About My Tendency To Disappear

Oh I know I neglect my blog, sorry about that. I should probably post more often but the truth is that whenever I think about writing a post it feels like something I have to do. For some reason I feel like I set a specific tone in this blog and know I’m kinda trapped in it.

With this I mean that I became very self-demanding (as usual) and started caring too much about making good quality posts, so whenever I wanted to write something “lighter” or maybe a little more personal I started having this “it won’t be good enough feeling”.

I had been writing very elaborate posts, and I actually feel very good about them. There was also a good amount of work behind them (also English isn’t my first language so I keep debating if what I wrote makes sense or not). I felt like I had to keep publishing stuff like that, when sometimes all I really wanted to do was to vent, or communicating silly things. It was like this blog wasn’t mine anymore you know, like I had committed to a job that I loved but became a little overwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong though, I DO love posting about eating disorders and mental health, and whenever someone tells me my posts have helped them I feel very fullfilled. I’ve learned that making a problem visible is really helpful, especially when we’re talking about an eating disorder that’s been hidden under the carpet (and minimized) for so long.

It’s just that falling into the mindset of trying to please everybody, or trying to “be enough” is just too easy for me.

But I’m trying really, really hard not to be so self-demanding. I’m learning that I’m not in control of everything, that being who I am is ok, that some days I’m just not going to check every item on my to do list. I’m learning that I have needs too, and that it’s absolutely valid for me to let people know what I need and want.

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So, moving on to another topic… I’ve been doing really well on my recovery lately. I’m happy to say that I haven’t had a major binge since June, although I have had some overeating episodes. I’m not doing perfectly though, when it comes to how I’m eating right now, I was probably doing “better” last year (AKA “healthier”).

But the one thing I’m really proud of is that I’m absolutely off my meds. I’m not taking any kind of antidepressant right now, nor any kind of drug that makes it a bit easier to recover.

I swear, I used to be absolutely and completely convinced that I would never be able to recover without my meds. I used to think that I just “didn’t have in me” to recover without chemical help. But here I am today, and now I see how wrong I was.

(I’m not saying that I’m recovered though, but I have come very far in spite of not being medicated)

I also see that I’m not even that special, anyone do this! And there’s not one correct way to recover! There are many ways! It’s just about finding what works for you and sticking to it. I am a firm believer in neuroplasticity (in very simple words: the ability our brains have to change). So we have to keep trying until we find our path, and then: REPEAT, REPEAT, REPEAT 😉

I will be writing a post about how I’m dealing with my eating disorder without medication, and about the tools that have helped me the most in this new stage of my recovery. I will probably post more often, and about different things (recipes, personal stuff, etc)… So let’s see how that works out.

(As I type this I’m feeling HUGE anxiety about this post not being good enough, but you know what? I’m publishing it anyways.)

Sending all the good vibes,

Pol

What Doesn’t Work

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things I’ve done to recover. The things that worked, the things that didn’t and those that helped me for some time. Until not so long ago I worried too much about finding the one correct way to recover, the one magic method that would save me.

I kept wondering what the real way out of an eating disorder was…

“Should I try following the Minnie Maud’s guidelines? Perhaps I should stick to a meal plan… No, I know I HAVE to go to therapy or I’ll never recover. You know, maybe I’m not even sick, I’ll pretend I don’t have an ED and it should all work out. What if I just have to tame my animal brain? Ok, I give up, I’ll take all the medication in the world. You know what? Fuck it. I’ll eat intuitively.”

Nowadays we have so much information available on the internetz that it gets confusing. You can find people swearing by one approach and even mocking others.

But apart from the “you have to do what works for you” cliché but I still think it’s true. I want to talk about what doesn’t work.

We know that a lot of things work, there are thousands of peoples’ stories out there about how they recovered through different methods (therapy, multidisciplinary treatments, meditation, intuitive eating, the “Brain Over Binge Method”, medication, etc). But there’s one thing I’m sure doesn’t work and it alarms me that so many people keep doing it.

Spoiler alert: it is trying to stop bingeing just to lose weight.

