A Confession : I Have an Eating Disorder

Ever since I read the painfully honest posts by Raechelle and Liz admitting to their inner demons, I have been wanting to tell you this secret. The cold hard fact is that what started out as wanting to 'drop a few kilos' has turned into a raging, all consuming, self inflicted eating disorder and pretending my behaviour is 'healthy' living or 'contest prep' is simply lying to myself and to everyone else.

If I step outside of myself and view my behaviour from the perspective of someone who cares for me, it is obvious that things have been out of control for more than a few years. In my mind I have convinced myself that doing this stuff is completely normal.

Here is what my eating disorder looked like at rock bottom ...

• weighing all food (including egg whites, lettuce and diet cordial) and adjusting portions to be exactly the right amount (that extra gram of pumpkin had to go back in the container)
• having food scales at home and in my handbag in case I eat out and don't know the weight of the food
• recording everything in a online calorie counter including the calories in diet soda and fish oil tablets
• feeling anxious and upset if I didn't have internet access to check my calorie totals
• pre-determining what to eat for the day and then printing it out and ticking it off so there was no deviation
• taking all my food with me all the time in multiple tupperware containers
• not allowing anyone a taste of my food because it is measured perfectly and I needed every bit of it
• scraping every last morsel out of the container or licking it clean
• restricting fruit and vegetables based on their carbohydrate content
• restricting food based on its sodium content
• scheduling activities around eating sessions - couldn't go to an event if it prevented me from eating on time
• eating was the main highlight of my day
• never eating the same food as my partner/friends
• the success of my day was measured by the food I ate - good day = ate according to the diet; bad day = ate something I hadn't planned 
• food/cooking/meals was all I thought about and talked about
• never being full - either eating and still being hungry or bingeing beyond the point of fullness
• taking large amounts of expensive supplements ranging from vitamins to fatburners to creatine
• eating large quantities of 'calorie free' food like green vegetables, miracle noodles, psyllium/bran
• exercising until a precise number of calories had been burned
• exercising when I was sick, sore or instead of sleeping
• wearing my heart rate monitor when I went for a walk longer than 10 minutes
• constant physical muscle pain (DOMS) and joint pain making every day activity difficult
• spending all weekend in my gym clothes and sneakers because I never went out anywhere other than the gym and the supermarket
• chronic constipation and gas
• avoiding social situations where food was present
• constantly scouring the internet for the latest diet and latest training method
• calling myself a 'fat pig' in my head
• having 3 different clothing, bra and underwear sizes that I regularly wore - competing, off season, fat clothes
• weighing myself multiple times a day - when I first got up, after going to the bathroom, when I got home from work, before I went to bed
• throwing food in the bin so that I wouldn't eat it and then taking it out later
• asking my husband to hide food so I couldn't find it
• eating until I was so stuffed I couldn't sleep, I had night sweats and my face, fingers and ankles became severely swollen
• always vowing to start afresh each morning, each Monday, each first day of the month
• going to bed early because the only thing I had to look forward to was a lower number on the scales the following morning and breakfast
• crying because of a number on the scale or not being able to fit into my clothes
• avoiding being with my husband because he would want to eat food I couldn't have in front of me
• not being able to leave the house because I needed to be near the toilet when the laxatives and diuretics kicked in
• using colonics as a weight loss strategy
• looking at pictures of steriod using figure girls on stage and feeling inadequate for not looking like them

I am pleased to say that I haven't done any of the above for most of the last month. I am getting help and support from people who understand where I've ended up and I'm making wonderful progress.

So although I may longer be the person you imagined me to be, that my reputation as an 'inspiration' has been has been based on lies, I am the happiest I have been in my whole life. I am recovering, healing, and evolving into the best that I can be one day at a time.

I would love to connect with anyone who recognises where I have come from and has achieved a transformational shift back to health and vitality. Please leave me a comment and/or a link to your blog so I can overhaul my reading list. I no longer want to know about the best diet, the menu item with the lowest calories or whether cardio is fat burning or not. I want to know that I can leave this mess behind because other people just like me have done it.

If this blog is no longer what you are looking for, then thank you so much for your loyalty over the years. I have felt part of a wonderful community but the time has come for me to focus on being whole and healthy rather than being thin enough to go the gym.

