Food fight
Food fight
My most destructive impulse is binge eating. I no longer feel trapped in a restrict-binge cycle; I feel trapped in a perfection-punishment cycle.
Note: This piece discusses disordered eating, binge eating, dieting, and addiction.
My father has been sober for nearly 20 years. He gently corrected me once when I referred to him as a “former alcoholic.”
I’ll be an alcoholic forever, he clarified. I’m a recovering alcoholic. I’ll be recovering for the rest of my life.
I understood then his recognition of his addiction’s power — there is for him no state of being “cured,” only a life of fighting the good fight each day against his most destructive impulses.
My most destructive impulse is binge eating that stems from years of a disordered relationship to food. I’ve envisioned for myself a fully recovered existence in which I’m a “former binge eater” or “cured” of all troublesome thoughts around eating. Lately I’m considering that my latent inclination to binge eat and an undercurrent of disordered food thoughts will be something I fight for the rest of my life, just as my father fights his own addiction. I don’t see this as defeatist; I believe that this undercurrent can be subdued into near-imperception. But striving for a “cured” state — or what I’ve perceived as a “perfect” state — is keeping me locked in a cycle that only perpetuates my struggle.
Flagellating myself for failing to never binge eat in a culture that normalizes it — we have competitive eating competitions on national holidays; we have perverted and popularized the concept of mukbangs; we simply eat huge quantities of food in America — will not help me find a more peaceful relationship to food. I know the power this disorder can hold and why it is so tormenting: I must consume the same mechanism for survival as I do for self-destruction. An alcoholic never has to walk into a liquor store again. People with binge eating disorder have to walk to the kitchen several times a day.
Fighting the good fight gets easier over time with the right tools and support. I don’t binge with anywhere near the habitual frequency I did a decade ago. Most of the time the inclination is a weak blip, not a roaring boom. I’ve implemented therapeutic practices into my life that help me manage the impulse. If I succumb once in a while, I know what I can do (exercise I enjoy, cooking the meals I like and savoring them) to return to a harmonious mind-body state. I manage my most destructive impulses and sometimes I relapse. Maybe at some point I won’t. Right now, I’m trying to understand why I do.
“I’ve been conditioned to see eating in black and white: The way I used to eat was all wrong; the way I eat now is right.”
There are people who binge eat because they’re trapped in a restrict-binge cycle; they try draconian fad diets or restrict calories or food groups so severely that inevitably they gorge at some point. I was locked into this cycle when I was younger. I’d go on Atkins with my mom; I’d villainize entire food groups; I’d try to live off of 1,000 calories per day. Then I’d eat an entire family-sized box of Triscuits and 20 slices of American cheese under cover of night in my parents’ kitchen.
I don’t restrict like that anymore. Part of my recovery process hinges on my feeling connected to the body I dissociated from for so long, so weight lifting and other exercise is the key. I’ve become a group fitness and indoor cycling instructor with an additional certification in fitness nutrition. I’ve trained for and competed in a powerlifting competition. I can deadlift well over double my body weight. These efforts and accomplishments helped me understand that I need to eat a lot of food; that carbs are not the enemy; that fad diets are not the way for me to make strength gains, peacefully relate to food, or enjoy life. I have come to truly love and embrace eating without a dieting or thinness-driven mindset. I don’t feel that I restrict myself from what I really want to be eating. I don’t feel trapped in a restrict-binge cycle.
I do sometimes feel trapped in a perfection-punishment cycle: It’s not that I restrict then binge, it’s that I eat in a way that satisfies and nourishes me and have come to erroneously believe that if I am not perfectly dedicated to this way of eating all the time, I’ll be back to where I used to be. I’ve been conditioned to see eating in black and white: The way I used to eat was all wrong; the way I eat now is right. This is no surprise, as I was taught from a young age that food itself is black and white: Foods are either bad or good. I was taught that the way I ate was bad, my appetite was bad, and my body was bad. I’ve overcorrected — I’ve left myself no room to ever stray from a certain way of eating. It’s not the same action of the restrict-binge cycle, but it’s the same intention: I try to do something “right,” but I may do something “wrong,” and then I punish myself.
Falling into a binge — doing something “wrong” — feels so easy.
This past Christmas, for instance, I was verbally pummeling myself on the drive home from a few days’ visit to my sister-in-law’s. I’d eaten in a way that felt out of control. Why was I eating fistfuls of fudge-covered popcorn at 11:30 p.m. when I was already beyond stuffed from dinner? Why was I ripping off hunks from homemade cinnamon buns every time I walked through the kitchen even though I didn’t really want or fully enjoy them? Why did I feel like I did nothing but eat myself sick for four days?
My husband offered an insight with typical equanimity: “Because it was there.”
