A Call? – My Experience In A TRX Class

So. I’ve never really had a good relationship with exercise.

When I was a teenager I hated sports or being active, I dreaded gymnastics at school for many reasons. I was so out of shape that I couldn’t complete the routines our teacher gave us and I hated having to wear tighter clothes that showed my body. I felt ashamed all the time.

Later on as I had my first encounter with pro-ana pages I figured that being active was something mandatory in order to be skinny. So it became something I had to do, but not necessarily enjoy. It was some sort of punishment for my compulsive eating. Still I was never constant with it, it never became an obsession for me, no even a habit (or a bad one).

For many years it was the class I hated and even avoided sometimes, or now and then, the class in which I’d put everything I had just to burn some calories. It wasn’t until some short time ago that I finally managed to exercise because it was something that made me feel good. I finally started learning to enjoy sports. But even though I did get to that point, I still wasn’t doing it regularly.

This is the thing. Since being recovering I’ve never wanted to force myself into doing something I don’t really feel like doing, I don’t want to go to a gym only to get fit or to lose weight because I feel it could be dangerous for me. There’s people who can do it, but since I have a history of disordered eating and problems with body image I just didn’t want to risk it. I felt like it was pointless to fight against one obsession to fall into another.

During my vacations I stayed in a hotel that included some activities and gym classes. So my boyfriend and I decided we would give them a try (I mean, they were included in the price, how weren’t we going to?). There was this TRX thing that called our attention, we did a quick google search and just went for it.

 

TRX straps

 

So… What Is TRX?

“TRX is a full-body strength workout that utilizes a person’s own body weight instead of relying on machines or dumbbells”.

It uses stripes to get a full-body suspension training that helps building muscle combining cardio and strength training.

You can read about it here.

I have to say that the class was… intense. We had a good trainer that pushed us to give our best. I wasn’t really expecting such a tough workout, but the truth is that I found it fun. There was something dynamic in trying to find balance while using the straps. It wasn’t something monotonous.

Time passed quickly as we followed (in quite some pain) our trainer’s instructions. I was very surprised to find I had done the whole workout when it ended. While I do jog now and then and maintain a pretty active lifestyle I don’t consider myself a fit person, so I felt pretty good after finishing.

I am the kind of person who gets bored with gym machines. I get quickly tired when running on the treadmill or when using the elliptical. Also exercising by myself is not something really motivating because I don’t know new, entertaining exercises. So if you are like me, and you get bored doing the same things over and over, this may be for you.

I enjoyed the sensation of working out like this so much that right now I really feel like joining a gym. I want to become stronger, I want to honor my body by exercising. I’m feeling a call to become fitter (that sounds cheesy  but whatever).

But seriously, for the first time I don’t want to do this to lose weight or to look better but to feel better and be healthier. This is the first time that I’m feeling this as something new and healthy I want to try and I believe that’s a new step forward in this journey.

So I’ll be sharing my experience in this new world for me which is… going to a gym. I’ve never really done that before so let’s see how it suits me!

Pol

 

Close To Relapsing?

About three weeks ago my psychiatrist and I decided I could stop taking topiramate, a drug that helps people to fight compulsive behaviors ( including binge eating).

I was doing great by then, I had almost no binge urges at all, I felt like my relationship with food was finally becoming a healthy one, like I was almost recovered. I felt strong.

But since I stopped taking the drug, things had been harder. I’ve found myself trying to eat more than usual and using food to soothe my emotions. I even thought that I was having binge urges again.

The truth is that I didn’t expect this to happen and I’ve felt pretty disappointed at myself, like I was almost done and that I had to start from zero (though I know it’s not true). About a month ago I felt like I could never really relapse. And for the past few weeks I’ve felt like I could binge or restrict on any moment. But this never meant that I had to give up, and keeping that in mind has been really important.

The truth is that (thankfully) I haven’t really binged or restricted. But I’ve been very anxious about this situation and I was scared that food could start being a problem again. Fighting restricting and bingeing urges is hard, and now that I’ve been in treatment for eight months already I can tell for sure that after the initial enthusiasm I had, striving to be healthy, body and especially mind is what has kept me going for this long, and what keeps giving me the energy to carry on.

