Looking Beyond the Food in Eating Disorder Recovery
One of the core philosophies of my work as a nutritionist specializing in disordered eating is that what is happening on your plate is happening in your life.
What do I mean by this?
We hear people say all the time that an eating disorder is never really about the food, and this is absolutely the truth. To heal from an eating disorder and find a healthy relationship with food and body, we must look beyond the food on our plate. Afterall, fixating on the food can never “fix” anything.
When we struggle with any eating disorder, the patterns on our plate become reflective in our life.
For example:
Those who restrict their food, often restrict elsewhere in their lives as well.
Some examples of this are: isolating from family and friends and restricting, or avoiding, social outings and experiences.
Where we restrict, we may also binge and purge.
This may be very literal within our food behaviours. The cycle of restricting food intake for a period of time followed by binge eating and purging is one we see often within our clinical work.
However, this can be external to food as well. For example, someone may restrict their food, but then binge drink in a social setting that is perhaps uncomfortable, and then “purge” in an angry outburst to a family or friend.
Within eating disorder recovery, it is so valuable to be able to look beyond the plate and notice where those patterns are showing up in your life.
This enables you to go deeper into the work and experience a complete recovery.
It also helps you to get “ahead of the ball” within your eating disorder recovery journey. By this, I mean that if you are able to become aware of the patterns in both life and plate, then you can begin to notice when you are in your pattern and foresee the next step.
In this way, you bring more awareness to your eating disorder, and can begin to look to plug in additional supports or alternate activities at various points in your plate and life patterns which will help to disrupt the eating disorder cycle as a whole.
Let’s explore an example of this:
In the scenario above, if you have been restricting your food intake and are aware of your personal patterns of binge, purge and restrict in both food and life, you may notice that when a friend texts you to go out, for example, you have the urge to “binge” on a substance to give you the feeling of alleviation of those social discomforts. But now you know that this is all part of your eating disorder pattern. It’s an extension to what is happening on your plate, and continually engaging in this pattern will lead you back to restriction with your food.
With this awareness, you can decide to make a different choice.
You may choose to say yes to plans and if you feel very uncomfortable, maybe you ask your friend to amend those plans to a night in or a quieter night, for example. There is a spectrum of showing up and nothing is all or nothing.
To help you explore the connections between plate and life, I want to provide you with 4 journal prompts:
How do patterns of binge, purge and restrict show up in your life?
Where do you binge outside of food? For example, some people “binge” shop, spend a lot of money at once, or binge watch TV shows, or sexual partners, etc.
Where do you restrict outside food? For example, some may be very closed off with their emotions, struggle to let people into their lives, restrict social outings, be very stringent with their spending, etc.
If/ where do you purge outside of food? This may be purging your closet in an effort to feel better, or maybe a buildup of anger and release, purging people in your life, etc.
The most important thing to keep in mind within this exploration, is that regardless of where and how those patterns are showing up in your life, there is no shame in this. It is so common and normal that I am writing an entire blog post about it! If we can release the guilt and shame around our behaviours (I know, this is extremely difficult and often a long process) and bring forward some curiosity, compassion, and sense of exploration, we can begin to find the awareness and the elevated emotions necessary to create change.
Once we know where and how those patterns are showing up within both plate and life, we can begin to get ahead of the ball: to notice when we are in a pattern and utilize tools external to the eating disorder.
And as always, if you are looking for support in the recovery of yourself or a loved one, please reach out and let’s chat! We offer free discovery calls to learn more about what you as a family/ individual are struggling with and share how best we can support.
