disordered eating Archives - Page 4 of 5 - Everyday Chocolate

May 3, 2023April 28, 2023 by Libby

4 Indicators of a Healthy Relationship with Exercise

Sports, exercise, and less-structured general activity are all aspects of life I have enjoyed and been passionate about for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I loved running around outside playing various games and sports with my brothers, neighbors, and friends. I tried a number of different sports throughout elementary school and eventually ended up focusing primarily on soccer and basketball throughout late elementary school, middle school, and the start of high school.

This was mostly fun for me, but as time went on, I started to experience more and more pressure internally when it came to sports and athletic performance. I felt I had to be as good as I could be and increasingly feared any sort of self-perceived failure.

Once I started high school, this fear of failure + internalized pressure led me to train even more obsessively for sports, particularly basketball. The girls basketball culture at my high school was also relatively intense, which didn’t help my fears + obsessive tendencies.

The fall of my freshman year I would go to basketball shooting practice before school a couple of times a week, participate in (mandatory) gym class daily, and go to weightlifting or other basketball skills/conditioning training after school a few times a week. I was also still playing travel soccer (practices + games) on top of all this!

This increase in activity at the start of high school (combined with not seriously increasing my nutrition, which was more ignorance at the time rather than an intentional restrictive decision) significantly contributed to my spiral into an eating disorder. While this aspect of my story isn’t the main focus of this particular blog post, I mention all this to highlight how obsessive and unhealthy my relationship with exercise had become by the time I was finishing my first year of high school. As my weight started to decrease, I increasingly felt addicted to and compelled to exercise more and more.

[Side note on this which I hope to explore further in a future blog post: researchers have discovered a similar neurobiological phenomenon (the urge to exercise increasingly more when eating less) in animal models. From Carrie Arnold’s book, Decoding Anorexia: “In the 1960s, researchers discovered that if you limited a rat’s access to food and simultaneously allowed it to run on its wheel as much as it wanted, the rat would rapidly run itself to death, a phenomenon that looked eerily similar to what psychologists diagnosed as anorexia nervosa. The researchers called this behavior activity-based anorexia.“]

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March 15, 2023March 14, 2023 by Libby

How to Know if You Are at a Healthy Weight for Your Body

We all have a unique, largely genetically determined, weight range at which we are generally likely to be our healthiest. I might be healthy at my current size but it would almost certainly be unhealthy for me if I were to lose or gain a significant amount of weight.

I have my own unique body size / weight range and you have yours. Which is why, in the absence of further context, fixating solely on weight is not usually useful when we are trying to understand our own or someone else’s health status. The same weight may be healthy for one person and extremely unhealthy for another.

If knowing your weight alone isn’t necessarily helpful, what are other contextual markers and potential clues we can use to discern if we are at a generally healthy weight for our own unique genetics and overall well-being?

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March 1, 2023February 24, 2023 by Libby

What is “Normal” Eating?

Normal eating is eating three meals and several snacks each day.

Or, from time to time, it is munching all throughout the day.

Normal eating is enjoying a slice of cake with ice cream at a birthday party.

Or, it is saying, “No, thank you,” without feeling the need to explain yourself.

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February 15, 2023February 13, 2023 by Libby

Why the Pill is NOT the Solution to Your Missing or Irregular Period

Imagine a scenario such as the following. You used to get your period regularly but haven’t had your period for quite some time (anywhere from ~3 months – a decade or more). You make an appointment with your doctor to inquire why this may be and/or what can be done about it. Without taking the time to ask important and relevant questions regarding lifestyle factors like your stress level, nutrition, exercise, and sleep, your doctor prescribes you the birth control pill to “solve” your period problem. Take this and you’ll have a regular cycle, clear skin, and balanced hormones — problem solved!

Fast forward several years to when you decide you want to get off the pill for whatever reason. Maybe you decide to go off it because you want to hopefully start having kids soon. Or maybe you want to be done taking a pill every day given that you’ve heard there may be negative side effects associated with it. The months go by and… low and behold, no period! Only now the situation is even more dire and stressful than before, due to increased confusion as to what could be wrong, length of time spent on the pill, and possibly even a strong desire to start a family soon.

