Relapse isn’t the end

Sunday October 28th, 2012

You self destruc­tive,
Lit­tle girl.
Pick your­self up,
Don’t blame the world.
So you screwed up,
But you’re gonna be okay.
Maria Mena — All This Time

I relapsed. I binged. Things can be hard to cope with, relapse hap­pens some­times. That’s okay. Don’t pun­ish your­self for it, instead learn from it and move on.

Look­ing back on it, I won­der if I should even call it a binge. I did not feel com­pletely out-of-control like I used to, and didn’t eat nearly as much as I used to dur­ing a binge. Still it felt like a binge some­how. I ate more than I would feel good about, because I wanted to numb my feel­ings. I’ve had sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions before where I ate too much to numb my emo­tions, but I haven’t in a long time felt the need to purge after. I wanted to make myself throw up, I even went into the bath­room and sat down next to the toi­let. But I stopped myself. It felt really empow­er­ing to be able to at least stop there.

It was still a set-back, mak­ing me won­der if I should be writ­ing about body image at all. Who am I to write about healthy body image and a healthy rela­tion­ship with food if I can’t prac­tise what I preach?

But you know what, relapse hap­pens. And I want to write about it because acknowl­edg­ing it might help some­body else. Deny­ing it is not going to help me nor any­body else.

It’s not the end, and it’s not even back to the start­ing point. Yes, I ate more than I would be okay with. But it was nowhere near the amount of a real binge. And I didn’t purge.

Even if you do relapse with a full-out binge, and even if you do purge, it’s still not the end. If you’re read­ing this, I’m assum­ing you’ve been able to keep up a healthy eat­ing pat­tern at least for some time. Yes, you relapsed, and no mat­ter how hard it is, the best thing you can do now is accept and move on. You do not need to pun­ish your­self for it. Accept that it hap­pened, but start your healthy eat­ing pat­tern back up imme­di­ately. After some days have passed, then look back on it and learn from it.

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Why You Can and Should Eat Everything

Saturday August 25th, 2012

Note: This post is about los­ing weight, but I do not think any­one needs to lose weight to be able to live a healthy and happy life unless there really is a med­ical rea­son. How­ever, if you feel you need to lose weight for what­ever rea­son, I want you to do so in a healthy way, which is what this post is about.

The other day I was out din­ing with col­leagues, my boss and his wife. I started this job in May, and it was the first com­pany din­ner I went to for this com­pany. My col­leagues had said before­hand that my boss and his wife are all about “healthy” eat­ing and being “fit” and we need to do every­thing we can to avoid the topic alto­gether. Just order­ing food was enough for them to ram­ble on about eat­ing no carbs and using some­thing fatty or oily to let alco­hol go down eas­ier. I’m per­son­ally not drink­ing alco­hol, not for any other rea­son but just not lik­ing the taste of any alco­holic drinks I’ve tried so far.

One of my col­leagues men­tioned she didn’t eat pota­toes, but just because she doesn’t like the taste much. “Oh, it’s no won­der you’re so slim, then! Carbs are so fat­ten­ing.” my boss’ wife said.

I’m glad the topic was changed to some­thing else again quickly, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep lis­ten­ing to that with­out break­ing into a mad rant against diets and the so-called “healthy” eat­ing habits.

You lose weight by cut­ting calo­ries, not cut­ting out nutri­ents from your diet

It’s really not the carbs that are fat­ten­ing. You may have been on a no-carb diet and lost weight, yes, but it’s not because you’re not eat­ing carbs. It’s because you’re eat­ing less calo­ries over­all. Whether you’re eat­ing only sal­ads or only French fries and ham­burg­ers, as long as you eat less calo­ries than you’re burn­ing, you’re los­ing weight. You can eat more sal­ads because they con­tain a lot less calo­ries than French fries and burg­ers, but a diet of only sal­ads is no fun, and you really do not have to deny your­self the plea­sure of eat­ing if you want to lose weight.

