The BED Post

Ice-cream: The Final Frontier

I’ve been practising intuitive eating for a good two or three years now. I’ve discovered I’m not particularly a biscuit person, I’m not addicted to chocolate, stale crisps are not nice, mature cheeses are too strong, and I feel better in myself when I add in gentle nutrition.

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So why was I still struggling with ice-cream?

I couldn’t figure it out. I’d made peace with so many of my former binge foods, but I still struggled to recognise when I’d eaten enough ice-cream, and before I knew it, the whole tub was gone. I knew it was THE most significant one for me, the first I used to reach for, the most comforting, the one tied up in childhood memories. But I’d made peace with pretty much every other food I used to abuse myself all those decades. What was it about this particular one?

I began to despair that I would never be free. I would never feel safe. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t make peace with that amazing sweet, frozen, comforting tub of dairy?

Then, one day I realised.

I was still restricting it.

Not in the same way as all those other foods, but restriction all the same.

My freezer was always full. There was very little space. So I could only ever buy one small tub of ice-cream at a time. That would get eaten quickly, then there would be no ice-cream available until my next food shop a week or so later. The lack of space meant ice-cream was always a scarcity, and that scarcity meant a scarcity mindset, more cravings, and the potential for more binges.

And there was such an easy fix: make space. And that’s what I’ve done. I decluttered my freezer and ice-cream now has a permanent space in my freezer. And now I can finally start to make peace with it.

Making space. Making peace. They’re both so essential to recovery. Making space to grow, to feel, for everything other than constant thoughts about food. Making peace with yourself, the you who was entwined with the eating disorder, the one who lied. Making peace with the loss the eating disorder caused, the wasted time, energy, brainpower. Making peace with the physical damage caused, too.

And so I face this final frontier. Yet again, I find myself making space, and making peace, to recover from this illness which has taken so much.

If…

If eight year-old me,

Fat, alone, sad, and scared,

Had been thin and restricting,

Would somebody have cared?

If eighteen year-old me,

Away from home that first time,

Had lost weight and not gained it,

Would they have noticed the signs?

If twenty-eight year-old me,

Purging regularly,

Had lost even more weight,

Would they have worried about me?

If thirty-five year-old me,

Had been thin, seeing my GP

Would he have advised weight loss,

Or diagnosed an ED?

If forty-eight year-old me,

Attending rheumatology,

Hadn’t been weight-shamed by that doctor,

Would I have relapsed so badly?

If fifty year old me,

Finally in recovery,

Had been thin, would I have already had decades,

not months, Eating Disorder free?

Awareness matters.

#EDAW2023

Time to Talk Day 2023

#TimeToTalkDay is a day of conversations about mental health. It’s a day to check in with others, share experiences, and most of all, to challenge stigma around mental illness. Even though the Time to Change campaign is no more, the day is still marked by Mind, Rethink Mental Illness, Co-op, and of course, those Champions from the original campaign, albeit under different banners.

I joined the campaign in 2017. I was a very different person back then, and in a very different place mentally. Still unwell, on antidepressants and in therapy, very unsure of myself, and fairly new to being open about my mental health issues, I wasn’t strong enough to campaign fully yet, so I started small. I wrote an email to my friends and colleagues at work, some of whom knew about my issues, some who didn’t. Here’s what I wrote:

Hi all,

Today is Time to Talk Day. Many of you already know this is a cause that means a lot to me. It’s a few years now since I made the decision to be open about my mental health issues, and I have never regretted it, not once. When I was first diagnosed with depression, age 21 and on the verge of failing my final year at university, I didn’t even tell my parents. Finally, thanks to campaigns like Time to Talk and Mind’s 1 in 4, the stigma is disappearing, and the isolation I used to feel is firmly in the past.

We all have some knowledge of mental health issues, it’s part of our daily job, so I won’t bore you with the details of the exhaustion, shame, and frustration my conditions cause me. Instead I want to use today to say thank you.

Thank you for not judging. Thank you for noticing when I’m having a bad day and checking I’m OK. Thank you for sharing stories of people with similar issues so I know I’m not alone. Thank you for seeing me as me, not as a mental illness. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for helping me feel “normal” (whatever that is). It makes a massive difference and it’s what today is all about.

Kind regards,

Sharon

I agonised over that email, and was terrified to press send. But of course, my colleagues’ and friends’ response was as kind as ever. It gave me the courage to keep speaking out, having those conversations, and challenging stigma. To join my local hub, where I found more friends with inspiring stories. And then eventually, to start this blog and social media accounts dedicated to those very same things.

You see, Time to Talk Day, and conversations about mental health, can make a massive difference. They can give strength, courage, and support. They can change people’s minds and beliefs. They can create a ripple that spreads out and touches more hearts and minds than you ever thought possible.