So after a session with my dietitian and psychologist (they both are awesome, I know they don’t read here but I just can’t not use this chance to say it) I got to a conclusion. I may be actually making this problem bigger in my mind than it really is (and to be honest that’s something I tend to do).

Maybe I have been getting too scared of wanting an extra piece of chocolate or about those times when I just really don’t want to keep eating because I already feel satisfied or full.

I’ve figured out that since I’ve been crash-dieting and bingeing for so long, eating like a normal person is freaking me out, because I just don’t know how to do it yet.

For the past few months I had been following a flexible and non-restrictive meal plan that my nutritionist gave me, and I felt under control because of it, it became my safe zone. But the truth is that people who have a healthy relationship with food just don’t really go following a meal plan permanently. Since I want to be able to respect my body and it’s hunger cues I’ve slowly stopped following the plan (this doesn’t mean I don’t have regular meals, it just means I’m being way more flexible about the things and amount of things I’m eating). So after being so under control with what I ate and what not, listening to what my body craves is being difficult.

Yes, having stopped to take the drug has made me crave more calorie-dense food. But it doesn’t mean that without it I’m going to binge like I used to.

Also facing this has made me realize how really important is to keep trying, even when we don’t feel like we’re making progress because in the end we discover that we actually were moving forward, we were learning even when it didn’t seem so.

And I can even say that the little victories we achieve when we feel everything is against us are the most important ones, because they remind us how capable we are. And if we feel like we’re having a setback, we’re not losing all we’ve done until now. We’re just learning a new lesson. But it never means that we have to stop trying. There are ups and downs in life, there also are going to be ups and downs in recovery.

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I hope you enjoyed this post. Now that I finally took the test that was haunting me, I’ll try to write more often.

I hope you’re all doing fine, and wherever you are, whoever you are, don’t forget that you’re amazing, you can do this!

Pol

Update (Or Lots Of Rambling)

Hi there!

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but if you follow me on instagram you probably know that these weeks have been very busy and that I’m focusing a lot on studying for a test, so I just haven’t really had the time to write.

Please excuse the randomness of this post, I guess I just wanted to write and let some things out.

—

Since I started my treatment I have changed inside and out. And people around me notice. I have lost a significant amount of weight, I am not overweight anymore. I am much more social than I used to be, I talk more to people and just speak my mind more often than I used to. I dress in a completely different way than I used to and I take more care of my appearance now. Some people tell me that I “have gotten pretty”. I’m eating like a normal human being most of the time and when surrounded by people I don’t pay as much attention to food as I used to. I’m less anxious, less nervous and feeling overall better.

And I’m not bingeing anymore.

I’m also not restricting. Finding an equilibrium between the two of them has been one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do during my recovery. I’ve come to understand that I can eat very unhealthily one day and that I’m not going to gain weight because of that. Now I know that I don’t have to “make up” for what I ate and most importantly, that even if I gained weight, it would be alright, because that doesn’t define how much of a good person I am.

I’ve learned how important it is to focus, or actually not to focus on things. Because when we dedicate all of our time in eating healthy, or worrying about how much we exercise, it’s almost natural to forget to look at the bigger picture, it’s easy to forget that those are not the most important things in life.

a yummy dinner I had the other night

When I’m with my friends it’s not rare to hear them telling me that they would like to lose weight like I did, and I do understand them, because living surrounded by all those ads telling us that being skinny is normal, and that there are some patterns that should be followed makes us want that, and in some cases we want it too much.

I’d love to make them understand what has been so hard to learn for me. That they are great just as they are, they don’t need to change one bit to be worthy of anything. I wish everyone who is suffering because of this would stop trying to change themselves and understand that just the fact that they are unique in this world is amazing.

