I’ve been getting a lot of questions in e-mails asking me how I fight my mind so that I won’t engage in disordered eating behaviors anymore. This is a really good question and I’ve been thinking about the answer quite a bit lately.
In the past, I was never good at the mind-struggle I’d go through when deciding whether or not to binge…or binge and purge. I rarely tried to “fight it.” After awhile, I did practice fighting it and it worked many times. Although I was dissatisfied with the struggle. I wanted to feel peace – I didn’t want the struggle.
Now if you’ve been reading my previous blog entries, you’ll know that I’ve found great peace in accepting my situation. Accepting means that your mind can be at peace with where you are, allowing you to take steps toward your recovery from a place of calm – rather than fear.
Healing The Mind – How Much Is Enough?
I worked on healing my mind for several years. Over these years, I started to notice the negative, limiting thought patterns that I had created: I’m not good enough, not loveable enough, not doing enough.
At the heart of my conditioning – my belief system – was NOT ENOUGH. There was so much about me that I felt was not enough. And in my mind, there was also a belief that I would never HAVE enough. This belief system was only serving to propel me further into an eating disorder, where no amount of food was ever going to be enough to satisfy me. And nothing I did in my life was ever enough to satisfy me.
Like A Dog Chasing It’s Tail
Once I got this – that I was like a dog, constantly chasing it’s tail – I was able to catch my thoughts. I was able to recognize what I was doing to myself. This often allowed me to get out of a relapse. Pretty soon, relapses were shorter and shorter, less and less in duration and frequency. I realized that no amount of that behavior would satisfy me. I wondered what I was getting, except upset and poor health. Having identified that I wanted joy, peace and more quality time in my life, I was able to see the big disconnect that disordered eating created.
Addiction to Substance
Addiction to drugs, alcohol and cigarettes – somehow, they seem easier to cure than eating disorders — to us, don’t they? I am not making a statement about the seriousness of these addictions or the ultimate impact of them here. What I am saying is that we still have to eat food. In other addictions, abstinence from the addictive substance is possible – it is not a necessary, life-giving component.
However, food is a necessary, healthy element in the cycle of life. We must provide our bodies with water and food in order to thrive in our human experience. The challenge is, how do we overcome an addiction to the very substance that fuels it? Those with anorexia choose to abstain from their addiction – projecting the addiction onto being skinny. Those who binge eat or have bulimia continue to fuel the addiction by adding more and more of the addictive substance into their bodies.
None of these methods work. And the cure seems to be working at the level of the mind, while teaching us to eat differently. Either learning to eat again, little by little – or learning to eat “normal” quantities, exercise in normal quantities and treat our bodies better.
My View: The Metaphor of Abstinence
When I started the The Body Ecology Diet, I stopped feeling the need to binge & purge. There was no longer a fight in my mind. No struggle. My husband has cookies, ice cream and other foods right in the kitchen, which create no “pull of the monster” in me. He eats them in front of me – and still, no pull. With no more pain in my digestive system, my mind is free to take advantage of all that I have learned about catching my thoughts & positive thinking.
How & Why?
Well, this is only my opinion, so bear with me. I realized that by eating the types of foods & in the combinations that are recommended for me by Donna Gates in The Body Ecology Diet, I have in essence, stopped the flow of the “drug” (a metaphor) into my body.
The types of food and the way I was eating previously, acted much like a drug or alcohol would in the body of a drug or alcohol addict. It created the same chemical reaction that fueled addiction. Now I am eating foods (and following food combining) that heal this chemical disturbance in my body. In essence, I am abstaining from the way of eating that contributed to disordered eating. Does that make sense?
When I tried to just eat less (not binge) of the same foods and in the combinations I was used to eating, I still felt bad. I was still not digesting correctly. I still have too little beneficial bacteria and too much yeast/candida. I was not abstaining from the way of eating that contributed to this behavior in the first place.
Food Is Healing
There are all kinds of reasons why The Body Ecology Diet heals the inner ecosystem. My metaphor here is just a way for me, a recovered food addict, to understand the challenge we have with needing to fuel our bodies with what we were addicted to. I feel empowered now that I understand it was the WAY I was eating and in the COMBINATIONS of foods I was eating, rather than FOOD itself. This allows me to know that food is healing – and a beautiful, nourishing, delightful part of life.
Back To Fighting The Mind
Now, you know from my other posts that I still have triggering events in my life. I still get angry, sad, upset – just like everyone else. I still work on managing my thoughts. Except now, my body is free of pain & chemical imbalance. That pain and chemical imbalance had me in a state of mind-body disturbance & weakness. I was in a state of malaise, which made it difficult to take the energy to catch my thoughts. I got better & better at it, but it still felt hard. I still fell into the dark hole and didn’t know how to get out. Now I don’t fall anymore. I catch myself because my body is strong. Now I can work with my mind, freely. There is no more fight. Just a noticing, a catching and a replacing with the thoughts I choose to have.
In this way, food is healing me. Once a source of pain and discomfort, I have recovered my sacred connection to this nourishing, essential element in the cycle of life.
