Category: Disordered Eating

Back from 4 days travelling interstate with the family. This trip was much anticipated (having been postponed twice already due to COVID) and we definitely made the most of it. It was a nice break and we had quite a bit of fun, but it’s good to be home.

I had two blowups at the kid. Only one of them was really a hangry moment, trying to make breakfast this morning. But after 4 days of constant stress due to crowds in a strange city, tiredness from constant sightseeing and general stress from anti COVID measures and being away from home and all the rest…. I forgive myself. We are only human.

But this blog is mostly about food and my issues with it, so the news on that front is…. interesting on a couple of fronts.

Despite being in a big city and surrounded by cafes and restaurants, and eating out a lot (including pizza and burgers other ‘fun’ foods), there really wasn’t a lot of anxiety. I just tried to eat intuitively, (ie whatever I felt like, but to hunger signals) and prioritise protein. Never really felt like I was about to lose control, so it’s been quite a while now.

We did stay in self contained accommodation so I brought sachets of protein oats and yoghurt and things to make sure I started off each day with a good breakfast – that probably helped. We also walked miles and miles on a couple of days, so I knew I’d be burning plenty of calories, plus the hotel also had a reasonably well equipped gym and I got a couple of early morning lifting sessions in. Those two things made me a little less anxious about getting a bit looser with food, it’s a holiday after all.

I’ll weigh in tomorrow morning, if I’ve gained a little weight I won’t care, but I would be very surprised if I have – realistically I’m expecting to be a little lighter. Trying to be zen about it – weight is not the thing that defines me. And honestly, I am probably in the best shape of my life right now. I’ve put on a couple of kilos of muscle this year.

The other interesting thing is that I met up with a family member up there, someone who I didn’t even know existed until a few years ago. I think we’d talked about it once before, but she reminded me again that she’s been struggling with disordered eating since she was a child. It just shows how much of a role genetics also play in whether someone is likely to suffer from this issue. To be fair – I think she had a much different upbringing than me, and her issues may be more deep rooted in childhood trauma than mine, but there are some real similarities there as well. Of course, me being me, I had a few words to say on the subject…. but hopefully it was a positive conversation and helped give her some comfort and strength.

For me, the upshot of that conversation was that it (again) put things in perspective. I get frustrated and feel like a failure when I lose control of my eating, and I get tired of my life revolving around food, but the reality is – it’s only been about 4 years now since I was really deep in a bad place of undiagnosed anorexia and orthorexia. 3 years ago I had a BMI of 19 and was so underfed and exhausted and miserable that I was close to taking my own life. Yet here I am now, probably 90% healed, eating Easter eggs and pizza almost like a normal person.

In the day to day hustle of life, it feels like this has been going on forever. But progress just takes consistency and patience, and hopefully when I’ll be able to look back on this as just a blip in a very long life. And for anyone else battling this rotten disease, I wish them the very best of success as well – it doesn’t have to be a life sentence.

Good Morning!

No, the title isn’t a mistake. It’s an IT Crowd reference, and if you don’t get it, well… I’m not sure if we can be friends any more but if you watch this maybe I’ll reconsider. Anyway… to the point of my post.

My wife has a commitment on Monday nights which means she gets home and has a late dinner on her own. She walked in last night, said ‘I’m hungry’, looked in the freezer, pulled out a tub of leftovers and immediately said ‘that’ll do’, before proceeding to microwave it and eat. My reaction, internally, was to realise how very far away I still am from being recovered because I still can’t imagine myself doing that.

When I need to decide what to eat, my brain is just a maelstrom of thoughts and feelings.

• How hungry am I right now – do I need something with volume to feel satisfied?
• How much protein have I eaten today?
• How much fat have I eaten today?
• How many carbs have I eaten today?
• How much ‘junk’ have I eaten today?
• How much fruit have I eaten today?
• What have my activity levels been like, and what will they be after this meal – how many carbs should I have?
• How much of x is left, and when will we be buying more?
• How much x have I already eaten today? (I try not to eat the same carb source more than once a day, or the same type of meat at lunch and dinner, etc etc)
• What needs to be used? What is the use by date of x?
• What do I feel like? What have I been craving?

I can easily stand in front of the pantry/fridge for some minutes if I let myself. And heck, sometimes I can make a decision and then rethink it again too. I am getting better at blocking out a lot of the unnecessary ones from the list above and trying to let the last one be the overriding factor, but it’s honestly sometimes hard to know what I ‘feel’ like.

Why is this so, and how do I get better at this?

One reason I think it’s so is because back when I was at my sickest, life was so utterly devoid of any meaning or happiness that meal times were the highlight of my day – the thought of food became so all consuming that it felt like almost my only source of pleasure – hence the title. And honestly – although I’m bigger, stronger, and far less hung up on eating perfectly and being slim these days, I still really struggle to have fun with anything except lifting weights and preparing/eating food. Spontaneous laughter just doesn’t happen all that often, work is pretty unfulfilling, and I don’t have a lot of other hobbies (although I am working on it), so yeah… life still often feels like a bit of a slog, and meals do still have a bit of a special place in my mind. When I’m on my own I enjoy shutting out the world and watching videos while eating, and with breakfast and dinner at home I really like the chance to sit and converse with the family because we just don’t get enough opportunities to do that especially during the week – between work and school and extra curricular activities, we really don’t get to spend as much quality time together as I’d like.

