My Personal Food Journey

My relationship with food was birthed in the late 90’s when thin was very in and we were all tuning in to watch the Victoria’s secret show and start our workouts/diets the very next day. Hoping that by eating 1000 calories and spending an hour on the elliptical we could somehow change centuries of genetics. If only little me knew i’d work for them at a size 12 a decade later. I learned quickly to look at food as calories, and I spent a tragic amount of time trying to cut my calories more and more until I’d inevitably swing back the other way and binge/abandon any care about what kind of food I ate. The popularity of being vegan or plant based around 2016-2018 quickly swept me away and soon my body was disappearing and I felt horrible. I quickly made the shift to being so obsessed with where my food came from and what was in it that I rarely ate out and I was willing to share my no sugar, no flour cookie recipe with anyone who would listen. Surprise cookies with no sugar and flour are just nut butter with almond flour lol it’s not a cookie it’s a mash of pulverized nuts. I think I hit the pinnacle of my food obsession during covid, I spent 4 months sugar/alcohol/processed food free and I won’t lie I felt great! I was in no way prepared though to be in the real world surrounded by delish food whether processed or not, and so as life started happening again I quickly fell back into my beloved restrict/binge cycle.

A quick note on binge eating as I think the word is used by a lot of people to describe a lot of different things. I have a confirmed binge eating disorder. I’ve talked to multiple therapists and specialists at this point. When I use the word binge I’m not talking about when you said you were going to have one slice of cake and instead you had two. I’m talking about consuming enough food for 5 people in one sitting multiple times a day at times for consecutive days in a row. I’ve been in physical pain and physically ill after binging. I wanted to make this differentiation clear because binge eating disorder and overeating on occasion are not the same thing. If you’d like more info the national eating disorder organization has a great description here. We are going to talk a lot about binge eating disorder because like any eating disorder it is very isolating. I’d like to share what I can to help anyone out there just looking for information they can relate to. I am not healed, but I’m working on it.

I realized I had an eating disorder during a nutrition class I elected to take at the UofM during COVID. Imagine that a person with an eating disorder wanting to study nutrition lol. It kind of just slapped me in the face and I realized I was really tasking my body by oscillating between whole food and literal trash. Since that time I’ve tried to white knuckle balance, I’ve convinced myself no engagement with the food environment of our time is possible (it isn’t for me), and in recent months have found something that helps my brain to not obsess over food and to make food decisions that aren’t constantly fueled by on the fly desires. We’re going to get into all of it here! Living with an eating disorder, favorite foods/recipes, favorite drinks NA and liquored up, restaurants around the world we love and more. I’ve even got the emails out to a few nutritionists i’ve worked with to get the good science based info for us. My email is always open to a new recipe, or new thought.