I know I keep sayin this over and over again, and I know too that it can be boring and even annoying to you. But keep reading, what I really mean is that you won’t get anything good from recovery if you’re only doing out of hate and anger.

Ok, chances are you’ve gained a lot of unwanted weight from binge eating and it sucks, I know, believe me, I’ve been there (many times, actually). But wanting to stop bingeing only to lose weight only adds stress, a sense of obligation and lots of pain.

The worst part of all this are the things we think (and the way they make us treat ourselves).

Do you ever feel like you have a bully in your head? I’ve found myself many times feeling like I have a Regina George in my head. Yeah, I know I could’ve found a better example, but stick with me.

Let’s say you just woke up, had a nice shower and are going to get dressed. You pick an outfit inspired on something you saw on the internet, but when you go to check how you look in the mirror you notice you’re telling yourself something like “You look ridiculous, c’mon you don’t have the body to wear this, people will laugh at you.” or when you’re having lunch. You chose what you really wanted and are happy about your decision, and then the voice comes again “Why are you even eating that? If you eat like this you have no right to feel bad about being fat.” or after putting some make-up “Take that off, you look like a clown, it’s too much for you”.

What would you think of a person who tells that kind if things to other people? What if it’s always to the same person? That would be bullying, wouldn’t it? And we know how much bullying damages other people.

What if it was you doing it to yourself? Would you treat other people like that? Would you bully other people?

Of course you wouldn’t (well, that’s what I hope). And if you wouldn’t do it to other people why would you do it to yourself?

I know. We’ve done it for so long we’ve come to accept it’s part of how we think, we’ve come to think we deserve it. We just don’t know how to stop. But here are a few tips that may help you, maybe not to stop but to make things easier:

• Recognize the mean voice: Whenever you’re thinking one of those awfully mean things, recognize it. Yes, it sounds easy but when you’re so used to living with that voice in your head it gets a bit tricky. Do the exercise of noticing when it pops-up.
• Separate it from yourself: Start taking that voice as an intruder in your head. Acknowledge it, don’t ignore or fight it (that only adds more stress), just recognize that it is there and it doesn’t belong to you. It’s not how you really think or how you want to think. Remember that we are not our thoughts.
• Let it go: Once you’ve done that choose to think about something else, choose to focus on something else. By doing this your taking away the power these thoughts had over you. They will be just that, thoughts. Not voices that rule your daily decisions and make you diet, not dress the way you want to or even binge as punishment.

 

Will they disappear from one day to another? Of course not, our brains are used to sending them because we’ve acted upon them for so long. But if we stop acting on them, they will slowly start popping-up less. And we will have more headspace to connect with ourselves. Our brains learn, and they will understand that those signals they’ve sent for so long, just have no use anymore.

If you do this please take the time to notice how better life is when you don’t have a bully in your head. How freer you feel, how good it is. Slowly start trying to practice kindness towards yourself. Start figuring out who you really are without those voices tormeting you.

You don’t have to stare at yourself in the mirror and scream “I LOVE MYSELF SOOO MUUUUCH” until you believe it. But you can allow yourself to buy that videogame you’ve wanted for a while, or enjoy the cup of tea you like so much, you can just sleep for four hours if you’re tired (just don’t blame me if you can’t sleep at night afterwards), or spend a whole afternoon doing “nothing productive”.

You’re not a machine and you don’t have to keep accomplishing things in order to be valuable.

So start treating yourself the way you’d treat a loved one. Listen to yourself, if you’re bingeing it’s not because you’re a failure or you’re “so lazy and lack willpower”. It’s because your body is trying to tell you something, it’s crying for help. If you heard a baby crying would tell them to shut up? I thought so. Listen to yourself and allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling because your experience is as valid as anyone else’s.

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I hope you find these tips helpful, they have really made things easier for me lately, and though I’m not counting my binge-free days anymore (adds-up to the anxiety), I know it’s been about three or four weeks since I last did it, so, it’s working 🙂

(and it may work for you too!)

Please take care of yourself!

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.

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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 ♡

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