I recall feeling stunned that he’d struggled with the same feelings. Rich, luxurious, special-holiday-treat kind of food was constantly around, literally placed in front of us at every turn, he reminded me. There was also looming, if unspoken, social and familial pressure. It feels impolite not to partake in the offerings of your host; everyone else is eating that way so you might as well, too; people get weird when you don’t eat in the same way others are — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Oh, live a little!” or, “Of course, you’re being good,” or “Come on, it’s the holidays!” Sometimes it feels easier to cave to the pressure and throw the spotlight of “the one who isn’t eating all the stuff” off of myself.
“We did nothing much but sit inside that house, surrounded by that food for days,” my husband said. “It feels impossible not to eat that way.”
It’s true. Hang out in a bar long enough and you’re going to have a drink.
Some people who discuss recovery from binge eating disorder* say there comes a point where you’ve made total peace with binge trigger foods. You can keep them in your house, because you don’t binge on them any longer. I’m not there yet. I’m not sure I ever will be, or even want to be. I’m not sure I want to test it. I feel I can have foods I used to binge on within certain contexts, like when I go out to eat in a restaurant or order a certain quantity of takeout food. Those situations inherently have limits — my time with that food is over when I’m done eating what I ordered and go home. I struggle at the homes or parties of people who constantly bring more and more food out to the table, or at events with endless passed appetizers or buffet-style presentations.
I’ve encountered the idea that I should keep certain foods in my place to “practice” having them around so they’ll feel less like bogeymen, so I’ll feel less tempted to binge when I’m out in the world with them. The very thought of this is bone-chilling to me. Food and alcohol addiction are not the same, but this summons the idea of encouraging an alcoholic to keep bottles of whiskey around the house to “practice” not drinking them, should she ever encounter cocktails at a party. Why the hell would I do this to myself?
“You just draw the line of non-participation. This can be far easier than negotiating with your disorder or your values around food every time another snack, drink, or appetizer tray comes out.”
My husband said something else I’ve latched onto: It can be far easier to draw one line regarding food and eating than it is to draw lines over and over. Meaning: It’s much less psychologically taxing to go to an event or arrange the state of your pantry or fridge with the mindset that you just don’t eat triggering things or things that make you feel physically or mentally unwell for whatever reason. You just draw the line of non-participation. This can be far easier than negotiating with your disorder or your values around food every time another snack, drink, or appetizer tray comes out.
I can see how this feels like a kind of band aid on an axe wound: Sometimes people will quit drinking for a month, or will go on a temporary diet with a specific plan to follow, because drawing the line of “I’m not drinking alcohol” or “I’m only eating what this plan tells me” is much easier than figuring out what’s wrong with your relationship to alcohol or food and developing new habits around them that are sustainable in the long term. If you have problematic drinking behaviors and soldier through a month off but then go right back to the same drinking habits, have you solved anything? If you go on a diet without understanding your disordered relationship to food and learning what foods will sustainably support your well-being for the rest of your life, what have you actually done for yourself? I do feel that simply not keeping some foods in my house might not be actually helping me develop a non-disordered relationship to them. I’m just not sure — really, I truly don’t know — how else to deal with my relationship to food at this point.
I’ve made the decision to find a therapist who specializes in binge eating disorder. I have a great therapist who I talk to about eating sometimes, but we mostly talk about a litany of other life stuff and she’s not an E.D. specialist. As I write this newsletter — which is a cathartic, educational, and joyful practice for me — I realize how much work I’d still like to do around my issues with food. I’ve made a lot of progress (and I worked with an eating disorder-focused therapist quite a few years ago), but to keep fighting the good fight each day, I need a little more help. Even if I’m not binging anywhere near as much as I used to, I am battling a relentless preoccupation with food thoughts. I’m struggling with drawing lines over and over. I’m not sure if what I’m doing and how I’m thinking is or is not always healthy for me. Writing helps a lot. Listening to a voice besides the one in my own head will probably help more.
I never connected to any of the religious elements of my father’s Alcoholics Anonymous experience, but I always appreciated parts of the Serenity Prayer:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.
I cannot change that I’ve had a disordered relationship to food for years. I cannot change that I have had (might always have to some degree, even a small one) a tendency to self-abuse, to numb myself with food. The next part of that prayer, though — [grant me] the courage to change the things I can — leads me to examine how I see eating disorder recovery as part of my life.
I can reframe how I interact with recovery from binge eating: I don’t have to be fully recovered to be committed to long-term recovery. I value the process of managing my worst impulses. I am committed to a life as free from disordered eating as I am able to manage at any given time. I must recognize that sometimes this will be far more difficult than at other times, and while I have agency and must take accountability for my own choices, I can also acknowledge that when the deck is stacked against me I might fold, and that doesn’t necessitate self-punishment. I acknowledge and recognize these things in theory but not yet in practice.
So the fight continues.
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*See: Every registered dietitian on Instagram. Some of them have a nasty habit of making Reels where they seem to be ridiculing or pitying the kind of person who doesn't keep Oreos or ice cream in the house or those who haven't yet "found food freedom." Needless to say, I hate this and find it totally antithetical to a truly inclusive health care mindset.