A Journal Entry: Finding Freedom (part one)

Content Warning: detailed descriptions of disordered-eating and eating disorder behaviours including talk of weight and body image.

(Sharing stories about disordered eating (DE) and eating disorders (ED) are not easy, they are painful and triggering. I have never been able to fully articulate how I felt when I struggled with mine. Regardless, I know how important it is to have such accounts breathe air; they may help someone, somewhere seek out the help they need. So here are some of my D.E/E.D stories I strung together from old journal entries in 2017 & 2018).

Journal entry date: 06.2017

Reflections…

- There used to be so much shame surrounding my eating; I had a huge appetite, but for as long as I can remember during my childhood, I was taught to suppress this appetite. Oftentimes associating it with being “bad” or “greedy”. These negative connotations stuck with me and fuelled my disordered eating later in life.

- Struggling with depression in my mid-twenties, and having experimented with several diets, I fell into a binge eating and food restriction loop. I sought comfort in food; having no other tools to explore difficult emotions. I would also partake in extreme exercising because of my disgust and embarrassment for when I binged on say a whole box of chocolates. 

- I remember, there was a time, back in 2013 when I had no one to help me deal with my depression (to give you some context, this was when I ran away to Kenya after a breakup). I think I talked to my parents about it once telling them I suspected something was wrong with me for how out-of-control I felt around food, but their reaction filled me with so much shame (they took me to a doctor who ran some blood work, which later showed I had high cholesterol and I was borderline diabetic). 

- I was given a “health scare” plus a list of “foods to avoid”. And this was enough to make me turn to “clean eating”. So I deprived myself of all the foods labelled “bad” or “unhealthy”. All the while, I never again spoke to anyone about my eating habits.

- I instead dedicated myself to an active lifestyle (getting a PT Certification) and I used running to give my life new meaning. I found joy in doing things I loved and so for a while, I believed I was recovered and “okay”. 

- Having embraced clean eating (which by the way, in my opinion, is orthorexia by another name), I thought that this was the solution to my problems. I made it a goal to forever restrict foods I labelled as bad (junk food, processed food, chocolates, cookies, ice cream the whole lot). And yeah, I was successful for a while... Actually, I was commended for practicing such great restraint and discipline and this motivated me to continue pursuing these restrictive behaviours. 

- Little did I know that I was still very much so stuck in a cycle of disordered eating and weight cycling. 

Journal entry date: 09.2017

Here we are now, and old habits have resurfaced and recent life stressors (my move to Vancouver) have once again triggered my binge eating habits. 

… I am unable to openly talk about my problems, I feel so much shame and I feel so alone. 

Soon after I moved to Vancouver. I told everyone I knew I was moving to continue my training as a distance runner. A lot of pressure came with setting myself a high standard like that (and this was another huge trigger for me). So too was the move to this new city, where I found it so hard to make friends (especially as a 30 year old). Leaving all my family and support network back in Toronto, not too long after this move, I started to feel very isolated with my new struggles and my binge-eating continued to hang around. 

First it was every weekend I would binge and very slowly it turned into everyday. The frequency in which it was happening scared me for so many reasons but my main fear was that I would “gain weight”**. Being someone so immersed in the fitness and running spaces, I was terrified that I would be seen as a fraud if I “did not look the part” and so I started to binge-purge. Very soon, my disordered eating became an eating disorder, Bulimia. All the while no one knew, heck it was never diagnosed! Who would believe a Black woman who looked “healthy” to most was sick. 

For the first few months I was in Vancouver I lived with roommates . At first my experience was alright, but as soon as my binge-eating behaviour increased, I grew uncomfortable and insecure whenever around them.  As a rule, I never bought any junk foods (foods I labelled “bad”) but my roommates did. My  binges were always late at night and usually when I was too tired to go out and buy foods to binge on. So naturally it was whenever everyone was asleep that I would have my cravings and I would rummage through my roommates' wardrobes in the shared kitchen, searching for foods to binge on. At first I would ask them via text and take only a few cookies or small amounts of whatever they had. But that was never enough and so I would find myself finishing entire boxes of cookies/chocolates that they had. Feeling immense shame and embarrassment after, I would quietly cry myself to sleep. I would also promise myself (countless times) that I would replace whatever I binged on the very next day. I would try to comfort myself by saying, “I will run to the convenience store in the morning”, that way I would also get to burn off some of the calories I ate***. But most mornings I didn't have time to replace the items I ate— my roommates eventually found out and that made for some very awkward conversations.