Unfortunately, this type of situation is all too common!

I can relate, and I know several of my clients, a number of my friends, and many other women whose stories I have read about on the Internet can, too.

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November 16, 2022November 15, 2022 by Libby

Some Thoughts on Fullness + Thanksgiving Recipe Ideas!

Happy Wednesday! How is your week going so far? We went to one of my friends from high school’s wedding on Saturday and then church + celebrating Alec’s bday with my side of the family on Sunday. It also went from 60s/70s/sunny to 20s/30s/snowy/cold rain in the past week… I suppose it is goodbye to fall!

Can you believe it is already Thanksgiving next week? We have plans to spend the week in Iowa with Alec’s side of the family. I always enjoy getting away for a few days and seeing family (+ meeting our newest nephew!).

How do you feel about Thanksgiving? I know for some of my clients and for many people in general, Thanksgiving can be a source of stress, anxiety, and discomfort. For anyone struggling in their relationship with food, the holidays can be a tough time to navigate. (On top of any usual family and/or disruption of routine stressors!)

In the spirit of the upcoming holiday, I wanted to share a brief post today on some thoughts regarding FULLNESS. (Plus some fun Thanksgiving recipes!)

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November 2, 2022October 28, 2022 by Libby

5 Strategies to Help Prevent Binge Eating

Do you ever struggle with feeling out-of-control around food? Do you find that you have patterns of days where you restrict your food intake and consciously try to eat “healthy,” followed by days of feeling chaotic around food and like you’ve “blown it” when it comes to eating and nutrition? If so, you are not alone. Experiences of binge eating, overeating, and/or feeling out-of-control around food in general can lead to feelings of guilt and shame that are difficult to manage and can lead to a spiral of even more chaotic eating in the future.

First things first, let’s define binge eating. Binge eating is characterized by the following: (1) eating an amount of food in a given period of time (for example, within an hour) that is objectively and considerably more than most people would eat during a similar timeframe and under similar circumstances; AND (2) a sense that you are out-of-control in regards to the eating episode. Binge eating episodes often involve eating much more quickly than usual, eating past a comfortable level of fullness, eating large quantities of food even though you aren’t physically hungry, eating alone due to shame/embarrassment regarding what and how much you are eating, and feeling guilty/disgusted with oneself afterwards.

Maybe you do struggle with actual clinical-level binge eating as described above. OR if not, maybe you struggle from time to time with feeling out-of-control around food, or chaotic and mindless in your eating. Either way, feeling this way is tough and worthy of getting help.

Whether you experience aspects of binge eating disorder or any degree of chaotic/out-of-control feelings around food, there are strategies you can begin to incorporate TODAY to help normalize feelings + thoughts around food, helping you to be more present and engaged in your everyday life. Let’s learn more!

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October 5, 2022January 31, 2024 by Libby

Increasing Satisfaction in Eating

Hello everyone! Today we are talking about SATISFACTION in eating. A lot of what I think about when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food connects back to satisfaction. Satisfaction can be thought of on a physical level (are you adequately nourished and responding to your hunger/fullness cues?) and also a more psychological/emotional level (are you regularly eating foods you enjoy and not feeling deprived?).

So often it seems that satisfaction gets left out when thinking about nutrition and eating. YES food is fuel for our bodies. YES it is important to eat plenty of fruits and veggies. HOWEVER, are you also seeking to pursue enjoyment in your daily eating experience, feeling appropriately satiated throughout the day, and regularly eating foods you find pleasurable?

As I have written about before, the array of health benefits we can get from food have to do with much more than their physical/nutritional benefits. For optimal health, it is important take into account not only the nutritional content of what we are eating, but also our emotional and mental well-being – aka our relationship with food.

When we seek satisfaction, listening to our bodies, and a healthy relationship with food as the foundation for our eating, meeting our nutritional needs tends to fall into place without our constant micromanaging. You may be wondering: how can I grow in experiencing greater satisfaction in eating? (*and thus improve my physical, nutritional, mental, and emotional health??*) Let’s explore this idea with the following ideas!

