Honestly asking the question of Do I have an eating Disorder? is a good place to start progressing in life. If you think you may have a problem, but only try and hide it, you’re heading in the wrong direction. So awareness with eating disorders and any addictions or self harm, or depression is the first step to stopping what does not work well for you.
Two major and easy ways to know Do I have an eating Disorder? are answered here. The first way is simple. Is my life and my eating manageable? Is it causing distraction, disorder, lying and hiding or some kind of chaos that hinders you from what you want most for your life? If the answer is yes, look deeper at eating disorders, addictions, or personality issues that need to be treated therapeutically in some way shape or form.
The second way is to see is you are abstinent. If you are doing what does not work for you again and again that is an addition. We don’t have to be addicted to drinking when we are addicted to thinking. In other words, if we are doing things that harm us, we probably need help to change. Abstinence is a loose guide, that can be tightened with professional help to see if you are able to DO healthy eating. Not just think about it. If you cant do it, all you need is a system to do it. That’s where professional help comes in. There is also not one way to skin a cat. So there is a lot of arguing about what eating disorders are and how they should be managed. We don’t really care what you do, or what system you choose, just that you don’t stay stuck in something that harms you habitually. Food is fuel not therapy.
What is Abstinence?
It is important not to make food (and behaviours around it) the issue in recovery from an eating disorder. It is only the symptom. Abstinence from compulsive eating, starving and purging is only the first step and not the goal in itself. What is also true is that many people come into Twelve Step recovery after years, or even a lifetime of disordered eating patterns. The following guidelines are an attempt to answer some of the basic questions and issues that often arise about how to be physically abstinent from using food addictively.
The whole purpose of recovery from addictive disease is to be able to rid ourselves of emotional obsessions and their damaging physical consequences. Simply changing an obsession for doing something into an obsession for not doing something (bingeing into starving for example) is no improvement. The correct treatment for both is to follow the guidelines for abstinence – in order to relieve the physical manifestation of addictive behaviour – and then work the Twelve Step programme in order to facilitate long term emotional and psychological health.
The basic issues of abstinence in an eating disorder are simple and straightforward – just as simple as for alcohol or drugs: put down the addictive substances and behaviours, then experience and deal appropriately with specific feelings and realities.
The guidelines are useful for patients in early recovery who may have little or no concept of how to fuel their bodies healthily. They are a framework – not a diet or strict regime – around which we can build a long term, well balanced and healthy way of eating. The basic Twelve Step principle around addictive substances is for total abstinence since we are powerless over them once we engage. Thus alcoholics avoid alcohol entirely. Food is essential for life and therefore we must ‘enter the arena’ every mealtime. Some say it is like having three thimblefuls of vodka each day, but they are wrong: alcoholics have to drink every day in order to stay alive just as sufferers from eating disorders have to eat. However, alcoholics do not have to drink mood altering drinks (anything that contains alcohol) and, correspondingly, eating disorder sufferers do not have to eat specific foods that have a mood altering effect. Nor do they have to involve themselves in mood altering behaviours around food. Abstinence is possible just as straightforwardly for people with eating disorders as it is for alcoholics. All the more reason to have a clear definition of our abstinence, to reduce the number of choices we need to make and to avoid those food substances that are more likely to lead us back to using food compulsively or obsessively, i.e., white sugar and artificial sweeteners.
Behavioural abstinence involves having normal portion sizes in three regular meals daily with nothing to eat in between. The appetite centre of the brain becomes stimulated by chewing. Once stimulated it remains ‘turned on’ for about twenty minutes. Grazing can therefore result in a constant feeling of hunger or expectation of food and it is also thus possible to still feel hungry after a vast, but rapid binge.
Do I have an eating Disorder? General Info
Eating should be a pleasure: the taste and process of eating should be enjoyable.
Fluid retention, diabetes, thyroid deficiency and various other medical conditions can have an effect on body weight but can easily be controlled medically and should have no effect on the simultaneous treatment of an eating disorder.
As a general rule for good health, one should drink one and a half to two litres (seven to ten cups) of fluid each day.
Bottled sauces are best avoided because many of them contain white sugar or they may be very spicy and stimulate the appetite. They also blunt the palate from progressively getting more sensitive to delicate flavouring.
Appetite suppressants should be totally avoided because they are addictive. It should be realised that nicotine, caffeine and diet drinks tend to be used as appetite suppressants and are also addictive in their own right. Do I have an eating Disorder? What a question! But we hope the answer is becomming clearer. Why wait for help.
Laxatives should be avoided because they form part of the binge/purge behavioural addiction component of an eating disorder. Bowel function takes time to return to normal after years of abuse through an eating disorder. Patients with anorexia, for example, will often complain that they are ‘constipated’ when what they mean is that they have the sensation of something in their bowels: not constipation but hypersensitivity as a result of years of starvation.
Taking regular exercise is healthy but as little as 30 minutes a day for three days a week is quite healthy enough. Exercise and the ‘high’ it can produce can become an addiction in itself.
It takes eleven days for the emotional high and subsequent withdrawal symptoms from sugar binges to clear. Each sugar binge will result in its own withdrawal period.
Eat everything on your plate. Don’t have second helpings.
If you experience any cravings to binge, purge or starve you should share these feelings with someone at the time, if possible. Cravings are not something to be ashamed about, nor are they a sign that you are ‘doing badly’. Indeed, they are entirely normal for an addict in early recovery.
‘Forbidden foods’. Sufferers, particularly anorexics tend to develop lists of forbidden foods – often the fatty ones, meats and carbohydrates – which are perfectly healthy. This can even sometimes take the form of supposed food allergies and tactile vegetarianism. It is important to reconsider what we are prepared to eat when we enter into recovery.
Artificial sweeteners are the equivalent of a non alcoholic beer for an alcoholic: they keep the sense of taste attuned to what we used to like. Many eating disorder sufferers have well developed addictive relationships with diet drinks and sugar free gums. Similarly, adding salt and pepper and various spices and bottled sauces will tend to stimulate the appetite excessively and keep our taste buds over-stimulated. It is better to avoid these substances and allow ourselves to develop a sense of taste for the more subtle flavours in food. Sufferers tend to like to eat stronger, sweeter, saltier, spicier foods than most. It can take several weeks or even months for our taste buds to get used to normal flavours.
For more information on Do I have an eating Disorder? call +27824424779 or email pathwaysplett@gmail.com we do super modern treatments, non-clinical and 100% non rehab styled. Experts that are registered with 20 years of experience are here to help you heal any eating disorder, addiction, or personality problem you have.