We seriously need to stop criticizing ourselves so much and start loving ourselves unconditionally. We need to become our own strongest and most important ally, not our biggest enemy.

this is the kind of lunch I have on a daily basis

Though I may look completely recovered and you may think “she’s already done it”. I know I’m not done. I still have a long way to go. There are moments when the ED voices fill my head and I forget that my main goal still is to recover. Even if it looks like “I’ve got my crap together” I have to choose to keep fighting against my demons. I keep choosing not to compulsively overeat, not to bring myself down, not to punish myself if I fail at something, not to restrict if I feel the urge to. I keep choosing these things everyday because I believe that one day I will completely leave this disorder in the past. Recovering has become to me, my only option.

And even if I don’t achieve full recovery, even if a small part of me has to keep fighting for the rest of her life, this is so much better than being the slave of an illness.

My battle may not be as evident as before, and it’s definitely not as hard as before, but it’s still real.

Also about two weeks ago I published on my personal Facebook that I’m on a treatment for my eating disorder. It was a hard decision, I used to feel very ashamed of it but I want to encourage people to seek professional help, and I want to contribute my two cents to reducing the stigma of mental illnesses, it felt contradictory not to talk about my own issues, so I just did it. And I’m still me. People haven’t changed towards me and somehow I feel liberated. I had a very nice response from my Facebook friends. Also people who I had no idea that were struggling with these same problems spoke up, which is the kind of thing I wanted to cause in first place.

And no, this is not an easy path to follow. It’s not all “look at the desserts I had yesterday” and using the #recoverywin hashtag like crazy. It’s actually hard, but when you’ve figured out that you want to get better for yourself, nothing can stop you. And I am no special case, anyone can do it (seriously).

And I can’t tell you too many times how worth it is, the words I write here are not enough to describe the weight I’ve stopped carrying on my shoulders, how freer I am, how much better I’m feeling…

So if you’re feeling hopeless, please hold on. Please keep trying, because I swear you can do it. I never thought I could, I thought I would die having this disorder… But here I am, more than six months binge-free, and on my way to recover.

yeah, that’s me in a fitting room (you can see the overall’s tag)

 Pol ♡

Update: Dealing With Restricting Urges

Time flies, and we’re already past half of October. I don’t even know how that happened, but it did.

If you follow me on instagram, you may know that I’m taking a test at the end of November because I want to apply to medical school. In Chile you can only take this test once a year, and I’ve been studying for months. I used to be terribly nervous about it. I would study for hours but then when I faced the mock examinations my mind would go blank, and that only made me more nervous, it was a vicious cycle. But I am relaxing more and understanding that even if I don’t make it, it’s not the end of the world. I’m always so self-demanding, and that is just not good for me. I know that “Perfect is the enemy of good” and that being such a perfectionist can be counterproductive in the end. I struggle with letting go of that every day, but I am feeling better.

The thing is that I have only about six more weeks before the test, and I will use them well. I have to study enough, and not become stressed. I’m doing my best. I really want to study medicine, but I don’t want to lose my mind in the process.

About my eating:

*This part contains some descriptions that may be triggering for you, read with caution*.

I am feeling very well. I can say that I have been binge-free for more than five full months. When I first started my treatment I thought that being binge-free for a period of time like this one would mean that I would be already completely recovered. I was so wrong.

At first my main challenge was to stop binge eating while building my self-esteem. And it was very hard, but I slowly managed to do it. The thing is that as I stopped eating those large amounts of food, I lost weight. It wasn’t intentional, but I knew it was going to happen. It was part of the process.

I know I always say that the focus should never be losing weight in our recoveries, because that’s what I think (and I believe that it made my treatment way easier), but I will be honest here since this is what’s been happening to me lately: Once I noticed I had lost the weight I started liking it and it affected my disordered mind because now I didn’t want to gain it back. So whenever I ate something more caloric I started feeling urges to restrict or to exercise!

I started this treatment to fight the binge urges and now I was feeling restricting and exercising urges!

I didn’t expect that to happen to me, and I thought that just ignoring those disordered thoughts would do the job, but as they became more common I figured I was getting stuck. I had to change the plan.

So, what do you do when you’re stuck because of a disorder?

You challenge it.

Instead of ignoring those urges, I started doing the opposite. I listened to them, like I used to do with my binge urges before. And I started breaking the schemes, eating unplanned snacks, going out for dinner. It’s been tough because I was very comfortable with the way I was eating before this happened to me. But it’s working. I am feeling like myself again, I’m in control again.

