I know it’s quite irrational, but at the worst of my eating disorder (and the year after) i had this rather extensive fear of what i considered to be solid foods. I was okay with liquids and frozen foods (since they were liquids at room temperature), but solid foods – especially those that would retain water and cause me to bloat (even for a day or two) were a fear. I stopped eating some of my favorite foods like sushi and pizza for quite some time because of this – realizing that i’d had pizza crust which (when followed by a glass of water) made me gain water weight due to the crust absorbing such, or realizing that the rice was sitting in my digestive tract for days. Living off of liquids for weeks at a time allowed for my weight loss to be a lot more apparent, and it seemed as though it kicked my body into starvation mode a lot quicker as well.
Now that i’m trying to eat – eat consistently and healthily (i try hard to pretend i’m eating healthily haha) – i find myself facing urges every step of the way. Every time i have a bite of food, i find myself thinking about how it’s going to lead to weight gain. Every time i have a food that’s not a liquid- pretty frequently now – I end up thinking about the consequences it’ll have on my body….how the food will weigh me down, and how the sodium will cause me to retain water. These thoughts getting the best of me is what has caused me to binge these past few episodes, so i’m trying me best to make peace with the chaos i feel surrounding food.
It’s just so exhausting and frustrating, having to justify every bite that i have. As i write this, i’m having tomato lentil snaps since i was craving a little snalty snack and was feeling munchy – which i told myself over and over i shouldn’t have – first because the sodium would cause me to retain water, then because i’ve been too unhealthy recently, and last because eating before bed has been correlated to worsening sleeping habits. I just sucked it up and started eating them because i wanted to eat something, but now i can’t and that ‘no fucks given’ attitude that i find myself having when i force myself to eat is risky territory. I feel like i have to force myself into such a mentality, as i otherwise wouldn’t be eating at all.
I’ve come to realize that i’ll always feel ambivalence surrounding my eating disorder, so if i sit around and wait until i feel ready and comfortable to pursue recovery, i’ll be sitting around waiting for my health and declining health. I actually made a post about this on my other blog:
You can’t wait until you’re ready to recover from your eating disorder.
Forcing people into treatment isn’t effective, but there come a time where you have to force yourself to pursue recovery – in a sense, you have to ‘fake it till you make it’. Most addictions leave addicts wishing they had the ability to pursue recovery (by definition they cannot merely stop their addiction of choice) due to the destruction their addiction has caused, but the difference with eating disordered individuals is the ambivalence often felt surrounding recovery. More often than not, people with eating disorders hold onto their disorders for dear life, making the act of ‘letting go’ quite complex in the recovery process.
So if you wait for that to simply fall into your lap – when in reality it’s something you may find towards the end of your recovery process – you’re quite literally waiting for something that will likely never come. People with eating disorders tend to feel ambivalence or resistance in recovering from their disorder – not openness to recovery. So by saying you’re waiting to feel ‘ready’ to recover, you’re really just putting off ever truly recovering.
Recovery is hard – so it’s understandable why most don’t want to give up a socially acceptable/encouraged destructive coping mechanism to avoid dealing with the reality of how much your life sucks, what troubles you, etc. However, unless you want to continue being tortured by the eating disorder, you have to get over that hump of resistance/ambivalence by simply white knuckling the situation, and going forward. It may sound harsh and cruel, but the reality of living with an eating disorder for the rest of your life is a lot more harsh. I feel like for most people, death/health complications beyond repair supersede being ready for recovery.
Such a strong part of me wants to go back to restricting, as life just feels easier – naturally more stable and secure. It’s such a chaotic conflict in my mind. I miss the solace, seeming stability and pleasure it brought me – and especially the feelings of competence, since i feel incapable in every other aspect of my life right now….and even more than before.
Borderline Dissonance 