The other issue is practice. I pack my lunches for work in advance, and most of our evening meals are decided in advance too. Breakfast is a dilemma pretty regularly, but it’s not the worst because I really only have 3-4 options I regularly eat so I’m not spoiled for choice; also I typically walk the dog before breakfast so that gives me a long time to think about it! Dinner times are where it’s most difficult – I typically have 1 or 2 nights a week where it’s entirely up to me, and now that I let myself eat most things, I feel overwhelmed by choice. A lot of the time that means I end up going back to ‘safe’ options.

Writing this is really just a reminder to myself that it’s something I need to keep working on. Next week we are heading interstate for a few days – we’re staying in a self contained apartment, so we can buy normal groceries, but no doubt we’ll also eat out a lot. This should be a really good opportunity to broaden my horizons a little bit and get less neurotic. Food doesn’t have to be perfect.

As a footnote – our six year old is a really fussy eater. The other day after a particularly difficult dinner trying to get her to at least taste some pumpkin from her plate, I tried to explain to her that not every meal is going to be something she loves – and sometimes you just have to eat what’s put in front of you even if you don’t particularly like it, because you are hungry and need food or because it’d be rude to refuse a meal someone has prepared, etc etc. And as I was saying it, I was thinking how gosh darn hypocritical I felt. I still try to make every meal something that I’ll really enjoy, because even now I still regularly feel like I need to restrain myself from eating everything I want to eat, otherwise I’ll blow up like a balloon. It’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but I am so desperately tired of that nagging feeling in the back of my mind.

Hope this helps someone.

Well, I shouldn’t have made that last post. That was a Thursday… Sunday night was F1 night – it was officially the end of my cut, and I was all alone in the kitchen. You can guess what happened….

On the upside, I think aside from about 4 or 5 cookies, most of what I ate was decent quality food. Lots of protein (yoghurt, skim milk, whey protein, a protein ice cream) and carbs (dry breakfast cereal, fruit) – mostly ‘normal’ food and not treats.

It’s now over a week later and despite some relatively weak urges, I’ve managed to eat pretty sensibly. I started working with a new coach for my lifting, and he wants to get an idea of my weight change over time, so I’ve been hopping on the scales. and right now it seems like I’m maintaining, not gaining or losing. I’ve been using the strategy of eating when I need to eat, but trying to choose healthier options like fruit and stuff if I feel the need to snack and I think that’s been satisfying the sweet cravings without turning me into a raving carb junkie looking to mainline sugar.

So far, at least, there is some balance in my eating. It doesn’t stop me overthinking things a lot, but it’s progress.

Oh, and we’ve got new pantry doors being made, so the old doors are back up. The food is out of sight….

This popped up in my feed the other day, and as usual Abel is on the money with this advice, I think:

So I’m gonna write this post a bit differently. First, the TLDR; then, if anyone is interested, they can read my longer explanations and thoughts. It’s cathartic for me to get that stuff off my chest, but at the same time, I feel as if it’s probably not very interesting to most people – so perhaps the take home messages are the most important thing – so here goes.

• Last night, I had another binge. It had probably been two and a half, almost three weeks since the last one, which must be close to an all-time record.
• I’ve forgiven myself completely. It’s OK. It really is. Even people who’ve never suffered from any form of disordered eating overeat sometimes! I had a solid breakfast this morning and don’t feel like I’m going to spiral into a days-long episode of self loathing.
• I’ve been really enjoying the Breaking Up With Binge Eating podcast lately. It’s full of real world experiences and common sense advice, the episodes are not too long, and interestingly it appears that some of the emotional strategies borrow heavily from ACT therapy – I have been reading The Happiness Trap lately (a book on this very subject – link on the Resources page) and found it very helpful, as well as aligning very nicely with Stoicism.
• The latest episode of that podcast, which I listened to on my way to work this morning, happened to outline how a client only recognised their progress in retrospect. That was a really timely reminder for me that I’ve come a long way, and these setbacks will happen – it’s not the end of the world.

Today, despite all the things rattling round in my brain, I continue to move forward. That is my vow.

Now – here’s the long version.

The last few weeks have been generally excellent – I’ve managed to keep my stress under control, feel like I haven’t yelled at my child or my dog in weeks, and my eating has fallen into a pretty regular pattern. It was date night on Saturday night, so the wife and I went out for a restaurant meal which was awesome – and although I still made my choices with health in the back of my mind, I wasn’t super anxious about macros or calories and even enjoyed a decent dessert. To be fair, the dessert was shared with my wife, but that was genuinely out of fullness, not fear. And I still ate a damn lot without feeling any concerns whatsoever.

At home though, I’ve been tending towards low calorie desserts again, mostly out of fear that eating a more ‘normal’ high calorie dessert will trigger off a desire to binge. This feels a little like restriction, which has been concerning me, and perhaps the fear is legitimate given what happened – but I don’t think that it was entirely the dessert that did it this time around.

