Week 7: Overcoming Struggle

After 7 entries, you’d think I’d be able to figure out how to start a blog without being awkward but no, I haven’t quite figured that out yet. So, what’s up losers? Yeah? No?

Let’s cut to the chase: I have an eating disorder. I’ve struggled with anorexia for 6.5 years. Surprise!

Since starting this blog 2 months ago, I’ve debated many times whether or not I would ever share my experience with anorexia on here. I worry that it isn’t professional, perhaps not even relevant to anything. I worry that sharing it will frame me as broken or incapable. If you are a friend of mine then you likely would have read posts about it already. As such, I worry that this may be annoying or tiresome to you. I worry that “eating disorder” will be the only thing people think about when they see my name. However, despite all this worry, I know that this is a blog about my experience in the mining industry and there has not been an experience in the past 6 years of my life that has not been affected by my fixation with food. So, I’ve decided that there is absolutely no shame or embarrassment in sharing it because it is a part of who I am – it is relevant. I’m not just going to write about how difficult it’s been, I’m also going to write about learning to co-operate with it. In this entry, I hope to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve difficult things amidst difficult situations – and ultimately, if in writing this I annoy five hundred people but manage to help even one, then it will have been worth it.

My eating disorder is ever-evolving. Up until I started recovery 2.5 years ago, it was something I was really ashamed of. It was something alien and mentally taxing, something that I wanted to classify as “other”. It was intrusive, it made me feel useless, broken, defeated. “How will I ever get a degree in astrophysics when I don’t know how to eat food”. Well, I did it anyway. Though now, I don’t see my eating disorder as something that makes me feel useless, broken, or defeated. It makes things harder, yes; but not impossible. It is still mentally taxing but I have grown to realize that it is not “other”; it is a reality that I must live with and it’s not something that will ever completely go away. So, instead of trying to desperately reject its existence and inevitably make it worse (like I would before), I have learned a bunch of “fun” strategies to cope with it. I’ve learned to identify and develop contingencies for self-sabotaging behaviours. I’ve learned to recognize, avoid, and mitigate the risks associated with potentially destructive situations. This took a lot of time and I’m still constantly learning many new things about myself. Yes, I still have bad days, but significantly less of them.

Here are some examples of strategies I employ so that I’m able to live my life as comfortably as possible with an eating disorder:

• Routines. I schedule nearly every meal I have weeks in advance so that there are no surprises or derailments. I’ve eaten the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day since starting my job in May. I eat all my meals at the same time every day. I grocery shop at the same time every week and I generally buy the same things every time I go, because grocery shopping is the single biggest stress-inducing task for me.
• Balance. I make sure that I eat dessert every single day. I have McDonald’s for breakfast every Friday. Even though I want to develop nutritious food habits, the healthiest food habit for me to learn is how to be happy and excited to eat. Of course, I ensure that my other meals are as nutritious as possible.
• Tracking. I track all of the food I eat (calories, macros, micros, etc). This is regardless of my weight goals. It is important that I log my meals so that when I worry I’ve eaten too much or too little, I can always refer to the log (which I’ve planned weeks in advance) and hold myself accountable.
• Avoid Popular Opinion. It is not helpful for me to read about the new latest diet or what I “should” be eating. If I see any post that glamourizes restrictive eating or food-punishment, I avoid it.
• Exercise. This one’s usually annoying to hear, but it is true – exercising always improves my mental state and willingness to eat.
• Let Others Know. It is important to me that the people I work with know that I prefer to eat at the same time every day (if possible), or that I’m not trying to be rude if I don’t want to eat the donut they’ve offered me, or why I’m feeling a little down sometimes.
• De-Catastrophize. No, I am not always successful at maintaining all of these strategies. There are days where I self-sabotage and skip grocery shopping (ie. today), or delay a meal for hours (or skip them altogether) because “I don’t feel like eating”. There are days I spend hours reading about the weight loss regimes of others. There are days where I indulge then spend the rest of it spiralling. In these cases, it is important to remind myself that just because I made one bad decision, or that I had one bad day/week doesn’t mean that my years of effort are nullified. Even in the worst case scenario where I’ve made every bad decision possible in a day, I will not let it be a catastrophe. It is recoverable.
• Contingencies. Relating to the previous point, I always make sure I’m preparing Future-Haley for success. I always have canned soup in my house, because it is usually the only thing I’ll be able to force myself to eat on days where all I want to do is restrict. I always keep extra non-perishables around just incase I cannot bring myself to go grocery shopping. I try to avoid planning meetings or tasks at the times I’m used to eating so that I’m less compelled to skip meals.

If you struggle with any kind of mental health issue (or otherwise), identifying strategies that work for you and your health is critical. Some people “beat” their mental illness, I have not. The biggest takeaway I have learned about my eating disorder is that until I’ve “beaten” it (if I ever will), I have not beaten it. I cannot treat it like it’s not there, that is a fight I will lose. I need to develop strategies that are mutually beneficial. By “mutually beneficial” I mean strategies that are beneficial to both someone who is burdened by a mental illness and someone who hopes to beat it one day – because for me, these two identities do not have the same goals. I’d recommend prioritizing de-catastrophization methods and contingency planning because until you have beaten your illness, you will continue to make mistakes (and that is perfectly okay). So it’s best to learn how to deal with them.

There is not a day that goes by without my eating disorder being a large part of it, and I don’t think that will change any time soon. It used to be (and sometimes still is) responsible for a lot of self-doubt, depression, and anxiety. Most of my life events over the past 6 years have been seen through this lens. Senior prom, going on a work trip to California, and my grandmothers funeral were a few things I starved myself for. My eating disorder is the sole thing I worry about when I think about future life events – Will this prevent me from being promoted one day? How severely will it affect my relationships? Will it ruin my wedding, too? How will it affect my children? Will I die young from heart failure?

What brings me solace is that I’m not the person I was 2.5 years ago before recovery – hell, I’m not even the person I was last week. I have done nothing but improve during this time, and there has not been one goal I haven’t achieved because of it (even a degree in astrophysics). It is true – it has made every goal harder, and it will for a long time. But, I’ll achieve them all anyway.

(August 17th, 2020)