I had an eating disorder. I think? Part of me wants to say I have an eating disorder. Because, as the saying goes: once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. But using the past tense makes me feel better about myself. I like feeling better about myself. It’s a rare sensation. And so, I’ll pitch my [...]
I had an eating disorder.
I think?
Part of me wants to say I have an eating disorder. Because, as the saying goes: once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. But using the past tense makes me feel better about myself. I like feeling better about myself. It's a rare sensation. And so, I'll pitch my tent in the past tense.
I was a binge eater.
It was difficult for me to stop eating. Some days, I ate and ate and ate. I ate until my eyes watered. I ate until I felt like I was torturing myself. I ate until I knew I was going to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating like mother with menopause, wanting to unfold my intestines into the toilet.
I kept my binge eating under control for years, which is to say: I binged one day every week. On purpose. On schedule. Eventually, however, I started binging more — when I didn't want to binge. Even when my stomach was bloated and beyond filled with food, I wanted to shove more stuff inside of me. Almost every single night, I found myself scavenging the pantry like a varmint, looking for anything edible that could fill the void inside of me.
Nothing ever did.
Most nights, I was able to control my desire to stuff my stomach with bottom-shelf junk food. Even though I wanted to binge, I didn't. It wasn’t easy. It was like keeping a cork pressed inside of a shaken bottle of champagne. I'd be holding chocolate-covered pretzels my wife brought home from school, and, after a lengthy dialogue with the devil on my deltoid, I'd conclude: I don't really need to eat these; these aren't going to make me as happy as I think they are; these aren't going to complete me; I'm still going to be hungry after I eat these; my nose will be back in the pantry as soon as I finish eating these, looking for the next numbing agent.
I wasn’t always able to keep myself corked, but my impulse to binge wasn't an all-consuming hole in my chest. It was more of a splinter. Most of the time, I didn't know it was there. But when it flared up, I couldn't think about anything else. It took years to wear me down, but when it did, I shattered.
Over the past few months, I’ve been able to subdue my gastric gluttony. I no longer peek into the pantry after I finish dinner. I no longer feast until I can't feel. I stop eating when I want to stop eating, and I feel satisfied afterwards.
I no longer feel broken.
Part of me wants to take full responsibility for my rehab. I got better because I made myself better. But, if I'm being honest, my gut tells me a large part of my recovery was happenstance. What follows is my best guess as to how I've been able to get to this point.
This isn't advice. At best, this will be an underwhelming story about a broken man. I am not your guru. Read this to feel less alone. Don't read this to heal yourself.
I wasn’t always like this.
This disorder didn't originate overnight; there wasn't an aha moment of ignition. As such, I have to start this story about my battle with binging from the beginning. Like, the very beginning. This won't be a short ride. I hope you brought beef jerky, peach rings, and other road trip regulars.
I didn’t have an urge to overeat when I was younger. I was lean and living the dream until I was six years old. A few years later, my belly jiggled like Jell-O. No one told me drinking milkshakes and eating my weight in Cheez-Its would make me fat. I ended up being a rather chunky teenager. I ate garbage foods, but I didn't eat until I was uncomfortable.
This changed in 2006. I was eighteen years old. This was when I started “dieting.” The first diet I went on was rather typical (at the time). I stayed away from “junk foods,” like chips, candies, crackers, and cakes. I ate a bunch of meat, fish, and other proteins. I ate a bunch of veggies. I ate healthy fats. I ate carbs… but not all carbs.
White carbs were evil.
Sweet potatoes were good, white potatoes weren't. Wheat bread was good, white bread wasn't. Brown rice was good, white rice wasn't. Wheat pasta was good, white pasta wasn't.
My diet wasn't insanely restrictive, especially compared to paleo and keto diets. Still, I categorized foods as either Good, or Bad. And the general vibe was this:
I could eat Good foods whenever I wanted, as long as they fit into my daily calorie and macro allotment. Bad foods were different. They were barred. Couldn't eat 'em. One bite of a Bad food would ruin my day. If I ate one chocolate chip, I wouldn't lose fat, regardless of what else I ate.
This dichotomy was problematic. Because many Bad food were, well… delicious. And the thought of not being able to eat bagels or brownies ever again wasn't easy to swallow.
And thus, I lived by this popular compromise: One day every week eat whatever you want in unlimited quantity, count the day as a loss, and then return to your “normal” diet every other day of the week.