The thing is, I’ve got a little bit of a minor groin injury, which has been bothering me for a while – yet I still keep squatting. I’ve also had a pretty sore biceps for ages (it started months ago, when I was doing curls almost every gym session) which I self diagnosed as tendinopathy. This has never really got any better, and every time I perform movements which hit the biceps it gets a little angry – then on Thursday last week I did some heavy rows (knowing full well I shouldn’t have) and really made it hurt a lot. This started off a bit of depression and disappointment in myself because I should know better by now, and it’s definitely going to impact on my lifting til it heals. I went in and trained on Saturday as normal, and during that session managed to hurt my back on the leg press (an injury I have experienced before – very painful, but will be right as rain in a couple of weeks). So you can imagine me going out for tea on Saturday night, hobbling round with a sore groin, a very sore back, and an arm that can barely lift anything – I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

Sensible people would probably take some time out of the gym, but I still trained on Sunday as well. The session went OK, but I guess in the afternoon I was feeling pretty sore and sorry for myself and depression set in. Sunday night happened to be my fortnightly evening alone, when the girls go to visit family without me – I generally enjoy these nights as they’re an opportunity to eat whatever I want in peace and quiet, but unfortunately they all too often turn into hours of obsessing about what to eat, and this was one of those times. It’s a bad recipe, scouring restaurant menus and Facebook food groups trying to decide on a food option for hours at a time, as well as feeling yukky about myself, so this is probably the first problem. Lately, I’ve been very good at letting those thoughts pass and saying ‘worry about dinner at dinner time‘ and not allowing myself to obsess and preplan too much. This time, I failed at that.

Ultimately I decided I wanted a nice takeaway steak sandwich with sweet potato fries – but that’s logistically difficult as I’d have to cook the fries at home – none of the local takeaways do them. I decided to go and buy steak and bread and make it all at home instead – and to many this would be considered a trigger, substituting a ‘healthy’ option for what you really want. However, and I’m sure this isn’t the ED voice talking, deep fried takeaway chips make me feel crap and genuinely aren’t nice/flavoursome enough to me to be worth it, so I don’t know whether I did the wrong thing or not. For better or worse, I made a steak sandwich on sourdough bread, with scotch fillet steak, an egg, full fat (shock horror!) cheese, sweet potato fries and salad. And fuck, was it good. Good enough that I decided to go all out on dessert and have strawberries, blueberries, ice cream, real (not sugar free) chocolate topping and a smattering of M&Ms. And that was bloody good as well. So good, in fact, that it made me want more. So. Much. More.

I typed out all the food I ate here, then decided it might be triggering for some. It was a decent amount, and it was all high calorie dessert type food, but I’ve certainly had much worse binges in the past. And, funny (not really) story – normally I make a cup of tea for the wife every night, and have a decaf or tea myself at the same time. When she got home, I was absolutely stuffed, but still wanted to have a hot chocolate with her tea so I had that, and also ate half a Kit Kat. Because, like, I knew I was extremely bloody full, but it was a limited edition Ruby Kit Kat which I hadn’t tried before and I just wanted it – but I really felt no urge to eat the whole thing. Even that, in itself, is progress – in the past I probably would have just eaten it all. And the Aero bar and the Cherry Ripe that were in the fridge with it.

So here I sit, a day later, reflecting on things. I’m putting this one down simply to the fact that I was sad and in pain, and I let myself obsess about food too long instead of accepting those feelings and letting them pass without acting on them. But having said that – I had a pretty decent night’s sleep and a good breakfast. I’m feeling a little heartburny, but not dreadfully so. Life will go on, these injuries will heal, and I will be a better, stronger person. Next time, I will do better.

I posted this on my Insta this morning, but as I’m trying to keep this blog kinda anonymous, I won’t link and will repost with a bit more detail here…

It may not be obvious but the difference in size and weight between these two bags is enormous.

I got the bag on the left in June 2017 in my Avatar Nutrition days. It’s an Innovator 500 by Six Pack Fitness. Let’s be prepared, I said. I loaded each compartment with different varieties of snacks, my own tea and coffee, protein powders and shakers, cutlery, as well as my standard lunch and the other foods I planned to eat for the day. I was gonna hit my macros come hell or high water!

I’ve been carrying this bag to work every day for two years. For the last few months or so I’ve not eaten anything out of it except my standard lunch. And it’s so big and unwieldy… I have to stop and wait for people in the hallway so I don’t bump into them with it, and given that I also carry a backpack with my laptop and other equipment in it, it’s a pain in the bum.

The stupid thing is, my lunch is only in it from the kitchen to the car, then the car to the fridge. I’m office bound most days, with access to a fridge, microwave, and a fair few shops within walking distance. So it’s completely unnecessary, but yaknow… habits.

Today I downsized and put my lunch into this smaller bag instead – it’s maybe a quarter of the size and weight. It might seem like a pretty minor thing, but this is another (small) step in the process to fixing my relationship with food. The smaller bag is so freeing – and ya know what? Food is just food. Meals don’t have to be perfect. If I’m hungry – I’ll go buy something. And in fact, I plan to – because shop bought sandwiches taste so much better than what I make at home, and actually, I might feel like a burger.

Don’t let food become a chain around your neck. Don’t let a fixation with your body size and shape ruin your life. I did, and I regret it so much. So many arguments at mealtimes, yelling at my wife and daughter because I was hangry, avoiding social and family events because the food didn’t suit me, or (worse) attending and starving myself because I refused to eat sausages because OMG SO MUCH FAT… or compulsively walking day in and day out to try and burn off the calories and make sure I stay lean.

It was a pale imitation of a life and it’s one that I refuse to live any more. Food is good. All of it. It’s there to be enjoyed. My body is the least interesting thing about me. It really is – and the benefits of eating enough food to fuel my body are evident in my energy levels, my gym performance, and my overall happiness.