KatieP ♥

PS: I might have to abandon the 100 Day Challenge because it is part of the old diet mentality. I still haven't decided what to do just yet ...
I am also pulling my coaching service because I can no longer endorse dieting as a weight loss solution ...

100 Day Challenge - Day 44 - Hunger Torches the Fat

The old miserable Katie used to hate hunger. It used to be a constant gnawing emptiness that made me cranky and unpleasant to be around. Now hunger is my friend.

I make sure that I eat large, nutritious, physically and psychologically satisfying meals that keep me comfortable and full until the next scheduled meal. And when I start to feel hunger before my next feed I am happy.

Hunger is feedback. It means I have eaten the amount of food my body needs, it has processed it all and used it all up to fuel my activity, internal organs and my brain. It has run out of the good stuff and is asking for more.

Here's the part that I love. I tell my body that more food is coming soon, but in the meantime, there are plenty of fat cells it can consume to access extra energy. I imagine a Pacman game, with little munching mouths gobbling up the blobs of fat. When the hunger subsides (which it always does because hunger comes in waves) I know that I'm still moving and functioning because I'm torching the fat.

I'm coming to get you -- nom nom nom fatty fat tastes good

There is also no reason to fear that getting 'too hungry' will precede a binge. This is my limiting belief and makes no sense under close examination. Naturally lean people get hungry every day and they don't eat until they are sick as a consequence.

The urge to binge is always precipitated by a feeling of pain or deprivation so my correlation between hunger and bingeing is a result of my old feelings that hunger was uncomfortable, continuous and painful so I wanted to soothe that pain with food. Now that I know that being hungry is an opportunity to access my energy storage units (fat) and is only temporary while my body switches fuel sources, I don't find it painful or uncomfortable at all.

Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom gobble up that yummy fat, there's plenty to keep us going ☺

100 Day Challenge - Day 55 - I Can't Get No Satisfaction

As a professional dieter, I have spent 5 years ignoring my hunger. I was either constantly starving or eating beyond the point of fullness until I was so stuffed I felt sick.

By tuning into my hunger signals and trying the 'eat when you're hungry and stop when you are full' approach I have slowly realised that I have got the signals all mixed up.

Being hungry does not mean that your stomach is completely empty of food, there are strange grumbling noises and you feel slightly nauseous. That, my friends, is fall on the floor starving. It is not normal HUNGER.

Similarly, if you finish a meal and you say ... "that barely hit the sides, I could eat that all over again" and then stare off into the distance wondering how you are going to get through the next three hours before you get to eat again, then you are not FULL. You are not even close to being full.

Somehow along the way we have programmed our thinking to believe that (a) we need to be starving in between meals when we are in a calorie deficit and (b) having a completely full tummy is to be avoided because it means we've eaten 'too much'. Worryingly, we almost prefer that empty feeling because we are 'putting in the work' and doing what it takes to get lean.

First of all, I need to remind you that most medical sources claim that 2,000 calories is maintenance for an average female. Are you average? How much lean muscle mass do you have? How much do you train every day? How active are you during your daily routine?

Then consider the types of food that you eat. Are you eating foods with high calories and low volume (processed crap) or is your food primarily fruit, vegetables, whole grains/legumes, and lean protein.

I am willing to bet (because I've been experimenting) that if you ate a 500 calorie breakfast of oats, natural protein powder, banana, bran, peanut butter and greek yogurt you would be wonderfully full and contented when you finished it. By the time lunchtime came around you would be just starting to feel like you could maybe fit some more food in. If your lunch was 500 calories of chicken, wholegrain pasta or a potato and vegetables, I am thinking you wouldn't even think about food again until about 4pm. If you then ate a piece of fruit, I suspect you might make it through to dinner quite easily. After a 500 calorie brown rice, vegetable and tofu stirfry dinner, I think you might be so full that you couldn't even fit in dessert and you'd sleep soundly and peacefully that night.

Even without trying you have only eaten 1600 calories and you are never fall on the floor starving at all. If you've worked up at sweat at the gym that day you probably still have a few hundred calories left to play with and still be in a deficit. You could fit in that hot chocolate and a small scoop of real icecream and still lose fat.

