I have to eat food.

I have to eat food – six times a day.

SIX TIMES A DAY!!

Fuck… Well to be honest – I don’t HAVE to – it is a choice I’m prepared to make. I am generally very obedient (see grandma!! I really am!!), so if say I’ll do something, I follow through.

I’ve just started reading a book called The Bulimia Help Method, and after many introductory chapters on how dieting, removing food groups, or restricting causes eating disorders (there’s a lot of science to back those claims up apparently), the first rule is to start eating – three main meals and three snacks (or six small meals).

So I need to eat at (approximately) 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm and a (very small) late night snack before bed. And I have to do that every single day, even if I’m not hungry. It can just be a little bit of food – like a cup of tea and a mandarin – but I have to eat.

Obviously main meals are meant to be a little more substantial than a mandarin…

As my weight has been climbing since I stopped restricting (but haven’t as yet stopped bingeing and purging…) I struggle to believe recovery will bring me to a healthy, stable weight. However as my body becomes more nourished – through the food I am eating and keeping down, and with all the multivitamins I was taking – it becomes much easier to make intelligent decisions. So – starting tomorrow, I will commit to eating six meals a day for the rest of this month and see if the urge to binge really, truly reduces. I am sceptical… But I promise to report back in a little while.

It does seem vaguely logical. I can see that by ensuring I eat something every three hours, I will probably start to let go of a lot of the food thoughts like, should I eat? when should I eat? can I hang out a bit longer before I eat? do I deserve this food? what should I eat? why am I eating? blah blah blah. It’s so boring. It’s incessant and it hounds my every waking moment. But it’s also boring. So perhaps structured eating times – rather than structured eating – will assist me with a lot of the mental food obsession.

Time will tell.

It is also supposed to assist with metabolism, as the body becomes used to the fact it will be provided with food on a regular basis so it doesn’t need to store every ounce of energy it comes into contact with – just in case it needs it later. My poor old body has never known when it will be fed, if it will be fed, or what it will be fed. It’s a tad confused.

I will commence six meals a day and part of me is thrilled to bits to basically be given “permission” to binge all day long – six meals seems like a staggering volume of food. But a much bigger part of me is thinking I’ll report back here in a month to say, I told you so. I’ve gained 20 kilos now.

I’m trying to stay positive though. I’m going to eat. I’m going to see how it goes. I’m going to recover.