That’s not to say I want to get fat again, or that I don’t care what I eat. And it’s true that I’m bigger than I want to be right now. But this is all part of the process of attaining balance in my life, and some sort of peace with food.

I refuse to diet again until I am confident I can do it without turning into a monster. Til then, I’ll just have to live with how I look. It’s really far less important than how I act and how I feel.

I haven’t had a great couple of days, to be honest.

I had a birthday last week, and enjoyed some cake and slices and generally had a really good day.

But we’ve had a sick puppy on our hands, so a bit of extra stress and sleep deprivation has taken its toll – at least that’s my excuse. On Sunday night I fell into old habits and hit the dessert hard in front of the F1, and then followed that up with another giant feast on Monday.

I don’t really feel any guilt over it any more, which is good. On the contrary, I’ve been using the feasts as opportunities to conquer my fear foods. I can honestly say that I’m no longer scared of eating takeaway burgers, having had three (plus a few other takeaway meals) in the last week.

I’ve also started on the chocolate milk. On Sunday night (pre-dinner) I stared at it in the supermarket for ages; looked at the nutrition info on two or three types; put them all back and didn’t buy any. I feel as if that may have triggered my overeating later that night. But I actually had one yesterday during the binge, and another today, and have one more in the fridge for the next time I want it. Pretty soon I won’t be scared of this either. Chocolate bars are another that I’m starting to knock over. Enjoyed a double coat Cherry Ripe yesterday and ate half a Snickers before bed – honestly thought I’d be sick if I ate any more or I’d have finished it!

For funsies, here’s photos of some foods I’ve eaten today. Obviously this is not a balanced diet. But if it helps me normalise these foods in my stupid brain; it’s worth it.

So that’s been my day today. I haven’t binged and have eaten unrestricted; no doubt I was in a calorie surplus but I’m feeling comfortably satisfied. Let’s hope tomorrow is another day like this one.

I feel like most of my posts lately have been fairly negative reports about what I have been calling binges (but are really extreme hunger). Today I received a nice email from J who has been reading my posts here, and while it was kinda nice to know that other people are reading and finding it helpful (thanks, J!) it reminded me that this is also supposed to be some sort of record of how I’m going, not just a neverending catalogue of my eating habits.

So, it’s time for a review of my symptoms and where I’m at with addressing them.

• As noted, I don’t track or weigh my food at all any more. I don’t obsess about perfect macros, I still try to get 30g of protein in every meal particularly after a training session, but really – close enough is good enough. A decent helping of meat and maybe some yoghurt or eggs if I’m in doubt, and everything is happy.
• I don’t look at nutrition labels very much these days. Every now and again I do, mostly just for interest’s sake, but it’s not usually a compulsion. Although I did look at the label on an AMAZING cookie I ate the other day… AFTER I’d eaten it. And since then I have been scared to buy that cookie again, even though it was so darn good – so clearly I still have some work to do here. But that being said, I can eat out at a restaurant without fear or favour these days. I even had a burger and chips the other night, and enjoyed them with no guilt.
• I am getting better at not restricting food all day, most definitely. I have been working with a dietician who has really drummed into me that I need to eat every 2-3 hours whether I’m hungry or not, and sticking to this has really helped me become far less food focussed. Also, and this should be common sense, but I’ve realised that if I’m not starving at dinner time, I’m in a far better mood to be spending time with my family, and I’m far less likely to want to eat a half a dozen servings of dessert afterwards. Which is great, because it leaves me time to spend on other, productive habits. So, my suppers these days tend to be very small, if anything at all – and I think that cutting back on that evening splurge, as well as moving to lifting in the morning again, has really helped me sleep better too so it’s a win all round.
• Refusal to eat non-healthy food? Nup, nada. I still try to eat ‘clean’ 80% of the time (because there’s nothing wrong with caring about your health) but I can’t remember a single day when I haven’t had some kind of chocolate, cake or biscuit in the past couple of months. And that’s kinda taken care of the fear of excess carbs/fat as well…..
• Multiple trips to the supermarket every week? Rarely happens. I make do with what’s in the fridge or in the cupboard, and quite often if I can’t be bothered making lunch I’ll go to the bakery (or the takeaway) and buy a bloody sandwich. Imagine that!
• Seasoning foods? I don’t do it anywhere near as much now – half the time I don’t bother, if a food isn’t tasty enough to eat without seasoning then perhaps I shouldn’t be eating it? But yaknow… chips need salt, salad needs mayo, and I even had sweet chilli sauce on my noodles last night. 3 months ago that would have been unthinkable because OH, the CAARRBS! The SUGAR! I do still use 99% fat free dressings, and having been watching a lot of Megsy Recovery lately, it’s reminded me that this is something I need to address. Same as my fat free yoghurt obsession.
• Microwaving tea and coffees? Nup. Nada. Can’t remember the last time I did it. Although I do occasionally now make a frothy coffee, with lots of milk, and I do warm that up first. Because it’s the closest thing to a latte that I can make at home.
• Bullguarding food? No, not really. I do still get a bit moody at mealtimes if I’m super hungry – but mostly I combat this by trying to never let my hunger get below about a 3 on the hunger scale.
• Craving carbs? Well yeah… as I’ve posted many times, my extreme hunger almost always involves some carb heavy food. But the erythritol out of the packet thing… nope. When I committed to gaining weight, I completely dropped artificial sweeteners from my drinks and went back to beautiful, lovely, sweet tasting raw sugar. I might have used erythritol or stevia two or three times in the past few months, the thought barely crosses my mind.
• Compulsions to move? Well no, not really. I still like to have a bit of a walk after lunch, but I don’t do it if I don’t feel like it, or the weather’s bad, or if I have lots of work to do. Since taking the Fitbit off I’ve felt the most free I’ve felt in a long time. I still get into the gym and lift weights – lots – but that’s something I enjoy even when I don’t feel like it.
• I’ve cut back on supplements a lot. Nowadays I’m down to 3 that I take regularly (creatine, vitamin D, and digestive enzymes) as well as a few actual medications. Most of the others are still in my stash but just get ignored.
• My bladder has been much improved since I gained weight and stopped drinking so much black coffee.
• I’m still a bit obsessed with gut health – partly because of the huge quantities of food I’ve been slamming at times, I feel like making sure my digestive system can handle it is probably not an awful issue to have right now.
• Extreme hunger – if you read this blog at all you know it’s still an issue. But I’m coming to terms with it.

