Important things I’ve learnt since I recovered from bulimia

I started dieting when I was just 16 years old. A combination of being bullied at my previous school, along with some unsolicited comments about my body, sent me into a negative downward tailspin of hating my body. It was back in the days before social media, so I grabbed all the magazines I could to learn how to change my body.

I must diet to lose weight. It seemed the perfectly normal and acceptable next step. I’d watched my mum and her off-on relationship with weight watchers, so I thought – what have I got to lose?  A lot apparently.

Several years of extreme restriction on fad diets. I tried the magazine diets, experimented with Atkins and the cabbage soup diet. Every time it was the same: initial euphoria with losing some weight, but invariably the binges came where the cravings took control of my entire body.

By 21 I’d finished University and had been both my heaviest and my lightest during the three years studying psychology. Ironically, it was only in learning about eating disorders during my degree that I realised my behaviour was just that: an eating disorder. After years of restriction which always led to bingeing, I’d somehow also discovered purging. And it dawned on me: I was bulimic.

It vaguely crossed my mind to do something about it, but I didn’t really know what, and in any case I’d just moved to London. I was trying to settle into a new life, with a new job in a new city and I was too busy catching up with old school friends and enjoying the nightlife.

And, bulimia was my coping mechanism. Rather than confronting emotions and the stress that came with trying to be successful in life and a career, I turned to food to help. I would try and be “good” during the day, eating light salads and fruit for lunch, then later at night when my flat mate was out, I would binge.

It was a premeditated binge, stopping in the corner shop on the way home, laying out the foods, knowing exactly what to eat and in what order, to make the purge easy. Bulimia helped me feel the pain and then the relief, and somehow this comforted me. I’m still not sure why, but it did.

Finally, I was in a steady relationship with someone I truly cared for and I knew it was time to stop. I started the hard and occasionally terrifying journey of recovery. It helped that I was ready now and that I really wanted to get better. It was a few hard months and slowly the binges were further and further apart and I started to heal my relationship with food.

Looking back on it now, these are 5 important things that I learnt since I recovered from bulimia…

1. Food restriction leads to binges

Oh this is just too ironic. I know now (and wish I’d known this at 16) that food restriction actually leads to bingeing.  In fact, girls who restrict food intake are 12 times more likely to binge. Twelve times! So my years of on-off dieting was the exact worst thing I could do to fuel my eating disorder and send me into this restrict-and-then-binge cycle that was on an endless loop.

2. There is a fine line between dieting and disordered eating

Something I also wish I’d known. We start restrictive eating plans that suggest a way of eating that can only be described as disordered. When you look closely at diets and disordered eating, the line is very blurry indeed. Even the National Eating Disorders association calls disordered eating (including dieting) a precursor to eating disorders.

There are diets that recommend very low daily calories (for example 1200 calories, which is less than the calorie needs of a toddler). That’s disordered.

There’s intermittent fasting – which is exactly what I did, but without the fancy label – which is skipping meals and trying to eat in a very small time window during the day. Again, disordered.

Then there’s the numerous diets that categorise food as “good” or “bad”. Just think of the diets that give you a list of “not allowed” foods, or perhaps more subtly categorise foods as red, amber or green, telling you to limit the “red” category.

3. The diet industry makes money by making you feel like cr*p

The diet industry is one that creates billions of dollars by making you feel terrible about yourself. It uses shame and body hatred to make money, thriving on the assumption that your body just isn’t good enough. Perhaps you’re not surprised, with the daily ads for diet-related products, skinny teas, 10 days to lose your belly fat.

As a result of diet industry marketing, we see around half of adolescent girls crash dieting, fasting, using diet pills and laxatives. Girls start young. It’s no wonder the diet industry is raking it in, and then combine that with my next point…

4. We are comparing ourselves to something that isn’t real

For me it was magazines, but now it’s social media. You check out these gorgeous beautiful women with flawless skin, chiselled abs, endless toned legs with absolutely no cellulite. The ideal that we are trying to achieve isn’t reality though. With influencers using apps to edit their appearance, and a plethora of filters, it’s hard to know what IS reality.

5. You need more coping mechanisms than just food

For so many years food was my coping mechanism, but it wasn’t in the least bit healthy. I binged and purged to make myself feel worse and then better and that’s largely because I didn’t know what else to do. I wish I’d known meditation, or journaling, or even just doing some stretches, or going for a walk. For a while I felt stressed so I ate.  Having several different coping mechanisms (like I do now) is the way forward and through.

Writing about my experience with bulimia now feels like I’m talking about someone else’s life, like I’m writing a novel. But I’m not, and it was very real and painful at the time. I’m just grateful to have found food freedom now. I hope that my hindsight can be your foresight so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did.