Last year when I shot a video on How to prevent Binge eating I received SO MANY E-mails and messages from many of you who were suffering. I’ve decided to create another video on how to get through the Holidays without binge eating! I’ve posted the video at the bottom of this blog post.
“BED” {Binge Eating Disorder} is a VERY serious disease that can actually lead to death (as so many eating disorders do)! I suffered from BED and both bulimia alternating with periods of anorexia for far too long. The Holidays were especially tough for me. I would take my “Big Girl salads” to family dinners then go home and binge on upwards of 10,000 calories of packaged processed “health foods”! It’s a common characteristic of people who suffer from binge eating. I always followed these binge episodes that would last anywhere from 2-7 days with what many call “restriction or exercise bulimia”! During this phase I would punish myself (literally) by isolating myself and restricting my intake of food while spending HOURS per day at the gym. This endless cycle led me nowhere fast and before long my weight had fluctuated from a healthy 142 to 92 LBS. I literally looked like a prisoner of war. It wasn’t until I met my sister Cassandra out shopping one December morning that I began to realize I had a problem. She hadn’t seen me in a few months and was brought to tears by my appearance.
She wrote me a letter two weeks later entitled “I LOVE YOU, ARE YOU LISTENING”! I’ve taken a screen shot image of the letter below. Grab your box of tissues and take a look.
This letter was received eleven years ago almost to the day. You are seeing one paragraph of twenty! The letter contained doctors she wanted to take me to visit “together” and each paragraph was ended with the words “I love you, are you listening”!
I thank God and my sister for this letter almost daily. I truly feel she saved my life!
As I gear up to give my first ever Ted talk about my struggle with the very eating disorder that almost took my life I want to say this… Never do you come back fully to who you were before this monster took over your mind and eventually your body! You never come back, at least not all the way, never fully! There will always be an ever lasting odd distance between you and the people you love. A distance between the girl you once were and the woman you survive into. You never come all the way out of the mirror you stand before, the mirror that shows your truth, the way others see you and then a reflection of the false imagery you see as yourself. For the rest of your life, you will stand with one foot in this world and the other foot in a land where everything is upside down, backwards and lonely.
Here is the video I promised you! Enjoy & watch until the end. It’s a valuable video full of great tips to help you prevent a binge!