After throwing this post together in a bit of a hurry, I feel like there’s far more positive things going on than negative, even if I still feel out of control around food at times. Things to focus on are finding better ways to deal with stress than eating (last week was… very bad in this respect) and making sure I don’t restrict. At all. Just eat when hungry and move on with life. And there are fear foods I need to work on. Chocolate milk is a classic that I haven’t mastered yet. But I will get there.

Lots of positive things going on in my life outside of the food world. Work is going fairly well, and I feel more productive than I have in a long time. We have a beautiful new puppy at home, and I just signed a contract to build a new gym in our backyard – soon I will have a lot more space for my man cave. It’s my birthday later this week, and we have some fun stuff planned including a nice night out and meal with the family.

Life is good.

So after 4 days of actual binges, I spent the next few days trying to eat heartily without restriction and have not had any more episodes of ‘uncontrollable’ eating, although I did eat enough to make myself actually vomit on Monday night.

Things are getting back to normal now. Hate to think what I weigh – but that’s not important. As I said to the dietician – the number on the scale doesn’t scare me any more. I do care how I look, and how my clothes fit, but that’s about it right now.

Had dinner at the in-laws on Sunday night, on our way home from the weekend away. I skipped the ice cream for dessert, with the intention of having something sweet at home.

Yep, did that alright. Ate a ton of desserts, cereal and everything I could get my hands on, and binged every day since – three and a half days of completely uncontrolled eating. Today (Thursday) is the first day I feel like I’ve got some semblance of my normal diet back, and even then I’ve eaten more than usual just to avoid feeling restricted.

Without stepping on the scales, I feel like the entire mini cut was a waste as I’ve probably undone all that hard work. I’ve been fairly grumpy with the wife and daughter making me feel a total failure as a parent, and I pretty much hate myself at the moment.

Things were going so well…. sigh.

So I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I haven’t had much to report.

After 13 days I’ve managed to drop the weight that I’d hoped to, my body composition is looking far better, and I’ve managed to avoid binges the whole time – but it’s been a close thing the last couple of nights. I’ve done a lot of meal skipping in the last week, and some of the old tendencies are really wanting to come back, but in a perfect piece of timing we have gone away for the night to a hotel in the mountains and I’d planned to either stop dieting or at the very least take a break this weekend anyway.

As I type this from the hotel it’s snowing outside, I’m sitting in front of a warm fire with a belly full of restaurant steak and apple crumble and ice cream and feeling more full than I have in weeks. To top it off I absolutely smoked some lifting PRs in the gym this morning before we left, and I’ve managed to spend an entire afternoon and evening cooped up with my wife and a precocious four year old without biting anyone’s head off (yet).

Right now, I’m satisfied. Not sure where to go from here, I’d like to be leaner but summer is months away and there’s no point rushing. Better to keep trying to find that sweet spot of sustainable eating and keep banishing the disordered thoughts some more.

Appointment with dietician next week. She probably won’t be impressed that I’ve restricted, but the fact it’s stopped the binges is a good thing from my point of view. I guess now we see what happens once I start adding back highly palatable foods again. But no point worrying about that right now. Just gonna sit back, stay warm, try to destress and enjoy the time away. At this moment, life’s good.

So if you read my last post, you’d know that the binges hit a peak 10 days ago. I actually ended up having 3 big ones in six days (Wed/Fri/Sun).

The following week I made it through the whole working week without one, and was very pleased, until I let it all hang out on Saturday night and went berserker. That cemented my decision that I need to put the brakes on for a while, and perhaps as a last hurrah, I had a little bit of a dessert feast last night (Sunday night) as well.

So  here we are, it’s Monday the 24th of June, and my plan is to diet for 3-4 weeks at most to get myself feeling and looking a little more athletic, before I try and attempt this ‘normal person eating’ thing again.

Perhaps this is a relapse. Perhaps this is a bad idea. I don’t know. But eating lots of everything doesn’t seem to have stopped me from losing control so perhaps relearning some discipline with myself will be helpful.

