Is Your Eating Disorder A Coping Mechanism?
This is a guest Post by Ritta Oraha.
Ritta is a certified Holistic Health Coach from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Her mission is to help women develop a healthy relationship with food, their body and exercise. Because she overcame Orthorexia, Depression, Exercise Addiction and Amenorrhea, she now coaches women who are going through similar struggles. You can connect with Ritta on her website rawritta.com. You can also connect with her on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
My history with Food and Mental Health
The whole time I struggled with my eating disorder (orthorexia, restriction and exercise bulimia) I truly felt like it was because of food. I thought my whole eating disorder stemmed from food and that food was my enemy. If I could just learn to control my calories, the shape of my body and my weight, then I’d have a perfectly healthy and happy life. There came a point in my recovery journey where I realized that it was never about food. I believe that eating disorders are our bodies red flag. There’s something out of balance in our lives. There is always a deeper issue, a root cause for your eating disorder. Think about it. You don’t just wake up one day and decide you’re going to be mean to your body, torture it with tough workouts and very little eating. The media and society can absolutely have a lot to do with your eating disorder and they may have influenced you from a very young age.
It was never about the food
For me and for so many women that I’ve worked and talked with, it’s actually about control. What do I mean by that? Let me give you an example from my own story:
After living in Denmark for almost my entire life, I moved to America because my husband lives here. I gave up my family, friends and just everything I had there. The hardest thing for me was my brother. I basically raised him until he was 3, and when I found out (after I got married) that I couldn’t go visit my family for 4 years, because I wasn’t an American citizen yet, I lost it. I lost control over my life. It caused me so much stress and depression. I felt like I didn’t belong here and I really didn’t know myself anymore.
Why I feel like I got a second chance at life
I always tell people that I felt like I was born all over again, only now as an adult. Because I didn’t like that and because I couldn’t go visit my family, the next best thing I knew to do was run away from my life through my workouts and by controlling my food and body.
My eating disorder and exercise addiction gave me a FALSE sense of control, even though it was the other way around. I was letting it control me. But at the time it felt like I truly was in control of my life. Humans have different ways of coping with uncertainty, stress, anxiety and the “out of control” feeling. Some cope with their issues by getting addicted to shopping, to alcohol, to drugs etc. For me, specifically it was through exercise and food. Getting caught too much up in food, calories, diets, exercise and my body kept my mind occupied enough to not think about my deeper issues.
Obviously this coping mechanism wasn’t healthy for me or for anyone else for that matter. Healthy foods are great! Exercising is great! But when we overdo anything that’s good for us we end up harming ourselves and our bodies. As you know, eating disorders have a snowball effect. You go from working out thirty minutes a day to over an hour a day. You go from paleo to vegan, to sugar free, to juice cleansing until your body starts to break down. My body started to give me symptoms and signs to stop what I was doing, or at least take a break and pay attention to it. But I kept ignoring those signs. My hair started to fall, A LOT. My libido went down. I always felt tired and fatigue, isolated, sore. My skin and my hormones were a mess. And then I finally lost my period!
A blessing in disguise
To be honest, I’m glad I lost my period. Because me losing my period finally gave me a kick in the butt/ kind slap in the face to finally start taking my recovery seriously. And because I desperately wanted my period back, it forced me to work on healing my relationship with food, body, and exercise. How I got my period back and how I recovered from my eating disorder is for a whole other post. But I will leave you with this;
A final word
Learning to let go of perfectionism, control and step more into your feminine energy will help you tremendously. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong at all with having masculine energy in us. In fact, we all need it. We all have a blend of both. But what I’m trying to say is it’s important that we stop demanding results, being so controlling, being perfectionists about our food, work and so on. Step more into your feminine energy and you’ll feel so much more womanly. I know I didn’t feel very womanly when I didn’t have my period. So this tip was super helpful for me. Not easy, but helpful.