Conversations with my sister who lived back in Toronto over the phone were, on the other hand, my only solace. But my stories I shared with her were always the same— I would make promises of “never again” and “this is it, this will be the end”. I wanted to so badly stop, the binge-purge loop took so much of my energy (physical and mental), but I had so much anxiety and it overwhelmed me to think of where to begin. Behind all the failed promises, I knew I needed professional help. With time, feeling defeated, I reached out to a therapist I found online.  

I remember my first session with her like it was yesterday... I went in after work for a 30 min complimentary session one Sunday afternoon (I worked on weekends to keep myself busy and from bingeing). My therapist introduced herself to me first and then it was my turn.

Note:She was my third therapist in the span of 3 months and that hit me hard. I started to cry wondering if this White woman would understand me let alone offer the help I needed. But once I started to cry, I could not stop. It felt like I was making up for all the suppressed tears... All of the pain and shame. Although the tears flowing out of me were gentle and quiet, they shook me to my core. It felt like they fought their way up from deep within. Tears that needed to be seen, fighting their way outside of me, escaping all of my pent up fears... 

My therapist was kind. She listened patiently and only smiled, a non-judgemental comforting smile that made me believe I would be fine here. A smile that let me see what she saw- sunshine behind all the dark clouds in my mind. Knowing I had her to share my fears with and hear my story made me feel seen, and that gave me hope. But it wasn't enough for the cycle to end. I wasn't ready to let go. So I still had episodes of binging and purging. This time however, I experimented with binge drinking. Somehow it made sense in my head that binge-drinking was “better than” binge-eating. I thought that that was more “normal” and socially-acceptable; I was a 30 year old woman binge-drinking and not binge-eating. You hear a lot more about the former than you do the latter so I tried to replace the eating with drinking. My misguided plans failed; when I was drinking, it was always easier to succumb to a binge episode.

Around the same time I saw my therapist, I also started dating someone. And although that too was another trigger, I thought that it would be a good distraction. As we dated I noticed my anxiety fluctuate up and down as I struggled to control my emotions surrounding my disordered behaviours. Consequently my insecurities related to body image were magnified. My self-confidence down, every time I didn't hear from him, I began to fear it was my fault, immediately defaulting to old reflex habits and thoughts of “I’m not good enough/I don’t look good enough”. 

Eventually things came to an end, the guy sent me a text one afternoon saying he felt there was no chemistry between us. Subconsciously, I think I saw it coming (I remember the weekend I saw him last, I was out buying books related to self-love and self-care, almost as though I was preparing for this split). 

When I got his text, I thought I would lose my mind; my negative thoughts and emotions ran wild, and my anxieties and insecurities were at an all time high. I remember I had to steady myself and sit down before I made any rash decisions. But then something strange happened to me... At that moment, I felt removed from myself, I felt myself floating outside my body and looking over my shoulder reading his text. Hovering outside myself, I thought about what kind of future I would like to see for myself...

My answer was simple— a future without Bulimia and Binges. A future where I was not the victim of my self-abuse, one where I would work to love and stand by me in difficult times instead of caving into my coping mechanisms. 

It was then I made the choice to write down love notes to myself (prompted by my therapist), everyday for 100 days or more. 

100 days because in April 2018, I want to run 100km to prove to myself how strong I am and how loved I am (by me).

This idea came to me as I explored new ways of running to connect to myself and to see how I could use it as another tool to help me break free of my crippling binge-purge cycle. 

In my mind the day I received that text I could see my ruin, but something deeper inside me saw hope. The potential to sink further down into the abyss if I chose bulimia made me feel so uncomfortable I had to break free. And I didn’t just want to liberate myself, I wanted to love who I was and all the potential of who I could become without the illness. 

So I chose to write to myself daily. To love myself all over again, everyday. 

Beginning a new cycle of love instead of the binge purge cycle I was stuck in. I made a promise to myself that no matter how hard it would be, I could do it because nothing can be harder than having to start all over (after broken promises of never again) everyday, which I was so accustomed to doing struggling with Bulimia. 

Journal entry date: 02.2018

Now.. here I am, it’s 2018... 

I have made it to 100 plus days without bingeing or purging, 

100 plus days sober with 134 love notes to myself. 

And although I had a few lows and relapses, I am so very proud to say, I am still committed to moving along smoothly in my  recovery.  

Statistics say that only a small percentage of people can fully recover from bulimia, but just like my 100km run, which to most seems like a far-fetched idea, I believe in me, reminding myself by writing it down in my love notes, every morning. Everyday.

** & ** Note: I cannot emphasize enough now how problematic these thoughts and behaviours are. Please remember this was within the context of my ED/DE.

Please know that if you are struggling with an eating disorder, there is help. In Canada, you can visit National Eating Disorder Information Centre (NEDIC) And please know that You are not alone.