It’s slightly uncharted territory as it’s really only the second time I’ve attempted to lose weight without tracking calories/macros, and it’s the first time I’ve tried without the Fitbit. I’ve also got some slight changes to my diet in mind, including trialling a low carb breakfast (mostly eggs/cheese/meat), which will be interesting, and also a bit of a challenge to a fear food. I’ve always loved eggs (and some types of cheese) but always been fearful of the fat content. So there could be some good come from it as well.

This is gonna be interesting…..

No, it’s not what you think. I’m not done with recovery from this disordered eating shite, and I’m not done with life. But I’m done with my bulk, and let me explain.

It’s now Saturday night and I’ve had two more crazy binges this week – one on Wednesday night (in a fit of depression and loneliness, after hurting myself a bit in the gym) and one at work yesterday afternoon, for no real reason that I can think of except I just wanted to eat some nice food. And boy, did I ever. Dinner was supposed to be a pastie but ended up being soup, because I was so stuffed.

I’m not beating myself up about this, in fact I’m slightly proud of the fact that even though I had the urge to lift last night (cos yaknow… burning calories as compensation, plus I could send at least some of them toward building muscle, right?) I didn’t. I sat on my arse on the couch and spent a little time with my (long suffering) wife. Faffed about on Facebook and YouTube. Shed a few tears over an acquaintance from many years ago who recently passed away. Drank hot chocolate. Slept.

I weighed myself this morning (yes, I’m doing that again, but it’s not compulsive, just when I feel like it) and it was pretty much what I expected. But again, no big deal. I skipped breakfast (honestly…. truly… I wasn’t hungry), I did my chores, and I got a great training session in before having a big lunch, a nice afternoon, and the pastie for dinner (which was super good, thanks for asking).

But to the main point of my post – I am big enough now that I’m feeling sluggish and lazy, I had to order a new belt yesterday, and I said when I hit this weight that I’d be done with gaining. Also – I think I’ve let these feasts become a habit, and while I totally think they were necessary for me to get eating my fear foods again, I also think I’ve let my disorder become an excuse and allowed myself to slip into bad habits of snacking and not eating mindfully.

So this week is a new start – time to break the snacking habit, attempt to maintain this weight for a week or so, and then do a quick mini cut to drop some of the fat. Four weeks at most. If I lose a third of the weight I’ve gained in the past couple of months it’d be a miracle, especially as I intend to do it without tracking and without going too hungry. But I think I can get to a place where I’m happy with my physique and able to maintain it without feeling deprived all the time, unlike the last few years.

It’s a new phase of this journey and I’m looking forward to it a lot. Dieting on higher calories with no Fitbit and no off limit foods. Many would say I shouldn’t be dieting at all, but I’m a rule breaker who’s come a long way. If it causes some of the old issues to resurface, I know what I’ve gotta do, but I’m sure I can do this. Wish me luck!

So I was feeling pretty down last night (after a particularly stressful day at work), and after kidlet went to bed I kicked off again, that’s twice in 3 days. My food journal is a dumpster fire of ice cream, puddings and Frosties. Oh, that honey flavoured corn flake goodness.

I had a training session planned and I even considered skipping that so I could lie on the couch and wallow in self pity. I didn’t, which was good. I felt a little less fat and bloated afterwards. Til I had my post training hot chocolate, biscuit and yoghurt. Then I felt like a beached whale again.

Today hasn’t been a good day either. The Frozen soundtrack was playing on my drive to work, and I decided to have a singalong, but instead of cheering me up it had me bawling my eyes out.

What’s more concerning, maybe, is that I had nawt but a coffee and a can of Monster for breakfast, a can of Pepsi Max for lunch, and didn’t let my first solid meal pass my lips until 4pm. And that was just a bowl of greek yoghurt with some fruit and muesli.

Sure, it could legitimately be said that I wasn’t hungry at breakfast time and not eating was a good example of listening to my body. But by morning tea time I was thinking about food a fair bit and by lunchtime I was definitely a little hungry – but I still decided to restrict and compensate.

Psychologically, I’m feeling pretty fucking delicate right now. It doesn’t help that my weight has almost hit the ceiling I set for this bulk (a week or two earlier than I want) and I’m almost unable to get my belt done up on the last hole, and I’m trying to avoid buying another one. But I really don’t want to be falling back into these old habits of fasting and restricting right now.

I like desserts.

Last night, after a rather bad mood bear night with the child, I ate many of them. I wasn’t hungry, just depressed and loathing myself and my lack of patience with her.

I want this to stop,  and I want to be a good parent, not a grumpy, shitty one.

Right now I’m not setting a great example.

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea yesterday at work.

I was anxious about this, and somewhat relieved when Miss Four was sick and I had an excuse to stay home from work in the morning and avoid it – but in the afternoon I had some work scheduled so I had to go in after lunch.

Decided I would happily eat some of the leftovers, but wanted to get a chunk of work done first. Which I did. And then proceeded to eat one or two of everything (cakes, slices, biscuits, lamingtons), grabbed some more chocolate on the way home, ate dinner and then four bowls of ice cream plus more biscuits, chocolate, granola and nuts for dessert.

Gosh darnit. When will this ever stop?

I changed my training schedule and lifted yesterday evening instead of this morning. I know that’s probably a bit of compensation (which is not ideal). But I also was careful to train normally and not use it as an excuse to punish myself, which was good.

Really not very hungry this morning…..

So, as mentioned I hit the conference buffet hard yesterday at lunch.

