Eating Disorders Recovery Blog

The below is a guest entry from an Camille Packer McConnell. Camille is an expert on recovering from eating disorders.

Those who struggle with overeating feel more vulnerable than usual during the holidays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years festivities all center around friends, family, and food. With so many opportunities to overdo it, guilt is a common reaction. Anyone in recovery knows that guilt can be incredibly damaging, acting like a magnifying glass that exaggerates the negatives. Here is a strategy from my book, Stop Overeating Today! (available on Amazon), that teaches how to break free from the guilt cycle.
Take a Vacation from Your Guilt Trip

This tip applies best to all of you who battle regularly with overeating. You may feel that it is a battle you will never win and that you lack the willpower to change.

When I was recovering from my eating disorder, I found that beating myself up and feeling guilty was not an effective way to make a positive change.
Framing Setbacks in the Recovery Process



I remember one particular Thanksgiving. I was determined to stop eating before I felt full. I wanted to treat Thanksgiving like it was any other meal and not an excuse for overindulgence. As careful as I tried to be, I slipped and ended up eating too much.

At first, I felt very disappointed in myself. I had made so much progress in the former two months, only to “relapse” again. It felt like a defeat. As I sat there marinating in self-loathing, a light bulb went on over my head. I needed to stop feeling terrible and put things into perspective. Had I made a mistake? Yes. Did I regret it? Yes. Did I want to put myself through more self-loathing? No. Did my mistake determine my future? No. Could I move on? Yes. You get the idea.

It’s like I had taken the magnifying glass off of my mistake and was able to see it as a one-time event, not as a pattern of never-ending mistakes. I was able to look back at all of the progress I had made, the hard work I had done, and how far I had come. So what if I messed up once? I could call it a learning experience and move on. No need to hit myself over the head again and again.
Chronic guilt is not an effective way to grow and change. It keeps you focused on the problem. When the focus is on your weaknesses and mistakes, it keeps you from visualizing how you can change and what you can do to solve your problem.
Guilt is consuming and saps your energy. Moreover, it keeps you from remembering what strengths you do have and what progress you have made. Guilt keeps you stuck in a cycle of helplessness. Even if you have taken one step back, take two steps forward and acknowledge you are moving in the right direction.

- Camille Packer McConnell


Be sure to check out Camille's book Stop Overeating Today! available on Amazon.com.

Labels: Eating Disorder, guilt, holiday, stop overeating today

When someone has cancer they perform surgery to try and remove 100% of the growth or do chemo and radiology until the patient is “Cancer –Free”. The time that the patient is cancer free is called “remission”. However, all cancer patients have been told that the growth could come back at any time; it’s kind of the luck of the draw. Eating Disorders are very much like cancer in the way that someone with an Eating Disorder can go inpatient, have extensive therapy and eat healthy balanced meals for 365 days straight, but at any time the Eating Disorder behaviors could flare up and relapse could happen. Eating Disorder Behaviors can take over the body out of nowhere, just like cancer.



The only way that it has been proven to keep women abstaining from their Eating Disorder behaviors is through weekly support groups like Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous and ANAD. Just like a cancer patient who would weekly try to exercise, eat right and remove stress from their life an Eating Disordered woman in recovery has to not only exercise, eat right and remove stress, but she also must…


· Work with a Sponsor to keep her accountable


· Maintain a support group of women that she trusts and is close to, to lean on for guidance when she struggles with food or the stress of life.


· Be of service to a women who has less recovery than her so she can cultivate an attitude of empathy and altruism


· Attend weekly recovery meetings so she can share her stress and struggles


· Periodically visit a therapist to keep her honest with herself and focused on recovery


In my time in recovery and working in the Eating Disorder field I have met quite a few clients, parents and spouses who think that 90 days of intensive Eating Disorder in-patient treatment should do the trick. That all it takes is for their daughter or wife to just “learn how to eat” or “get that dark cloud away from her” and then she’ll be fine. I wish I could share with those loving family members how many women I see return to the rooms of Overeaters Anonymous and Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous after they had 5 or 10 years of recovery and just stopped participating in their recovery. They thought they could do it on their own and that they didn’t need to attend meeting or work with a sponsor to keep their behaviors in check. They were “cured.” Many, many, many women return to the rooms of OA and ABA in tears saying, “I thought it was gone.” “I thought I was cured.” “Why is it back?”


In all honesty, I was not a fan of the idea that I would need to make my recovery my top priority for the rest of my life. I said, “I don’t want some Sponsor telling me what to do and I have enough supportive friends, thank you very much.” But after a year of stomping my feet against the process I found that the people with the healthiest lives, with the smiles on their faces who actually liked themselves were the people who were dedicated to daily recovery.


Today, I know that my Eating Disorder if very much like cancer if not worse. I say that not to put cancer patients down in anyway, but just that I think in society if a cancer patient says, “My cancer came back” Most people think “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” Where when someone with an Eating Disorder relapses people tend to think, “Well what did YOU do wrong.” I know that there is a whole world out there of diets, detoxes, ads of under weight models; skinny celebrities and accepted eating disordered behaviors. I know that if I don’t keep my mind focused on recovery I can very easily be sucked back into a disease that will invade my whole body like cancer.


Recovery is a ton of work, but it is worth it to be Eating Disorder free and when we are Eating Disorder free we can help another woman struggling to join us as well.


Happy Recovery and Healing,


Irvina

Labels: Anorexia, Anorexia is deadly, Bulimia, cancer, Eating Disorder Help, Eating Disorder Rehab, Eating Disorder Treatment

In my short 26 years of life I have found that the average Joe Shmo on the street thinks that “Eating Disordered thoughts” go a little something like this…

Girl looks in the mirror at her skeletal appearance; she thinks, “OMG, I’m so FAT”

Girl is offered a cookie, she thinks: “I can’t eat that…. I’ll gain 10 pounds.”

