Eating Is Supposed To Be Easy: An Essay About Binge Eating, Wellbeing And Forgiveness

From ever since I could remember I have had a turbulent relationship with food. Food was both a comforter and a punisher, I ate when I was happy, I ate when I was sad and anything in-between. Coupled with my disordered eating, I had to contend with the comments of family members from childhood into adulthood. Already living in a world where I was constantly reminded that I didn’t meet the beauty standards, I didn’t find sanctitude or safety at home. Funnily enough, it has never been the media I’ve had an issue with, yes, I grew up in a time where midsized was considered plus sized, where they fat shamed Christina Aguilera and Nicole Richie… but it was the comments at home for me. Being told to cover my arms because they were too fat. Having my thigh slapped at Christmas ‘joking’ that we should roast it instead of the ham on the table and of course the quintessential “you can live off a yuh fat’. And then came the mixed signals, “why are you eating so little?” “Why are you eating so much?” Being questioned when I don’t want a second plate, or insisting I have more. 

All of this ruined my relationship with food. I no longer saw food as sustenance or fuel, but my self worth, value, comfort, emotions were all tied up into eating. So, I started hiding. I didn’t want to hear the comments, I didn’t want to get the mixed signals, I didn’t want to be reminded I wasn’t good enough because I was fat… so I hid. I didn’t eat when I was hungry. I ate whenever I had a change in my emotions. I ate to celebrate, I ate to self harm. This strained my relationship with food, making it love hate, I needed it, but I hated it. I couldn’t eat without shame, disappointment and feelings of worthlessness. Food was now tied to my self worth. 

And with that came weight gain, yoyo dieting, rebelling and low self confidence. I hated how I looked, I hated how I felt, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop eating. I couldn’t stop gaining weight. I was stuck in this vicious cycle where the thing that made me feel better was also the thing biting me in my (fat) ass!

In 2013 my mother put me on a diet. Honestly, it’s likely this wasn’t my first attempt at dieting, but it was admittedly my most memorable. I lost about 50 pounds . 

My mother bought this book and prepared the food for me. It consisted of eating for about 6 days and one day all you could have were shakes. I was starving during the entire diet, but the weight was dropping off of me and I looked great. I didn’t feel great though, I looked the best I had ever looked in my young life and felt like absolute shit, physically and mentally. 

In 2014 I went to university. I decided to keep up with my diet and now added gym. I actually liked working out, I documented a lot of it and would go to the gym.

Once I moved out and lived on campus that’s when everything went downhill. I never learnt to eat “properly” on my own, with someone controlling everything for me I never had to think about it. Not to mention by this time the gym trainer at UWI’s gym now made me feel too uncomfortable to work out with him and the men at the gym were no better- so I stopped going to the small, free school gym. School was stressful, I experienced loss and heartbreak for the first time and with every stress that came so did the pounds. I restarted several times, I got gym memberships, trainers, I tried keto, I tried everything and I just ballooned. By the time I left university I had gained back the entire 50 pounds and 10 more! 

After graduating, I was mentally exhausted, and hated every moment of working. The unbelievable hours, the unreasonable seniors, the stress of everyday life and I had quit therapy by now. I was running on fumes and finding refuge in food. By 2021, after 5 years of school and 2 years of working I had made my way up to my heaviest I’d ever been gaining 70 pounds over 7 years.

Then a shift happened, I decided enough was enough, and I didn’t want to be who I was anymore. I wanted to like the person looking back at me. By this time, I hated myself, I hated how I looked, I was unfit, I felt unlovable and was only engaging in more and more destructive behaviours. Honestly, I don’t know when or what flipped the switch, but it did. By the end of 2021 I started this new journey, I wanted to reinvent myself and I wanted to take my time, I wanted to do it with grace, love and understanding. I started my journey of rediscovering myself, happiness and peace.

I started to have open and honest conversations with myself, trying to find the root of my issues and acknowledge instead of boxing away my feelings. It’s not that I couldn’t lose the weight, I proved to myself that it was possible. It’s not that I didn’t like working out- I also proved to myself that I actually did enjoy it. It all had to do with how I felt and thought about myself. So I started with that first. I repeatedly told myself it took 20+ years for me to get here, I can’t fix this overnight. I started the mental work and eventually went back to therapy when I needed help to deal with the things I couldn’t. I’m not sure when I discovered intuitive eating, I’m sure it was from social media. My definition of intuitive eating is that I eat when I want to, what I want to and how much I want to. I listened to my body and how it felt and craved. Admittedly I was afraid to try this. I had no confidence in my ability to trust myself and to stop eating, I also thought all I would want to eat is junk! For me, intuitive eating was an act of self love, it was a challenge to start trusting myself and an exercise to actually listen to what I wanted and respecting myself.