No binges. No restricting. No over-exercising. Me against all my disordered thoughts, and I am winning this fight

.

I am feeling very optimistic. I know that I still have a long way to go to be recovered… But I believe that I’m walking the right path. I am absolutely committed to my treatment, and I can’t wait to start university next year. In this moment I feel completely connected with myself and wanting to live like never before. It’s not really like I am me again, it’s more like I am finally becoming me. Because I’m breaking free from all the limitations I set to myself.

I’m really grateful for being able to live this process, because I am regaining my whole life.

Pol♡ 

Ads, Media And The Image of Women

Hi there, very brief post today.

I just wanted to share with you an amazing video I found on YouTube. It’s not 100% eating disorder related but you may find it interesting since it is about the image of women presented on ads.

The way publicity portrays women is dangerous and worrying, and it can even be considered as violence, because of the behaviors it normalizes. This has personally affected me a lot during my life. It was very difficult growing up being a chubby teenager when ads told me I had to be skinny, pretty, feminine and flawless. Not every girl exposed to this is going to develop an eating disorder like I did, but some of us do.

I’m not going to say anything else, so if you have the time, please, just go ahead, watch the video, get angry 😉

Pol

Not Sure If I Was Bingeing!

Hi there! Happy October! 🙂

Many people have asked me about this topic on my instagram lately so I figured I would write a post about it since it seems important when it comes to overcoming BED or any kind of disordered eating.

Has it ever happened to you that you didn’t really know if you were bingeing or not? Well, it surely happened to me before I started my treatment, and I would spend a lot of time stressing about it. So I will try to explain the differences from having a full blown binge and binge eating.

A binge is doing “too much of something in a short period of time”. So if we apply this to food it is theoretically very clear what is a binge, and what is not. But in real life there are some days that while you aren’t clearly in “binge mode” (eating a large amount of food in a short period of time) you somehow, in a different way, end up overeating and feeling guilty, but you don’t know if it what you did was a binge or not.

Let’s put an example: You may be mindlessly snacking during the whole day, and at night you notice that you ate way more than a “normal” person would have in a regular day so you feel guilty. But there wasn’t a moment in which you consciously thought something like “This is it, I’m bingeing again”. So you end up wondering “Was that really a binge?”

While it probably wasn’t the common definition of a binge you do feel like it wasn’t normal eating, you do feel like something wasn’t right there.

The truth is that while the amount of the food you ate probably was inferior to the one you eat when you binge, what you need to recognize is if the underlying behavior is the same one. If it was, then it wasn’t a binge, but you were binge eating. Which is compulsive overeating, eating more than you should, and feeling like you can’t stop, it is part of BED.

Now you may find this cycle hard to break, and hell, it is. But there are some things that make it way easier. First, try to analyze how are the days when you keep mindlessly snacking. Did you have breakfast? Were you stressed? Did you drink enough water? Did you seep enough hours the night before?

The following tips have helped me enormously, since they are habits, you just have to get used to them, and they help with the snacking vicious cycle. The binge-urges are another story although they tend to be fewer, but what comes to the habits, those are easier to change. Also remember that this requires consistency, you can’t expect it to change from one day to another without putting work to it, this isn’t magical.

Having structured meals:

This is very important. If not the most important tip to break this particular vicious cycle. Having breakfast, a mid-morning snack, lunch, a mid-afternoon snack and dinner. If you have been binge eating for a long time you probably have problems recognizing the signals your body sends you when it really is hungry or when it is having a binge urge. Having proper meals will help you reconnect with your body, it will help you re-learn to know when you’re hungry, when you’re satisfied and you’re full. And it has to be non-restrictive, because if it is you’ll feel deprived and due to our black and white thinking this will probably lead you to a binge.

Many people believe that you can start mindfully eating straight from binge eating disorder, I’m not going to say that it never works, because some people have recovered from doing it, but I’m convinced that the best option to reconnect with your body is this one. Doing it one step at a time. If a nutritionist can help you with a meal plan it would be even better.

