I had a lot of posts and emails after my last post, telling me I should get a counselor or a therapist, or some kind of eating disorder specialist, or start going to a support group like OA or Weight Watchers or some other kind of therapy group. Thanks for the suggestions, but no thanks. There's really nothing new about those ideas and I do think they are valid ones. I appreciate you caring enough to make a suggestion. Sometimes people really do need an outsider helping them fix their emotional issues or heal from the past. Sometimes people do benefit from going to a group where other people have similar eating or weight related problems and everyone works on it together. That's really not something I want or would benefit from. Oh maybe if I had a *real* ED specialist who has lots of experience and training dealing with this stuff, it would help me. It probably would. We don't have anyone close by I can see who has that kind of background. I went to see the only counselor I could find who has ED experience, and wrote about that earlier in my blog. I didn't get a whole lot out of it and usually felt like I was wasting time going in there. I've been to plenty of other, mainstream and/or church-based counselors and really don't like it. I also don't like OA (in person or online) and never enjoyed Weight Watchers when I went years ago. I have been in a couple of other weight loss type, recovery type groups and they are just not my thing. And to clarify, I am not depressed, I feel good emotionally, I like my life, I am not "struggling" with any issues. I worked on a lot of the emotional stuff while I was losing weight, because I no longer had the coping mechanism of eating and had to actually deal with the issues I was trying to stuff down. Not much left.... I am happy. But yeah, the extra weight is hurting my joints and I know is not the best for my overall health, so I don't want to keep plowing happily forward from 250 to 260 to 300. No thanks!
I thought about it and decided I can continue on with my calm, unrestricted eating as long as I shift a few of my thought processes and tweak the habits a bit. I can't justify counting calories or carbs or weighing and measuring my food and risking the ED resurfacing. Instead, I will nurture that tendency I have developed to reject foods that cause me pain. It has worked very well for avoiding sugar (as a choice, not a rule), so why not for processed foods and carbs? It's really a mental process of equating the food with the result of eating it... something I was unable to do when I was blinded by food obsession. So that's, I think, the long term solution. Yes, I have always lost weight well eating low carb. But I am not going on a "diet" that restricts whole foods groups or brings up feelings of failure if I deviate from some list. My body knows what I need. This is all about staying calm and non-reactive to diet, food, weight, etc in order to let the eating disorder heal (or die!) Maybe to a person who has never had an eating disorder, these two things look the same:
I am not eating that candy bar because I need to lose weight and I have to stick to this diet.
Do I want that candy bar? No, because it would make me feel worse if I ate it.
But to someone who has struggled with binge eating, obsessive food thoughts, or compulsive overeating, these two approaches are vastly different! One is a demand, a rule, fear based, resolve driven, motivation dependent. The other gives a true choice where either option would result in emotional peace. It is self-love driven, with no risk of failure. This is my path to healing.
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