Intuitive eating has been the best thing I’ve ever done, it changed my relationship with food forever and helped me to rediscover my interest in cooking too. The first step I took was getting to know myself, what are my triggers to binge? What foods do I binge? How do I feel when I’m full? I refused to believe in self control, I had zero restrictions, I could eat anything I wanted, I just had to be mindful about how I felt and when I slipped up I reminded myself that tomorrow is a next day and I can get up and start again. Now, some might say “Sam you don’t believe in self control? What?” And the answer is no, I don’t. I don’t believe in self control or self discipline, what I believe in is self knowledge. The truth is when I define what I mean by that, you’re likely going to ask me what is the difference… for me it’s all about language. Self control and discipline evoke feelings of restriction in my mind and automatically make me reject it. So I focused on getting to know myself and using that knowledge to influence my behaviour, and made positive behaviour easier and negative behaviour harder.

I started off first by allowing myself to eat what ever I wanted, picking up patterns on the food I liked and how it changed based on my mood. I noted the foods I liked to binge and either didn’t buy them for my home or replaced them with healthier alternatives. I cooked more at home, but still allowed myself to eat out and not feel guilty about it. I started to introduce ‘healthier’ foods like nuts, fruits and vegetables by starting with the ones I liked the most. I picked up my cues for feeling full, cues for eating not because I was hungry but I wanted to comfort myself and if after eating I was still hungry, I would drink water and wait to see if the feeling persisted. One big step I took as well was documenting myself eating, I used to hate eating in public and I hated being photographed with food! I always felt like no matter what I ate I’d be scrutinised because of my weight. 

I want to highlight some examples of my journey of improving my eating and decreasing my binging. I really like Nutella, in December 2022 I bought a jar of it… within a day or two it was done. I was well into my intuitive eating journey, I had gotten better at binging and that’s when it clicked to me that there will be foods I cannot ‘control myself around’ so I decided instead of buying it and trying to resist I would simply not buy it. If I wanted Nutella I’d get a small snack packet or buy a meal with it at a restaurant. This made me take note of the foods that wouldn’t last and stopped buying them or replacing them with better options… I also don’t return to the grocery store until my groceries are finished so I can’t replace my binging foods.

I grocery shop weekly and only meal prep a few meals at a time, this helps me decrease food wastage. Groceries are so expensive and I would feel so bad that I wasted all that money on food I didn’t eat. I also stopped buying foods I would hope to eat, waste of time! So, I have a continuous grocery and meals list. I also keep foods that are easy to make because I realised I would snack and snack because it took too much effort to cook. 

I chose better versions of foods I liked and only buy foods I like. I love love love corned beef, so now I only buy the reduce salt version. While this is the more expensive option, I eat corned beef multiple times a month and had to be realistic. When I started to introduce higher quality foods or healthier foods, I took it one step at a time. I really like cucumbers, callaloo and cabbage so those are the only vegetables I currently buy.

Since October 2021 when I was at my heaviest (I rarely weigh myself by the way) I have not touched that number since, and on my weight chart there has been a steady decline… I only recently realised after being curious and going on the scale at a hotel gym, that I had gone down 25 pounds! People have been telling me I look smaller, and clothes has been fitting me differently, but I never connected the dots.

I give myself credit for where I am now, and acknowledge that I’m not where I want to be. My primary focus now is focusing on higher quality and healthier food options, reducing my sugar intake, eating more vegetables and learning how to stop myself when I get on my binging roller coaster. I still haven’t perfected not binging once triggered, sometimes I’ll get away with drinking a lot of water or sparkling water so I can get the sensation… but some days, I’m so wired up that I just let it happen and the next day I get up and start again. To me, it makes no sense I dwell on it, I think about how I would binge daily and now I can go weeks without binging at all… to me that’s a win! 

I’m not on a weightless journey, it’s so much more than that for me. The moment I took away the pressure and the restrictions, everything became easier. Grace and forgiveness have been the best things I’ve given myself. It feels like I’m constantly restarting, and it sucks. It makes me feel like I can’t stick to anything, this time around, I think I’m starting the right way. And I’ve decided to share the journey, almost like an online journal, but also so I can have accountability buddies! Plus, I love reading the stories people share, and maybe by sharing my own, I can find strength in community and others may identify with what I’m going through and feel inspired too. 

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. Talking about my disordered eating makes me feel naked, exposed and vulnerable. I actually can’t believe I’ve moved from hiding it to being able to talk openly and freely about my topsy turvy relationship with food. 

Love, 
Samantha