Things you should stop doing: Having just one or two big meals for the whole day, or just mindlessly snacking through the day instead of having proper meals. Crash dieting (or skipping meals).

Stay hydrated:

I know that everybody says it, and you may think “oh this bitch, I’ve read this everywhere” but believe me. Sometimes you feel hungry at an odd hour and start feeling desperate, you drink a glass of water and it fades away. It’s real. Carry a bottle of water, it really might save you from overeating.

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So, I hope you found this post helpful. If there’s anything else you think I should add or if you have any questions just let me know through the comments or instagram 🙂

Pol

New Blog!

Hellooooooooo 🙂

So… I said on my IG that I had some new plans for my blog and this was it. I was having something like a “writer’s block” and just wasn’t really motivated to keep writing on the other one. I felt trapped in the concept I made for it (have you ever felt trapped in your creation? strange paradoxical thing). At first my blog was only going to be about overcoming BED but as time went by my posts started becoming more and more personal and I discovered that I couldn’t really only write about that. I love writing and I had caged myself to only publish entries about one topic, so this “corner”, “my miscellaneous corner”, will be my personal place to write about different personal things, mostly about how I’m learning to live a normal life again after having an eating disorder and such high levels of anxiety. There will be random posts, and some rants too. But of course overcoming BED will still be the main topic of my blog, since it still is one of the main topics in my life.

I added some new pages to the blog, one with some information about myself and this blog (every blogger did that, so I guessed I had to do it too…) and the other one with basic information about BED, for people who don’t know much about the disorder, or maybe for when you need to explain to someone what the illness is about. I added some myths about eating disorders to that page too and I expect to keep updating it as the time goes by, any suggestions will be much appreciated!

Now, why did I change the name of my blog? “I Didn’t Binge” means a lot to me actually, and I had a powerful reason behind it. I remember thinking when I was in deepest moments of my ED “I want to be able to say one day that in spite of everything I didn’t binge, no matter how hard it was”. I know it may sound a little silly, but it’s one of the reasons that keeps me going when I’m feeling weak. It still surprises me seeing that I haven’t binged in such a long time, and that saying “woah, I can’t believe I didn’t binge” isn’t just a dream now.

So, since I’m not using that name anymore I was thinking we could make a small section in my blog, a collection of all the times we didn’t binge, of our little victories. You could send me a description of how it was, how you didn’t binge and I could post it in my blog, so every time we feel weak they are there for us to see. I don’t know, you may find it a bit ridiculous, but just let me know what you think about the idea through the comments or through instagram. I’m also planning about adding another section with a compilation of all the tips that have ever helped me to deal with binge eating and disordered thoughts, I hope I can have it ready for next week.

I hope you liked this new blog, I will be adding things as the days go by and I will also make the spanish version of it as soon as I have the time for it. If you have any ideas, or if you’d like me to talk about an specific topic of BED recovery just let me know. Stay strong people! You got this ❤

Pol

Not Letting My Guard Down Again (An Experience)

Hi people! 🙂

Today, August the First is my binge-free day number 87! Which is a great achievement for me, but if I wasn’t capable of facing the experience I’m going to tell you about in this post I wouldn’t have reached that number. This happened to me about two weeks ago. It was a really hard and unexpected challenge that I had to face and I’m still surprised that I actually came victorious from it. 

I met with some friends and we decided we would order a pizza and some garlic sticks, I was very hungry, but it was alright. I had known during the whole day that I would eat more than usual with them and I was OK with that, and since I had faced those kind of situations before and hadn’t binged I didn’t feel anxious at all.

So, we received the pizza, we payed and we started choosing a movie to watch. While we were doing that my friends started eating the garlic sticks and I saw them and thought “Whoa, they look tasty! I’ll have one”, I felt no danger, I didn’t worry at all, so I grabbed one and smelled it. And in the moment I tasted it. CLICK. My mind went blurry, and I even started feeling dizzy. I hadn’t felt like that in such a long time that I had almost forgotten how strong it felt, but there I was. I felt like I was in the middle of binge, but I wasn’t! I had just tried a garlic stick! I didn’t understand anything, so I started freaking out. I immediately knew that if I didn’t find a way to stop feeling like that, I would end up hardcore bingeing for real.