If you like thinking about food all day and counting down the hours until your next feed from your 42 tupperware containers in your cooler bag then aiming for 1200-1400 calories in 5-6 small meals might suit you.

But if you want to eat like you did when you were a skinny kid, or the way that the naturally thin girls I know do (because I watch them and ask them) then have 3 decent, filling, delicious meals a day and snack wisely either to tide you over or to have a small treat. If you train like an athlete, and you carry a decent amount of muscle then you can eat much more than you think.

Hunger is not starvation and gluttony is not being full and satisfied. Once you give yourself permission to eat large healthy meals you realise that you can get lean and stay lean without ever wanting to chew off your arm. AND you feel fantastic and full of energy.

• So what do you prefer? small meals or large?
• How long has it been since you've been completely full and satisfied from healthy food (not a binge/overeating episode)?
• Do you think that you have to 'pay the price' of continuous hunger to be lean?
  

100 Day Challenge - Day 68 - The Pros and Cons

I am a bit confused about whether NOT counting calories and NOT weighing myself is preventing me from putting on fat. As I have no feedback mechanism, except for how I look (and we all know how accurate (*sarcasm*) that can be with body dismorphia and all) so I don't know if I'm eating enough, too much or too little.

Here is my list for and against standing on the scales.

Pros

1. I will have concrete evidence whether I am gaining or losing weight
2. I will be motivated to be more disciplined when I face up to the large number I am expecting

Cons

1. I will instantly want to go back into 'dieting' mode
2. I will be depressed about the number and hate myself instead of loving myself
3. The scales lie, so scale gains/losses is not concrete evidence of how my nutrition is affecting my body fat levels
   
4. I will restart the starve/binge cycle
5. I will prioritize how I look over how I feel
6. I will become a slave to the number

So, obviously standing on the scales is not what I need right now when my goal is to live a life full of energy and passion at a size I can maintain without constant calorie restriction and excessive exercise.

My highest hope belief is that by eating clean, unprocessed, natural foods my body will have the nutrients, hormones and enzymes it needs to regulate my body fat levels without any extreme effort from me. I want to let food be food again and not the enemy.

Going back on a calorie restricted diet has never helped me get to my goal weight and stay there. No matter how I approach it, I always end up in rebound binge world.

Giving up counting calories and weighing myself is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and frightening but if it works in the long run then I will be so much better off. As each day passes, I learn to listen to my body and hunger signals a little bit more.

This is how naturally thin people eat and it works for them, so there is no reason why it can't work for me.

• What is your strategy for making decisions when you are confused?
• Can you see the merit in both sides of any argument?
• Do you maintain your 'ideal body' by counting calories and/or weighing yourself?
• Are naturally thin people just genetic freaks that we hate?

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On Judgment and Awareness

From the book : Breaking Free from Emotional Eating

A judgment is a continuous, high pitched, silent scream. It hurts to listen to it. First you try covering your ears. Then you try leaving the room. Soon you become frantic; you'll do anything to make the shrieking in your head stop.

Eating makes it stop. Eating takes your attention away from the shrill and focuses it on the taste. Eating provides relief from whatever you are judging yourself about, until you start judging yourself for eating. Eating makes it stop until eating makes it start. So eating doesn't make it stop.

Nothing will stop a judgment but the awareness that it is a judgment. You can't fight - and win - against a judgment. It is like pruning a plant, only to have it grow back wider and bushier. When I tell myself that I am fat, my response is to eat more, not less.

Judgments do not lead to change.

Change happens the way a plant grows: slowly, without force, and with the essential nutrients of love and patience and a willingness to remain constant through periods of stasis.

If change is what you want, you need to learn of gentler of way of dealing with yourself and others.

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100 Day Challenge - Day 83 - Walk the Plank

• When you live a life based on the externally imposed and inflexible need to be thin, it is impossible to develop trust in your ability to eat what satisfies you because what you are believing is that being thin will satisfy you. *
  

• While it is true that you cannot trust the feeling that because you want something you must have it, it is not true that you cannot be trusted. Or that you cannot lose weight by listening to yourself. *
  

• Trust develops and builds when I am given a choice (and not, as in dieting, denied it). Trust develops when I choose to make myself comfortable, not miserable, to take care of myself rather than hurt myself. Trust develops when you learn from actual experience that you can decide which desires to act upon and which you will leave to fantasy. *
  

Being Thin Does Not Satisfy Me
Being sick lean is no longer the driving force in my life. The spot on the map marked by an "X" is not about how I look, it is about how I feel.

