Written as a comment on a Youtube video for a friend of mine...
So much to say, I don't know if I can say it all.
I was in an intensive binge eating disorder program last year and worked through my outer layers down into the deep cause of my emotional eating. It was stuff that I knew about my childhood but that I hadn't really understood as the cause of my eating. The food is the symptom and the crutch, the arrow pointing to what is going on inside of me. At the beginning of therapy my therapist gave me specific advice: trust the food, trust yourself, don't restrict. Don't take away the only thing you have that helps keep you emotionally stable. If you are craving or binging go ahead and accept it, and accept yourself. While doing so look inside yourself for what you are feeling, don't just bury the feelings in food, but primarily don't restrict. Yeah, you may eat more at first but if you learn to trust that the food is there for you you can use it to "hold your hand" while you work through whatever is going on in your mind.
When I had my childhood trauma I didn't know how to ask for what I needed and my parents weren't able to give me what I needed; I internalized the angst of what happened, I learned that food and cooking was my happy place and even after I gained years and years of age and experience that child inside of me never resolved her traumatic situation and she still needs to be soothed, held, and comforted for everything that happened. Imagine inside of me there is me, the responsible grown up who works, keeps house, pays bills, takes care of a husband and a daughter. There is also me, the little girl who was abused and neglected. The adult in me doesn't know how to deal with that pain either because I never learned to deal with it as a child. As I grew older I let that child inside of me be in charge where food was concerned. When I was hungry or just exposed to food that child took over my actions unconsciously and sometimes even subconsciously. You wouldn't let a little kid eat whatever they wanted in a candy store but if the grown up doesn't learn to take charge then the little kid will eat everything. That was me.
Even after learning that, working through the trauma, and understanding all of it I never felt cured. I was still mindless around food even after 8 months of therapy. I quit therapy because after all the work I did I felt stuck, like I wasn't getting any better. It wasn't until I experienced more trauma in January, went into a deep depression and back out of it that I was able to move on, past the trauma I had just experienced, incorporated the trauma I had as a child into my adult consciousness, learned how to soothe myself through both traumatic experiences and all the ones in between.
The main thing that helped was learning to tell myself it was going to be OK. Life sucks, we lose people, we get scared, we lose income, things are hard and sometimes horrible, but I'm here every day for the little girl deep inside of me. My parents couldn't show her the love and affection she needed so I do it for her. And that's exactly how I think about it. I talk to that little girl like she was right here. I let her play by playing with my daughter. I let her learn by watching cool documentaries. I let her eat ice cream whenever she wants by buying Halo Top instead of Dreyer's.
To be completely honest, until I started keto in May I was still binging almost daily. I knew why, I knew what was going on inside of me, and I couldn't really stop. A lot of it was boredom eating and a lot of it was just habit, plain old ordinary unconscious hand-to-mouth habit. I started keto in the middle of a binge cycle and I didn't restrict my keto eating at all. I ate fat and protein and more fat and more protein and just ate and ate and ate. One day I forgot to eat lunch, then I forgot to eat dinner and at that point I knew I was fat adapted.
It wasn't until I became fat adapted that I discovered, surprisingly, that a big part of the habit of binging was a response to carbs I'd been eating my whole life. Insulin doesn't just make us fat, it makes us hungry, it makes us have cravings, it MAKES US LOSE OUR MINDS AROUND FOOD. So now that the insulin isn't controlling my stomach, my mouth, and my mind, after three and a half months on keto I don't eat until I'm hungry, I stop when I'm satited, and I actually feel that I satiation before I'm stuffed. Occasionally I look at my plate of food, think "woah, I'm not hungry anymore but this is so good I don't want to stop" and I know it's not emotional eating anymore. Sometimes the food is just good and the taste is just pleasurable. I take another bite or three or five and that's OK. I don't feel guilty, I don't LET myself feel bad. And that's back to the first thing I learned. Trust myself, trust the food. One more bite is OK.
My weighing is really erratic. I didn't weigh myself the first two weeks of keto and I weigh now more to get a feel for where I am. If the scale isn't moving or if it goes up I get pissed of course but I delete the reading in my app and move on. I can't remember where I heard this advice but this is what I do: I only go by what my lowest recorded weight is and I ignore the little bumps up. If I made it I deserve to own it. Usually the weight went up because I ate too much and haven't pooped yet. Sometimes it's because I forgot my BP med plus diuretic and I'm retaining water. Sometimes it's because I had too many carbs and have filled my glycogen stores back up. In all these cases all I have to do is Keep Calm and Keto On.
If weight loss is any indicator of a body's preference for a way of eating then my body LOVES keto. If you have had success in the past with the scale you will have it in the future. Right now just eat an avocado covered in salt and pepper and drink a shot of tequila. And maybe play with some LEGO or watch some old Saturday morning cartoons. The little girl deep inside of you will thank you.