If I wanted to eat a Bad food, I had to wait until my cheat day.
This weekly purge probably planted the initial binge-eating seed. This is when I started to eat until I was slightly uncomfortable. Because when you can only eat delicious treats one day a week, you think to yourself:
I better eat more of this stuff right now because I won't be able to eat it again until next Sunday; I better scarf down the last two slices of pizza because I don't want to have leftovers I won't be able to eat — I can't waste food! I watch Anthony Bourdain! I know how precious food is! I need to get my fill!
I had one weekly cheat meal for years without serious issues. I filled my belly with forbidden foods every Sunday, but I stopped eating when I felt pleasantly plump; I didn't eat until I was sick.
This would soon change.
I started experimenting with intermittent fasting in 2011, after I broke my foot (in five places).
Intermittent fasting didn't force a huge makeover. Not much changed. I ate the same foods. I ate the same amount of food. The only difference was when I ate. I still had one cheat day every week, even though I had a more nuanced understanding of Good foods and Bad foods.
I knew, for fat loss, calories were king. Otherwise said, I knew eating certain foods wouldn't hurt my fat loss potential independent of overall calorie intake; I didn't think I'd get fat from eating one chocolate chip.
Still, I couldn't ignore the fact that some foods were better than others. I knew some foods were designed in a lab to be hyper palatable and difficult to stop eating. I knew some foods were more nutritious than others. I knew apples were healthier than Skittles, even if calories were controlled for.
I knew eating Bad foods in moderation throughout the week was a possible alternative to a cheat day, but I thought cheat days were superior. Like, you're gonna order pizza and only eat one slice? Really? You might get hit by a bus tomorrow and you're only gonna eat one cookie?
I liked how cheat days were an exhale from the daily grind of dieting. I didn't have to cook food. I was able to escape the drudgery of dieting for just enough time to recharge my motivation for the week ahead.
I was team cheat day, all the way.
And so, even though my criteria for Good foods and Bad foods changed, I still ate Good foods throughout the week, and I reserved my Bad food “indulgences” for my weekly cheat day. I was in control of my binge eating, save for holidays and special occasions. This was mild compared to what came next.
I became an intermittent fasting junkie.
Because, after I started intermittent fasting, I saw the best results of my life. In hindsight, this was probably because I was rebounding from an injury. Muscle memory is magical. Still, I lost fat and built muscle simultaneously. I ate two meals per day (lunch and dinner), and I looked better than ever.
My stupid monkey mind associated intermittent fasting with otherworldly gains. I wanted to take intermittent fasting to the next level; I wanted to see it's true power. This led me to a feast/fast diet. The premise was simple: Eat a bunch of food one day, then, the next day, don't eat anything.
My cheat day became my feast day. And this was when I started binging — when I started to over overeat. Because binging had utility. If I ate myself silly on my feast day, to the point where I made myself sick, the following day of fasting would be easier. I remember waddling around the grocery store late at night to buy a baguette and peanut butter… after I'd already eaten multiple dinners and desserts. I wanted my body overflowing with food.
I followed my feasts with daily fasts for a few months. Fasting for an entire day was tough. Chewing gum helped. I attribute my one gray hair (at the age of thirty-four) to these full-blown fasts. Eventually, it wore me down and I quit the feast/fast diet… sort of.
Knowing the consequences didn't stop me. Just like having an incredible wife and loveable children doesn't stop middle-aged men from sacking up with tighter rations. The savory smell of foregoing your future, brought to you buy ephemeral ecstasy!
This is the only explanation I have for treating my body like a dumpster behind Applebee's every weekend:
There's a moment of biochemical euphoria when you binge. It feels like a drug-induced coma. You go numb. You can't have anxiety. You have no blood supply to your brain. All of your resources are diverted to digestion. Your body can't do anything but process the overwhelming amount of food it's been fed.
I couldn't stop eating, and I was worried.
Not because I thought I had an eating disorder, but, rather, because I thought I was going to get fat. I wasn't fasting after my feasts anymore; I wasn't combatting the large calorie surplus. And so, I tried to minimize the damage using a less extreme (but still somewhat extreme) strategy: Going Plaid.
