WOBBLES & SPIRALS
Eating disorder recovery is not a perfect art, but I am a long way into the process now. I have four years of what feels like solid progress to me. I still wobble from time to time, but I do not spiral. So let me tell you what that means.
We all need to eat food. Day in day out. Forever. There’s no getting out of it. The trouble with an eating disorder – of any type – is that you spend your entire life trying to avoid or compensate for some aspect of food. And thoughts of food become all-consuming. Sometimes, it’s a way of managing life. Sometimes, it’s fear. But it’s never about freedom. Finding recovery is about finding freedom.
I have food freedom now
I eat whatever I want, whenever I want. Sometimes, I eat for hunger or nutrition. Sometimes, I eat for pleasure or to socialise. And there are times when I eat something because I see it and it looks good. I eat pretty frequently but only small amounts at a time. There are two reasons for that.
Firstly, in my recovery I was taught to eat six times a day. No matter what. And once you start doing that, it is not attractive to eat really large meals. Because there’s going to be another one in three hours time. It takes some getting used to, but regular eating curbs appetite. At least it did for me.
And the second reason I eat a little but often is because I had a gastric bypass. For me, recovery and the bypass have become complementary. I do understand that would not be the case for everyone. If I did not have strong recovery, the bypass would be problematic.
One of the byproducts of food freedom is that I now have hunger signals. I did not have those when I was eating disordered. I could starve myself relentlessly and never feel hungry. I could binge until I vomited and never feel full. I had spent so long overriding hunger signals that I no longer had any. It is a surprise to me now that I can all of a sudden feel really hungry. And then after I’ve eaten a bit, I feel really full. Three hours later it happens again. I’ve learned to recognise and honour those signals.
But sometimes I wobble
Just because I have strong recovery (in my opinion) does not make everything perfect. Sometimes I still want to use food as an emotional crutch – either through avoiding it or through eating some delicious tidbit to avoid an emotion. It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every month or so, but the thoughts will once again start wobbling in my head and there are times when I succumb and skip breakfast. Or stop by the shop and stuff in a chocolate bar on the way home.
As time passes the wobbles get fewer and further apart. They last shorter periods of time. But I suspect I will have wobbles for all my days. To me the important thing is not that I have an eating disorder thought or that I skipped a breakfast. The important thing is whether or not I compensate or continue the behaviour.
I have not purged in four years. And prior to that very last time, I had only purged twice in ten months. My purging behaviours are gone. Including over-exercising which is an often overlooked purging behaviour.
I have two golden guidelines
I do not have rules anymore. I relentless punished myself with ever increasing ways of trying to manage my eating. Food rules are history. But I do have two guidelines that I try and always come back to if I wobble.
- Eat something every three or so hours. And 2. Never compensate for eating.
It is that second guideline that is my most important recovery tool. No matter how much self-recrimination I may have for choosing cake for breakfast or eating to an uncomfortable level of fullness or for having skipped a meal or two, I try to never compensate. I just tell myself that what’s done is done and if it made me uncomfortable physically or psychologically then perhaps when a similar circumstance arises I can look back and try something different next time.
Sometimes I wobble and forget the guidelines, but always I try and pull my socks up quickly and jump back on the wagon.
It is years since I spiralled
When I first came out of the clinic in April 2020, I was doing well with my early recovery. But I did have wobbles, and sometimes those wobbles escalated into a spiral. I wasn’t perfect. I don’t think recovery ever is. But letting go of perfection is part of my recovery toolkit.
To me the difference between a wobble and a spiral is longevity. A wobble may last for a meal or maybe a day or two. A spiral is where things escalate. The restriction or the bingeing gets worse every few hours and the thoughts start to become all-consuming again. Lasting not just a day, but a week. And the longer it lasts the harder it is to reign it all back in.
My worst spirals were in 2020. When my recovery was still finding it’s feet. In many ways my recovery began in 2018 when I did the first inpatient stay and learned about all the tools I would need. But there were many spirals over the next two years. I did find my way back to the wagon fairly consistently, but I do consider my recovery to be from mid-2020. Not 2018.
I will probably always have wobbles. If we’re being completely honest here, I skipped breakfast yesterday. Mostly because I wanted a coffee and I can’t fit coffee and breakfast in at the same time. But ED thoughts were also racing around my head. By lunchtime I was berating myself and quickly dragged myself back to reality. I ate normally for the rest of the day. I will probably be fine for quite some time now.
It is difficult to control thoughts
Idle thoughts cross our minds all the time. It is difficult to just “never have an eating disordered thought”. I would go so far as to say that’s impossible. But the point is to challenge those thoughts. To see where reality lies, and to hopefully not engage in the behaviours.
And if a behaviour has been engaged in, well that is a wobble. If I keep doing it for days on end, it will become a spiral. And if there is one thing I have learned in all my 58 years, it is that I never want to dive headfirst into an eating disorder ever again. It is a hellish thing to live with and when I wobble, that is the primary reminder I need.
Food freedom is a beautiful thing. When the going gets tough, it is the thing that I try to remind myself I will lose if I spiral. I want to keep that freedom forever.
