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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

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