I didn’t go to the conference dinner (this was pre planned). But now part of me wishes I did, I was so full from lunch that I deliberated for ages about what to have for dinner and I decided to grab a seafood salad from a nearby sushi place. At the time, I thought that was the right call. However I decided to have some ice cream and a hot chocolate afterwards. Sure, no problem. But that kicked off another few hours of eating cereal, chocolate, chocolate milk, and more ice cream. Faaaaark. Fell asleep on the couch in a carb coma.

Hit breakfast hard this morning too. Normal brekky, plus extra cereal and extra croissants and more coffee. Overfull.

More croissants, some banana bread and lamington and coffees at conference morning tea. Absolutely stuffed. Feel like I won’t need to eat again for days.

When will this end? Surely I don’t fear these foods any more. I hate myself so much right now.

(more…)

As noted in my list of symptoms one of my issues is compulsive movement. Mostly, it’s the fact that I wear a Fitbit and enjoy challenging myself to hit 250 steps every hour and 10k steps every day. However, if I can’t hit these targets it often causes anxiety. Even trying to sit still for 90 minutes to watch a movie can be difficult.

However in addition to this, I really like to lift weights. I’ve been doing this since midway through my big dieting phase a few years ago (the thing that started all this!) and it could probably be argued that I’m a bit compulsive about this too. I enjoy training hard, I pretty much never miss a session, and I have been known to use it as punishment (after overeating) or as a reason to eat more (as in hey, if I train, I deserve more food). The last two are problematic, because I don’t deserve punishment for giving into hunger and I certainly don’t need a reason or justification for eating until I am satisfied, that’s just a basic human need whether I’ve lifted weights or not!

I’ve digested so much ED material over the past year or so and much of it seems to suggest that during recovery we should just eat and rest – exercise of any sort is a bad idea. I’ve never quite been able to accept this, to be honest and it’s been a bit of a source of guilt. I know that my walking is definitely a problem, but the lifting, I think in most cases, is generally OK except in the cases I mentioned above – and in fact I think more often than not it is really beneficial for my mental health. I need the time out in my gym, away from the hustle and bustle of day to day life – getting under the bar and lifting some heavy ass weights seems to clear my mind better than almost anything else I’ve tried.

Thankfully, it seems like not all experts think exercise should be completely cut out, and I was pleased to have my own biases confirmed when I read this article by Emily Troscianko  earlier in the week. And this week, I’ve also confirmed to myself that the lifting is really a minor issue (if it is one at all). Due to some work commitments this week I’d planned a lighter week in my lifting, and often times in the past when I’ve tried to deload I’ve found myself just going hard anyway. But this weekend just gone I had two days out of the gym without guilt, have done a couple of light sessions since then, and will be heading interstate for a conference tomorrow (and a couple more gym-free days) with zero guilt as well. I feel like I’ve got some perspective on things.

On the walking front, well there’s progress there as well. I haven’t hit 10k steps quite a few days this week, and I’ve been quite chillaxed about it. It only really took a few days at work in meetings and stuff (which meant I was unavoidably low on activity) to realise that the sky wasn’t going to fall in if I didn’t do it. I just haven’t quite got around to removing the Fitbit yet, but come to think of it, since this conference means hours of sitting inactive in a function room, now is probably a good time to challenge myself so tonight I’ve pulled my old watch out of the drawer and I fully intend to wear it tomorrow instead of the Fitbit.

I still genuinely believe that a ten minute walk after every meal is useful for digestion and overall health (both mental and physical) – I don’t think that’s my ED voice talking, as in my head the post meal walks have nothing to do with weight management (it’s my overall activity levels that do that). I’d also like to make sure I don’t become deskbound all day at work, again just for general health. But it should be quite easy to do those things without relying on external cues to do it – if that means less anxiety (and being better in touch with my body) then that sounds like a win-win to me.

Another one last night. Ice cream, biscuits, cereal.

This time, I really don’t have a trigger or an excuse. There was some child-related stress (I was single parenting all afternoon/evening) but it really didn’t feel like a big deal at the time. There was some anxiety about working the election today, but not much. I’d eaten really well during the day and in fact really didn’t feel super hungry at mealtimes because I’d been so good about getting my snacks in.

And yet still, after E went to bed and the housework was done, I hit the sweets like there was no tomorrow. Just wanted the chocolate ice cream (it was so delicious) and everything else….. for no particular reason. Maybe a little bit of loneliness, what with my partner being out for the evening. I dunno.

I’m paying for it today. I’ll be working all day and now having to cope with major heartburn and indigestion as well. And I feel pretty hopeless to be honest. I don’t know when or if they’re going to stop, and I’m beginning to think that having an ED is just giving me an excuse to be a pig and deal with my emotions by eating, which is not what I want to do. Gotta use my damn brain.

So I had another episode last night. I’ve been logging these in a Word document, but now this blog is up, it’s probably a more appropriate place to put them.

My last episode was on Friday the 3rd of May, so it’d been 10 days or so. The trigger for that one was, as usual, a combination of restriction and stress. I had a day off work, had a busy morning running errands with E in tow, and really wanted to go to a cafe or bakery for a nice coffee and a pastry. Unfortunately with her being such a fussy eater, we couldn’t find a shop that had kiss biscuits, and she kicked off in the street so I took her home and missed out on my treat. It was after lunch that day that I went berzerker on cereals and chocolate.

