It can take decades to unlearn. My relationship with disordered eating & poor body image started when I was just 8. 

I spent the majority of my childhood & early adulthood overweight & unhealthy. I was told in middle school by a teacher I was too big to be a cheerleader. Kids were cruel, calling me names like lambchop because I had big 80’s hair & even thicker thighs.

My disorder began with overeating & then restricting to punish myself. I’d try to skip breakfast & barely eat lunch (which I’d “allow” myself sugar free jello, a small travel size cottage cheese & 5 Ritz crackers).

My stomach would growl. I remember being embarrassed if the classroom was quiet enough for others to hear. Inevitably, I’d return home in the afternoon absolutely ravenous & binge on cookies, candy, cereal, chips, & junk food.

These episodes got more & more out of control. I continued eating less during the day, binging at night & sometimes I’d take cold medicine to make me sleep to keep from eating.

Years passed, & my eating habits fluctuated. I had never even considered throwing up until I saw a Lifetime movie about a girl who had bulimia. The process seemed easy. Eat whatever you want, throw up. The first time I purged was in middle school after eating a tub of ice cream. 

Bulimia became a sort of coping mechanism for me. I told myself my obsession with diets & exercise were normal. It was about control. I was dealing with a lot of stress: school, college, later on, relationships, a failed marriage on top of debt & drinking too much.

There were lots of things in my life I felt I wasn’t able to manage. I’d binge & get a rush. Then I’d get an even bigger, better rush after getting rid of it all.

Takeaway: Don’t make my mistakes.
If you’re dealing with an eating disorder or disordered eating & exercise habits, I encourage you to seek help.

Life is more than choosing to shrink yourself as a hobby. Eating disorders like bulimia are often not just about losing weight. They also revolve around issues of control or negative thoughts, like having a poor self-image.

The first step is admitting that you have a problem & you WANT to break the cycle. Don’t make my mistake & fill your memory book with reminders of your eating disorder instead of the truly important moments in your life!

Lies told by your food addiction.

I can’t abuse food & exercise. I’m fine.

Receptors in our gut respond to certain foods we consume by triggering release of dopamine in our brain. Exercise & social media can do the same thing. One of the hallmarks of any addiction is tolerance: progressively needing more & more of a certain substance to get the same effect. When the brain’s reward system is repeatedly flooded with dopamine, it responds by reducing the receptors as a protective mechanism. And as with drugs, people who are addicted to food often binge in order to get the same dopamine rush. The more sugar, alcohol, carbs, fat, & salt (for examples) the greater release of dopamine & “reward” we experience. Dopamine-enforced sensory cues mean we are motivated to have the substance again just by the sight, smell, & sounds of a food (like bacon cooking) or an endorphin high after working out.

I don’t have a problem. I’ll just have 1.

Addiction & recovery don’t discriminate. Most of us that have an emotional trigger to sugar, carbs, & hyperpalatable foods like dairy, cheese, bacon, keto/sugar free treats, ribeyes, ribs, nut butters, etc are abstainers when it comes to food. Abstainers usually have an all-or-nothing mentality. It’s far easier for abstainers to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. Trying to moderate becomes an internal struggle & justification of actions like: Should I? How much? Can I stop? I’m a failure! Small portions intensify cravings & lead to wanting more. Avoidance of food helps cravings pass. We do better with food rules, meal plans, tracking food/macros, fasting windows, & meat based diets. avoiding trigger foods like carbs & sweets.

This is the last binge. Diet starts tomorrow.

Habits, habits, habits. Our habits make US. The issue with food vs drug addiction is we HAVE to eat. We cannot live without food, it is literally life fuel & what we’re made from. We often use it as a reward or punishment. When you chronically restrict, then binge over & over again, it becomes a cycle we deem as “normal” (as f*cked up as it is we justify it). We also physiologically cause imbalance & lose the ability to sense true hunger cues & satiety, making over eating & binging more prevalent. This happens by throwing off our hunger & satiety hormones, leptin & ghrelin. The more we participate in these behaviors, the more our brain is wired to believe they’re accepted & normal. Ima be blunt when it comes to sugar & carbs, the more you eat, the more you crave them & harder it is to stop the cycle.

I’ll stop once I reach my goal weight.

“You’re just not trying hard enough!” Sound familiar? I remember telling myself I “just didn’t want it bad enough.” Once I was skinny all my problems would go away & I’d be happy. Guess what? They didn’t & I still wasn’t happy even when I reached my “goal weight.” I still had an addiction to food & exercise, I still binged, & my health was worse. I gained weight back because it wasn’t sustainable, physiologically trashed my hormones, gut health, & metabolism. I ignored the poor relationships I had with myself, food, & exercise. Have you ever told yourself you, “Didn’t deserve to eat & needed to workout more!?” Let’s try harder to love ourselves & seek help over restriction & self loathing. I promise you’ll get a lot further & life will suck a whole lot less.