“Going Plaid” is the moniker I (recently) gave to skipping meals and/or eating mostly lean proteins and non-starchy carbs as a way to limit calorie intake. And so, if I was Going Plaid, instead of eating my normal two meals, I'd skip lunch and only eat dinner consisting of mostly chicken breasts and vegetables.
Going Plaid allowed me to eat something and still keep my calorie intake rather low. And Going Plaid a few times per week was much easier than fasting for an entire day, especially on the days following my feasts, as I wasn't really hungry around lunchtime. Ah, the perks of eating until you're the size of a hot air balloon.
Not long after, I started eating one meal per day, every single day.
This was in 2013. I can't remember why I switched from two meals to one meal. I wish I could… or maybe I don't. It was probably because I thought intermittent fasting was magical and the longer I fasted the better results I would get. How embarrassing.
From 2013 to 2016, life was good… I guess? I'd eat one meal every day. No snacks. I'd have one massive cheat meal (binge) every week, consisting of foods I didn't normally eat throughout the week. I didn't think I had a problem. My wife and I planned our week around cheat meals. Sure, I'd be out-of-this-world bloated for two days after the binge, but I'd rebound by the end of the week.
After cheating, I'd return to my “normal” diet. I'd Go Plaid a few times during the week. I'd look in the mirror on Saturday, see six-pack abs, and know I was ready to repeat the cycle. During this time, I was content with my weekday meals. I felt fine after I finished dinner. I wasn't compelled to eat a second dinner for dessert. I was lean. I was muscular. I was strong
Perhaps most impressively, I was able to get strong and muscular while staying somewhat lean. In hindsight, I don't know how I was able to do this. Part of me doesn't believe I did.
Even though I made some progress from 2006 to 2011, I was underwhelmed with my stature. I used to wake up at five o'clock in the morning in order to lift before my eight o'clock biology class in college. I put in the work. I lifted religiously.
I spent a lot of time questioning my genetics. I have thin wrists. I can wrap my hand around my wrist and touch pinky finger to thumb. I'm tall. 6'4″. Maybe I'm not meant to be a maze of muscle.
If I had one single motivational bone in my body, I'd parallel my progress with bringing water to a boil.
Adding a tiny bit of heat to room temperature water does nothing, but if you're consistent and you add a tiny bit of heat on a regular basis, the heat will compound and you'll eventually reach a boil. Perhaps I played the game long enough for my physiology to reach a boil.
Unfortunately, water rarely boils forever.
My boil froze in 2017.
Around this time, my satiety circuity started going haywire. My binging behavior escaped from under Sunday's door, like black smoke, and began to seep into weekday doors. I wanted to binge. Every single night. I don't know why this happened, but I do know this: lots of things happened in 2017. I got into an accident, which resulted in a grade 3 shoulder separation; I couldn't lift. I got married. There was a honeymoon. There were a few other weddings. Parties were aplenty. I was drunk almost every weekend.
My day-to-day lifestyle was rather extreme, too. For instance, I was playing ultimate frisbee every Thursday. Games were at six o'clock. I didn't want to eat my one single meal prior to the game. Who wants to run around like a maniac with 3000 calories crammed into their intestines? I played on an empty stomach.
After the games, we'd go to the bar. I'd drink a few beers, but I never ate. This was my caloric compromise. Drinking 600 calories of social lubricant was better than eating 2500 calories of fried regret. By the time I got home, it was late. And I didn't feel like cooking dinner. Slept with nothing but a few beers in my belly.
In hindsight, I'm inclined to blame my increased desire to binge on some of the extreme aspects of my lifestyle, but none of the extremes were novel. I'd been fasting for frisbee for years prior to 2017. I'd been binging once per week since 2006. I'd been Going Plaid since 2012. I'd been eating one meal per day since 2013…
The person I saw in the mirror appeared both gradually and suddenly, as if he arrived atop an avalanche. When I finally realized damaging debris with the potential to ruin me had been accumulating for years, it was too late. I was trapped.
I entered the dark days that loom over every period of inexplicable prosperity.
For unknown reasons, I wanted to binge. Like, every single night after dinner. Some times I wanted to eat otherworldly portions of the foods I normally ate, but most times I wanted to eat Bad foods — the stuff I usually reserved for cheat days.
Binging is an art. You want to eat, but your body isn't really hungry. Most foods aren't palatable. There are only a handful foods your body won't reject. Most weekdays when I wanted to binge after dinner, I was drawn to sweets with heft.
