Chocolate Biscuit Therapy

I've said this before - but I used to believe that I was addicted to food, and more specifically sugar. I used to believe this because I used to gorge on large amounts of sugary (and fatty - but interestingly no one talks about fat addiction, in fact lots of people seem to think fat is a superfood these days) foods in one sitting - one or two family blocks of chocolate, whole tubs of ice cream, whole packets of biscuits, eating way beyond the point when I was full, going to bed with a sick stomach and a racing heart, taking medication to control the heartburn that came with eating so much food. It felt like I would go into a trance like state where I wasn't even tasting the food - I just knew I had to have more, I felt out of control and desperate. I felt like I could never have just one or two biscuits - I felt that if I had a block of chocolate in my pantry I would have to gobble it all up in one sitting.

Still it wasn't even the actual food that was the biggest problem for me - it was all the really disordered behaviors that went with it that I felt were even more disturbing - sneaking around trying to make sure no one ever actually saw me eating, hiding the evidence by eating in the car and then stopping on the way home to get rid of the rubbish or not using the bin under my desk to get rid of my wrappers but using the bin in the kitchen, sneaking into the kitchen when no one was around and furiously eating slice after slice of the leftover birthday cake, going to the shops and buying food and hiding it under my jumper for the walk back to my desk so no one could see.

The feelings of shame, the disgust with myself. It's embarrassing to write  about this here but I feel like it's also necessary - it's part of my healing and I hope it will help others as well - I know I can't be the only one who has behaved and felt like this.

Internet diagnosis - Sugar addiction

Internet treatment  - Give up sugar forever and live your life feeling like you can't trust yourself around food.

Actual diagnosis - Binge eating disorder 

Actual treatment (what has worked for me) - Therapy (including choc biscuit therapy which I'll get to soon)! Give up dieting, learn to see all foods as morally neutral, learn to eat a balanced diet, learn to trust yourself around food, stop being afraid of food, learn to love and accept yourself.

I wanted to share with you a little tool I've been using that has helped with my recovery - Chocolate Biscuit Therapy. It's really like exposure therapy that gets used for treatment of other phobias. It's a tool I've been using to help me stop being afraid of my old binge foods, to start trusting myself around those foods and to build a balanced diet that includes some less nutritious foods.

So, most nights, after dinner, I make a cuppa, get 2 chocolate biscuits out of the packet and put them on a plate, and then I sit and enjoy - really enjoy them, eating them mindfully and slowly, while we watch some TV.

I started doing this pretty early on in my recovery and found it was great for teaching myself that I can actually have just a couple of biscuits and that having the packet in the house doesn't mean I have to eat them all at once.

I also learned that the act of getting just two out and putting them on a plate is helpful - it sets a clear boundary in my mind, and helps me to see the biscuits as food, rather than binge food. The times I have eaten more than two have been when I have the packet sitting out in front of me.

I stopped doing it for a while because I thought that maybe I "shouldn't" be getting into the habit of eating sweets after dinner, but I've started again recently because it's actually something I've really come to enjoy and also, funnily enough, it's become like the "full stop" to my eating at the end of a day.

It stops the mindset that to be fit and healthy I have to give up enjoying food.

My eating has become a lot more settled and balanced now that I'm a good six months into recovery and so in that context I'm happy that it fits within my goals of being happy, healthy and "normal" around food.

I have taught myself that It is possible to eat sugar without bingeing on it. It is possible to eat sugar as part of a balanced diet.

Of course this is what has worked for me and what works for you might be different, but I've found it to be quite a powerful tool.

I want to finish by saying this - A lot of people, regardless of if they have an eating disorder or not - believe that they have a "problem" with or are addicted to sugar or even a particular food such as chocolate. I no longer believe that this is due to the chemical properties of that food itself - more so, I believe it's because we think we "shouldn't" be eating those foods, we feel guilt and shame about eating them, and we feel that we should be giving them up - this leads to a perpetual state of "last supper" eating. Something to think about.

The moderation experiment

January is a hard time to be an advocate for moderation. With all the New Years resolutions it seems every body is giving up something. I've heard about people giving up sugar, doing paleo challenges, doing the Whole30, giving up bread and giving up carbs. It's been so hard to bite my tongue! I feel like if I hear one more person talk about their diet I'm going to scream - still, I have to remind myself it took me a good 15 years to get where I am now - in fact in 2013 I asked for Paleo cook books for Christmas!

Everybody is on their own journey and I respect that. I haven't really come up with a respectful way to suggest that maybe all of this restriction isn't really necessary in conversations, so I tend to just smile and nod. But, this blog is my space and I've put myself out here to challenge the diet and restriction culture we live in - so I am going to use today's blog to ask - Why do so many people believe you have to give up something to be fitter, healthier and, if that is one of your goals, loose weight?

In my experience - all you really have to give up is dieting and restriction (and, as a consequence of that, binging). You have to stop labelling foods as good and bad and attaching your self worth to what you eat - and really, that's not giving up anything at all - it's gaining a whole lot of freedom!

It's not very sexy though, is it? This moderation concept. I sometimes wonder if we don't feel like we deserve health unless we have deprived ourselves to get there - do we feel like we have to earn it?

I've started my own moderation experiment this year - I am keeping a food diary and sending it to a personal trainer friend once a week. I'm just writing down what I eat, no counting of anything. I just felt like I needed this little bit of accountability to get me to actually think about what I am eating. Mindfulness is something that takes practice and when you have spent most of your life not even really tasting your food having an external reminder of what you are doing is helpful. Still, in the two weeks I have been keeping my food diary I have still eaten pizza, chocolate, ice-cream, cake and lots of bread and oats! I've also had a few glasses of wine and beer. The difference is that I am eating all of these things consciously - I am tasting them fully and stopping when I have had enough. Sometimes I clear my plate, sometimes I don't. I'm looking at my food intake as a whole over the week and trying to balance it out rather than letting one "bad" choice lead me down the spiral of binging - and I have lost weight without feeling deprived.

I think this is something that "normal eaters" do automatically, but for now keeping the food diary is the tool I am using to help me get there.

A pretty remarkable thing has happened - I've found I'm becoming less and less afraid of food. Invitations out to dinner aren't tinged with the fear that I'm going to "ruin" my diet. I was given a massive box of Lindt balls last weekend and I still have some left. In the past I would have either - eaten them all in one sitting, thrown them away immediately or eaten half of them in one sitting and then thrown the rest away! It's madness! 

Advocates of the Paleo diet or other low carb high fat diets say that the food pyramid is wrong and is what has lead to the "obesity crisis". I just don't believe that is true - how many people really follow the food pyramid? How much of the results attributable to these diets is actually because people start paying attention to what they are eating and start choosing less processed options and eating more veggies? I tend to believe that's the real "miracle" of these diets. You can achieve the same by choosing to eat more mindfully - without all the restriction that comes with it.

I really don't think it's necessary to micromanage your food intake and severely restrict food groups or food in general to be healthy. I'm setting out to prove that this year!

The biggest argument for moderation for me is that is the most powerful tool I've found for stoping binging. When you are not constantly feeling like you are being good or bad, on track or off track, food just becomes food - something we all need and something to enjoy but not something to be obsessed with.

I encourage everyone to try it!