I am no longer able to endure the heartache, pain, and struggle of living from hour to hour counting down until I can eat again. I am tired of not sleeping through the night because my body is screaming for nourishment. The time has come to explore new ways of staying fit, healthy and SANE.

I Have Given Up Dieting

• When we give up dieting, we take back something we were often unaware we had given away : our own voice. Our ability to make decisions about what to eat and when. Your body is reliable. It doesn't go away, get lost, stolen. If you will listen, it will speak. *
  

Pirates Answer to No One
It occurs to me that I cannot be truly empowered while I serve the rules and promises of experts who tell me what to eat and how to train in order to be fit and lean. These strangers tell me that if I obey their laws, I will be one of the few who achieve their goal. Yet, if it were true, then everyone would be the size and shape they wanted. It clearly doesn't work.

It is even more evident when I listen to your stories which echo my own day after day. We are sick of fighting, sick of deprivation, constantly living in hope that tomorrow will be worth all the struggle today and ending up face first in the nearest bucket of ice-cream.

Is There Another Way?
Eat when you're hungry
Eat what you want
Stop when you're full

Oh Yeah ... Intuitive Eating ... Tried It Once and It Was A Disaster
Let's try that again ...
Eat when you're HUNGRY
Eat what you WANT
Stop when you're FULL
Intuitive eating with boundaries!

I Eat When I'm Hungry
There is a difference between mind hunger and body hunger. Fortunately, I know intimately what body hunger feels like. So I wait until I my stomach is empty and growling before I eat ANYTHING. No treats, seconds, or dessert unless I am physically hungry.

I has been years since I have eaten when I'm hungry. I am either denying the sensation by waiting until an appointed time to eat a minuscule amount, or eating large volumes of food way beyond the sensation of hunger when I binge. I am now choosing instead to rely on my body to tell me when I need to eat, through a real and tangible physical sensation.

I Eat What I Want
Eating what I want doesn't mean eating cheesecake and hash browns at every meal. It means asking myself 'what does my body want right now?'

My body wants fuel and nutrients in the right quantities so it doesn't need to store it (as fat). My body wants to feel energised after a meal not sick, bloated, bogged down and sleepy. I eat to honour these wants. I am developing trust in my body by not measuring, weighing or logging my food. I have enough experience in portion control and macro requirements that I don't need to track any more.

Occasionally, my soul need feeding as well. When these needs outweigh my body's needs I will give myself what my soul needs. Comfort food is acceptable but I must still wait until I am physically hungry, truly eat what I want and stop when I have satisfied my emotional need. I will also carefully observe the effects these not so healthy foods have on my body and spirit.

I Stop When I'm Full
I stop eating when my hunger is satisfied. Satisfaction only occurs when I am physically and psychologically nourished. In order to stop when I am satisfied, I need to wait until I'm hungry and eat what I really want. If I mistakenly eat too much or too little it is OK because I know that it will simply alter how long it takes to get hungry again.

I choose to eat real food that my body will recognise as filling. Processed chemicals (like protein powder and SF maple syrup) just confuse my satiation signals. So back on the menu are real yogurt, full fat soy milk (just because I prefer the taste), and naturally sweet things like fruit.

Why am I Doing This?
Because I need balance and clarity in my head and room in my life to think of other things besides food. I want to trust myself instead of being in constant conflict. I want to be lean so I can live my life not live my life to be lean.

How is it so Far?
It is almost the scariest thing I have ever done. I am frightened beyond belief. I am choosing to abandon the only way of preventing getting fat that I know (counting calories) and I am fucking petrified. I cannot even imagine doing this for a week, I can only concentrate on one meal at a time. I still have a compulsion to work out how many calories I am eating which I must resist. It is not easy.