I had a thing for hearty bakery goods. I wasn't a big candy man. I'd pound down cookies, brownies, and pastries… just about anything that pairs well with wearing Merino wool and drinking a cold glass of milk.
I rarely kept bakery goodies in the house, which made it easier to control my binging. Still, you'd be surprised what you can make with oatmeal and desperation.
Most days, I was able to surf the wave and resist my urge to eat the world's worst oatmeal cookie. When my willpower broke down and I binged, I resorted to old faithful: I'd just Go Plaid more. I would Go Plaid even if I didn't binge, because I knew I'd probably binge sooner or later. I was planning ahead.
Fighting this daily desire to binge wore me down.
Even though binging had been a weekly occurrence in my adult life, absolutely no parts of me wanted to binge anymore. Not even on cheat days.
I can't remember when I started to despise binging. Then again, I can't remember ever really enjoying it. I hated the night sweats. Waking up with a dry mouth. The cheat day hangover. Being uncomfortably bloated at the beginning of every week.
I did, however, enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of cheat days and how they were a break from the weekly grind. I didn't have to worry about what I ate; I could eat anything my mouth dreamed of chewing. No care for protein. No care for nutrients. No care for carb cycling or anything other stupid strategy I was using to build a body worthy of strangers' admiration.
I wanted to eat whatever I wanted, but I didn't want to consume until comatose.
I couldn't.
I struggled to eat certain foods in moderation.
My body had been conditioned to associate certain foods with binging. Most of the foods I avoided throughout the week, the stuff I historically reserved for my cheat days, usually triggered full-blown binging episodes. As soon as I began eating them, I turned into a demon with an insatiable appetite. I liken this to an alcoholic having one sip of vodka.
If I took one bite of pizza, I'd spiral. I'd end up eating seven pieces of pizza. Or I'd find something else to binge. I'd eat six bowls of Reese's Puffs cereal or leftover pie or eleven of the world's worst oatmeal cookies.
This was another reason I was team cheat day. Even though eating one piece of pizza is, indeed, nonsensical, my hatred towards people who preached moderation was also a defense mechanism. When I tried to eat forbidden foods in moderation, I couldn't. I ended up binging. Limiting my exposure to “trigger foods” was my only option. (Little did I know, this made my binging problem worse, but I don't wanna get ahead of myself…)
My diet turned into an all-or-nothing tightrope. I had two options. I could either be perfect and not binge, or I could eat Bad foods and sink the ship.
This dichotomy, combined with how I dealt with binges, created exponential degeneracy.
Remember, I minimized the damage of my indulgences by Going Plaid. I put a lot of pressure on myself to Go Plaid as often as I could, especially after binges. This is what I often whispered to myself as I stuffed my face with food I told myself I wouldn't eat: “You are okay. Everything will be fine. You'll just Go Plaid a bunch this week.”
This pressure to Go Plaid made me binge harder.
I wanted to purge my body of the behavior. If I binge hard today, I won't want to binge tomorrow; I'll want to eat good. I also wanted to purge the house of any foods that could potentially trigger a binge in the future; I binged harder to rid the house of Bad foods that would tempt me away from perfection.
On my cheat day, I'd shove down a dozen donuts even if I felt sick after the sixth because I knew, tomorrow, the leftovers would tease me. They'd look at me funny. They'd call me names. They'd seduce me. I'd want to eat them, but I wouldn't be allowed to. They'd trigger another binge. I didn't want to binge. And so, I shoved them down. As a way to increase my odds of having an unblemished tomorrow.
Of course, the irony of this cycle isn't lost on me.
I binged to get rid of foods, so that it was easier for me to Go Plaid perfectly, yet the only reason I needed to Go Plaid perfectly was because I binged to get rid of foods. Makes as much sense as restricting myself from foods that triggered binges, yet the only foods triggered binges was because I restricted myself from them.
Speaking of which…
I knew why I couldn't eat certain foods in moderation.
The heartbeat of my brokenness was scarcity. There were foods I didn't want to eat, foods that didn't deserve a place in my “normal” diet, and, if I wanted to eat them, I had a limited window of opportunity. In other words, come tomorrow, I won't be able to eat something I most certainly will want to eat. And so, I better get my fix right now. And I better make it count.
I had to trash this mentality. I had to stop the scarcity. I needed to eat Bad foods more often. This was something I did with peanut butter not long ago.