You can eat every­thing, just in mod­er­a­tion. This is noth­ing new, but it seems it’s been for­got­ten with all the dif­fer­ent kinds of diets out there today.

Not only can you eat every­thing, you need the diver­sity. Food is not just a way of gain­ing or los­ing weight, you need the nutri­tion. No one food con­tains every sin­gle nutri­ent you need.

Nutri­ents

Pro­teins are one of the key build­ing blocks of your body. They help with build­ing and heal­ing body tis­sue. Ath­letes usu­ally con­sume a lot of pro­tein to help build and heal mus­cle tis­sue. Meat, eggs, fish, milk (and dairy prod­ucts) are the biggest source of pro­tein. To a lesser extent, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits, whole grains and cere­als also con­tain proteins.

Fats are essen­tial as well. They keep your skin and hair healthy, keep your organs safe from shock, main­tain your body tem­per­a­ture, and help cells func­tion health­ily. Sev­eral vit­a­mins can only be digested com­bined with fats. Unsat­u­rated fats are gen­er­ally con­sid­ered to be healthy, while sat­ured fats are deemed unhealthy. Even so, I strongly believe you do not need to scrap them from your diet entirely, just eat in mod­er­a­tion. High in sat­ured fats are cream, cheese, but­ter and sim­i­lar prod­ucts. Unsa­t­ured fats can be bro­ken down fur­ther into monoun­sa­t­ured and polyun­sa­t­ured fats, but we don’t need to go into that much detail. Great sources for unsa­t­ured fats are red meat, whole milk prod­ucts, nuts and fatty fruits such as olives and avocados.

There is a huge amount of dif­fer­ent kinds of vit­a­mins, and it really goes too far for this post to go into them all. Most have mul­ti­ple func­tions and can be found any­where from fruits and veg­eta­bles to meat.

There is a huge vari­ety of min­er­als as well, with an even greater vari­ety of func­tions. They can be found any­where from table salt to dairy to fruits and veg­eta­bles to meat.

Water makes up 55% to 78% of your body, depend­ing on sex, age and size. To func­tion prop­erly, your body gen­er­ally needs around 1.5 and 2 liters per day (about 50 to 67 oz. for my US read­ers), but it depends on activ­ity, tem­per­a­ture, humid­ity and other fac­tors. Drink­ing actual water is great, but it can be con­sumed from any other drinks as well as foods con­tain­ing water.

Enjoy eat­ing everything

You can eat every­thing and lose weight or be at a healthy weight, when you eat every­thing in mod­er­a­tion. You need to eat a diver­sity of foods to get all the nutri­ents your body needs for healthy func­tion­ing. Most nutri­ents can be found in a huge vari­ety of foods, so if you really don’t like the taste of some­thing, it’s OK to skip that, there’s still a lot of other sources you can get your nutri­ents from.

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10 Ways to Cope with Emotions without Food

Sunday July 29th, 2012

Even after I was so-called “recov­ered” from my eat­ing dis­or­der, I still strug­gled a lot to cope with emo­tions with­out using food or star­va­tion in some way. Here are 10 things you can try to han­dle your emo­tions and stress, instead of turn­ing to self-destructive behaviour.

1. Talk about it
Talk to some­one you trust about your feel­ings. This has always been and still often is the hard­est thing for me to do when I’m emo­tional or stressed. I don’t want to be a bur­den to some­one else by talk­ing about myself and my feel­ings. Though often, the per­son you choose to talk to does not mind at all, they want to hear you out and help you.

2. Write
Write your feel­ings in a jour­nal, on your blog, in a let­ter to some­one else, to your­self or even to an imag­i­nary friend. Just get­ting it out, even if you don’t share it with any­one else, can help you work through it.

3. Draw or paint
In ther­apy, I also did cre­ative ther­apy classes reg­u­larly. For me, these were one of the most effec­tive parts of ther­apy. I come from a fam­ily of cre­ative types — both pro­fes­sional and hobby-wise, and absolutely love draw­ing. Don’t worry about what it will look like. Take a pen­cil or brush and just start draw­ing or paint­ing. If you like craft­ing, just tak­ing scis­sors and cut­ting (coloured) paper into pieces, then glue­ing them into a shape on another sheet of paper can be won­der­ful too. Really, doing any­thing cre­ative can be great to work through what you’re feel­ing, so find some­thing you like to do — and do it.

