The fact that it’s been THREE months since I’ve written a post on my beloved blog.
A lot has gone down since February 7th, when I wrote my last post for this blog; including two more posts (for the NEDA Blog and for a really awesome girl-run blog called Demystified!)
Wellllll y’all, for one, I had a lapse in recovery behavior; I found myself bingeing and unable to cope with my anxiety, which led to a lot of stress flooding through me for a little while. Over the past few months, work and school have taken over my LIFE, and I’ve managed to not only get back to the business of recovering, but do it well.
Right now, I’m really focused and this lapse, strangely enough, has brought me close to my family. I finally got to explain to them what it feels like to live inside my head and inside my body after a lot of miscommunication, passive aggression and a lot of avoidance on both sides.
For the first time in my almost 24 years of life, I can say that my family and I are closer than ever and that I actually feel fully supported by the people around me.
It wasn’t always this way, though. But I don’t and would not ever attribute that to a lack on the part of the people who raised me, in any regard. Like I told my mom recently, the reason why I stuffed a lot of my anxiety down (emotionally and literally) was because I love her so much and my way of being grateful for all that she does for me and for my family was to not make her life more difficult with my stress and symptoms.
This came across as a lack of appreciation and gratitude, but I got to finally communicate that it was merely my intense ability to internalize things so that they don’t adversely affect others. I wonder if anyone relates?
This idea of stuffing things down brings me to the initial topic I had for this post; mixed messages.
My introduction to emotional eating began with my parents’ divorce when I was really young, as I’ve said in so many posts before–around age six.
Food was my way of emotionally regulating, and when my home split into two, my families on either side also had really different ideas about food and body image.
When they were still together, my mom had Slim Fast in the fridge and Weight Watchers books all over the place. She was a product of the roaring, dieting, Tae Bo crazed 90s.
One family made a lot of healthy meals, and raw veggies were a staple for after-school snack foods. My grandmother would always joke about how good my eyesight would be because I ate so many baby carrots. Even still, the amount of baby carrots I would consume was always a lot. But I guess it was okay, since veggies were “free” foods.
At my other grandparents’ house, processed foods were of the same status as raw veggies at grandma A’s house (they’ll be A & B because I’m not trying to @ either parent in this one). The food they eat does not have anything to do with their morality, but that’s not to say it hasn’t built consequences around me vis a vis an eating disorder.)
Cold cuts, desserts in wrappers, popcorn with extra butter–and you had to eat all of what was put in front of you, whether you liked it or not–the implicit “clean plate club.”
Grandma A, on the other hand, took everyone at the table’s likes and dislikes into account when we ate meals. My grandfather, to this day, HATES lima beans. He never had to eat them, and if we didn’t like them, we didn’t either; they modeled what they did and practiced what they preached. Lucky for me, I LOVED when grandma made lima beans with dinner–tilapia, not so much.
I could write the rest of this post about why it’s really not okay to attempt to regulate children’s hunger and fullness signals by moralizing what or how much they eat. But diet culture studies already do that for us. I am living proof of how these mixed messages created so much chaos for me and for my body image.
I will also reiterate that it’s not really the fault of my parents on an individual basis as much as it is part of the culture(s) from which they came. Strict Irish Catholic backgrounds on both sides + diet culture = one confused six year old girl.
Confused six year old girl became confused twelve year old girl, confused eighteen year old girl, and going on 24 year old woman trying to make sense of all the information that was (and wasn’t) given to me about health, size, weight stigma, nutrition, and self love.
These mixed messages eventually solidified into conditioned behavior, and then emotional eating became bingeing and restricting. I would exercise for hours when I went to visit this parent in order to sometimes counter the lower quality food and portion values that came to the table with us at meals.
Intuition about fullness, in this house, was not a value, because “if you don’t like it then starve” took the driver’s seat when we ate together. We also had milk with every meal while the adults drank soda “because [they were] the adults.”
I would run or work out in the basement just so I could feel less bloated and weighed myself up to six times a day in the bathroom, compulsively.
At home, bingeing would occur more frequently. Intuition was lost there, too. “You can’t possibly be hungry” or “you’re just bored” would be a lot of what I’d hear when reaching for snacks.
Sometimes these voices were right, but they still encouraged me to tune out my own and privilege “discipline” over intuition. Eventually, I would learn how to regulate these emotionally charged eating cues and address the actual feelings rather than stuff them down. Then these comments don’t come as often anymore, and when they do, there are boundaries because I have learned due to intuitive eating how to stand up for that intuition.
I oscillated between binge and restrict cycles well into college, and have since learned to emotionally regulate, nutritionally regulate, and get enough movement in to satisfy my body’s need to just stay active.
Exercise aversion, after many years of faithful exercise bulimia, is also a tremendous part of my story, one that I work on every day.
This past weekend before I went to my first NEDA walk, I hung out and played frisbee with my partner. We actually had a really great time tossing it around, and kept up a really shocking volley of 25 throws before I stubbed my finger on the hard plastic. I sometimes forget how good it feels to get up and moving, and I am trying to make it more of a habit.
All I know now despite these mixed messages is that loving THIS body is possible. Being myself and learning new skills to emotionally regulate is possible. Learning how to be loved and to keep loving myself is not just possible, but necessary!
Thanks for sticking with me, y’all. I promise I won’t sashay away on you anymore. The Inbetweenqueen is back!!!!!
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Royally Incomplete 