For many years, peanut butter was one of my trigger foods. I loved peanut butter, but I struggled to control myself around it. If I ate it, I'd binge. It got so bad I told my wife to hide the peanut butter. This was my coping mechanism. And so, I avoided it unless it was my cheat day.
When I found myself examining the shelves like Sherlock one night, trying to find the peanut butter, I knew I needed to stop punting my problem and address it head on. And so, I decided to eat peanut butter every single day.
My thought process: I struggled to control myself around peanut butter because I rarely ate it. When I actually ate it, I binged because I was trying to eat as much as possible, knowing I wouldn't eat it for an extended period of time afterwards. In other words, scarcity.
I wanted to make eating peanut butter a normal every day boring activity. I wanted to demystify it. If I eat peanut butter daily, I'll be able to eat less because I know I'm going to eat it again tomorrow.
This experiment had some initial turbulence. I was pulled towards my usual behaviors. I wanted to binge. The first few days, I ate more peanut butter than I wanted to, but I was able to stop before things got out of hand.
After a few days, reality sunk in. I knew I'd eat peanut butter tomorrow, and I was able to control my portions.
I knew I had to take a similar approach with the rest of the so-called Bad foods I couldn't control myself around.
I had to eat them beyond the confines of my cheat day, which was easier said than done. Peanut butter was only one food. The list of Bad foods was long. How was I going to eat ice cream, pie, and pizza every day? And what about foods that were truly scarce? What about mom's Christmas morning monkey bread? What about the pizza from across town we only get once every year?
Even though I knew what I needed to do, and I had done it previously with peanut butter, I couldn't repeat the process. I always fell back into my old ways, which is to say…
On my cheat day, I told myself I'd eat in moderation, and that I wouldn't limit my Bad food consumption throughout the week. And yet, every Sunday, I'd think, I'll just eat all of the Bad foods today and Go Plaid throughout the week — this is the way.
I'm not proud to admit this, but I had an all-or-nothing mentality with no respect for nuance.
It was as if I started each day with a perfect 100% grade. If I ate Better foods and followed the plan on paper, I kept my 100% grade. But if I slipped and ate something I shouldn't, I dropped to a 0% grade. There were no minor deductions. This was high stakes living.
If I ate something I wasn't supposed to, especially a Bad food, then I failed. I went from went from 100% grade to 0% grade. And I thought, The day is already ruined, why not pile on? Cheat days were hedonic hall passes. In some twisted reality, eating 5000 calories was the same as eating 9000 calories.
I thought it was better to make a bad day worse than make a good day bad. This doesn't make sense, but most behaviors we wire into ourselves don't have intellectual intent.
I thought sinking the ship and then Going Plaid as often as possible was somehow tipping the scales in my favor. That, somehow, this yoyo between highs and lows was better than eating Bad foods in moderation. After all, how much damage can be done in one day?
I was trapped in a psychological web spun without rational thought, but, in my defense, I had proof of concept.
My actions were based on superstition more than science, but I rallied around my results. I wasn't fat. At times, I was quite shredded. Below is a picture from 2019, when I was anything but sane.
History showed me my strategy worked. And when you combine this evidence with how much easier it was for me to exist within the black and white world of Good foods and Bad foods and not letting the two share the same water fountain, I struggled to escape.
Eating trash in excess one day every week and then sticking to nourishing foods throughout the week was so much simpler. In the end, compared to eating in moderation, the numbers shook out similarly anyways… or so I thought.
Turns out, I was wrong. Getting slapped with my stupidity was one of the biggest reasons I was able to stop binging, but I'm getting ahead of myself…
Wrestling with my appetite on a nightly basis and being unable to control myself on the weekend (despite wanting to)
made me realize my binging was more problematic than playful… perhaps a real *gasp* eating disorder.
Being unable to stop yourself from engaging in self-destructive behavior is exhausting. You hate yourself for engaging in the self-destructive behavior, and then you hate yourself even more for being unable to stop yourself from doing such an irrational thing. You start to question who you are, fundamentally, as a human being.
You eat until you can barely breathe, how are you going to take care of your son? You're gonna get an ice cream cone with him after his ballgame and order seven pints for yourself?
In 2020, I hit a breaking point. My attempts to fix myself in the past were well-intentioned, but half-hearted. I was ready to make some real changes and accept whatever consequences they brought.
