I had to consider the physiological and psychological factors that were contributing to my demise and take a multi-pronged approach to combat them all.

Disclaimer.

This blog post is based on my personal experience; the research I’ve done, strategies I’ve implemented, and mindset I’ve applied to put an end to my own disordered eating. It is NOT meant to diagnose or treat an eating disorder. If you or a loved one are diagnosed with and eating disorder or if you are concerned that a diagnosis may be needed, please seek medical attention. Eating disorders are complex, and sometimes life threatening, conditions that may require serious intervention.

Sound familiar?

Until the past 15 months, I struggled to act sane around food. For many years, I caused myself undue stress planning, preparing, and plotting; constantly concerned with cutting calories, avoiding a long list of ingredients, and controlling myself at social events. Furthermore, I shouldered the mental burden of restricting, reducing, and refusing. I agonized over how to make myself eat less, get smaller, and avoid looking like a glutton in front of others.

These things ruled my mind, and from my early teens until my early twenties, I suffered through a constant cycle of restricting, bingeing, and purging my food. I convinced myself it wasn’t insanity to continue trying to diet because each time I took a slightly different approach. However, one day, I finally woke up to the fact that rigid dieting, in any form, was causing my obsession with food and willpower around it to get progressively worse over time. With every attempt to diet, my bingeing and purging response became more and more violent and damaging. To continue to impose diets on myself would be nothing short of insane.

What changed for me?

Now, just 18 months after deciding to ditch dieting, I’m living with food freedom. I’m in tune with my body, joyfully eating balanced nutrients and calories, stress-free around food, fueling performance, and maintaining a healthy body composition. However, I won’t try to sell you this as a quick fix. It wasn’t an overnight transformation. I had to consider the physiological and psychological factors that were contributing to my demise and take a multi-pronged approach to combat them all. Here, I’ll share the top 10 things I did to end my disordered eating patterns and learn to trust my body’s cues again.