I per­son­ally am also really into dig­i­tal art, but for me it doesn’t work as well as actu­ally draw­ing with a pen­cil on paper to work through feelings.

4. Take a walk, go run­ning or bicy­cling
Some­times just being out­doors — tak­ing a walk, going run­ning or bicy­cling — helps you work through your feel­ings in your mind. I’ve found it’s a great way to clear your head.

5. Sing or make music
I’m per­son­ally not very musi­cally inclined, but I do like singing along to my favourite music. Like I said, draw­ing, paint­ing, craft­ing, doing any­thing cre­ative can be great to work through your feel­ings, and music can do the same so get vocal or start play­ing your favourite instru­ment if you’re a music type.

6. Have a pillow-fight with the wall
It’s a really safe way to let anger or frus­tra­tion out of your sys­tem to just hit a pil­low against the wall as hard as you can repeat­edly. It sounds silly, but try it and you will notice it does really help.

7. Clear clut­ter
Clear­ing out clut­ter can be an absolutely amaz­ing way to work through your feel­ings. I wanted to say “if you’re calm enough”, but really, just the act of clear­ing clut­ting will calm you down if you aren’t. I’ve found work­ing through what you want to keep, give away or just throw away is great for work­ing through your feel­ings at the same time. So much so, I think I’m get­ting addicted to it — when­ever I want to clear my mind, I start look­ing for things I can clear out but I have barely any­thing left that I no longer like or that doesn’t get used.

8. Play a game
For me per­son­ally, play­ing com­puter games didn’t work so much to work through feel­ings, but it is a great way to take your mind off things. After­wards, just because you found dis­trac­tion and spent some time not think­ing about it, things will not seem as bad as before. Be care­ful though, com­puter games can be addic­tive so set a time for your­self, like an hour, and stop play­ing when that time is over. I don’t want you to go from one bad way of cop­ing with emo­tions (starv­ing, binge­ing and purg­ing or overeat­ing) to another (get­ting addicted to gaming).

9. Lis­ten to music
There’s so much music out there, there will always be some­thing that is about what you’re feel­ing. Just lis­ten­ing to the lyrics and know­ing that you’re not alone, singing along if you want to, can be comforting.

10. Watch tv or a movie
Much like play­ing a com­puter game, I’ve found this is a great way to take your mind off what­ever is going on. Just hav­ing some dis­trac­tion will help tone down strong feelings.

Do you have another way to han­dle your emo­tions, with­out food or star­va­tion? Please share what works for you!

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Reaching rock-bottom and crawling back up

Thursday July 19th, 2012

I don’t know the first time I felt unbeau­ti­ful
The day I chose not to eat
What I do know is how it changed my life for­ever
I know I should know bet­ter
There are days when I’m OK
And for a moment, for a moment I find hope
But there are days when I’m not OK
And I need your help
So I’m let­ting go
Super­chick — Courage

The start of an eat­ing disorder

I felt lonely and mis­un­der­stood in high school. I had friends, but I took a lot of dif­fer­ent classes from them. I was at a per­fectly healthy weight, per­haps just in the top range of healthy weight. I did eat candy and other snacks, some­times more than I prob­a­bly should have. I got told off about it. I felt like I was fat. What started as a sim­ple diet — pay atten­tion to what you eat, quickly became an eat­ing dis­or­der. I couldn’t con­trol my envi­ron­ment, so I con­trolled my eat­ing. For nearly a year, I cut out more and more from my diet. I ended up eat­ing only a tiny bit of break­fast and as lit­tle din­ner as I could get away with. I lost weight. Quickly at first, but later it came to a full stop. I decided I couldn’t live like that any­more, and started eat­ing more again, even if it was scary as hell and mostly because I thought my par­ents started to notice how lit­tle I ate, and I really didn’t want them to make me stop. I ended up going the oppo­site way. I was fright­ened by the num­bers on the scale going up. I decided to try to con­trol the calo­ries a dif­fer­ent way. I took lax­a­tives, and started throw­ing up. I went through starve, binge and purge cycles for nearly 4 years.

