Just out of curiosity, as I wrote in my journal today, I fished my memory to the best of my abilities and wrote in gory detail a list of the foods I’d typically consume when choosing to succumb to what I used to call a “Junk Food Binge.” That was my code for anything goes, no food is off the potential list, no attempt to observe or even define certain boundaries (funny how when removing any boundaries always seems to lead to junk food and not, say, “the all-melon binge” or the “any flavor of kefir I want binge”). I’ve always been aware of the staggering calories I must have consumed, as I still count calories to this day as part of my food plan. In fact, counting calories is so second-nature to me, by now it’s actually more comforting TO count calories than to try to eat without having that automatic awareness be part of my selection. Yet, it seems part of my bingeing was rooted in the need to say to heck with rules, and I kept myself mostly ignorant on how much I was actually consuming during these episodes. “More than 3000” is about as far as I wanted to think about it. Until today. Yow.
I’m seriously frightened by what the sum total must have been at my worst. My poor body, when I think of the load I caused to so many of my organs and systems, it breaks my heart and makes me sick. At the same time, I don’t know how my body managed to handle it without the degree of weight gain you would have expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very active, have always been involved wth athletics and have always been vigilant about jumping back into serious clean eating following a binge. Even so, surely these measures alone could not have negated the mass ingestion, at least that’s how it seems in hindsight. I mean, my weight is pretty much the same as it was back in those days, and I can promise you, my net totals over a typical week or a typical month are nowhere near as high. I exercise pretty much the same, so no change there. How do I explain the disparity?
I can only speculate, and even then there’s really no point, just an interesting thing to ponder. Does the body actually hit a point in which it simply can’t absorb more than “X” calories over a given period of time, so once I crossed “X” I couldn’t absorb any more? Was I simply given the grace of a normal-weight body until I was ready to take action for my recovery? Was I in fact still exercising more, and doing more restricting on my regular food days than I’m remembering?
Yet another reason why I’m so grateful to be at the point I’m at in my recovery. I can only pray that I always remember how horrible, awful, panicked, miserable, depressed I was during that time. How many times did I write the words, “So SCARED!” in my food journal. How many times did I lay in bed, so sick to my stomach after ravaging it all night with sugar, fat and carbs, that the sound of my poor stomach wimpering (at least, that’s what it sounded like to me) made me cry?
Of course, on a lighter note, it’s still depressing, seeing how quickly those calories can STILL add up. Anyone check the label on a can of nuts or a bag of trail mix? Ouch! Not fair.
Recovering Part-time Bulimic 