I tried to calm myself down and ate my garlic stick very slowly but even after that I still felt hungry so I had a slice of pizza. Then I was physically satisfied, but “I” wanted to keep eating. In the moment and because I was with my friends the best idea I could come up with was waiting for the urge to pass. So I waited, and waited, and waited. And it slowly started to fade away. 

It was especially hard not to binge this time because I wasn’t expecting this urge to hit me like this after being “urge-free” for so long. I had let my guards down, and also because I was hungry when the urge to binge appeared. So in the moment I stopped feeling hungry not bingeing was sheer willpower, thankfully I recognized the urge immediately, that feeling was so different to what I usually feel everyday now that it would have been impossible for me not to recognize it.

While I didn’t technically binge in spite of how freakin’ hard it was not to, I did feel like I did. My body felt like it did, or at least I felt like that in my head, the feeling was very real. So after that experience I feared that I had to start from 0. I feared that I had to be scared when going out, that I’d tremble when walking outside a bakery, or that an urge could hit me again on any moment. 

But it wasn’t like that at all. While I’m still a little nervous that it may happen again, it just hasn’t and I feel pretty much like the recovery-me again. I’m back to normal. It was a weird and really scary experience, but that was it.

So… I gave a deep thought to it and after talking to my therapist we concluded that I had an emotional link to garlic sticks -which is true, even if it’s funny, I would eat them hidden at nights when I was a child and that made me see them as a forbidden food-. I didn’t notice but I was thinking in black and white with this specific food, then you add that I was hungry, plus the emotional baggage and well, and you got a shiny urge to binge. 

My therapist recommended me to make a list of all the foods I still consider forbidden (in my case: garlic sticks, cinnamon rolls, frappuccinos, McFlurry’s, and Churros) which will be very helpful in case I have to or want to face them in the near future, to be prepared.  

I can learn from this that even when I’m doing very well in my recovery I still have to keep working hard at it every day. I can’t let my guards off. That doesn’t mean I have to be worried 24/7, but since I have a past of binge eating, it’s just still too soon to stop worrying. Again, there’s a balance I need to find.

And well there will be some days that I will have to use my willpower to decide to fight the urges -those who follow me on instagram probably know that I have my own technique to fight my urges but even that technique requires some amount of willpower at some point-, even if those days are the fewer. But here’s the brighter side of this: If we keep ignoring these brain’s signals, our brains will learn that they are useless and they will eventually just stop sending them. That’s how we will eventually break free from these compulsive habits. It will work. But we need to stop hurting ourselves in every other aspect to achieve that (we can’t focus on dieting and expect to stop bingeing).

Soooo. This post was (again) very experiential, but I hope you liked it 🙂 Remember that you can always leave a comment, a question or send me a direct through instagram ❤ Stay strong, you got this.

What I Have Learned (Recovery Freedoms)

Hi people! It’s been a while since I last posted. For some reason I just couldn’t get inspired enough to finish all the posts I was working on so I decided to do a different one.

In my posts I tend to stay pretty far from my personal life, I’m usually a pretty private person on my instagram and blog. But this time I’m going to cross that line because this post is going to be basically about how my life has improved since I started my treatment. This is going to be a collection of what I have learned during my recovery from BED, and a comparison between my life before and after it. Even though I cannot say that I’m fully recovered yet, this experience has given so much freedom -and has been very challenging at the same time-.

And well, without any further explanation I’m just going to start saying that during my recovery I…

♡Have been able to learn to enjoy cheat meals: For example, I was able to go to Dunkin’ Donuts with my boyfriend without bingeing. Every time I went before my treatment I would a) not eat anything or b) binge. But this time I was able to enjoy myself without obsessing about the food.

♡Have started to eat in social situations without focusing on the food but on the people I’m talking to. Actually being present. I don’t know if you can relate to me, maybe you can. But this used to be terrible for me. I used to be stressed when in company because I just couldn’t stop thinking about dieting or bingeing even if I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t feel 100% present, but now I do. This has given me the freedom of being able to go anywhere I want and to any event I want to go without worrying about what I’ll be eating or not.