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September 21, 2022September 19, 2022 by Libby

A Few Things That Helped Me in Recovery

Recovering from an eating disorder was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I don’t even think there is a particularly close second?? There is a reason recovery rates for anorexia are generally estimated to be below 50% (and I would argue probably considerably lower, depending on one’s definition of “recovery”), and that it is the mental illness with the highest mortality rate. Not only is it a severe mental illness, but unlike other mental illnesses, the sufferer is literally physically starving themself to death as a result of the internal mental and biological processes gone astray. To make matters worse, the person generally doesn’t realize they are even sick (at least not initially or for a while), and the “anorexia brain” causes the person to not want to get better and to maintain the eating disorder at all costs (again, at least initially).

IT IS A TERRIBLE THING, LET ME TELL YOU! And I have tremendous compassion for anyone reading this post who is suffering or who knows someone who is.

From my own experience and considering the experiences of other people I have talked to or read from, the downward spiral into full-blown anorexia is usually very sharp and sudden. While I have a lot more insight now, when I broadly look back on my experience, it is like I was walking…walking…walking…going about my life, and then suddenly it was like I fell off a cliff and was helplessly consumed by this devastating thing in my mind I had no control over and didn’t even realize was there. Anorexia, from my experience, was like this out-of-body, dissociative experience of devastation taking place inside my mind with drastic physical consequences. While the downfall into anorexia is often sudden, the full climb out is long and challenging, taking a tremendous amount of motivation and perseverance.

However, I believe that full recovery is possible for anyone, no matter how serious the illness or how long it has been a problem in your life.

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August 17, 2022July 28, 2022 by Libby

Exploring Different “Types of Hunger”

When many people first hear of Intuitive Eating, they tend to think it is simply about eating when you are hungry and stopping when you are full. While this is certainly an important part of being an intuitive eater, eating intuitively goes well beyond responding to our physiological hunger/fullness cues. In this post we will explore some of the other kinds of “hungers.”

This concept of “types of hungers” is introduced in the Intuitive Eating book and I will elaborate and expand a bit more in terms of how I tend to think about it. Of course, generally when we think of feeling hungry we are talking about a physiological drive to eat. Everyone experiences physiological hunger in slightly different ways, often some combination of a grumbling stomach, lightheadedness, irritability, difficulty concentrating, etc. For the purposes of this post, we will explore hunger as a concept of various drives/reasons to eat including and beyond just physical hunger.

Let’s explore some of the different types of hunger!

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August 3, 2022July 23, 2022 by Libby

What is Intuitive Eating?

This post was first published on January 13, 2021. As many of you are newer to the blog, I wanted to repost it today as the principles of intuitive eating are relevant for much of my nutrition philosophy!

Today I want to spend some time discussing what intuitive eating is, as this framework of eating underlies much of what I believe and talk about when it comes to food. When I first learned about intuitive eating towards the end of high school, it greatly helped me in my recovery from an eating disorder and in improving my relationship with food.

The intuitive eating framework was developed by two dietitians, Eveyln Tribole, M.S., R.D.N., and Elyse Resch, M.S., R.D.N. The first edition of the book, Intuitive Eating, was published in 1995, and the fourth (and most recent) edition was published in June of 2021. The book goes in depth on the ten principles of intuitive eating (which I will describe more below) and is a resource I would HIGHLY recommend if you are interested in learning more! (*There is also a workbook that you can get to go along with the book that is also really helpful!) Since the publication of the book, there have been over 100 studies on intuitive eating, validating its effectiveness when it comes to improving one’s overall health (both physical and mental), including one’s relationship with food.

Intuitive eating is a way of eating that focuses on tuning into your own internal bodily cues, mind, emotions, and overall intuition. It places emphasis on the reality that our bodies know best what/when/how much to eat – better than an app or calorie tracker, a meal plan, or a diet (or “lifestyle/wellness plan”) – YOU yourself innately have the ability to eat in a way that cares for YOUR body and YOUR specific needs at any given point in time.

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