I just had to walk away from my desk. I had to physically remove myself from the environment where I store my snacks because I was in real danger of eating all of them.
It's been awhile since I've felt the urge to binge eat in the middle of the day (binge in broad daylight?! How uncouth!), but it's not an altogether unfamiliar experience.
On a recent trip to Target, I saw a t-shirt that read, "BINGE, SLEEP, REPEAT." I believe it was Netflix that introduced "binge" into the popular lexicon, and I have to assume that the shirt was using the term in the movie-watching sense. Because as popular and socially acceptable binge watching has become, eating disorders remain cloaked in secrecy and shame. But ironically enough, "Binge, Sleep, Repeat" was a pretty apt description of my existence at one point in my life, although I added an extra step between binge and sleep. And I certainly wouldn't have advertised that via commercially made apparel.
Self-induced vomiting just doesn't have the kind of Millennial charm that my generation has managed to ascribe to the combination of introversion, consumerism and laziness that binge-watching encompasses.
My eating disorder started when I was 14 or 15, and peaked somewhere between my first semester of college and falling in love for the first time. It's taken different forms over the years: calorie restriction and over-exercise (though not as extreme as you've seen on Lifetime), binging and purging (just as extreme and weird and gross as the Lifetime movies), a combination of the two, abstinence from eating disordered behavior in favor of alcohol and drug abuse, a combination of restriction, binging, purging, alcoholism and drug abuse, and lastly, gratefully, periods of what sort of resembles "recovery."
I use the term lightly because I don't know that I've ever felt fully recovered from my eating disorder. Even when I'm not engaging in behaviors, there has always been at least some degree of lingering obsession (what will I eat, how many calories are in this, if I eat the donut now will I be able to not eat the brownie tonight, how many miles do I need to run to eat both, etc). There is always at least the threat of compulsiveness to my eating and my appetite.
I consistently overeat, which I define as eating past the point or in the absence of true hunger, but I'm fairly certain this is typical (if not normal) behavior.
I feel guilty if I don't exercise frequently or intensely "enough."
I get anxious about eating at restaurants, where portion size and calories are out of my control, and when food is presented outside of my planned schedule.
I like to save my calories for the end of the day, so I can eat a lot at the end of the day. It's a practice that might be considered delayed gratification, except it has a tinge of the pathological.
I use food to numb my feelings and silence my thoughts. It's a reward at the end of the day, an indulgence in reckless abandon that feels amazing and justifiable when so much of my energy is spent trying to be good, to be perfect, to be in control.
Most days, I manage to eat "normally." I've learned to mostly ignore the urges to binge as well as the voices that tell me I'm fat and shameful and weak-willed. I let myself eat, and I know how to sit with the discomfort of overeating. I forgive myself for not working out every day, or for having the donut AND the brownie. I move on.
But sometimes it sneaks up on me. It starts with a preoccupation with my appearance, or a change in my routine, or a stressful week at work. This time it started with a visit to the doctor. The nurse weighed me and, not realizing why I stood facing away from the scale, read the number out loud. I don't weigh myself because it makes me crazy.
Or maybe it was that I skipped breakfast in some ill-advised (read: self-advised) attempt to restrict my eating to 8-hour windows because I read an article that said it will make my body burn fat more efficiently. It also makes my mood in the mornings somewhat...volatile. Go figure. Hell hath no fury like a woman deprived of food.
Possibly, too, it was the cumulative effect that working in an open environment has wrought on my mental health. Somehow bearing witness to my coworkers' habits, particularly their eating habits, has made me hyper sensitive to my own eating habits. I'm someone who snacks during the day, and occasionally eats lunch (sometimes breakfast) at my desk. Without walls to create at least the illusion of privacy, I feel exposed and anxious any time I attempt to eat at my desk. Normal people would either A. change their habits and eat elsewhere or B. not be so self-conscious in the first place. I, on the other hand, just set my anxieties to simmer and stew in them until I become so agitated that I act out in some way.
So yeah, maybe that's what happened. I let a number get into my head, tempted fate by restricting food, and then the presence of a coworker as I ate my lunch made me lose. my damn. mind. And the only solution my brain could fathom was to eat! Eat the popcorn! Eat the chocolate! Eat the strawberries! Eat until the inside screaming stops!
Luckily, I caught myself in time to intervene. I grabbed my laptop and water bottle, sat in another, less claustrophobic area, and documented my meltdown here. Was it helpful? To me, yes. To you, not likely, unless you, too, have an eating disorder. In which case I recommend headphones, hydration, a blog and/or a good therapist - and I send you sincere wishes for your own inside screaming to subside.
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