I didn’t think I’d ever write a blog post about this. Binge eating hasn’t been an issue for me for many years but the stress of 2020 snuck that awful habit back in without me even noticing it at first. Or I should say I was in complete denial of it. I can write about it now because I feel I’ve gotten a handle back on it but I am hesitant to write about this because I’m no expert. All I have is my own personal experience. I know many struggle with all forms of disordered eating and I am in no way offering advice. Simply just sharing my struggle and journey with it.

Binge eating for me started back when I was a little girl. I remember gorging myself on food. As a child eating 6 and sometimes 7 or 8 taco bell tacos along with the nachos. Or eating a whole bag of Jays bbq chips in one sitting. Or eating ice cream sandwich after ice cream sandwich even though I was full from dinner. Always looking for food. Always eating and often never eating from hunger but eating for comfort. It continued on throughout my life but it wasn’t a daily occurrence. In hindsight I binged when I was stressed or had anxiety.

I grew up in a stressful home. I was the 2nd oldest of 8 kids and the oldest girl. A ton of responsibility was placed on me at a very young age in regards to taking care of my siblings & household chores. I honestly don’t remember a ton of my childhood. I just remember all of the work & stress & discipline & never feeling like I measured up. I remember being expected to act a certain way, look a certain way, be a certain way. The emphasis was definitely on ‘children should be seen & not heard’. Now this is in no way bashing my parents, they did the best they could with the tools & skillsets they had. I am a firm believer that every single thing we go through molds us into the person we are meant become. I wouldn’t be the woman I am today if my upbringing was different and I’m proud of the woman I’ve grown into so I don’t wish my life any other way.

But back to anxiety…

I didn’t even recognize the anxiety I’ve lived my whole life with until the last few years. It was just who I was, how I was wired. But a few years ago, due to my daughters struggle with anxiety and me learning all about it, I began to recognize patterns of it in my own life.

Stress & anxiety doesn’t feel good.

Food tastes good & makes you feel good.

So food became my crutch when I wasn’t feeling good.

Luckily, as a child, I had an amazing metabolism and it didn’t catch up to me until around age 16, that’s when I started to gain weight and not love the way I looked or felt in clothes. That was the first time I considered purging. But I had read a book a year or so before, I was a huge book worm growing up, about the dangers of purging and I was so afraid to become addicted to wanting to purge so I never let myself.

So that’s when dieting began.

Slimfast shakes, fruit smoothies, lean cuisines, not eating all day & waiting until I got home from school. I was able to drop the weight I had gained but the binging kicked back in and weight came back due to life stress & anxiety. It was a roller coaster I was on for years. Gaining & losing the same 25-30 pounds for almost 15 years.

It wasn’t until I learned healthy lifestyle habits & real nutrition, not what diet culture wanted me to buy, but clean & whole foods did I gain control of it. At least I thought I gained control of it.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of hard things over the last few years, but I’ve been managing it really well, or so I thought. In all honesty I was self-medicating with alcohol. I was drinking all the wine. Well not all the wine, that’s an exaggeration, but I was having a glass or two at least 5 nights a week. There were even periods of time where I couldn’t remember the last night I didn’t have a glass, which means it had been weeks of having a glass of wine every night. I plan on doing another blog on this topic soon since I committed to 100 days dry and as of today I’ve been dry 42 days!

Anyways, I don’t watch the news or follow politics or any of those things, not because I don’t care, but because it’s not good for my mental health to live in a constant state of doom & gloom from all that the media pushes out. But 2020 & the pandemic followed by all the other horrible things that happened had me watching the news and being sucked into it all. That along with some personal family things that were a lot to deal with I found myself not only drinking the wine but eating until I was sickly full. Then going and looking for sweets and even sometimes eating a second dinner and I wasn’t even hungry at all. I was literally just feeding my stress & anxiety, it numbs everything and made me feel like I was ok when in fact I really wasn’t.

By the end of December I was feeling awful about myself and just sick & tired of feeling sick & tired. I was tired of drinking. I was tired of eating all the foods. I was tired of feeling miserable in my skin. I was tired of waking up and feeling tired. I was tired of feeling bloated & having an upset stomach all the time from eating foods that tasted yummy, but that I know my body has an intolerance to. I was tired of being crabby and impatient and short tempered and miserable with my family, all because I didn’t feel good about myself.

I am a child of God. He created me for more than the life I was leading and I was ready to start pulling myself out of the pit.

I simply plugged myself into a proven system that I knew would work for me & jolt me out of my wine & food induced coma. I committed to a 21 day whole food cleanse that I had done before. That meant being on a supplement schedule, eating vegan, drinking a gallon of water each day, and no wine, all for 21 days. I was worried I’d fail but at the same time I was so ready for change.

Within a week I felt so good that I was hooked and fully in for the 21 days. As I entered my last week I didn’t want it to end because not only was I feeling better, I was showing up better. I hadn’t been this focused & driven with my business in a long time. I hadn’t been this present & filled in my morning time with God in a long time. I hadn’t shown up for my family the way I finally was with a little more grace in quite a while. I wasn’t perfect. I will never be perfect. But inside I felt a shift. Inside I knew something changed and I was on the right path. I was showing up. I was showing up for the woman I knew I was created to be and I was leaving behind the woman who was self-sabotaging this beautiful life.

So the 21 days ended and I committed to going a full 100 days with no alcohol. Can you believe it? Because I can’t! I still can’t, who am I?! If you asked me at any point last year if I would willingly go 100 days without wine I would have laughed but here I am fully committed and loving it! In regards to nutrition, I did go back to adding in dairy & meat, simply because I have no desire to be vegan permanently. I don’t mind it, and actually enjoy it for a short time, but this girl will never be fully vegan. I prefer to stay veggies most and everything else in moderation.

Will I fall again? Maybe.

I pray with God’s help I can keep binging under control because I don’t think it’s one of those things that ever just goes away. I think you just get to a place of managing it and I’m ok with that.

I’m still not where I want to be with my nutrition and know I need to dial in my nutrition a bit more. But for now that intense binging has gone away and that’s all that truly matters. I’m feeling good and even though I would like to lose 5+ pounds to feel my best physically I’m ok with where I’m at and doing the work on healing from the inside out. I know the few pounds of extra fluff is ok and I’m doing my best to love myself no matter size I am and no matter if I have a little extra weight on me or not. I’m very hard on myself so self-love & learning to give myself grace is definitely a journey I need to take.

Being healthy physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally is so much more important than how flat my stomach is or what size jeans I’m wearing. Because I’ve been all the sizes and even achieving super thin & fit and everyone complimenting me on how great I looked didn’t quiet those voices in my head that still kept saying I wasn’t good enough. I’ve learned that the happiness that I thought I would get when I looked a certain way never came, it was never good enough. So I have to stop chasing a number on the scale or a jean size or how I looked compared to other women and simply focus on chasing what makes me feel my best from the inside out and I encourage you to do the same.