This Time to Talk Day, I hope you find the courage to be open, speak out, or just ask a loved one how they are. And if you’re not sure what to say or do, you won’t go wrong by starting with those things I was grateful for back in 2017, because those were things that helped give me the strength to recover, and keep fighting to stay in recovery: friendship, understanding, and love.

If you’d like know more, click here: https://timetotalkday.co.uk/

Resolutions to aid Eating Disorder recovery

It’s that time of year again. Christmas is over and we’re being bomabarded with diet and fitness ads, “New Year, New You” slogans, and promises of increased health and happiness. So to counteract all that, here’s some suggestions for New Year resolutions which will actively support your mental health and aid your recovery. How do I know? I’ve done them all. Take a look and choose whichever one speaks to you to try in 2023.

1/ Detox your Social Media feed

Social Media can support your mental health, it just depends how you use it. Unfollow everyone who makes you feel bad about yourself: no more fitspo, what I eat in a day or heavily photoshopped images. Replace them with accounts which make you smile, challenge diet culture and disordered eating, and expand your world.

2/ Start journalling

There’s no right or wrong way to journal. It can take any format you like: buy a pretty book with inspirational quotes, record voice notes, make mood boards, doodle or paint, try stream of consciousness writing, post on social media, start a blog, or write a good old fashioned diary. It’s a great way to release emotions, a form of mindfulness and creativity, and an excellent way to challenge the perfectionism that goes hand in hand with the eating disorder mindset.

3/ Smash those scales

I’ve been there, and I know that constant weighing only ever made me feel worse about myself. Even when I was losing weight, getting on those scales was just reinforcing my belief that a number, my size, was the most important thing about me. So when the numbers increased, I felt truly awful about myself.

If getting rid of the scales entirely seems too much, try cutting down to weighing once a week, the recommended amount in BED recovery, as a starting point.

4/ Be more mindful

I was rarely present when my eating disorder was in control. Letting things just be, with curiosity, was the opposite of that mentality of needing to control, atone for a past binge, or plan the next one. The brain power needed for those constant thoughts about food left so little space for being in the moment.

And that’s precisely why mindfulness can be so helpful. Short, structured exercises to help you get used to being present, noticing thoughts and feelings, can be a fantastic resource as recovery progresses. Mindfulness apps and courses are a great way to get started and learn different techniques.

5/ Be kinder to yourself

All that criticism you pile on yourself every day. All the shame and guilt. How’s that working for you? I’ll tell you what it did for me: it just made me feel worse and worse about myself, and fuelled increasing binges, further restriction, and more frequent purging.

How would you talk to a friend going through your situation? Why not try treating yourself with that same compassion? Hey, I get it. I didn’t feel worthy of it either to begin with. But the more compassion you show, the worthier the recipient feels, whether that’s your friend or yourself.

6/ Challenge your inner fatphobia

We’ve all been brought up to believe fat is bad and thin is good, and that belief can be a real barrier to recovery. As a starting point. try following a variety of fat creators on social media to help get used to seeing a range of different bodies. Then start reading about the history of the BMI and the diet industry. Be prepared: this one will probably bring up difficult emotions.

7/ Learn a new skill

Have you always wanted to speak a foreign language? Learn to paint? Bake? Why not finally give it a go? Whether you enrol at your local community college or join an online forum, learning something new is one of the Five Ways to Wellbeing for a reason. It challenges the brain, increases self esteem, and can be a way of connecting with others. It’s also another way to challenge those perfectionist tendencies, because no-one is perfect at something they’re doing for the first time, but that doesn’t mean that trying can’t be fun.

8/ Give to others

Another of the Five Ways to Wellbeing, volunteering, giving or helping others in some way has been shown to be really beneficial for good mental health. It can be as simple as taking the time to pay someone a (non-appearance related) compliment or as involved as giving up a few hours a week to help a local charity. Either way, giving to others takes focus off yourself and your worries for a while, helps you connect with others, and just somehow feels good.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year! Which resolution appeals to you most?

Swimwear and scars

Content warning: this post mentions sexual assault.

A friend shared a story recently about her struggle with showing her scar in a bikini. It was really inspiring and it got me thinking. I don’t have scars like my friend, well not external ones. Yet it occured to me that I’ve never worn a bikini. Definitely not since puberty, at least.

I suppose wearing a bikini is the ultimate in self confidence, in body confidence. My Instagram feed is full of beautiful fat women wearing two pieces. But since my recovery, I haven’t bought any swimwear at all.

Then I remembered the last time I wore a swimsuit on holiday. Way back when I was straight size, but not really any more confident in my body. And I remember the man who leaned forward and tried to put his hand down the front of that swimsuit, and my friend and I fighting him off.

