourself, even with the best of intentions, is not a good plan when you're recovering from an eating disorder.”

I assured them that my therapist and dietitian had a close watch on me; that everything was going to be okay. Except they didn’t - at least not as close as I needed them to - and it wasn’t. In the month I was on Paleo, I lost 6 pounds.

My therapist lectured me; my dietician said, “That’s why people lose weight on Paleo – you’re cutting out an entire food group: grains.”

So we made a plan for me to go off Paleo. The problem was that my restrictive eating had set my body up to not like the foods I had been cutting out. Carbs made me bloat and gave me acne, and it was difficult to know what was real and what was psychosomatic.

Then I remembered a conversation I had with my doctor, a conversation that might have very well triggered the return of my eating disorder.

I made an appointment to get my hormones tested in September because I was feeling out of whack. The first thing he said to me when I walked into his office was, "you've gained 6 pounds of fat since May and I'd be okay with you losing 5 of them."

Gulp! I immediately went to that place - the place of the eating disorder mentality. "Okay!" I wanted to say. I'd be happy to lose 5 pounds.

Then I stopped myself. No. I fought hard to gain that weight. At 129.5 pounds with 19% body fat, I didn’t agree that I need to lose 5 pounds of fat anyway.

Yet I found myself on that slippery slope. Should I or shouldn’t I? I thought to myself that maybe I could eat less fat, do more cardio, lift more weights in an attempt to turn that fat into muscle (though it doesn't really work that way). Then I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need to; that while the drive to respond to a comment like that is still there, I was getting better at ignoring those comments and that drive. I was lying to myself.

My eating disorder whispered in my ear, “You need to change your diet to heal your adrenal fatigue; it’s for your own good; for your health.” I bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

I discovered Paleo was the way to heal my adrenal fatigue, that carbs (especially fruit and grains) were the enemy. That if I would just get rid of them I would heal.

But I didn’t heal. I got sick. Four head colds in a month, followed by a bout of walking pneumonia that just won’t let go, and an abnormal EKG that has my eating disorder treatment team up in arms. Two rounds of antibiotics, a round of steroids, a pulmonary embolism scare (which turned out to be negative) and two blood draws later, I still have a cough and chest pains.

The New Year brings a referral to a cardiologist for me, and still, I think to myself, “I’m doing fine. I’ve got this.”

The funny thing about having an eating disorder mentality is how logical and rational it can make you feel. It’s very good at justifying the very behaviors that keep you sick. And just when you think you’ve got it “beat,” it comes back in a different form – a form that has you convinced it’s not the voice of the eating disorder.

I posed a question a few months back: Can you ever really recover from an eating disorder that generated quite a bit of feedback – on both sides. I can’t answer that question for myself – it’s too close for comfort. But I do know this: my eating disorder is my coping mechanism – as unhealthy as it may be. When my life feels out of control, it’s where I go. I restrict in an effort to “control” something. Yet, the smarter I’ve gotten, the sneakier it’s gotten. It’s so easy to fall back in the trap.

I’ve spoken with other eating disorder sufferers about this. Some, like me, struggle with the eating disorder coming back in times of stress. Some have experienced a shift in the type of addiction/coping they use – instead of bingeing on food, they gamble or shop. Instead of restricting food, they withdraw. But these are really examples of the eating disorder mentality in a slightly different form. Restriction from human contact is still restriction; bingeing on clothes is still bingeing. And underlying it all is still the same eating disorder mentality that got us into trouble in the first place.

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So I come back to where I was a year ago. I’m no longer in denial that I have an eating disorder – and that is a huge step in the right direction. But I still struggle with this issue of “control.” I am beginning to realize that many of us who suffer with eating disorders really have “control” issues – some of us feel that our eating disorder helps us have some element of control in our lives; others of us feel our eating disorder is “out of control” or makes our behavior “out of control.” But it still, for many of us, boils down to the illusion of control.

Because that’s all it is: an illusion. There is no control. I can’t control the sun rising and setting or the years passing by any more than I can control my colleague deciding to quit or my boyfriend’s family stress. The “control” I think I am exerting over my food intake is an illusion as well. I don’t control food – it controls me; at least that’s where I am at this point in my recovery journey.

So where do I go from here? Back to the beginning – back to what worked for me a year ago. I silence the voice of the eating disorder in my head and eat. That’s it. Yes, I’m resting more and focusing on healing, but at the end of the day it really all boils down to this: did I eat enough today?

For today, I hope I can say the answer is yes.