There were two separate (yet obviously intertwined) problems I was trying to solve. First, there was my weekend cheat day binge. I didn't want to get rid of my cheat day. I wanted to be able to eat whatever I wanted once every week without spiraling into a binge. Second, there was my weekday urge to binge at night. I wanted to feel content and satisfied after dinner.
I had some theories as to why I wanted to eat twelve dinners and thirteen desserts every night and why eating one salted tortilla chip transformed me into a human garbage disposal. I based my interventions around these theories. Some of them worked… I think?
I'm insecure about boiling this into a “top five” list or whatever, because I know I'm overlooking something. I wasn't wearing a pocket protector and wielding spreadsheets. I didn't create controls. Lots of things happened in a short amount of time. My memory is fuzzy. I can recall highlights. That's about all. And so, what follows is my best recollection as to how I ended up where I am, with no respect for chronology.
First, I started to eat lunch again.
I thought I could curb my post-dinner desire to binge by getting some food in my belly earlier in the day. Maybe if I eat lunch, I won't wanna binge after dinner.
I wanted to keep my calorie intake consistent, which meant I had to subtract food from dinner and add it to lunch. This was tough. My dinner wasn't filling enough as it was (according to my post-dinner desire to binge). I was skittish.
In order keep calories skewed towards the evening, I kept my lunch small. I ate a few eggs and some raw carrots. Both cheap. Both easy to prepare. I wanted to eat some protein. I wanted to eat some non-starchy carbs. Job done… on paper.
This meal frustrated me. It wasn't filling. After I finished the eggs and the carrots, I wanted to keep eating. I was conditioned to eat until exhaustion. This lunch was like trying to quit cigarettes and exposing myself to a wisp of second-hand smoke. It was a tease.
I remembered eating a cinnamon roll while drinking coffee a few months back, and how the combination made me irrationally full and satisfied. And so, I added a small bowl of oats topped with whey protein pudding and a banana to lunch. I treated this dish as if it were a breakfast pastry. I ate it slowly. I sipped coffee throughout. I was hoping this would replicate the satisfied sensation in my stomach I got months prior from the cinnamon roll and coffee combination.
It did.
Problem solved.
Unfortunately, eating lunch didn't curb my post-dinner urge to binge. I kept eating lunch anyways. I look forward to lunch now. I can't remember how I ever went without lunch. Eating one meal per day seems impossible… and this might have helped me stop binging. More on this soon.
Second, I purged myself of purging.
Remember, I had a hunch the heartbeat of my binging was scarcity. To this point, I wasn't able slay scarcity and eat so-called Bad foods more often. Likely because I knew my attempts to break the habit wouldn't be clean. I'd probably binge. Repeatedly. I didn't want to binge. I didn't want to get fat… until the holidays came around.
Normally, I eat nonsense around the holidays. I tell myself I'm only going to eat like a degenerate Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Eve, but the entire week between Christmas and New Years blurs together and I end up shoving slop into my body every day. Just trying to get rid of the leftovers in order to get back to my “normal” diet as soon as possible, you know? Makes total sense.
In 2020, with the holidays approaching, I knew it was the perfect time to experiment with eating in moderation. If eating in moderation didn't work and I binged, it wouldn't be a big deal, as I would have been binging otherwise.
I adopted a different mindset. Instead of shoving all of the glorious holiday foods into my maw in an attempt to get back to my “normal” diet quickly, I extended my holiday. I made a pact with myself. I could eat whatever I wanted for the entire month of January, and, along the way, I'd do my best to eat in moderation.
The start was slippery. I binged at first. But I settled down a few days into the experiment, because, around this time, I realized something….
Third, I saw my stupidity.
Years of binging and deprivation led to some success. I got stuck to my strategy; I was superglued to superstition. I thought my way was the better way. Moderation was for mothers depriving their children.
My superstition started to deflate when I saw the math of my stupidity. And for a little more perspective, let's rewind…
Historically, Going Plaid meant eating cabbage, chicken breasts, three 70cc scoops of whey protein, and a banana… and sometimes eggs. At some point, I ran out of whey protein and I ate two tablespoons peanut butter instead (a byproduct my previous peanut butter story). Not an identical swap from a macronutrient standpoint, but the caloric yield was somewhat consistent…
And so, after every “normal” dinner, even when I was Going Plaid, I'd eat a banana and some peanut butter. This was my 400ish calorie daily dessert, save for cheat days.