Yesterday was similar. I actually had a pretty good day at work, but was obsessing all day (again) about going to the bakery and getting a coffee and some sort of sweet treat. But I refused to let myself have it, telling myself that I should save my money – which is true – I really can’t afford to be spending ten bucks a day on coffee and pastries! So got through the (short) day without it, had some cereal for afternoon tea, all good. But then I had a couple of blowups with E around dinner time, for various reasons, really wanted a nice dessert, and a second bowl of ice cream turned into half the tub, as well as copious quantities of biscuits, chocolate, coco pops, and a couple of hot chocolates, the final one with a generous spoonful of Nutella in it.

It’s worth noting that this one felt a bit different than most of my others – I didn’t feel anywhere near as manic, or out of control. I really just felt lonely, depressed and wanted sweet food. Taking photos of it for Ate gave me the opportunity to reflect at each plate refill, and I could have stopped, but I didn’t want to.

Needless to say I had another hot, heartburny night’s sleep – and not enough of it, particularly since I’d planned to be up at 5am for an early training session. At least I was well carbed up for it! As I write this, I’m midway through lifting and I feel OK. But needless to say, I’ll be going and getting that latte and croissant today, if I feel like it.

As mentioned in my List of ED symptoms post, for many years I had been obsessively tracking calories/macros using MyFitnessPal, obsessively weighing food wherever possible, and planning my nutrition to a T. Ostensibly this was to ensure that my diet was on point and optimised for whatever my goal was at the time (whether that was fat loss or muscle gain). There were a heap of food rules around this, such as:

• Making sure overall daily calories weren’t too excessive, so that I could eat a large enough meal at dinner time and before bed to feel at least somewhat satiated
• Ensuring that every meal contained at least 30g of protein (but not too much!) to ensure maximum muscle protein synthesis
• Attempting to spread those protein feedings over at least 4-5 meals a day
• Trying to keep carbs a little higher pre and post training sessions; and keep them lower at other times of the day, particularly on days I knew I’d be more sedentary
• To keep fats down as low as possible – especially if I knew the family dinner (the one meal I don’t really have complete control over) was going to be higher in fats/calories

I ate like this for three years solid, with only a couple of very short breaks of 1-2 weeks at a time  when the family were away on holidays and it was difficult to sustain. The end result was that I felt constantly hungry, grumpy, exhausted and sore. Even when trying to ‘bulk’ I almost never ate enough, because I was so fearful of gaming fat, so aside from one short period where I was letting Avatar Nutrition set my macros, my metabolism almost never normalised and I was constantly in energy deficit.

If I was forced to eat food I hadn’t prepared, this would cause me great anxiety. Going out for a meal was a nightmare – I’d always want to know where we were going in advance, so that I could spend hours poring over the menu and trying to figure out what to have. And since most restaurants around here don’t publish nutritional information it also meant spending ridiculous amounts of time looking through MyFitnessPal’s database comparing similar meals to try and estimate what the macros would be, and planning the rest of the day’s meals to try and compensate for the restaurant meal inevitably being more calorie dense than usual.

Don’t even get me started on Christmas dinners and work functions and any other occasion where I had to try and wing it. I actively tried to avoid most of these, with a fair amount of success. But when I couldn’t, they were a major mindfuck, and inevitably I either ate nothing, or ate too much (in my head), felt guilty and compensated by going walking for long periods and/or restricting subsequent meals.

This was probably one of the most stressful parts of my eating disorder, and I am so glad to be able to write about it in the past tense. I used to tell myself that I’m a numbers guy, and I enjoy having good data on the foods I’m consuming, but in reality it was a massive life thief (to steal a phrase from Christy Harrison) – I know some people have success with it (and I did too, to begin with) but with my tendencies towards obsessiveness and OCD type behaviours, it wasn’t good for me in the long term.

The story of how I gave it up is straightforward. I started experiencing more and more regular episodes of binge eating (and I tracked those binges in MyFitnessPal as best I could) and I eventually recognised that the obsessive tracking and controlling was probably a contributing factor. So to start with, I stopped tracking carbs and fats and just attempted to track protein. That didn’t help much, so on Feb 1st 2019 after another late night biscuit and cereal rampage I decided just to stop tracking and weighing and just try to eat mindfully in an attempt to stop the binges. It didn’t work, and I still experienced (and gave in to) extreme hunger many times afterwards, but I just never went back to tracking.

I was so proud of my record with tracking that I continued to login to the MyFitnessPal app and website daily to keep my ‘streak’ going (their system tells you how many consecutive days you’ve used it in an effort to encourage consistency). The last time I checked it was at 1200 plus days, but then in mid May 2019 I realised I’d forgotten to do it and I logged in to discover my streak had been reset. I thought this would bother me, but it really didn’t. So I took the opportunity to delete the app from my phone and cancel my premium subscription, and can’t see myself ever going back.

On a related note, in early May I started using another app to track food called ‘Ate‘. This might seem a bit strange, after everything I’ve just written, but the process and purpose is completely different. It is simply a food journal, where I take a photo of the meal and ask myself some questions about the circumstances of the meal as well as how I feel pre and post eating. It encourages mindfulness and has been really helpful in learning how to eat like a human again – after so many years of ‘eating by numbers’ I’d completely lost touch with my body’s hunger and satiety signals. In my efforts to eat ‘clean’ all the time, I’d also largely forgotten which foods that I really enjoyed and didn’t, and which foods made me feel good and bad.