How can I learn to eat normally?
I am so tired of using eating as a coping mechanism. For the past 6-8 years I have swung from periods where I have heavily restricted and lost a lot of weight to periods where I binge eat. I am currently finding myself tending to binge and I feel so guilty and ashamed by it. This has been going on for so long that I now don't know how to eat normally and what that might look like.
I've been to the doctor once during a restrictive period and I was just told that I was underweight and need to drink whole milk 🤣 Useful...
Has anyone recovered and have any tips? Thank you so much for any advice you can give.I feel so lost with it all and want to change. I just can't seem to find a balance between restricting and binging.
@ClaraRoseDreamer
Hi Clara, wish you the best in your approach, first way to solve something is realizing it and checking information how to put a solution.
What helped me somehow is to buy and cook food in batching and frozing it, so when I´m lazy to cook I just unfroze, warm and eat.
Those moments when lazy about what to cook or buy to eat, are traps that make us fall in bad habits and order junk food, or eat anything.
About recipes that can´t be frozen or kept long, just try to make easiest recipes as possible of stuff you like, without worrying too much about quitting calories and so on, just try to make things easy (easy recipes, froze, have normal food at home) so you can avoid that "junk windows" offers that appear when a stress-anxiety-lazyiness-overwhelm situations appears and you just want to assault a McDonald with a machine gun.
Other thing that helped me, was to when I realized that a "food attack" was coming, was just to drink water, and go training, walk, or do stuff (move your body), so your brain get entertained with something else instead of assaulting Fort Knox food supply.
For food lovers I don´think there is no permanent solution, just trying to make things easy, be active physically, and the wins will be more frequent than the loses.
Wish you the best!
@JJDuctu
Thank you, that is really helpful advice, and I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to me. I will try meal prepping more, I just find them difficult when my brain wants to restrict and I don't know the calories. But I guess pushing through that is part of recovery.
Distraction is a great idea. I think going for walks or reading when I hear my ED voice might work so I'll give it a go.
Thank you!
@ClaraRoseDreamer Hi Clara - I am brand new here (this is my first post!). But I hear you. I came here for help with a similar problem. I keep self sabotaging myself with binge eating. I just want to be "normal" - or at least, what I perceive as normal. I want to have 2 cookies, stop - and not find myself obsessing about eating the rest of them. I have had issues as early as age 7, now that I think about it. I'm 56 now. Hopefully we can both find help.
It sounds like you have been through so much these past 6-8 years. For me what helped is finding a dietician who specializes in eating disorders. They can not only help with nutrition but explore the feelings that lead to restriction and binging. Also I am so sorry you had such a
bad experience with your doctor. That’s very invalidating.