On cheat days, I'd eat an actual dessert… multiple actual desserts, to be more accurate. Let's say, for an easy example, I got a dozen donuts. And let's say one donut contains 200 calories.
As you know, my mentality erred towards overconsumption. I would eat all of the donuts on my cheat day, for a variety of reasons I don't want to mention again because my ego can't take the punishment. One day, randomly, the math of my stupidity slapped me in the face.
Say I eat eat all six donuts on Sunday (I saved six for my wife, I'm no savage). This would be 1200 calories. On Monday, I'd hop back on my regular diet and eat my “normal” 400 calorie dessert. Same goes for Tuesday, Wednesday… every other day of the week. This means I'd be eating
- 1200 dessert calories Sunday
- 3000 dessert calories Monday-Saturday
which equates to 4200 dessert calories across the week. On the other hand, I could eat the donuts in moderation. And, by doing so, I could eat some donuts instead of my “normal” dessert throughout the week. If I ate 400 calories worth of donuts daily, I'd only eat 2800 dessert calories across the week.
Quite the difference… and a slap in the face. Because I realized the ripple effect this had, as I ate dinner food in excess on my cheat days, too. My strategy wasn't better. My strategy wasn't even equal. My strategy was bad.
The math of moderation might be obvious to you, and it is to me… now. Before, I was blinded by my bigotry.
Fourth, I treated dinner like lunch.
Shortly after the math of moderation slapped me silly, I had another epiphany. At this point, I was eating lunch regularly for about one year. I was content after lunch. I wasn't full, but I had no desire to eat more or binge. This was strange considering my lunch was much smaller than my dinner.
Why did I want to binge after dinner and not lunch? What if I ate the same thing I did for lunch at dinner? Would I feel content, despite eating less food?
Unfortunately, I couldn't eat a carbon copy of lunch for dinner. I didn't want to drink coffee late at night. And, as mentioned, coffee was probably one of the reasons my lunch was so satisfying.
I compromised.
I decided to beef up my “normal” dessert (banana with peanut butter) by adding some oats and drinking some milk (instead of coffee).
My goal was to eat a smaller dinner and reframe the meal in my mind as if it were lunch.
It worked.
It kept working.
It still works.
You might be expecting me to explain why this worked, but I can't. Like, I started drinking 1/8 cup of milk after dinner and now I don't binge anymore? Silly. Maybe I reframed my expectations. Otherwise said, my desire to binge after dinner was due to how I was expecting to feel after dinner. I was expecting to feel bloated and numb, instead of just content.
Maybe.
Then again, the milk helps.
A lot.
So.
Maybe milk is magical.
Fifth, there's the unknown.
As mentioned, this recap ignores the unknown. There were probably contributing factors I didn't (and still don't) appreciate or even know about. For instance, I got used to eating lunch, which made it more difficult for me to skip lunch when Going Plaid. This meant I wasn't creating as large of a calorie crater as I had in the past. Surely this had an impact.
There was also desperation. Desperation is different than desire. Desire is wanting something. Desperation is needing something. Most people desire to lose weight. The sixty-two year old grandfather that survives a heart attack is desperate, he needs to lose weight.
I felt like I needed to stop binging.
Remember how everything fell apart in 2017 after my injury? Well, around that time, I started eating less protein. I wasn't lifting. I didn't put an emphasis on it anymore. Considering protein intake is linked to satiety, especially when you're deficit, this could have been a factor.
Also, I got fat. My holiday experiment extended into April. My second son was born in February. I was eating mystery foods that were gifted to us. I wasn't binging, but I was gaining weight. My body fat percentage was higher than it had been in years. Could this have influenced how I was able to regulate my appetite?
Of course.
I don't really know how I was able to beat my bug to binge eat. All I know is that the battle was worth it. I'm able to get ice cream with my son without having a panic attack. I'm able to enjoy delicious foods more often. I don't wake up in the middle of the night with meat sweats.
Just about every aspect of my life has improved.
I'm not perfect. I'm not as lean as I used to be. I'm still figuring some things out.
That's okay with me.
For now.
May the Gains be with you,
Ant
ps
I did not have binge-eating disorder. I was a binge eater. There is a difference. If anything, my disorder was closer to bulimia nervosa. I was never professionally diagnosed.