I've found it much easier to stick with than I thought I might. Having a history of eating disorders I was worried about placing rules around food again. I didn't want to fall back into obsessive ways of thinking about food and prescriptive rules what I could or couldn't eat. I spent 15+ years of my life attempting to live with excessively restrictive rules around food & although it's been many years since I've placed those kinds of rules around food, I did wonder about the possibility of triggering a relapse.
Hence I didn't embark on this plan lightly. I'd given it a lot of thought before I started. In part, the experience has been connected to my PhD research & my findings around the importance of being connected to our bodies and listening to them & their needs. I felt I needed to 'practice what I'm preaching' to maintain my congruency in my research & therapy practice. I felt I already had quite a good handle on this, but I wanted this eating experience to enable me to challenge myself a little bit further.These last few weeks have proven to be everything I'd hoped they would. And it's been very different from any 'eating plan' I embarked on from my eating disordered self. The 'rules' have been easy to put into practice & as it's essentially been around eating healthy, nutritious, unprocessed foods which I enjoy eating, it's been fairly easy to maintain. The most difficult thing for me has been getting myself organised enough to ensure I always had the fresh foods available. It's made me realise how often I would just 'make do' with whatever I could find in my cupboards, fridge or freezer without really thinking about the nutritional value. I was essentially not fully taking care of myself & my body. The last few weeks have made me more aware of the importance of making appropriate food choices, knowing that the food I eat will have an impact on both my physical body, my mental functioning & my general sense of well-being. All things which I knew already and talk to clients about, but this experience has enabled me to embody this knowledge at a much deeper experiential level.
The other big difference has been that it hasn't been a prescriptive diet & I haven't had to think about things like counting calories, fat or anything else. I've still been able to listen to my body (& therefore myself) & feed it (me) when it's (I've) been hungry. I've recognised at a deeper level how significant hunger is to me. For the years of my eating disorders, I essentially over-rode my hunger ... either following excessively restrictive eating plans in an attempt to control or lose weight, or over-eating & bingeing in a way that paid no attention to physiological hunger. I now more fully appreciate hunger as
an essential bodily need. Being able to ensure my physical needs were met ensured I've not felt hungry; therefore I've not felt deprived in any way. Rather, as the foods I've been eating have been highly satiating, I've experienced a sense of more fully satisfying my body's physical needs.
As a result of this, I've also become more fully aware of some of the other things I hunger for & the feelings I still sometimes use food to manage. I now see more clearly how much I've been 'using' that bar of chocolate or glass of red wine to dull some of those emotional hungers & feelings. Yesterday for example, I spent most of the day sat at my computer working on my thesis. At those times when I felt confused or frustrated with how it was going, my mind turned to eating 'something nice.' Those are the times when I might have eaten that bar of chocolate in an attempt to soothe myself & my feelings. And yes, it would have temporarily given me a boost (psychologically & physically), but it wouldn't have solved my frustration. It would probably have distracted me too much & I'd have ended up leaving my computer & possibly not going back to it. Whereas yesterday, I recognised the 'craving' for 'something nice' for what it was ... & instead of running away from my feelings, I sat with them, allowed them to be there & just kept going. And ended up having a much more productive day than I would have done had I given in to the temptation for chocolate!
It's okay to 'use' food at times to help us manage feelings or to comfort or reward ourselves; most people do, consciously or not. The important thing is to learn to discriminate between physiological hunger & emotional hunger so that we can make more informed decisions about whether we need to satisfy a bodily need or an emotional need.
All in all, it's been the positive experience I'd hoped it would have been, enabling me to think more carefully about the foods I put into my body and to connect more fully with my body and the satisfaction of its nutritional needs.
I would never condone anyone still experiencing an eating disorder to embark on such a plan or to follow yet another set of externally imposed rules.
I embarked on this from a very different place and for me, it's been about getting even more fully connected with myself and my body; allowing me to listen more closely to my body and its needs ...
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