When Food Becomes A Drug: My Struggle With Food Addiction And Binge-Eating Disorder
A few weeks ago I stumbled across a photo of myself on my phone that brought back some uncomfortable memories. The photo was taken a couple summers ago at a time when my mental health was at its absolute worst, and as I later realized, I had developed a full-blown eating disorder as a coping mechanism.
But disordered eating habits weren’t new to me at that point by any means. In fact, I developed issues with food when I was 13 or 14 years old. Like many teenage girls, I struggled with body dysmorphia and would often undereat, but my relationship with food was complicated; undereating for a week would lead to overeating the next week.
As I got older my priorities shifted from thinness to athleticism. It sounds like an exaggeration to say that my entire life in high school revolved around volleyball, but I quite literally ate, slept, and breathed the sport to the point that academics took a backseat more often than they should’ve. By college I was still playing volleyball, I took up weightlifting, and I even made my university’s boxing team in my junior year. Some days I was at the gym for four hours at a time, going from a weight-training session to a volleyball game to an intense boxing practice all in the same night.
Objectively, I looked incredible and I was in the best shape of my life, but I was obsessed. During the week I followed a strict diet of protein, fat, and absolutely no processed carbohydrates. I scrutinized everything I ate, petrified that consuming just one bite of the “wrong” food would undo all of my hard work.
But on the weekends I allowed myself to eat anything I wanted (I had heard that doing so would stop me from “going crazy”), so I spent weekdays fantasizing about which foods I would indulge in. As I quickly recognized the endorphin rush that eating large quantities of food gave me, premeditated binges became a weekly occurrence.
These weekly binges got more severe with age and the inevitable pressures of adulthood. Whether it was a career change, relationship turmoil, or a quarter-life crisis, I knew food would always be there to help me cope with whatever life threw at me.
The photo I mentioned above was taken in the summer of 2018 at a time when (for reasons I won’t divulge at the moment) it felt like everything in my life was spiraling out of control. Food had complete control over me by that point and binge-eating episodes were happening four or five times a week, sometimes more. Over time I lost the ability to feel full, so I would routinely eat until I was doubled over in pain. But even at its worst, I never told anyone what I was dealing with.
I gained 20 pounds in just a few months, and my greatest fear at the time was that I had let everyone down. I had lost my identity as an ultra-dedicated athlete and I feared that people now viewed me as lazy and lacking discipline.
During this time I noticed that my habits surrounding food closely resembled those of a drug addict. I thought about food constantly, to the point that it seemed to permeate my thoughts at every moment of the day, and I would even occasionally skip plans with friends so that I could binge in isolation instead. Each episode was followed by intense feelings of shame and guilt. I shouldn’t have done that, I’ll quit tomorrow, I would say to myself after every binge. But I never would quit, and it didn’t matter how horrible binge-eating made me feel, both physically and mentally. All I could think about was the endorphin rush it provided in the moment and when I was going to get my next “fix.”
It’s hard to describe the urge to binge to someone who’s never dealt with an eating disorder or addiction, but imagine the following scenario: You’re in a rush to run out the door to work in the morning. You put on your shoes, grab your keys, and run out the door, worried that you might be late for the second time this week. But the moment you get in your car, you realize that you were so flustered that you can’t remember if you locked the door. You don’t want to be late for work but you also don’t want to leave the door unlocked because having someone break into your apartment would be far worse.
That’s what the addiction feels like for me; you can attempt to push the thoughts away all you want, but in the end the urge always wins. And as with any addiction, the urges will likely never go away permanently. I still think about food a lot, to the point where it disrupts my thoughts many times a day, even when I’m not hungry. I will likely have to permanently avoid certain foods and situations that trigger these urges, and unlike a drug or alcohol addiction, food isn’t exactly avoidable altogether. (And of course I have to take this time to acknowledge the fact that I’m grateful that I do not struggle with substance abuse.)
All of that being said, It’s been a little less than a year since I started talking with a therapist about my binge-eating disorder, and the improvements I’ve made are pretty remarkable. Shutting out the voices telling me to binge is much easier for me now, and when I get said urges, I meditate on why I’m having them. (And of course, there’s always an underlying reason that has nothing to do with actually feeling hungry.)
Something else I’ve found particularly liberating throughout my recovery process is accepting that eating disorders aren’t a choice and they have nothing to do with being lazy or lacking discipline. First and foremost, it’s a mental health issue.
My body image is also much better now than it was in the past. Am I a few pounds heavier now than I was in college? Certainly, but now when I look in the mirror I feel good about myself most of the time, and instead of using exercise as punishment for not being good enough, I do it for the health benefits and because I enjoy it. I also don’t have “cheat days” anymore. Rather, I eat whatever I want for the most part and I’ve found that I have less of an urge to binge if I don’t restrict myself.
But I do still slip up sometimes. About a month ago I relapsed twice in the same weekend, and although I did get angry at myself afterward, I changed my thinking from frustration to gratitude for how far I’ve come - even just eight months ago I assumed that binge eating would literally be a part of my life forever.
The point of this blog post isn’t to try to make anyone feel sorry for me, or even to claim that I’m completely recovered, because that certainly isn’t true. Rather, the point is to bring awareness to a condition that is often overlooked. Binge-eating disorder can be just as debilitating as better-represented disorders like anorexia or bulimia, and is no more or less valid. Being of a certain weight also doesn’t necessarily determine the severity of an eating disorder. The most important thing is to seek out help when habits surrounding food feel out of your control.
Everyone’s eating disorder recovery process looks a little different, but for me, patience and compassion for myself have been key.
Michelle
May 25, 2020
