I had always loved food. Food was comfort. Food was love. Food gave me something to do.
My story began when I was 7.
I had always been slightly bigger than my peers and I felt self-conscious when I was sitting next to my friends, so at 7 years of age, I decided to go on my first ever diet in my life. I hardly knew anything about nutrition back then, but I knew food makes people fat, so I just skipped as many meals as possible. I never had breakfast anyway as I only went to school in the afternoon. I threw away lunch. I gave away my snacks which I brought to school to my friends. At home, I was never very interested in dinner so my portion sizes were small. And I often made up excuses not to have dinner. My first ever diet, I had willpower, I had control.
But then, one day, my cousin visited from America and brought me my favorite chocolate. "One piece wouldn't do much damage," I thought to myself, so I went ahead with the chocolate...but obviously, I didn't just stop after taking one. I took one, after another, after another. At that time, I had had little food intake for an entire month, I was ravenous. The chocolate I'd just eaten made me feel like a failure, so I said to myself, "screw it, one day of indulgence wouldn't hurt", so after my cousin had left, I raided the kitchen and put everything and anything edible into my mouth-ice cream, biscuits, pasta, bread, cheese, sausages......I felt awful. I broke my diet. But a more pressing concern was, what if my parents found out I had eaten everything, what would they think? So, I looked for a garbage bag and quickly put all the empty containers and packages and got rid of everything, before going out to the supermarket to buy everything I ate to pretend nothing happened.
I promised myself just one day of indulgence but I guess my body wasn't prepared for the sudden increased intake of calories and I went through from feeling very run-down and lethargic to a sudden urge to feed my body more and more. But the human body is smart,it knows how to prevent future starvation, and as soon as I started feeding it, it constantly asked for more. Before I knew it, I found myself regularly binging and then buying food to replace what I binged on.
So throughout primary school and secondary school, I was in a vicious cycle of restricting and binging. But as time went by, my willpower diminished and there was more binging than restricting.
At my lowest, I was binging 8-15 times a day.
I put on weight fast. Nothing was more important than food. That was the only thing I could think of. I neglected my friends, my family, my studies, my hobbies, my life. I felt so trapped that I lost the will to live.
I often skipped class to stay in the school bathroom so I could finish a large fish-and-chips, an entire chocolate cake, family-sized packets of crisps, two premium-sized pizzas, an entire jar of ice-cream, boxed chocolate for trick-or-treating that I sneaked out of the school campus to purchase...I was skipping classes more and more regularly to binge on food. I could finish 18000 calories in 15 mins.
I knew this couldn't go on any longer. I was broke. I was desperate to change and lose weight. I was ashamed. My despair was profound. In fact, I became suicidal. I had lost control of my eating…completely. It was controlling me.
Deep down in my heart, I knew diets (and especially extreme diets) were a disaster. But I kept trying different ways to lose weight anyway.
My story began when I was 7.
I had always been slightly bigger than my peers and I felt self-conscious when I was sitting next to my friends, so at 7 years of age, I decided to go on my first ever diet in my life. I hardly knew anything about nutrition back then, but I knew food makes people fat, so I just skipped as many meals as possible. I never had breakfast anyway as I only went to school in the afternoon. I threw away lunch. I gave away my snacks which I brought to school to my friends. At home, I was never very interested in dinner so my portion sizes were small. And I often made up excuses not to have dinner. My first ever diet, I had willpower, I had control.
But then, one day, my cousin visited from America and brought me my favorite chocolate. "One piece wouldn't do much damage," I thought to myself, so I went ahead with the chocolate...but obviously, I didn't just stop after taking one. I took one, after another, after another. At that time, I had had little food intake for an entire month, I was ravenous. The chocolate I'd just eaten made me feel like a failure, so I said to myself, "screw it, one day of indulgence wouldn't hurt", so after my cousin had left, I raided the kitchen and put everything and anything edible into my mouth-ice cream, biscuits, pasta, bread, cheese, sausages......I felt awful. I broke my diet. But a more pressing concern was, what if my parents found out I had eaten everything, what would they think? So, I looked for a garbage bag and quickly put all the empty containers and packages and got rid of everything, before going out to the supermarket to buy everything I ate to pretend nothing happened.
I promised myself just one day of indulgence but I guess my body wasn't prepared for the sudden increased intake of calories and I went through from feeling very run-down and lethargic to a sudden urge to feed my body more and more. But the human body is smart,it knows how to prevent future starvation, and as soon as I started feeding it, it constantly asked for more. Before I knew it, I found myself regularly binging and then buying food to replace what I binged on.
So throughout primary school and secondary school, I was in a vicious cycle of restricting and binging. But as time went by, my willpower diminished and there was more binging than restricting.
At my lowest, I was binging 8-15 times a day.
I put on weight fast. Nothing was more important than food. That was the only thing I could think of. I neglected my friends, my family, my studies, my hobbies, my life. I felt so trapped that I lost the will to live.
