Looking Beyond the Food in Eating Disorder Recovery
One of the core philosophies of my work at a nutritionist specializing in eating disorder recovery is that what is happening on your plate is happening in your life.
What do I mean by this?
We hear people say all the time that an eating disorder is never really about the food, and this is absolutely the truth. To heal from an eating disorder and find a healthy relationship with food and body, we must look beyond the food on our plate. Afterall, fixating on the food can never “fix” anything.
When we struggle with any eating disorder, the patterns on our plate become reflective in our life.
For example:
Those who binge eat, often binge elsewhere in their lives as well.
Some examples of this are:
binge shopping
binge drinking
binging on new diets and fitness plans
In fact, within the binge eating recovery program, I have yet to meet someone who did not engage in a binge beyond their plate.
Where we binge, we also may purge and restrict.
This may be very literal within our food behaviours. The cycle of restricting food, followed by binge eating, followed by purging is one I see often within my clinical nutrition work.
However, this can be external to food as well. For example, someone may binge eat, and then restrict from social gatherings, and purge in an angry outburst at a loved one.
Within eating disorder recovery, it is so valuable to be able to look beyond the plate and notice where those patterns are showing up in your life. This enables you to go deeper into the work and experience a complete recovery.
It also helps you to get “ahead of the ball” within your eating disorder recovery journey. By this, I mean that if you are able to become aware of the patterns in both life and plate, then you can begin to notice when you are in your pattern and foresee the next step.
In this way, you bring more awarenss to your eating disorder, and can begin to look to plug in additional supports or alternate activities at various points in your plate and life patterns which will help to disrupt the eating disorder cycle as a whole. (Read more about alternate activites and urge surfing here).
Let’s explore an example of this plate/ life connection:
In the scenario above, if you have recently had a food binge and are aware of your patterns, you may notice that when a friend texts you to go out you immediately want to say no. You have a strong urge to cancel plans and not engage socially. To restrict. But now you know, that this is all part of your eating disorder pattern. It’s an extention to what is happening on your plate, and that continually engaging in this pattern will lead you back to a food binge.
With this awareness, you can decide to make a different choice.
You may choose to say yes to plans and if you feel very uncomfortable, maybe you ask your friend to amend those plans to a night in or a quieter night. There is a spectrum of showing up and nothing is all or nothing.
You may also want tune into yourself and become aware of your emotions. It would be completely normal to experience some heightened stress and anxiety as well as body “noise” (poor body image thoughts). There are so many tools accesible to you beyond your eating disorder patterns to navigate and support these feelings. You can explore some mindfulness tools for anxiety here.
To help you explore the connections between plate and life, I want to provide you with 4 journal prompts:
How do patterns of binge, purge and restrict show up in your life?
Where do you binge outside of food? For example, some people “binge” shop, spend a lot of money at once, or binge watch TV shows, or sexual partners, etc.
Where do you restrict outside of food? For example, some may be very closed off with their emotions, struggle to let people into their lives, restrict social outings, be very stringent with their spending, etc.
If/ where do you purge outside of food? This may be purging your closet in an effort to feel better, or maybe a buildup of anger and release, purging people in your life, etc.
The most important thing to keep in mind within this exploration, is that regardless of where and how those patterns are showing up in your life, there is no shame in this. It is so common and normal that I am writing an entire blog post about it! If we can release the guilt and shame around our behaviours (I know, this is extremely difficult and often a long process) and bring forward some curiosity, compassion, and sense of exploration, we can begin to find the awareness and the elevated emotions necessary to create change.
Once we know where and how those patterns are showing up within both plate and life, we can begin to get ahead of the ball: to notice when we are in a pattern and utilize tools external to the eating disorder.
And as always, if you are ready to go deeper into your eating disorder recovery and curious what that work looks like, reach out! I am always happy to have a free call with you to help guide you to those next steps.