When my Motivation Changed
(How I could finally recover)

In high school my eating disorder started quietly with a casual diet. After some time, my eating became very restrictive and this turned to extreme dieting. When my guilt attached to eating intensified, I started to purge my food. After purging my meals for some time, I entered a very stressful period of my life (New York Fashion Week) and I started to binge and purge for the first time.

I vividly remember having what I call "eating blackouts" in front of my food cabinet in the model apartment. I'd feel frenzied and tortured, eating everything in sight and trying to stop myself simultaneously. It felt like a time-warp where I'd be standing in front of the cabinet and then "wake up" with a new jar of peanut butter completely empty in my hands. I'd emerge out of these "black outs" feeling sick to my stomach and immensely guilty. A few minutes later I would go to the bathroom and throw everything up.

To be honest, I do not know if I would have been able to recover as quickly as I did without letting my eating disorder get this bad. Similar to others suffering from an eating disorder, my initial ED was motivated by the need to be thin. When I started to uncontrollably binge, I gained more weight which made modeling feel even more impossible to continue. But quitting modeling is not what saved me.

I started to heal when my motivations started to shift. Many horrible side effects came with the new binging/purging pattern.  I always felt sick to my stomach and overly full, I continuously had a putrid taste in my mouth and I was constantly running to the bathroom or throwing up in my mouth. Slowly, my motivation to binge was overpowered by my motivation to not feel physically sick/ nauseous  overly full.

The shift was powerful. I started to notice that while I wanted to remain thin, I wanted to stop feeling constantly sick to my stomach more. Previously, I starved myself to avoid feeling "guilty" or "fat", but after getting deep into the binge/purge cycle, feeling physically "sick" was what I wanted to avoid. This was not a deliberate shift but a very natural one.

With this, I found myself making fewer late night trips to the cabinet. While it took months to stop binging/purging, this consciousness also allowed me to notice my trigger foods. Because I wanted to stop feeling sick, I soon wanted to avoid them. My need to be thin was finally overpowered by a new need.

While it has been about 5 years since I've fully recovered, I can tell you this: My need to avoid feeling sick from eating still remains. This has help me immensely in never relapsing. Instead of overeating, I am now programmed to stop when I'm satisfied. I'm happily a "grazer" instead of a "meals person." I don't eat large three meals a day, I eat smaller meals when I'm hungry and stop when I'm satisfied. I also eat snacks when I want them. Finally, food is just food again and there is no more emotion or pain attached (thank god). Of course I'll sit down for a big dinner now and then, but  the temptation to keep eating "just cuz" is not there. I'll take the to-go container, please.

Have any other readers who are fully recovered ever noticed a key motivation shift that lead to their recovery as I have? For me I could boil it down to this: something needs to overpower your need to feel thin/feel control.

Please share your stories with me. I'd love to hear them! Margaretjmccabe@gmail.com

xoxo

Meggasus