I often skipped class to stay in the school bathroom so I could finish a large fish-and-chips, an entire chocolate cake, family-sized packets of crisps, two premium-sized pizzas, an entire jar of ice-cream, boxed chocolate for trick-or-treating that I sneaked out of the school campus to purchase...I was skipping classes more and more regularly to binge on food. I could finish 18000 calories in 15 mins.
I knew this couldn't go on any longer. I was broke. I was desperate to change and lose weight. I was ashamed. My despair was profound. In fact, I became suicidal. I had lost control of my eating…completely. It was controlling me.
Deep down in my heart, I knew diets (and especially extreme diets) were a disaster. But I kept trying different ways to lose weight anyway.
The wake-up call was some diet pills that caused heart problems and landed me in hospital.
Because of the severity of my binge-eating problem, the doctors there referred me to be treated in eating disorders units, which didn't work-it was just more restriction and rules. For me, binge eating had become an addiction and as soon as I left the ward environment, I would binge again.
Inpatient stays didn't work out, so I was referred to try counselling. But as someone who had always been shy and introverted, I didn't know how to put things in words. I mean, my life was fine, I had a loving family, I was excelling at school. So there wasn't much to explore really. So I felt I was just wasting the counsellor's time. After the course of counselling ended, I decided to just find ways to stop the problem myself.
Because of the severity of my binge-eating problem, the doctors there referred me to be treated in eating disorders units, which didn't work-it was just more restriction and rules. For me, binge eating had become an addiction and as soon as I left the ward environment, I would binge again.
Inpatient stays didn't work out, so I was referred to try counselling. But as someone who had always been shy and introverted, I didn't know how to put things in words. I mean, my life was fine, I had a loving family, I was excelling at school. So there wasn't much to explore really. So I felt I was just wasting the counsellor's time. After the course of counselling ended, I decided to just find ways to stop the problem myself.
I recognized my main problems were:
When I came across DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy), and as soon as I saw what it entailed, it knew this was it. This basically provided everything I needed. But very few places offered this so I did my own research and designed a program for myself based on the core principles.
- I ate for every emotion and occasion-I ate when I was happy, when I was disappointed. I ate during the festivities. I even found the need to "celebrate" after making it to the supermarket.
- I had an all-or-nothing mindset. As soon as I broke a rule, I would binge for the rest of the day
- Binge-eating had become a habit
When I came across DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy), and as soon as I saw what it entailed, it knew this was it. This basically provided everything I needed. But very few places offered this so I did my own research and designed a program for myself based on the core principles.
Having realized the DBT-based approach had helped me so much in ending my nightmare that lasted for more than a decade, I decided to obtain qualifications in the fields of nutrition, fitness and psychology, so I can develop a DBT-based program specific to tackling overeating, using a mixture of the core skills and re-establishing healthy eating.
And I DID IT!
Will I ever be able to eat my "binge food" again?
Short answer: Yes
Longer answer: Yes, and not only yes, but you'll also learn to eat them in such a way that it is no longer a food that will is just like any other food! Because restriction doesn't help.
Chocolate, crisps and chips were my absolute favorites, and they still are!
Longer answer: Yes, and not only yes, but you'll also learn to eat them in such a way that it is no longer a food that will is just like any other food! Because restriction doesn't help.
Chocolate, crisps and chips were my absolute favorites, and they still are!
photo source: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/health/20brod
There was a time I dreaded these foods, they put them on the "forbidden food list" in the house. No one in the family was allowed to buy them, or if they did, they had to lock them away. Because I knew that as soon as I had my first bite, something would click and I wouldn’t be able to stop eating them until my stomach was about to explode.
But the difference is...I used to finish 40-50 chocolate bars at a time or a few family-sized crisps or four supersized fast food meals (or everything at the same time), but now, I have a few mouthful as a treat, enjoy my favorite food fully and put the rest away!
But the difference is...I used to finish 40-50 chocolate bars at a time or a few family-sized crisps or four supersized fast food meals (or everything at the same time), but now, I have a few mouthful as a treat, enjoy my favorite food fully and put the rest away!
Does any of this sound familiar?
- I used to be someone that hated myself for my binge-eating but I didn't know how to stop
- I used to someone who waited till everyone was asleep and then crawled out of bed to raid the food cupboard and then buy exactly the same items to make it look like I didn't touch the food
- I used to be someone who repeatedly went on diet diets, then fell off the wagon...and then waited till "next Monday"
- I used to be someone that thought food was the solution to everything, every situation, every emotion. When I was happy, I ate. When something went wrong, I ate. When I went out, I ate. When I was home, I ate.
- I used to eat around the clock
- I used to have to use public bins so no one would know how much food I was actually eating.
- I used to be someone who knew all the secluded places to hide and eat so no one could see how much food I was consuming.
- I used to be someone that ordered so much food that I had to pretend that I was ordering for a large party of people besides myself
- I used to dream of food in the night and wake up panicking whether I had binged again.
Yes, that WAS me. I used to be all these.