I’m just health conscious. I’m not obsessed.

NO. This is called Orthorexia & leads to you chronically yo-yo dieting, exercise hopping, over training, pissed off & life sucking all the time. Orthorexia nervosa is perhaps best summarized as an obsession with healthy eating with associated restrictive behaviors. However, the extreme attempt to attain optimum health through attention to diet may lead to malnourishment, loss of relationships, & poor quality of life. Basically, this is you making shrinking your body your biggest hobby & priority in life. It gives you food anxiety, social anxiety, & you lose yourself. You compare to everyone, often get lost in all the information, & are confused af all the time. Hire a coach or practitioner to help guide you. More does not always mean better results when it comes to over exercising & restricting food.

The weight on the scale doesn’t trigger me.

Ever wake up & feel great only to step on the scale & see you gained 3lbs & instantly you hate yourself & the whole day turns into a dumpster fire? You look in the mirror & tell yourself you’re “fat” & only eating bread & water or whatever specific diet food all week simply because you base your worth on your appearance & number on the scale. Fat is not an emotion. You most likely are FEELING: stressed, sad, anxious, vulnerable, angry, ashamed, jealous, alone, etc. These feelings are often triggers for continual emotional eating &/or exercise abuse if you use food & exercise as numbing & coping mechanisms. Complete this statement: “_____ happened & triggered me. I am not “fat” & do not need to punish myself. I am actually feeling ______ & choose to do _____ instead.”

Orthorexia Warning Signs

• Compulsive checking of nutritional labels & obsession about the “health” of ingredients & specific foods.
• Obsession with steps, fit trackers, & calories burned.
• Feeling compelled to exercise to compensate for what you ate, when you’re ill/injured, sacrificing your mental health/work/social life to burn off calories & workout.
• Refusing to eat anything but foods that are deemed ‘healthy’ or ‘clean’.
• Unusual interest in the health of what others are eating, fitness goals, & exercise routines.
• Food consuming your every thought & feeling guilty if you didn’t workout or “ate the wrong things.”
• Showing high levels of distress & anxiety when ‘safe’ or ‘healthy’ foods aren’t available or you’re presented with social situations.
• Obsessive following of food and ‘healthy lifestyle’ blogs on social media.
• Body image issues such as body dysmorphia.

Watch your words. Common phrases that encourage disordered eating & exercise habits:

• “Diet starts tomorrow, or Monday, or January 1.”
• “I deserve a ‘cheat meal’ or ‘treat’ because I’ve been, ‘good’ all week.”
• “I already messed up my diet, might as well splurge & start again tomorrow or Monday or January 1.”
• “If I eat that I’ll need to make sure I workout enough to burn it all off.”
• “I’ll be happy when I reach my goal weight.”
• “I don’t deserve to eat that.”
• “I can’t do that until I lose the weight.”
• “You just don’t want it hard enough.”
• “It’s fine, we’ll work it off in the gym tomorrow.”
• “Whatever, calories don’t count today.”
• “I already messed up, might as well make a whole day/week/month out of it.”
• “Ugh, look at everything I ate. I’m so fat.”

Final Thoughts

When you are scrolling thru pictures on social media, remember your worth lies in your essence & your heart. You’re amazing for the sum of everything that you are. What you look like is the least most interesting, magnificent thing about you. What is: Your intelligence. Your kindness. Your relationships. Your smile. Your wrinkles. Your impact. Do not let comparing pictures & the constant pressure to shrink yourself believe that you aren’t enough & you need to be more. Go build your life & embody your big beautiful world. Self-love is an important part of a happy life. When we love ourselves, it becomes easy to go through life. There’s no judgment, fear, or low self-esteem, & instead, there’s immense gratitude & compassion towards our own selves.

The best thing is that self-love helps us have healthier relationships with the people in our lives. It’s a true win-win situation!

Oxox
Coach K

Hailing from Fishers, Indiana, Katie is an aficionado of health, mindset, human connection, & entrepreneurship. Motivational writer, speaker, doer of many things, she grew up on her family’s beef cattle & crop farm where agriculture was her first love. She is a Purdue University graduate well known for her storytelling of life lessons & personal transformation through her own relationships, financial struggles, Crohn’s Disease, disordered eating, body transformation, & adapting to a carnivore diet lifestyle.

Katie also has over 17 years experience as a Registered Radiologic Technologist, Nutritionist, Brand Growth & Sales Consultant. She works with people of all walks of life as a nutritionist & life coach to help them authentically optimize their lives to find health, wealth, & happy!

You can catch her via Instagram @lil_bit_of_fit & blog, Lilbitoffit.com