Hav­ing to share my secret

Then, in 2007, I went on a two-week vaca­tion with friends. I’d learned and taught myself how to keep my eat­ing a secret and I knew which lies to tell, and it seemed no one noticed. Until about a week into this vaca­tion. If you’ve ever been through bulimia or binge eat­ing dis­or­der, you know how strong the urge to binge can become. I needed to binge. It was around noon, the hottest time of the day, and shops were closed. I went crazy, being mad about the shops being closed and rant­ing about it to my friends. My friends didn’t under­stand, but they knew some­thing was up. They asked me up straight, but I just couldn’t talk about what was wrong. I asked them to leave me alone while I stayed in the apart­ment and thought about it.

It was hard, this had been my secret for years, but there was no way out now, I had to tell them.

I con­fessed my eat­ing dis­or­der in a note. I never felt so relieved and fright­ened at the same time. I was relieved to know I no longer needed to keep this secret. Years of keep­ing it a secret had me bogged down. It had become both my best friend and my worst enemy. It was the one thing that was just me, no one else that knew about it, so it also felt like my best friend after all these years. I was absolutely fright­ened about what would come next. Some time soon, I would need to get help, because peo­ple knew about it now and they would make me stop this, they would make me get help. And they did. I needed to get help.

Ther­apy and life after

It was good to have some­one to con­fide in, that seemed to under­stand. I went through ther­apy for another 3 years or so. Ther­apy helped, but it wasn’t until nearly 2 years into it, that I finally started to feel real con­trol over my eat­ing again. I no longer needed to binge. Even after all this time, I still had occa­sional relapses, but it wasn’t any­thing close to what it had been.

Dur­ing the last year of my uni­ver­sity stud­ies, I finally started to see my body for what it is. I learned to dress bet­ter and started to wear clothes that make me feel good about myself instead of hid­ing in baggy clothes. All these years, my self-esteem had been at rock bot­tom, and for the first time it started grow­ing again.

I’ve learned there’s bet­ter ways to cope with emo­tions than through food. Don’t pun­ish your­self for hav­ing coped the way you have, no mat­ter how long it may have been. It was the only way you knew how. Food isn’t the enemy. There’s too much candy and deli­cious nutri­tious food not to enjoy it.

I still have times where I don’t feel great about myself, times where I don’t eat much at all because of my emo­tions run­ning high, and other times where I eat more than what can be qual­i­fied as a healthy amount, but it’s nowhere near the amount of food I would eat dur­ing binges. I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that lov­ing myself will be a life-long journey.

Too Much Candy is part of that jour­ney. You’ve reached this place, because you’ll likely have (had) your own strug­gles with food, body image and self-esteem. I hope that, by writ­ing about my own jour­ney and the things I’ve learned and am learn­ing on this jour­ney, I can help you on your jour­ney to feel great about yourself.

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Your body is normal

Tuesday July 17th, 2012

I got a per­fect body
But some­times I for­get
I got a per­fect body
Cause my eye­lashes catch my sweat
Regina Spek­tor — Fold­ing Chair

Whether you have been through an eat­ing dis­or­der or not, if you read this, it’s likely you, too, know the pain of feel­ing your body is not normal.

What is nor­mal, any­way? Is it skinny legs, a flat stom­ach or a rounder butt? When I first realised every­one has some­thing they don’t like about their bod­ies, it changed my per­spec­tive. I do not love every sin­gle part of my body equally. It’s not like any body on tv or in mag­a­zines. It’s my body. Whether I lose or gain weight, my body shape stays roughly the same. It stays true to itself, and this shape is nor­mal for me.

