Not feeling as good as I was yesterday...

...because I'm feeling AMAZING.

I've noticed that I never write about what makes me feel GOOD. Probably because I'm too busy being out there and doing it. But right now I feel like it's really important to record this feeling for posterity, so I don't have to keep on learning this lesson:

When I eat properly*, I feel unstoppably energetic and fabulous.

When I binge, I feel slow and sad and useless and bloated and FAT and miserable.

* Of course, I have somewhat ridiculously warped views on what "eating properly" means. ~An apple a day keeps the fat away!~


I know this. I've been through this cycle countless times. So why do I continue to binge?

(I meant for this to be a quick happy-go-lucky post, but it's turned into the monster below. You've been warned!)

I've been thinking about this a lot for the past few days (monthsyearsdecades?) and came to the sudden realisation that the crappy feelings I get now from binging weren't always there. They crept up on me very very slowly.

I remember binging from when I was very young. It would only happen on the weekend when I stayed with my grandparents, because they would let me have anything I wanted, whereas my nasty old mother expected me to obey her rules and be disciplined. (Now of course, I love my mum and am ineffably grateful for the 5 "miserable" days I spent with her while she tried to undo all of the physical and psychological damage that I unknowingly suffered every weekend.)

At 7 years old I had mastered the ability to consume 4 slices of bread with ridiculous amounts of nutella for breakfast, a Happy Meal for lunch, an unknown amount of chocolate for an "afternoon snack", another Happy Meal for dinner, and a couple of bowls of ice cream. I fucking wish I was joking. This was a typical Saturday for the first 10 years of my life. Needless to say, I was the fat kid.

I started high school just before I turned 11, and although I'm not sure why, I stopped spending time with my grandparents. My mum says that I just seemed to get sick of the free reign I had while I was there, which was probably just a sign of me maturing. Whatever the reason, I am once again ineffably grateful. Spending my weekends at home meant that all of my food intake was dependent on my mum... and there is no way in hell she would let either of us near a McDonald's, let alone TWICE A DAY.

I still had issues with food (and of course, my mum isn't completely innocent; one of the fun facts about me is that I have NEVER seen my mother eat anything other than an apple). For a year or so I picked up the habit of eating my lunch as soon as I got on the school bus, about half an hour after I'd had breakfast. Then I spent about a year throwing my lunch away as soon as I got to school. This binge-restrict-binge pattern has continued ever since.

My binge habit really started to accelerate when I began uni, because it meant more freedom. I had ACTUAL REAL MONEY that I could use to buy WHATEVER I WANTED! I started off buying a bag of M&Ms (200g or 250g? Either way, way too much chocolate) every Friday afternoon when I had a three-hour break. Then I started getting them a couple of times a week. Then every day. Then twice a day (one for during the day, one for on the way home).

Fast-forward five years. Now, one measly bag of chocolate is considered a "good", "manageable" binge, which should make me "happy that I didn't go over-the-top".

I'm so fucked up.

I've completely lost my original point in my effort to word-vomit my story (pun intended). Back in those early days of uni, I felt great. Chocolate was the cherry on top of my week/day/hour. I felt content all afternoon. I didn't feel any worse the next day, and my weight was completely stable.

After a while I started getting what my mum unaffectionately refers to as "food hangovers". I attributed it to getting older. My response was to cut some salt - but not sugar, never ever ever cut sugar - from my diet. A while after that, I started feeling crappy all afternoon after I binged.

[Insert a few years of switching between intense binging and intense starving every few months. Yaaaay?]

But never before, until a few weeks ago, have I ever felt bad WHILE I was binging. I kept doing it every day, anyway, worse than ever before. I guess I figured I just needed to keep doing it to get the feeling back.

The past two weeks will have been completely worth it, if that was what I needed to snap me out of the habit. It's only been four days, I know, and I must sound hopelessly optimistic, but I feel... powerful?... in a way that I never have before. I've "quit" binging before (or rather, switched it to heavy restricting) for months at a time, but I always went back. This feels different. I think I've FINALLY satisfied myself in knowing that NOTHING about it benefits me. Before I always had a reason to go back to it, no matter how ridiculous and self-sabotaging that reason was.

Even as I'm typing this, I find my conviction in this sudden realisation a bit silly. But the conviction itself hasn't changed. Does that make sense?

It's hard to explain. Even thinking of my eating habits a week ago is strange to me. It's as if now that I've experienced a complete lack of pleasure in eating that way, I no longer understand how I could EVER have gained pleasure from it.

Is it even a little bit realistic to think that something in my head has "clicked"? Or is it just wishful thinking? I feel so SURE about this, but when I try to rationalise it, it doesn't make any sense. Deep-rooted issues like this don't just go away overnight. A part of me believes that they don't ever go away.

But I feel really, really GOOD right now.

I've confused the fuck out of myself. But I still feel just as good.

Maybe one day I'll "click" again, and I can feel good without starving, too, and then I'll be normal. A girl can dream...