But if it works, I will be free at last. I am launching my sailing ship into an unknown and unexplored sea. If I get lost or battered and bruised I can always turn around and head for home.

But not many Pirates do that do they?


*all quotations from this book
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating

• Is the price you are paying to be thin too much?
• If 'eat less : move more' really worked, why do we struggle so much?
• What if the opposite of what we believe was also true?
• If this was your last day on earth, how would you choose to eat?
• If your body could speak, what would it say?
  
• Can you be a Pirate without being lawless?
• Have I gone fucking mad (again)?

New article :

• From Dieting to Disordered Eating : A Cautionary Tale
• How to Choose a Weight Loss Program : Use this Checklist

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100 Day Challenge - The Bones Boss Blows It

It is very late on Friday night and I am confessing to my fellow Pirates and relinquishing a Skinny Bone.

I have eaten a fair amount of crappy food tonight. It has not been a full blown binge by my standards, so I am clinging to the comforting thought that something (some restraint) is better than nothing (no restraint).

I am uncertain as to why tonight I had a meltdown. Perhaps it was the low calories/low carb over the past 12 days but I had some carbs last night (pasta at a restaurant) and I was fine.

Anyway ... why doesn't matter ... I am drawing a line in the sand, sucking up my mistake and starting afresh in the morning. I am so good at dishing out advice to other people but I continue to find it extremely difficult to practice what I preach.

I still don't know how to find a deficit that gives me gradual fat loss without leaving me starving, exhausted and prone to rebound overeating just to ease the constant gnawing hunger and empty hole in my stomach.

I am grateful that I have you, my 'crew', to keep me honest and on track. The last thing I want is to lie or to avoid mentioning what is going on in my life/head. Today has been shit - not as shit as in the past, so I guess that's progress.

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100 Day Challenge - Winning the Fight

I fought the legendary evil Pirate of Powerlessness and I won!

I went to the pub and ate chicken Caesar salad (without the croutons) and a small piece of battered fish. I didn't keep eating. I didn't binge. In fact that is all I have eaten today and I am still quite full.

By the end of this 100 day challenge that evil Pirate will be a whimpering cabin boy forever marooned on a deserted island. Arrgh me hearties ♥

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100 Day Challenge - Day 94 - The Pub Test

Mr Katie wants to go to the pub for lunch. I am going with him but every time I try to do a 'free' meal I end up in a binge.

Today is going to be different. No bread, chips or pasta. I am going to have steak and salad.

Wish me luck. I know I am accountable to you girls so I am determined not to blow it after so many good days in a row.

I relinquished a skinny bone by weighing in early (Day 90 is official weigh in for me and I was meant to stay off the scales). Result = 57.8 kg which is 0.7 kg up from last last time I weighed in about a month ago. Considering it was on different scales (my regular ones are broken), how ridiculous my eating has been and that TTOM is due at any moment, I am relieved.

I just hope knowing I am at my happy weight doesn't trigger a binge.

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Two New Team Members - 100 Day Challenge

Please welcome Andrea...Hi Katie - Count me in too!
I need to get my act together and this is a great idea - especially leading into summer.

and Lisa Jane...I'm in too. I am aiming to write 100 blog posts in 100 days and to drink litres of water a day. [psst...your blog link isn't working at the moment LJ]

Good luck ladies.

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::

Day 99 was tough. 12 hours at work which I am disliking more and more by the minute.

I always seem so cranky, edgy and kind of raw when I am in a calorie deficit. It makes me wonder if I am withdrawing from sugar/carbs/sodium/whatever, or if a plummeting mood is a real biological result of not getting enough food. For whatever reason, eating more food makes the irritation subside, and makes me feel more emotionally even.

Is this a chemical thing in my brain? or a learned response that can be unlearned? Is this the true definition of comfort eating? Am I a classic carbohydrate addict?

Maybe my life is annoying and frustrating and I can only block out those uncomfortable feelings when I eat? Which is my true state and which is the one that is altered by the amount of food I eat?

The problem is that I haven't found the middle path. It is starve or binge, under or over eat. I don't even know what it is like to go for a week without being in a deficit or a surplus so I can't tell you how that makes me feel.

It is all very confusing. I don't have any answers today, just questions. Just thinking out loud.