1. Mindful and intuitive eating. This may seem silly, but truthfully, paying attention to my food and savoring every bite was a game changer, especially in the beginning of my journey. I understood that I couldn’t always pause everything and savor my food (I scarf down my lunch while on meetings at work), but making time to eat mindfully, at least once a day, helped me to slow down, feel satisfied by my food, and recognize my satiety cues as soon as they started to fire. Also, leaning on those hunger and satiety cues to tell me when to start and stop eating made all the difference. A little bit of hunger or a slightly full stomach now and then is ok, but my focus was on learning how to respect when I felt ravenously hungry or stuffed full and respond appropriately.
2. Nutrition and addition. This should go without being said, but just because I was ditching restrictive dieting didn’t mean that getting proper nutrition wasn’t important. Most notably, having a balance of macronutrients and an appropriate amount of energy helped my body signal hunger and satiety cues at an appropriate time. Leaning on protein and fiber as building blocks for my meals was the most pivotal component of this. And, while having an awareness of the energy content of foods is important, strictly tracking calories and trying to hit a certain daily target is never something that worked for me. I switched from thinking about what I could cut out of my diet to reduce my energy consumption to thinking about what I could add to my diet that would satisfy me (not just make me feel full, but also content).
3. Shades of gray mindset. Thinking in black and white was always a recipe for disaster. Previously, when I would fall off track from my targets, I would think “Aww shucks, I blew it! Now I have to start all over.” However, before starting over, I would think “I’m off the rails now, might as well eat everything under the sun before I restart my streak of being good.” Now, I don’t have any strict guidelines, so I can never go “off the rails”; therefore, I don’t feel the need to binge if I eat something I didn’t plan to eat.
4. Removing guilt and fear. Before, when I would eat certain foods or exceed my calorie targets, I would feel extremely guilty. I basically associated breaking my diet to a perceived immorality or inferiority. Admittedly, I also judged others for their food choices, too, based on my own insecurities. I’ve gotten rid of these feelings by slowly removing my own fear of these foods. I introduced foods I was previously scared of (in small portions and very gradually) back into my diet, so I could prove to myself that they didn’t hold power over me anymore. I’m also happy to say that I no longer care to judge other people for the things they choose to eat.
5. Setting up the environment for success. I’ve learned that there are certain, more nutritious foods that made my body feel better, and these are the ones I buy in bulk. However, lower quality foods that make me feel sluggish are foods that I want to buy in smaller portions. It’s not because I can’t eat these foods, it’s just because there’s no point in buying them in large amounts because I don’t want to eat them in large amounts. Conversely, this doesn’t mean I avoid social situations, or visiting my family members, where more of this low-quality food may be more readily available (this would be leaning back into food fear, which I worked to remove with step 5). Though it was a challenge to resist over-indulging early in my journey (spoiler alert for step 7: it’s ok to overeat), it got much easier as my journey progressed, and now I am staying with my family without blinking twice at their pantry full of sweets and snacks. At the end of the day, though, the more you arrange your environment to make the behaviors you want to reinforce easy and the behaviors you want to change difficult, the better.
6. Forgiveness. If I overate at any point in my journey to food freedom, I had to forgive myself and move on. Even though listening to my body and stopping when full was the goal, it took some time to get to a point where I could trust my body completely and remove the emotional hold that food had on me. I had to be patient and understanding with myself when I struggled, and embrace the fact progress would be gradual and not always linear.
7. Food prep as a tool. To make general healthy meal choices with less stress, I leverage meal prep. I tend to prepare most of my meals for the week (when I’m not traveling) on Saturdays. This helps me have healthy meals that I like readily available, and makes choosing the best option non-stressful. I do not, however, force myself to adhere completely to a meal plan or meal prepped food; if I’m too hungry, I will allow myself more food. If I’m full before finishing my meal, I stop eating. If I decide to eat out with friends last minute, I let myself do that instead. Overall, I use it in a way that is not restrictive and saves me time during the week when I’m the busiest so that overall, I make smarter and healthier food choices.
8. Intentions and reflections. I journal briefly at the start and end of every day. Early in my journey, I reflected often about my food habits. I would set my intentions for the day (for example: eat mindfully, aim to eat 5 cups of vegetables, or respect hunger and satiety cues) and reconcile these intentions at the end of the day. I would reflect on what I did that supported my goal of food freedom, and what I did that pushed me back towards my disorderly eating habits. If I did anything that fell into the latter category, I would evaluate what led me to do it and how I could avoid doing it in the future.
9. Staying active. Movement is medicine. Activity is shown to have positive effects on regulating appetite; and, of course, it increases energy expenditure. Not to mention, it’s a great way to reduce stress – instead of turning to food to comfort overwhelming emotions, I turn to sports or exercise. It also increases my integrated motivation – I desire healthy eating because I identify with being an athlete (more about this in The Truth About Motivation). Conversely, I am careful not to let this sway me into the trap of associating extreme food restriction with athletics (a common trap among female athletes), so I stay vigilant in reminding myself that having sufficient muscle and energy are both imperative to reaching my peak performance, and I can only achieve that if I consume enough calories and protein.
10. Removing blame and taking responsibility. One of the most damaging mindsets while I was in deep in my disorderly eating was blaming other people for my food problems. The victim mentality was the surest way to make sure I never had the power to dig myself out of that hole. I would blame certain people who made comments about what I ate and my body, or people who encouraged me to binge on sweets as a kid. To take back power, I had to take ownership over the choices I made, mindsets I adopted, and the impact I let other people have on me. This didn’t mean shaming myself or feeling guilt about my past actions, but reconciling that I was able to get myself into this disorderly eating mess, which empowered me to realize I had the ability to get myself out of it. Also, I resolved to never again let people’s remarks about me or attempts to influence my food choices affect me negatively.

Closing thoughts.

I’ll reiterate that this blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive guide to curing an eating disorder or a replacement for diagnosis or treatment. However, I do hope that these tips can be helpful for others who have struggled with cycles of dieting, overeating, and agonizing over food choices, and can be used as tools in people’s toolkits of recovery. Once again, I encourage patience – this is a process, and like any process, it takes time to take root and make a visible difference. There were a couple times after starting my journey away from dieting where I doubted myself and started to move back towards it, but each time was shorter and less impactful than the last, until I fully let it go and never looked back. Ultimately, I’m so relieved that I persevered.

If you decide to partake in a journey to freedom from disorderly eating, don’t forget to celebrate the small wins along the way and congratulate yourself on how far you’ve come. If you’re interested in learning more about how to implement a well-rounded, successful nutrition and fitness routine, check out How to Actually Be Successful at Fitness.

Ciao!