[BINGE-EATING DISORDER: Frequent episodes of binge eating without compensatory behaviors (such as vomiting or ingesting laxatives).]
It doesn’t show on the outside anymore: I’m neither skinny nor fat. Occasionally, I’m a few kilos overweight.
I thought I was the only one who did this. As far as I knew, it wasn’t an official disorder, so it seemed I should have been able to overcome it smoothly.
Losing control two to seven times a week, every week, for years finally opened my eyes to the cerebral burden engendered by this almost invisible struggle: eating without hunger in an attempt to eliminate stress, to comfort myself. Except that comfort shifts into disappointment, then despondency.
I developed the disorder as a chubby teenager, obsessed with dieting. Before long, I classified foods as forbidden or permitted. I counted calories with the aid of a booklet I carried around with me everywhere.
I could have turned to sex, but I thought myself too ugly because of my significant excess weight and glasses. Or to drugs and alcohol. Alcohol would come later—I have now been sober for several years, hallelujah, inshallah, one day at a time!
Picture an incident of bullying at school, a big assignment due the next day, or a guilty bite of chocolate, and the scheming commenced. I have this much money on me, I’ll go to the bakery and buy a pastry on the way home from school. A tantalizing little fire lit up inside me. Doing something forbidden, secret, reclaiming a tiny bit of pleasure... So began a head-spinning series of daily computations.
Let’s see... I have enough for two éclairs. Terrific! It really has to be worth it, since the diet resumes tomorrow: then I’m over and done with pastries, chocolate, etc. I’ll sneak down to the basement to see if there are any cookies in the pantry… If there are two boxes, nobody will notice me bringing one up to my room. I hope we have pasta for dinner, because I usually try not to eat too much, but I have free rein tonight, so why not take advantage.
Food quickly became the answer to everything. I’d eat if I was cold; it’s only recently that I’ve started putting on a cardigan. I’d eat when I was tired; why snooze, even for three minutes, when junk eating immediately chased away the nasty feeling?
They were reflexes. I didn’t perceive that I was tired or cold. Those sensations were neglected for so long that even today they are often lost deep down.
It’s not entirely over, but I handle it better. If I nibble on something that I find nutritionally useless, I decide I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and I plan a spree at the store. Mac and cheese, cookies, bread, chocolate spread… Typically, when people have little food frenzies, they prepare fancy meals or gobble a bag of chips. Let’s just say that, for me, it’s more like three meals. Except that there are no vegetables or fruit, but a maximum of sugar, fat, and calories. Only the first bites are truly delectable; soon I’m no longer hungry, yet I keep at it.
I try to calibrate my purchases so there are no forbidden items left over the day after the “feast,” a bad word for these episodes that leave me helpless, defeated, desperate over and over. Sometimes I feel queasy when I go to sleep, as if I’ve had too much to drink. Or I have a headache in the morning.
If there are leftovers, I give them away or ruin them. Take chocolate spread, for example. I pick the smallest size available at the store, and late in the evening I pour dish soap into the jar so I won’t cave in the next day.
I’m a little more flexible currently, although I still think long and hard before allowing certain ingredients. I make up all kinds of rules to follow.
The crazy thing about it is that I always fall into the same trap. I have tried introducing prohibited food. Eating it mindfully. Only consuming it when I’m hungry. Stopping when the flavor dulls because satiety has kicked in. Planning two or three binges per week. Joining weight loss groups.
Fortunately, I don’t eat “forbidden” fare until late in the afternoon, which limits the damage. My internal rudder knows that the distress of overeating and the terror of obesity—which I tell myself would slowly but surely isolate me—are so intense that I must keep a grip during the day. Since I eat rather healthily during those hours, I don’t put on weight, or not too much. I may gain a few kilos. Then I lose them with great effort. I regain them. And so on. All these fears I create because the specter of the true corpulence I suffered from as a teenager is never far away.
I finally figured out that this is a way for me to manage my stress, by replacing it with another negative feeling. To fill this void that remains even though my life is pleasantly built.
photo © Annie Spratt