I was in an intensive binge eating disorder program last year and worked through my outer layers down into the deep cause of my emotional eating. It was stuff that I knew about my childhood but that I hadn't really understood as the cause of my eating. The food is the symptom and the crutch, the arrow pointing to what is going on inside of me. At the beginning of therapy my therapist gave me specific advice: trust the food, trust yourself, don't restrict. Don't take away the only thing you have that helps keep you emotionally stable. If you are craving or binging go ahead and accept it, and accept yourself. While doing so look inside yourself for what you are feeling, don't just bury the feelings in food, but primarily don't restrict. Yeah, you may eat more at first but if you learn to trust that the food is there for you you can use it to "hold your hand" while you work through whatever is going on in your mind.
When I had my childhood trauma I didn't know how to ask for what I needed and my parents weren't able to give me what I needed; I internalized the angst of what happened, I learned that food and cooking was my happy place and even after I gained years and years of age and experience that child inside of me never resolved her traumatic situation and she still needs to be soothed, held, and comforted for everything that happened. Imagine inside of me there is me, the responsible grown up who works, keeps house, pays bills, takes care of a husband and a daughter. There is also me, the little girl who was abused and neglected. The adult in me doesn't know how to deal with that pain either because I never learned to deal with it as a child. As I grew older I let that child inside of me be in charge where food was concerned. When I was hungry or just exposed to food that child took over my actions unconsciously and sometimes even subconsciously. You wouldn't let a little kid eat whatever they wanted in a candy store but if the grown up doesn't learn to take charge then the little kid will eat everything. That was me.
Even after learning that, working through the trauma, and understanding all of it I never felt cured. I was still mindless around food even after 8 months of therapy. I quit therapy because after all the work I did I felt stuck, like I wasn't getting any better. It wasn't until I experienced more trauma in January, went into a deep depression and back out of it that I was able to move on, past the trauma I had just experienced, incorporated the trauma I had as a child into my adult consciousness, learned how to soothe myself through both traumatic experiences and all the ones in between.
The main thing that helped was learning to tell myself it was going to be OK. Life sucks, we lose people, we get scared, we lose income, things are hard and sometimes horrible, but I'm here every day for the little girl deep inside of me. My parents couldn't show her the love and affection she needed so I do it for her. And that's exactly how I think about it. I talk to that little girl like she was right here. I let her play by playing with my daughter. I let her learn by watching cool documentaries. I let her eat ice cream whenever she wants by buying Halo Top instead of Dreyer's.
To be completely honest, until I started keto in May I was still binging almost daily. I knew why, I knew what was going on inside of me, and I couldn't really stop. A lot of it was boredom eating and a lot of it was just habit, plain old ordinary unconscious hand-to-mouth habit. I started keto in the middle of a binge cycle and I didn't restrict my keto eating at all. I ate fat and protein and more fat and more protein and just ate and ate and ate. One day I forgot to eat lunch, then I forgot to eat dinner and at that point I knew I was fat adapted.
It wasn't until I became fat adapted that I discovered, surprisingly, that a big part of the habit of binging was a response to carbs I'd been eating my whole life. Insulin doesn't just make us fat, it makes us hungry, it makes us have cravings, it MAKES US LOSE OUR MINDS AROUND FOOD. So now that the insulin isn't controlling my stomach, my mouth, and my mind, after three and a half months on keto I don't eat until I'm hungry, I stop when I'm satited, and I actually feel that I satiation before I'm stuffed. Occasionally I look at my plate of food, think "woah, I'm not hungry anymore but this is so good I don't want to stop" and I know it's not emotional eating anymore. Sometimes the food is just good and the taste is just pleasurable. I take another bite or three or five and that's OK. I don't feel guilty, I don't LET myself feel bad. And that's back to the first thing I learned. Trust myself, trust the food. One more bite is OK.
My weighing is really erratic. I didn't weigh myself the first two weeks of keto and I weigh now more to get a feel for where I am. If the scale isn't moving or if it goes up I get pissed of course but I delete the reading in my app and move on. I can't remember where I heard this advice but this is what I do: I only go by what my lowest recorded weight is and I ignore the little bumps up. If I made it I deserve to own it. Usually the weight went up because I ate too much and haven't pooped yet. Sometimes it's because I forgot my BP med plus diuretic and I'm retaining water. Sometimes it's because I had too many carbs and have filled my glycogen stores back up. In all these cases all I have to do is Keep Calm and Keto On.
If weight loss is any indicator of a body's preference for a way of eating then my body LOVES keto. If you have had success in the past with the scale you will have it in the future. Right now just eat an avocado covered in salt and pepper and drink a shot of tequila. And maybe play with some LEGO or watch some old Saturday morning cartoons. The little girl deep inside of you will thank you.
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