♡Celebrated my birthday (two times!): I celebrated it with my family and the next day with my former school mates, and I had lots of fun. I had the freedom of enjoying the company of the people I love instead of being focusing bingeing or not bingeing all the time. Now, the week of my birthday was stressful because I ate extra junk food… but I managed to get back on track the next week. And I didn’t binge 🙂

♡Have been scared, many times: During the first week of my recovery I took a huge leap of faith (metaphorically speaking, of course) that was starting to follow a non-restrictive meal plan. This meant putting an end to my diets, to my “I binged yesterday so today I’ll skip dinner” sort of behavior. I had little control, I could only choose between my options for each meal and there was no calorie-counting involved. My first week was really scary, really. I was surprised at the amounts of food I had to eat at every meal, I was scared that I could gain weight but I still followed it. After a few days I noticed that I had fewer and fewer urges to binge. And now, that more time has passed, after 70+ days without bingeing I can say that this leap of faith was a great decision, if not one of the most important ones in my recovery.
Because after all that initial fear of gaining weight because of bigger portions… I stopped restricting, bingeing even managed to lose weight as a consequence of that without it being the center of my life and without harming my body on the process.

♡Have learned “normal” eating behaviors: Deciding what to eat pretty quickly. Since I follow a very flexible and non-restrictive meal plan, choosing what I’m going to eat is very easy now. I pick what I want and eat until I’m satisfied. I’m slowly reconnecting to my body.

♡Regained the ability to focus! I was having issues with my concentration because all my energy was being wasted in my eating disorder, but I can use that energy in my real interests now.

♡Am learning to deal with my perfectionism: I am a perfectionist, which can be helpful but dangerous too if you let it rule your life. So I’m learning to deal with it, I’m starting to “be friends” with it and my anxiety levels are very well regulated.

♡I have (finally) started to enjoy exercise as a part of a healthy lifestyle and not as a tool for weight-loss or punishment: I really used to hate sports, they were only a calorie-burning system for me. But now I get to enjoy my 30-minutes on the treadmill with some nice music, it makes me feel good and it’s good for my health.

❤︎ My recovery has been AMAZING for me. I have learned a lot from it, my life has improved in so many ways that I’m still surprised by it. When I look back I can see how tangled I was with my eating disorder and how much it was ruling my life. I was aware of it but now that I can see it with some distance I have better perspective. Now I know how much I was missing. But I also know there was always hope and at least in my case seeking treatment was the best option. The following points are the most meaningful for me in this post.❤︎

❤︎ My recovery made me step out of my comfort zone (of dieting/bingeing): Cliché? yes. But it’s true. I needed to do it. But I wasn’t really able to until I asked for professional help and I finally arrived to the conclusion that my self-worth can never be tied to my weight. In the end, leaving my old, unhealthy and repetitive comfort zone gave me a new, much better and healthier one which is balance :).

❤︎ Asking for help didn’t make me a loser: I am a proud person, and sometimes I can be stubborn, so asking for help wasn’t an easy decision for me, it took me about a year. I really thought I could recover on my own and I tried many methods, I read books, investigated about the subject, meditated, tried different approaches, but in the end I figured out that I couldn’t do it alone. I wanted to recover with all my heart, but I didn’t know how or where to start, it was just too much for me, and looking back, that’s ok. When I finally figured it out, I broke the silence. And it did take a lot from me to say those words. It was hard telling my mother that I wasn’t well, that I needed help desperately, but by then I knew that to get my life back I had no other choice. And now that I think about it I don’t feel like I am loser for asking for help, I feel that doing it was very brave. I was scared, depressed, and disoriented but I still wanted to fight to get better. I chose to recover. I chose to get my life back, and I don’t regret it for a single second. It hasn’t been easy but has been completely worth it.

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Ok people! I really hope you liked this post. I wrote it so you can see how much recovery can change a person’s life, it definitely has changed mine. If you have any questions you can always leave a comment here or send me a direct on my instagram, also if you want me to write about a specific topic related to binge eating disorder please let me know. Stay strong everybody, you can do this!

