I’m sitting in Copenhagen airport waiting to board the plane back to Zurich. I’m wearing the white jeans that I donned flying over, which sat just right on the outbound journey. Now, the waistband feels a little snug and it digs into my soft belly, provoking my bloat. The slightly more swollen physique is the result of abandoning my normally lentil-rich diet for food that usually doesn't land on my plate: Fluffy white bread, creamy salted butters, flaky, greasy pastries, fries, decadent soft ice and too much wine.
When I decided to book my flights, I stalled. Each time I opened the Swiss airlines site, my cursor hovered over the flight selection undecided, before closing the tab and thinking about it again. I couldn’t decide what day to leave for Denmark. My decision hinged on two factors 1. How much time did I want to take off work and 2. How many days did I want to be away from my routine? A routine I’ve worked hard to establish and one I fear deviating from will result in reverting to damaging habits.
The Leftovers from Having An Eating Disorder
I join the many legions of people who have suffered or still suffer from disordered eating. I don’t think I’m wildly off mark when I say going on holiday can be a major stressor for those struggling with their relationship with food.
Food became a preoccupation and a source of restriction early on in my life. The obsession to be thin was all around me: in my family, friendship circles and notably society...so, everywhere. And while the body positivity movement has made strides,I'd argue the fascination with thin is still rife (Hello, Ozempic-boom). I remember seeing celebrities branded fat and chubby, and I’d look at my body which was bigger than theirs and conclude I was disgusting. I love the social media accounts today showing celebrity pictures from the early 00s (think Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones) who were dubbed fat, but clearly weren’t, to show how distorted our minds were by the media. It shocks me how brainwashed we were.
My mission for thin was endless. I attempted everything from the cayenne-water-maple syrup diet, that exploded when Beyonce allegedly did it to lose a few extra pounds for Dream Girls, the Dukan diet when Kate Middleton apparently did it to lose weight for her wedding, to no carbs at all, to super restricted diets. During phases where I had a healthy balanced diet, I would inevitably sabotage it from having a disordered eating mindset.
From 2017 to 2022, I ballooned to the biggest I have ever been. I’m not an idiot. I know what makes you fat. But when your food and drink choices are intrinsically linked to managing (or rather, not managing) your emotions, switching out habits is hard. I genuinely believe that weight loss is above all, a matter of the mind, not some check-mark list activity of a fitness program. Many of us use food and drink like a drug - to self-medicate and as a form of escapism. Changing your diet is so much more than just switching out a croissant for a carrot.
Re-wiring
It took me a long time to start dropping the weight and letting go of destructive patterns. There are many reasons it took me a while to sever ties with bad habits, but one was that I wanted to be smart about this. I didn’t want to embark on anything that would cause me to relapse into bulimia, or swing from one destructive disordered eating pattern (binging) to another (restricting). I was determined to approach this from a healthy mindset, not a skinny-motivated one. Lucky for me, this came quiet naturally when I embarked on getting off of antidepressants. I outlined a lot of the holistic changes I made in my blog post about it, and they've had a compound effect on my life.
Over the course of the last 21 months, I’ve lost 14 kilos. It’s been an incredibly slow journey where I’ve incrementally made changes to make sure these new lifestyle habits are here to stay. Could I have gone faster? Yes, absolutely, but had I gone through the motions without my head and heart really being in it, I don’t think I would have been successful or persevered. It was as if I had to take baby steps with inner Amanda and at each point check in and ask how she was doing: Did we need to slow down? Could we move forward a few steps now? A lot of it had to do with me
making sure that each decision came from a healthy mindset, not a disordered eating mindset.
I’m glad to say that slowly adopting new habits and really giving them time to sink in before moving on to the next habit instalment, has been a successful approach...so has ignoring everyone else’s health journeys and focusing on my own - I highly recommend this one. Today, I have a remarkably healthier relationship with food than I ever have. But old habits do die hard, which I gleaned from my most recent holiday.
Permission to Indulge
While I love my daily routine, for me, holiday is a time to relax and abandon your usual daily structures. And as a foodie, a holiday is not a holiday to me if it doesn’t include eating amazing dishes that I don’t usually cook for myself and drinking full-bodied wines.
As I started planning my trip, the inner critic started whispering:
“If you book an earlier flight, you’ll spend more days in holiday mode and overindulge. You’ll put on all the weight you’ve worked hard to lose.”
“Are you sure you want to be away from your routine that long? You’ll probably slide right back into all those nasty habits you’ve spent two years kicking.”
A huge part of my self growth has consisted of becoming aware of these thoughts and learning to reason with them. If a friend told me they were going on holiday and were scared to deviate from their usual eating patterns, I’d tell them a week isn’t going to derail years of work and that it’s okay every now and then to indulge. But that’s the problem isn’t it? We rarely speak to ourselves with the kindness we would to a friend. I decided to offer myself the compassion I would to anyone else.
My inner critic sat like an anxious teenager in my brain, but seemed to accept my reasoning. I reassured her that it would be business as usual when we returned home. I felt a sense of accomplishment, like I’d climbed another rung up the ladder in combating self-negative talk and practicing compassion. Instead of letting this thought process take the reigns for my holiday planning, I acknowledged it and then parked it on the curb.
But what really alerted me to disordered eating thoughts lurking in the shadows, was when it came to flying out a day earlier to spend time with my grandparents.
