The Tipping Point
It’s true that I feel very connected to my blog, and that what I write is about as honest a representation of my current state of mind as it gets. But today I found myself thinking about what it would be like to read this blog at other points in my journey, how much of it would ring true, whether I could truly connect. The paradox of food addiction, or actually any addiction, is that it often takes years of suffering and believing you’re desperate enough for change to will it to happen, just to turn around and continue to suffer some more. Yet often people in recovery describe that there was some tipping point for them. Some day where it shifted, when healthy actions moved from being torturous and desperate gestures, to the next natural action your body feels like taking. So on the one hand, it takes forever, but on the other hand, things can change in an instant.
There is implicit good news and bad news in this. The bad news is, you may read my blog with resentment and bewilderment, relating to some aspects, but discounting it globally as you know you will continue to binge, restrict, or obsess about food today. The good news is, you can continue to exhibit those behaviors for as long as they work for you, and if you keep hope, willingness to learn, and curiosity alive, you may just wake up one day to your tipping point. You really never know what’s right around the corner. That sentiment has helped me through many painful, lonely, and scary times, and I love that about life.
Addicts are extreme thinkers by nature. I am either on the wagon or off. Going all out, or trying to be perfect. Feast or famine. There are many many wise beautiful people who have helped and mentored me along in my journey of recovery from both alcohol and drugs, and my eating disorder, and they continue to help me every day. If there was one nugget of wisdom above all other things I have been told by these people, it’s the importance of reminding myself 50 times a day if that’s what it takes, that this is a process. If I still don’t feel good, it’s because I’m still growing. If I still don’t “get it,” it’s because it’s not time for me to get it. And most importantly, if I hang in there without shutting down my heart to recovery, I will ultimately heal.
So speaking of feeling stuck, I wanted to say today with regard binging, binging is functional. If it didn’t do something for you, you wouldn’t do it. Instead of obsessing about why you can’t stop binging, why not give yourself permission to binge if that’s where you are today, and instead consider making alterations in the foods you binge on. There is an anesthetizing quality to a binge, yet at the same time it is often so destructive. What if you started by making your binge less violent, instead of stressing yourself out about giving up the binge? What if you ate unlimited sushi instead of 2 supersize value meals? What if you cooked yourself a beautiful 4 course meal instead of loading up on supplies at the convenience store at 11 o’clock at night.
It was a pivotal moment in my life when a dear friend of mine brought little defiant, reluctant me, to a local health food store with a luscious buffet and suggested that I eat whatever I desired, as long as I confined it to that store. To my amazement, the food was delicious. For several months, I over-ate vegetables drenched in olive oil, cheesy casseroles, baked goods made with spelt flour, and organic chocolate and coconut. And as I grew to love and crave these foods, I found that I was just not feeling the need to go to the convenience store or anywhere else destructive. I did not feel shame, I felt moved by the loving act of putting nutrition into my body. And the best part was, I did not have to give up my food yet.
I have since moved further in my recovery, and I capture this next phase in my blog. But although the winds of change had certainly been blowing for a while, the real switch happened when I fully leaned in to the sometimes uncomfortable belief that healing from food addiction might take far longer than I had hoped, and may work way differently than I had predicted. And then one day, I woke up and I had a tipping point.