Challenging Your Common Eating Disorder Thoughts

Struggling with your ED thoughts? Let me challenge them!

Jan 06, 2022

Likes: 8

1. ''I just love food too much, I can't control myself''

I don’t see anything problematic with this sentence. Then I read the following Why try to control and limit something you find pleasurable? Enjoying good food is not a crime. As a person who really loves food and enjoys a good meal, there are of course days I overeat . During New Year’s Eve, I indulged in delicious Georgian food. Yesterday I ate a little too much of the lasagna I made. With a history of an eating disorder, they were definitely uncomfortable experiences for me. But there is a difference between overeating and binge eating. I was well aware of what I was eating and did not feel like I lost control. I simply ate too much willingly. If you experience ‘loss of control’ around food and you feel like you are unable to stop; that is no longer about how much of a foodie you are. There is something else to investigate there.

2. ‘‘I am not restricting, why am I binging?’’

We can break this sentence down into two competing thoughts:

‘‘I have had enough of this! I want to change, I want to get better!’’ , and

‘‘See!! I am binging, so everyone was wrong! What if I am different from others and I just cannot control myself around food?’’.

This is a thought that should be handled delicately. Why? Because the person with this thought has achieved the hardest: they have taken their first steps towards recovery.

If you are here, please do not let go. This is the moment you take a leap of faith and just push through. It is unrealistic to expect to suddenly wake up and let go of all the restrictive behavior you developed over several months , maybe years. It takes time and patience.

Also it is worth mentioning that sometimes we think we are not restricting ourselves, but we unintentionally do what I would like to call ‘‘dieting mentally’’. That is, restricting yourself mentally , even if you aren't doing it physically. If you are always questioning what you are eating, tracking calories religiously (you don’t have to be in a deficit) and you can’t shake off the feeling that you have to move around everyday, you may be dieting mentally. Sure, you are not ‘on a diet’ so you are not giving your body the message ‘‘Food is scarce, panic!!’’. But you definitely aren’t telling it ‘‘ There are lots of food, you have nothing to worry about! ’’ neither. This alone can cause someone to binge.

3. ‘‘I don’t want to gain weight so I should keep dieting somehow’’

This is the main thought that keeps you in the diet-binge cycle. Let’s assume that you actually stopped restricting yourself. Regardless of your weight , you may (and most probably will) find yourself eating more. You will not just keep gaining weight forever (not to say that weight gain is bad, but because this is a common thought among people with eating disorders). After a long time of on-and-off dieting, it will be your body’s way of recovering , achieving homeostasis once again. You may gain weight, lose some, then regain until it finds a comfortable weight. Your body needs to trust you to recover and stabilize your weight at your ideal interval (be mindful of the word interval, because our weight fluctuates all the time). If you disrupt this process with a diet, you will find yourself right back in the diet-binge cycle.

4. ‘‘It is just a diet, I will stop at X kgs’’

A tricky one! Your eating disorder is downplaying what you are going through, in order to survive. Because, if it is just a diet , what are you recovering from? It cannot be a disorder that makes your life a living hell if it is ‘‘just a diet’’, am I right?

There are many ways an eating disorder can emerge, but personally this is exactly how I developed one. I went on ridiculous diets that were clearly disordered, and told myself ‘‘ It’s just a diet, I will stop the day I achieve my goal weight ’’. But let me tell you, that day never came because there is no skinny enough! You will always find an excuse. I know I did. When I stepped on the scale, if I lost weight I believed the scale was broken. I am dead serious, I really did believe that! If I gained weight, I would tell myself I never lost it in the first place. Once I accepted this was abnormal, I could get the help I needed. So, be honest with yourself and if you have the slightest feeling that what you are doing is unhealthy, please seek help.

It’s not a diet honey.