The 3 Steps that Helped Me Survive an Eating Disorder

     Let’s face it – no one lives a stress-free existence, no matter what it looks like on the surface.  And not many can say they don’t have inner battles.  The only thing that differentiates us is what form those self-struggles happens to take.  For me, it took the shape of an eating disorder.

     No inner conflict occurs in a vacuum.  We all have multiple circles in the Venn diagram of our lives.  The question is how much the triggers within each area overlap to create the perfect storm.  The tipping point at which our cup filling with daily obstacles begins to overflow, pushing us over the ledge of “I’ve got this under control”.

     Our circles consist of family, friends, home life, work life, physical health, emotional health, hobbies, spiritual beliefs, and the list goes on.  Within each of those life areas are positives and negatives.   And within those is our perspective which influences how we tolerate the negatives.   Are they just something that happens and then we allow the moment to pass, or do we dwell on them and twist them into somehow defining our views on life itself?

     For any of us, this is complex and too dense to be covered respectfully in the span of one article.  And there is no easy fix that quickly dissolves our point of distress so that we can be free of self-doubt for ever more.  I wish it were that easy, and if it were, there would be a lot less songs about heartache and books about change.

     All I can do here is open up and tell you a little about how I learned to manage my own inner struggles over the years and hopefully it will connect with, and maybe even help, one person.  I’m not a doctor, a psychiatrist, or a nutritionist.  I have a Bachelors degree in psychology, a 25 year interest in spirituality and yoga, and a curious mind that always pushed me to learn and try to help myself.

     Notice I did not say “cure”.  I still don’t think I am “cured”, but am accepting of the idea that, if I can find a way to manage it, I have won.  Winning is not always black and white, nor is success.  Sometimes it means minimizing anxieties, maximizing quality of life, and quieting the negative voices in our head long enough that we can hear the positive ones that are in there too. 

     One of the tricky spots is, unlike others issues of addiction, you can’t just psych yourself up and stop eating cold turkey.  We need to eat to live.  There are a lot of moving parts that most people don’t even think about, but someone dealing with an eating disorder thinks about constantly.

     Social situations revolve around oral consumption.  Let’s meet up for drinks.  Let’s get together for lunch.  Let’s make a dinner date.  For someone who struggles with the issue of eating, it’s impossible to not have it bleed over into affecting social relationships.  Some deal with it by avoidance, never accepting those invitations.  Successful on some level, but also socially isolating.  Some deal with it by choosing a few scenarios that feel least stressful, and trying to fit all round invitations into those square holes.  Whether you are dealing with under-eating, over-eating, or cycle between the two, the world can feel like a constant challenge that keeps you ever on edge.

     Let me share an overview of the 3 steps that helped me survive an eating disorder:

1)  Basal Metabolic Rate

     The most helpful professional advice I received was from a Registered Dietician/ Licensed Nutritionist.  She did a test to determine my Basal Metabolic Rate, an analysis of your body’s unique minimum caloric need to stay alive.  This is to say, at rest, if you did nothing but sit in one place for 24 hours per day,  your body requires this just to keep your heart beating to circulate blood and your lungs breathing to circulate oxygen.

     Even the strictest anorexic should acknowledge the benefit of at least taking in enough to not die.  My dietician was kind, but matter of fact.  She said, at this current weight I am required to insist you go somewhere that will force nutrition into you.  You are a smart and independent person and I know you wouldn’t want that.  But it is your choice.

     The deal was I see her once per week, show her my daily food journal reflecting what I ate and drank to achieve this minimum level, and a weigh-in to determine if I stayed or went.  Eating disorders are all about control.  Feeling out of control of other aspects of your life, so asserting control over the one thing you can  –  what you put into your body.

     This was interesting.  On the surface she was taking control away.  But if I thought about it, I was still in control based on my choices.  I didn’t want the embarrassment of having to explain to people where I had been while I was away.  And I certainly didn’t want to be somewhere where I’d have even less control.   I accepted the ultimatum.

     Weigh-ins were always backwards so I wouldn’t see the number on the scale, the holy grail that anyone with an eating disorder focuses on.  There would be no mention of the number, and no emotion in her voice when she told me each week if I could remain independent.  This was so the gradual gaining of weight wouldn’t backfire and send me clutching old patterns to reverse it back where I was more comfortable.

     She explained that when anyone’s body is in a state of critical need, it is all their physiology allows them to think about.  If someone is freezing, it’s hard for them to think about anything other than how cold they are and how to get warm.  If someone is starving,  all they think about is food and the idea of eating.  It’s survival of the fittest and the Darwinian way that only the most adaptive members of a species survive.

     If I was ever to get to a point where I didn’t think about food ALL the time, I had to compromise and at least give my body enough nutrition that it wouldn’t be in a constant state of survival mode.  This one concept helped avoid the anorexia – bulimia see-saw.  The cycle of narrowly restricting what you eat, then starving to the point your body takes over and pushes you to take in as much as you can, and then the inevitable guilt and shame that motivates you to promise yourself you will restrict again to make up for it.