Pol ❤︎

Stop Thinking About Losing Weight!

Hello there 🙂 I have been thinking about the importance of a post like this for a while and I finally decided I would write it. This has been very important in my recovery from binge eating disorder. And as I usually say: I am not a professional. My ultimate advice is always to seek professional help. I take the time to write these posts because this is what has worked for me, and my life has drastically changed since I started doing these things, so if I can help a little, that’s great. But if you have an eating disorder, and if you can, please, please, please, seek treatment.

An eating disorder is an illness. The causes can be biological, genetic, social or a combination of them. An eating disorder can coexist with other pathologies like depression, social anxiety, borderline personality disorder, etc. Eating disorders can be very different from one another and sometimes people may think that they have nothing to do with each other. Some are completely restrictive and others are all about excesses, but then again, if we pay attention to them, what they cause is a  disturbance in the normal eating habits of a person.

An eating disorder won’t let you eat normally and guiltlessly. And because eating is something you do about 5 times a day, every day, an eating disorder won’t let you live normally.

Even if they are all eating disorders, and they all cause a huge over estimation of the importance that weight and food have in life, the treatment for each eating disorder is different, and of course each recovery is different too. There’s is no such thing as one right way to recover (and there’s also no point in comparing your recovery to another person’s recovery).

One of the things I have learned so far, is that when you really want to get better you have to give up some things. You need step out of your comfort zone. You’ve probably read this before, but this is the point of the post: You need to stop thinking about losing weight.

Ask somebody to keep the scale for you, or put it somewhere else if you can’t help weighing youself everyday, stop doing bodychecks. Stop judging your body. It’s hard at first but really need to stop all those punitive weight-related behaviors as soon as possible because they are not helpful with your recovery.

Now, this is from my experience: when I first committed to my recovery I gave up the idea of losing weight and I had my reasons. But, I have lost about 6 lbs since I started my treatment. I know I sound like an idiot when I say this but please keep reading, because I will explain…

You can’t recover from an eating disorder and attempt to lose weight at the same time.

I know that those who have binge eating disorder commonly are expecting to lose weight. And I completely understand, I really do because I had that mindset before, but it’s no use. It’s not going to help you to recover from something so complex like an eating disorder.

Because those things, they are incompatible. It’s like rowing in two opposite directions. It doesn’t make any sense and this is the reason: when you’re focusing on the weight loss only -the result- you are tying your self-worth to your weight. And that is exactly what recovery isn’t about! When you start making progress with your self-esteem, and you start loving yourself as you are, and the treatment starts to work and the binges start to be less and less frequent… Weight-loss comes as a consequence.

And when weight-loss comes as a consequence it feels like a blessing.

If you have BED and it developed like mine (after losing weight because of a highly restrictive and long diet) when you actually notice you lost some weight, no matter how little and no matter slow, but without suffering, obsession, and without compromising your health. I promise you, you will feel how you are breaking free from the ED chains.

As I’ve said before it’s not all rainbows and butterflies -I also like pointing out my struggles because you need to know that it’s not all perfect, and that it is perfectly ok to feel down now and then-, and there are still some ED thoughts that have to be progressively attacked. I started my treatment being a bit overweight, and when I first noticed some weight-loss I noticed some thoughts like “whoa I’m starting to look like that again” and then that nasty voice popped out of that corner of my mind “I could start working out like before” but hey, those are the moments when I have to recognize my ED voice and stop it right there and be strong enough to carry on and follow this path I have been creating, this new path that is finally taking me to where I’ll have a healthy relationship with myself, with food and exercise.

And nope, I’ll never be perfect, I’ll never look like a model and I’ll probably never be skinny. I may never have a thigh gap but I really don’t care. The only thing I’m looking for now is confidence and health.

I’m feeling happy most of the time 🙂 and also tomorrow is my binge-free day number 50! yay!

Ok, so I really hope you liked this post. If you agree/disagree, or have any doubts regarding my treatment feel free to leave a comment (they are open).

Have a nice week everybody. You can do this, it’s hard but not impossible.

Pol