To Rebook or Not to Rebook
A few weeks before flying out, we received news of my grandma’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. My grandpa also has Alzheimer’s, and it’s more advanced. My grandma is clear enough in her mind to understand her diagnosis and what the trajectory means, thanks to witnessing first hand my grandpa’s slow deterioration. Understandably, she was distraught by the news. I decided it would be nice to spend an evening with them. I hadn’t originally planned to see them, deciding to keep a tight schedule so I wouldn’t spend too many days deviating from my usual routine. Some might read that as disordered, but being away from routine too long stresses me. This isn’t just a physical aspect, this is as much about mental health. These routines keep my anxiety in check and if I get out of sync for too long, I end up in a puddle on the floor.
I wavered at rebooking my flight. Was the extra day abroad, that would surely result in abandoning routine, worth it? As I toyed with my decision to get to Denmark early, I told myself that this was silly. Forgoing an evening with my grandparents out of fear of overindulgence was something I’d regret the day they’re not here anymore. I rebooked my flight and had another chat with my inner critic. She sat back down.
We had a wonderful evening full of laughter and tears, as they recalled memories from the past (however fractured). Not one part of me regrets rebooking my ticket. But the hesitation to, made me curious about when do we cross the line from healthy compromises, to letting disordered eating thoughts take the wheel?
I sometimes find it hard knowing when I’m straddling the line between health conscious choices, compromise or obsession. Hitting the gym, meditating and doing my usual routines before getting on the plane to Denmark felt good and felt like self-care. The run in the morning after my dinner with my grandparents felt like a good compromise for a night of indulgence and the next ones ahead. Movement is also my preferred go-to for soothing mind, body and soul.
During my 4 day trip to Bornholm with my friend, we clocked a lot of steps each day, but I still let go and ate more than I usually would. I tucked into fried fish delicacies at the local smoke houses, dunked fries in mayo, “mmmmm”-d at every spoonful of delicious soft ice topped with cocoa powder, slathered salted butter over fresh warm homemade bread (even though I know gluten bloats me), sipped local gin poured over with crisp tonic water and enjoyed full-bodied reds and whites. Do I regret it? No, I don’t. Which to me is a sign that there’s been a healthy shift in mindset. The ability to not beat myself up and know I’ll be back to my usual routine afterwards is a big step. Yet I had to constantly reassure anxious Amanda that it was okay to eat what she wanted and not to worry that it signaled a return to old habits.
While I enjoyed every morsel of food on the trip, I also genuinely looked forward to getting back into my routines. Save for the one year after the Ayurvedic retreat before my masters, I mean it when I say that I enjoy my lifestyle rather than it being some bullshit blanket statement to convince myself and others this is the truth, when really I’ve felt restricted and deprived. This is not the case now.
At the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, my blood pressure was so high I was convinced I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. Something had to give. I think my week of indulgence ignited a fear that I’d fall back into extremely unhealthy habits that I’ve worked hard to get out of. But when I awoke Monday morning in Copenhagen to board my 9:40am flight back to Zurich, I honoured my promise to myself and got into routine as usual. My re-entry to routine was a little clumsy. Despite the hiccups, I still got back to most of my rituals and routines. It’s a testament to myself that I can deviate from my health journey, without derailing completely. And part of me really needed the comfort of knowing I could do this.
I constantly analyse if my dedication to my health goals are positive changes or a fall back to disordered eating. The line really can be very fine, but I’ve found that simply being aware really helps stop negative and obsessive thoughts from spiralling. For example, there’s a slight fear with social engagements as I don’t want them derailing my efforts. I’m thrilled that my lonely days are behind me, but it’s to the extent where if I saw all my friends every week, I’d have no time for myself. I try to tune into what feels good to me. I like having a very structured morning and evening routine Sunday through Wednesday. The other days, I’m happy to fit in socialising. This might not work for others, but as a naturally introverted person who needs time to recharge, this really works for me. Routines help me reset and keep my anxiety at bay. My life is now largely based on doing things that bring me peace, so I try to lead a lifestyle that supports this.
I’ve also been good at stopping myself from acting on disordered eating thoughts or doing things that trigger them. For example I don’t measure my food, count calories or weigh myself on a daily basis. The last time I weighed myself, I hadn’t touched the scale in about 4 months. That’s huge. There was a time I would weigh myself 4-5 times a day. Changing your mindset and approach to holistic health, really is a game changer and peace bringer.
Continuing with Compassion
My lifestyle reset looks like a stock market graph - ups and downs but for the most part an upward tick. I remind myself that this is a lifestyle change, a new way of living and that I have my whole life (hopefully a long one) to perfect my thought process and approach.
The week after my holiday I definitely felt a little more swollen and I noticed a bit more of a craving for sweet stuff, and at times I caved. Instead of beating myself up for this, or vowing I won’t indulge on my next holiday, I showed myself as much compassion as possible and focused on the routines and habits I’d accomplished on the given day. Small wins add up over time.
When my thoughts turn to weight and thinness, I remind myself there's a plethora of other reasons for me to keep up my habits, namely, my mental health. I shift the focus to: how do I keep showing up for future me? How does she want to be treated? What does she want her life to look like? How does she want to feel?
My trip to Denmark was a good taster in showing me that my new habits are here to stay, but that I can still let down my hair without spiralling into another destructive mindset. I used to think that once you’ve had an eating disorder, you’ll never really be able to cleanse yourself from it, but I’ve changed my mind. I think by repeatedly replacing negative self talk and thoughts with more positive ones and habits, you can eventually snuff it out. I’m still not quite there yet, but I’m further than I ever have been. And for good measure, I’ll say it again: ignore other people’s health journeys and focus on your own. You are unique - your health journey will be too.
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