I remember my therapist asking if I subconsciously binged to make myself bigger to avoid the groping, the unwanted comments and propositions. And it made sense. I feel less visible when I’m fat. I am less visible. My body is certainly less sexualised by strangers.

We’re all conditioned to want to be thinner, more attractive. But whenever I complied and lost weight, my prize was unwanted attention from men who believed they had the right to see me as an object. To stare openly at my breasts. To grope. To shout at me in the street.

Losing weight was supposed to be all my dreams come true. It was supposed to bring happiness, success, everything I ever wanted.

What it actually brought me was a feeling of unease, of not feeling safe. The expense of buying a whole new wardrobe for what I now know would be a temporary body, because my real body and my eating disorder always fought back. It brought a constant hunger. It never brought that confidence the models had in the ads.

So I tried to fake it. I put on a swimsuit. And look what happened.

I don’t know when the feeling of unease began. Maybe with being viewed and treated as an adult women from the age of 12 or 13. Or with the house party in my early teens when a boy kicked in the door to the bathroom, pushed me down on the floor and ripped my knickers off before I managed to get away.

As young girls we’re taught to feel pride in being sexually attractive to men. And so I did. But I also felt afraid. And in the midst of all this were those eating disorder thoughts of being ugly, and fat, and hating myself, and not understanding why men would find me attractive at all.

It’s all so fucked up.

Looking back on my therapist’s question years later, with all that I’ve learned about diets and restriction and how our bodies fight back, I don’t think I was deliberately making myself fat. My body was just responding to famine in the way it is biologically programmed to. Each successive period of weight loss, whatever the reason for it, has inevitably been followed by a period of weight gain, where I ended up bigger than I started.

In many ways I wish my body’s set point weight were lower, that I’d recovered into a straight size body that fit better in the world. But another part of me is glad that I’m fat. And yet another part of me isn’t particularly bothered about my body’s size at all.

Because through body positivity, I found body neutrality, and I’m starting to view my body according to how it feels and what it does, not how it looks. I may not love it. I may never love it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t listen to what it needs and treat it with respect.

I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the point where I put on a bikini. But I’d like to think that if I do, I’ll do it without fear.

Freedom

So much time wasted, lost

To the voice in my head

That told me I was unworthy

Of joy, love, freedom to be

Myself. Not that I knew who that was,

Too busy trying to bend, to fit

Into someone else’s mould.

Not that it helped

Because the mould kept changing.

I could never be enough.

Words can’t begin to explain

The relief, the realisation:

I don’t have to fit in a mould,

I can be who I want.

Do I know who that is?

Not quite yet, but I’m finding out,

Giving myself space

To feel that freedom to be

What I denied myself for so long:

Happy, content, unapologetic

In this body that hurts,

That doesn’t fit this world of ours.

We only get one body, one life.

Why waste time fighting myself?

It’s time I found the freedom to be

Myself.

Feeling fat

What feeling “fat” meant for me when I had an eating disorder:

1/ I felt physically bloated because:

How can such a short word be so loaded?
Photo by Anna Tarazevich on Pexels.com

I’d binged
I hadn’t eaten
I’d drunk too much water to stop hunger pangs
I hadn’t drunk anything
I’d deliberately eaten something that triggered my IBS

2/ I was feeling ashamed, guilty and hating myself because I’d binged, purged or both, and was taking it out on my body.

3/ I was struggling to deal with difficult emotions completely unrelated to my eating disorder, such as struggling with criticism because of my perfectionism. Or sadness, or anger, or fear, or disappointment, or lonliness, or any other strong feeling.

So many people talk about feeling “fat”. But “fat” isn’t a feeling. And our bodies don’t change massively from hour to hour. So if you’re looking in the mirror, hating your body, and feeling “fat”, ask yourself what’s really going on.

Is it fullness or bloating, or are you blaming your body for something else?Because I can pretty much guarantee it’s not your body’s fault, and if it’s not, then changing your body won’t fix it.

And as for feeling “fat”, but not being fat, and not understanding why that’s an issue?

If fat wasn’t seen as a bad thing, you wouldn’t be feeling “fat” would you? If fat wasn’t seen as morally inferior, something to be feared, the worst thing you could possibly imagine, you wouldn’t be feeling “fat” at all.

And there you have it: fatphobia in action.

Not ill enough?

One eating disorder symptom, which isn’t talked about enough, is the belief that you’re not really ill, and definitely not ill enough to get treatment. And for many, including myself, the belief that you don’t deserve treatment, that you don’t deserve more than this existence, the half-life that comes with an eating disorder.