Girl looks at carrot sticks and dip: “If I eat 200 calories now I’ll have to run 200 laps on the track at school.”

And on it goes…what many people don’t know is that Eating Disordered thoughts go much, much deeper into a persons psyche than just body image. It attacks a persons character, intelligence, substance, worth, expectations and simple existence.

A day of Eating Disordered thoughts goes something like this…

· Girl doesn’t hear her alarm and is woken up by mother for school, mother says, “We’re running late. Please dress quickly.” Girl thinks, “I can’t believe I overslept! I am so lazy!”

· Girl raises her arm in class. Teacher calls on her for the answer, she gives half of the right answer. The teacher says, “Not quite, but good try.” The girl thinks, “I’m so stupid. Why do I raise my hand at all, ever?”

· Girl sees cute guy smile at her in the hallway, she thinks: “He was smiling at me because he feels sorry for me. No one would like me. I’m stupid, clumsy and fat.”

· Friends invite girl over to hangout at house after school, girl goes while there she thinks, “I am boring them. They are so disappointed that they asked me to come over. I should leave.” And on and on it goes.

At The Victorian we encourages our clients to “watch your thoughts”. They are encouraged to speak up and freely say, “I feel fat today.” Or “I fell like such an idiot.” From there we backtrack. Meaning we go back in time and see what it is that brought on that thought. A good 99% of the time it is usually fear of their unknown future, a conflict amongst clients, a conversation with mom or their interpretation of a strangers glance at them. What we find is that it is usually a fear outside of their body that bring on the scrutinization of their body. The client feels unable to control or manipulate the situation so the disease takes that fear and puts the focus on the body. Since “of course” the body is easier to change than someone else’s perceptions of you. In turn this makes “Watching your Eating Disorder thoughts” a very big job (and slightly exhausting if you ask me.) But, all together vital for recovery. It’s when a client is able to see that “I’m fat” really means, “I’m scared that you don’t like me” they are able to see themselves clearly for where they are.

Myself and one of our Support Staff members, Katelyn holds the “5 Policy” with our clients. If we hear our clients putting themselves down by saying, “I’m fat” or “I’m so stupid!” we have them name 5 things they love about themselves. It can be anything from their hair, their laugh or their personality, but they must immediately shut down the negative with 5 positive. *It’s pretty cute when we make our staff do it too! Everyone is held up to the “5 Policy”. The idea is to constantly remind clients that Eating Disordered Thoughts = Bad Thoughts and they are not allowed here at The Victorian or in their thoughts. I personally have my sponsees call me everyday before 1pm with 3 things they are grateful for and 3 things they love about their body. That way they start their day a step ahead of their disease. Some of the women have a hard time coming up with the 3 things they love about their body so if they don’t finish I just call them back later and give them their 3. The more we all recognize ED thoughts and call them out, we will get stronger and it will get smaller.

Have a great weekend!
xoxo,
Irvina

Labels: Body Dysmorphia, Bulimia, Eating Disorder, Eating Disorder Treatment, psychology

Last night I met with one of my Sponsee’s at Alta Coffee in Newport Beach. She was telling me about a difficult visit from her mom. She found it triggering to stick to her meal plan and eat nutritiously while her mom barely ate and restricted her food. I can’t blame her, if the person who is supporting her treatment and recovery from her eating disorder displays Eating Disordered behavior why would she want to stick to her meal plan? Unfortunately this one trigger is just one of the millions of triggers that lay ahead of my sponsee on here road to recovery. The facts are that we live in a very “Pro-Eating Disorder Society” where dieting, cutting carbs and over exercising is not only acceptable, but praised. So the question is “How does one maintain and grow away from their eating disorder when everyone around them is pushing them back towards it?

The answer I had for my sponsee was fairly simple, “You could very well toss out your meal plan and just go back to not eating. And if you did eat you could always purge it. There’s no one physically stopping you so why wouldn’t you do it? I’ll tell you why, because you know where the road of starvation takes you. Starving, binging and purging leaves you out of control without a job, a college drop-out, a victim of rape, depressed, angry and alone. The people around us who are active in their eating disorders are not happy people. They are terribly frightened that they aren’t good enough so they starve themselves to be good enough, but unfortunately it is never enough. If starving, binging and purging was the answer to happiness than there would be no rehabs or eating disordered therapist. No one who starves, restricts, binges and purges is a happy person. It’s your choice. You can participate in your eating disorder and compete with people in theirs or you can start taking care of your body and having integrity over it.”
There is a saying in the recovery world, “You can spot it, if you got it.” It means that you can see other peoples eating disorders because you yourself have an eating disorder. I am all too aware of peoples behavior around food and exercise and it does a lot of the time make me angry to see people active in an Eating Disorder. I see the anger as a good thing though, I’m not angry that I choose not to participate in their disease, I am angry that there is a disease controlling the people around me and they don’t know it. They don’t know how dangerous an eating disorder is. How small and lonely your life can become with it. When I think about that I then feel a bit of sympathy for the people struggling and still trying to figure it out. I say a little prayer that they’ll figure out soon that a size zero won’t guarantee you a husband, awesome friends or a six figure job and that I pray that I remember that too.
Xoxo,
Irvina

Labels: Eating Disorder Help

Binge drinking at college is all too common, but those nightly drinks can really pack on the pounds and for a lot of people, particularly young women, weight gain is unacceptable.

• Abstaining from food all day to compensate for the calories consumed in a binge drinking session at night

• Drinking alcohol and eating in binge quantities and then purging

• Using alcohol to suppress appetite

Labels: drunkorexia, Eating Disorder