     It is an endless cycle that can’t be won, unless you break it by at least consuming your body’s basal metabolic rate of minimum required calories for survival.

     Once we established a point I was not in acute danger, and I was no longer constantly thinking about food, she upped the ante.  She went on to teach me that if a person does ANYTHING active during the day, their body required additional calories to carry out those functions.

     We made a list of what I did on a typical day.  Get out of bed, get dressed, walk down stairs, walk outside to car, etc.  We then added what I did for exercise.  If I only did it 3 times per week, add it up and divide by 7 days, to get the average calories burned per day.  This would reveal the amount of additional calories needed to be consumed each day so my system did not break down muscle and bone for energy to live.

     It made sense, but I struggled more with this one.  She made another deal.  Keep the food journal going and at least reach this new minimum daily calorie level.  Past that, I could keep my eating disorder and she wouldn’t give me a hard time.  She added that I was good at having an eating disorder, so if it didn’t work out after a couple months, I could go back to having it and just never leave my bed.  She drove a hard bargain, and I accepted her challenge.

     I had to admit it was easier to carry out my daily activities.  I was still underweight, but no longer in a physical danger zone.  This meant she was no longer hanging the carrot of in-patient avoidance over my head, and I was still left with a feeling of control.  So far it was win-win.

2)  Structured Eating

     Once I reached this new plateau, it was time to experiment with which foods to consume and when.  The journal helped as a starting point.  Let me assure you that this was not introducing a new negative.  Anyone with an eating disorder knows exactly what they are consuming.  Writing it down would not be adding to this focus.  In fact, it actually allowed me to not think about it so much because it was all there – I could let my mind rest about it.   If I was going to obsess about a number, minimum calories to sustain life was a better one than weight on a scale.

     I had already made up my own rules that I would only, but always, eat three time a day.  For me, this helped ensure I wouldn’t over-eat, with the new additional goal of not under-eating.  How many of us unconsciously snack throughout the day?  And how many skip meals?  For me, sticking to my rule of 3 times gave me a structure so that I wasn’t ruled by impulse or fear.

     It was interesting to see what combinations would get me to that golden number.  I was concretely seeing that I could eat a larger amount of healthy choices than most of my go-to cravings.  At first it was against everything I held on to as a restricter of quantity.  But this was teaching me that quality was more important.  If it wasn’t going to be more calories, it felt safe to eat a whole plateful of chicken and veggies rather than a tiny bag of cheesy chips  when the caloric total was the same.

     I was also concretely seeing that I was less on-edge not skipping meals or restricting to unrealistic levels.  It became like a game, seeing what combinations I could come up with and still be at this number.  The better I got at it, the more I could eat.  We even added in a multi-vitamin because it hardly added any calories, but helped round out needed nutrients.

     Over time, I began naturally gauging what my body needed for optimal functioning.  If I wanted my car to get me where I want to go, I had to put in premium grade fuel and not let it run out of gas.  Why wouldn’t I do the same for my own body?

     Once I saw that I was feeling better and not adding weight too far past my comfort level, it eventually allowed me to expand what and how much I was eating, without panicking.  Her words stayed in my head – I was good at having an eating disorder, so if I went too far the other way, I’d know how to turn back.  Ironically, knowing I could was the thing that helped me not need to.

3)  Yoga

     Yoga rounded out this trifecta of survival skills.  With yoga the focus is all on what your body can do, not what it isn’t compared to everyone else.  The philosophy is breathing love and self-acceptance into your body, not staring at a counter to burn calories out of it.  The new mindset is appreciating what your body does look like, not about pushing harder to change what you don’t like about it. 

     My favorite yoga teacher was a body builder and girl-power enthusiast.  We would hold warrior pose and she would shout  “pain is weakness leaving your body – face it and let it leave!”   We would hold dancer pose and she would cheer  “if you’re in your center, you have balance, and no one can knock you down!”   Her words resonated and I soaked them in like a yogi sponge.  I was now connecting strength and endurance with a positive body image, instead of striving toward small at any expense.

     I was in charge of my own destiny.  It didn’t matter what I looked like to other people as long as my inner self felt good to me.  I had just learned how to nourish my body,  now I was learning how to nourish my mind and soul.

     Yoga’s ability to decrease anxiety and depression was proven effective in a 2007 study published in “Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine”.  As a result, yoga was recommended as a complimentary treatment for depression.  A more recent 2012 review examined other yoga studies,  reinforcing the finding that yoga practice leads to improvements in both stress and anxiety.  Yoga’s success in physiologically helping issues linked to anxiety was attributed to it’s focus on controlled slow deep breathing.

     It doesn’t mean there still aren’t times of struggle.  But when you have been introduced to your authentic self, you are more confident. When you have confidence in your whole self,  bumps in the road no longer deflate your spirit.  You re-connect to your true self, pick yourself up, tell yourself it’s ok,  and you keep moving forward.