Even now, far along my recovery journey, I find myself thinking I wasn’t that ill. Things weren’t that bad. I’m just an imposter pretending I was ill to get attention. A narcissist, as one troll called me. After all, there were times when I didn’t binge much. There were times when I felt in control of my eating.

And then I think about those times, and realise they were the times when I was restricting heavily and cutting out foods groups. When I was barely eating during the day, then going out and drinking heavily at night. When I was making myself sick and overexercising. And I’m forced to admit that I wasn’t in control at all. I was just using different eating disorder behaviours to cope.

The only times when I used food less were my worst bouts of depression, when I mostly felt numb and so there were less emotions to control. SSRIs dull everything. Not just sadness and depression, but joy as well. And during my first episode, I didn’t have the physical or emotional energy for anything, including food and attending university, for a few months. Replacing the symptoms of one mental illness with those of another isn’t exactly an option I’d recommend.

Body checking: a hard habit to break.
Photo by Andres Ayrton on Pexels.com

I think back to the perfectionism. The constant shame and guilt. The self-loathing. The body checking I’m still trying to kick. The failure of all my relationships. The lies. The obsession with food that left so little room for anything else. The fear someone would find out how disgusting I was behind my carefully created facade. The secrecy. The physical pain of bingeing and purging. The compulsion to binge that screamed so loudly in my head that I just wanted it all to end.

I think back to the fact that I was diagnosed and referred to an eating disorder service, and they accepted me for treatment, and continued that treatment over more than two years.

Yes, I was ill enough. And if you’re asking yourself if you are? Or reading this believing you’re not, while doing and feeling the things I’ve described? Trust me, you’re ill enough. If you’re not getting help, it’s time to find some. Please speak to your GP, and see my resources page thebedpost.blog/resources for alternatives.

Stolen Years

Allowing myself to feel,

To cry,

To realise just how much you stole from me.

Peace, inner calm,

The strength to be myself.

The courage to admit just how terrified I was.

Sapping my self-esteem

Till I felt worthless, unworthy of any joy.

The feeling of dread

That they would all realise I was a fraud,

Not knowing what I was doing.

Seeming calm but completely out of control,

Wanting it to end,

But not knowing how.

Eating down the sadness,

Throwing up the fear,

Not knowing why

But knowing it was wrong.

Knowing they’d be horrified

If they ever knew.

Trapped in the cycle

Year after year.

So many years stolen.

So few remain.

Time to make them count.

It’s been a year!

On 24th July, 2021, I wrote the post “I binged today. Here’s what I learned.”

At the time, it didn’t cross my mind that I’d go a whole year without a full-on, painful, BED-style binge.

Yet here we are, in August 2022, and I haven’t binged like that since. There were so many points where it could have, and previously would have happened, and yet somehow it hasn’t. And I’m not even sure why.

I’ve certainly come very close. I’ve planned binges, bought binge foods, then put them away. I’ve had days when I just wanted not to feel, to numb myself, but used other ways to cope. And I’ve had days when I’ve eaten past fullness, just to take the edge off.

I’ve had plenty of days when I’ve hated my body, wanted to shrink it, trade it in for one that works properly and doesn’t hurt. When I’ve blamed it when something went wrong. I spent every day at my parents’ home in oversized and black clothes because when I packed, I was taking my anxiety about travelling out on myself.

I’ve delayed eating until lunchtime, even dinnertime some days. I’ve eaten nothing but binge foods every meal for days at a time until my body has screamed for something green.

I’ve eaten mindlessly. I’ve gone for weeks at a time without moving my body. I’ve had days when I’ve eaten nothing at all thanks to migraine induced nausea, and days where I’ve done nothing but graze.

But what I haven’t done is fall into such a pit of self-loathing that my only response is to binge until my stomach is so bloated and painful I could cry.

Why am I telling you all this? Because recovery isn’t about being perfect. Aiming for perfection can contribute to an eating disorder in itself. No, recovery is messy. It’s one step at a time, then sometimes three back. It’s learning as you go along: learning from mistakes, as well as successes. And it can look different every single day.

You take each challenge, each new experience as it comes. Leaping into the unknown, sometimes curious, sometimes terrified, holding onto the knowledge that whatever you face it won’t be as bad as before, when you were in the depths of the disorder, unable to see a way out.

Then little by little, the good days start to outnumber the bad. You face challenges, and change, and upset, and disappointment, and don’t automatically default to those old eating disorder coping strategies: bingeing, purging or restriction.

And one day, seemingly from nowhere, you realise that the eating disorder is no longer in control. It’s not screaming anymore. It’s a whisper, sometimes so quiet you can barely hear it. Sometimes it’s not even there at all.

It’s been a year since I last binged. My eating disorder is no longer in control. I’m in recovery. And I couldn’t be more proud.

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