So I want you to ask your­self, what is nor­mal for you? Find out, and let go of any thoughts about what you “should” be.

I don’t like my hips, thighs and butt, but I have learned to accept them as they are, and instead focus on the things I do like about my body — I have long legs, I like my calves and I have a rel­a­tively small waist. When I dress to flat­ter these parts, I feel great. I can wear skirts that hit on or just above the knee, hid­ing my thighs but show­ing my calves and the length of my legs, and I can wear a belt to cinch in my waist to put focus on the small­est part of me.

Which parts of your body do you like? If you say you don’t like any­thing about your body — look at it. Move your hands, wig­gle your toes, stretch and think of all the things your body enables you to do. It’s gor­geous and pow­er­ful. There’s bound to be a part of your body that you don’t hate as much as oth­ers. Focus on that part. Learn to like it. Then start lov­ing it.

What­ever shape or size, your body is nor­mal. Focus on the things you do like.

What parts of your body do you like? How do you put focus on them?

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Welcome

Sunday July 15th, 2012

Hi, and wel­come to Too Much Candy. This is a blog about body image, per­sonal fash­ion and food.

Who I am

I’m Anouska, I strug­gled with eat­ing dis­or­ders and low self-esteem for over 7 years, and low self-esteem for even longer. I was clin­i­cally depressed, and hid from the world in over-sized, shape­less clothes. I realise now, that only made me feel more inse­cure about myself. I was absolutely con­vinced I was fat and ugly and not wor­thy of anything.

I spent so much energy hat­ing my body that eat­ing dis­or­ders and depres­sion creeped in. For years I tried to change my body — if only I could lose weight, I’d be beau­ti­ful and happy. Of course, reach­ing any weight-loss goal never worked, I just kept hat­ing my body.

Through ther­apy, I recov­ered from my dis­or­dered eat­ing pat­tern and depres­sion. It wasn’t until two years after ther­apy ended, that I really began to notice how much mak­ing an effort to dress my best every day — even when I don’t feel like it — boosted my mood and self-esteem. Even if I still am not totally con­fi­dent about my body, I can dress to flat­ter my best fea­tures, which makes me feel better.

I actu­ally weigh more now than I did before and dur­ing the first year of my eat­ing dis­or­der, but I’m hap­pier and health­ier than I can remem­ber I ever was. I finally learned to dress in a way that makes me look and feel great, I learned to nour­ish my body and soul, and I learned to accept myself. I want to share my expe­ri­ences and help other women feel great about them­selves, too.

Healthy, happy and beau­ti­ful at any size

I strongly believe you can be healthy and feel happy and beau­ti­ful at any size. By dress­ing your best, nour­ish­ing your­self and truly tak­ing care of your­self and let­ting go of all the guilt and shame involved with eat­ing “bad” foods, you will feel great. You deserve to feel great about your­self, just as you are.

I will never, ever tell you that you should lose weight. I’m not an expert at fash­ion, food or psy­chol­ogy. The things that work for me will not be the exact same things that you need. Every­one is dif­fer­ent, but every­one deserves to feel great about them­selves. I’m just writ­ing about my own expe­ri­ences and hope that by shar­ing my jour­ney and thoughts, you, too, will find a way to feel great about yourself.

If you are cur­rently strug­gling with an eat­ing dis­or­der or depres­sion, please seek pro­fes­sional help. This site is not a sub­sti­tute for pro­fes­sional help or treat­ment to any indi­vid­ual. This is just a place where I share my own expe­ri­ences and where I encour­age you to share yours.

Sub­scribe to my blog posts

You can fol­low my blog posts by sub­scrib­ing to the blog through RSS or e-mail or fol­low TooMuch­Can­dy­Org on twit­ter.

I encour­age you to share your own expe­ri­ences as well as your thoughts on the things I write. I’m always open to dis­cus­sion, but I will not accept hos­tile, intol­er­ant, or cruel comments.

So, tell me, what has your jour­ney been like so far?

Posted in Too Much Candy | 2 Comments