I love to eat and like most Americans, I’m obsessed with TV chefs.  (shout out to Giada!) But like some Americans – eight million to be precise – I also suffer from Binge Eating Disorder. Why am I sharing this with you? Because the book I am editing now is about a girl struggling with Binge Eating Disorder (B.E.D.) and when I shared my story with my beta readers and critique partners I received a lot of positive feedback for the reality of my protagonist. She hates her body, she struggles with emotional eating, she uses food to punish herself or to punish others. If I show my story to a few people and they can all relate on some level to her issues, what does that say about our relationship with food as a country?

It isn’t good folks. And I’m not going to waste time discussing the latest fad diet, or our new obsession with sugar being the enemy. What I will talk about honestly is my struggle. For years I have been on some diet. By day, I shunned carbs, fats, sugar and whatever else the latest fad told me to avoid. But by night, feeling deprived I would go into a frenzied attack on everything I ignored during the day. Brownies? Yes. Cake. God Yes. ICE CREAM??

I don’t binge every night but I do have triggers and here are just a few of them for your edification:

Officemate talking about diets and how much weight they lost
Officemate talking about how fat she is (she’s tiny – FYI)
The Today Show has Dr. Oz on and he has a rather creepy discussion with tiny tiny Matt Lauer on ways to avoid certain foods. Dr. Oz just seems creepy to me.
Putting on clothes that don’t look good and deciding, “F” it. I’m just going to go down in a blaze of ice cream.

What can we do as a society to help sufferers of Binge Eating Disorder? Not much. We have to figure out our triggers on our own. We need therapy and a nutritionist and sometimes even medication. We cannot do it on our own. WE CANNOT. If you binge, please read this and believe me. I’m probably older than you and have been ignoring the signs of B.E.D. for years. I couldn’t work toward healing without my therapist.

What we can do as a society is stop obsessing over our bodies. No one is getting healthier by being shamed. No one is getting healthier by being placed on a 1200 calorie diet and forced to comply with the tiny bits of food. No one is getting healthier by being yelled at by those nasty trainers on Biggest Losers. Those are all temporary fixes. If you binge, believe me, you will binge again after they stop yelling at you. And then you will hate yourself even more.

How about we learn to love ourselves? Big, small, muscular or flabby. Good things come to people who truly love themselves. We want to get outside and walk, run or go to the gym. We want to eat salads because they taste good and we can feel the change in our bodies. What we need to learn as a society is that the fairy tale ending of someone losing all their weight and then they live happily ever after is simply not true. I may never lose all the weight but by GOD I will learn to love myself! I will learn to eat vegetables and enjoy exercising because it feels good. I am not doing this to become thin or “in shape” whatever that means. I’m doing it because I want to be the healthiest me I can. That means taking care of myself. It does not mean obsessing about carbs or sugar or whatever else they came up with – it means loving myself.

So join me in finally taking charge of our lives. I have a morning mantra: It is  “I love myself and I’m going to take care of me today.” Okay, so it’s a bit hippy dippy, who cares? If we hear things enough we might believe it! So join me in loving ourselves. We deserve to be our highest priority. Also as my therapist says to me every time she sees me, “be kind to yourself.” If you binge, don’t be angry, figure out why you binged (in a kind non-judgemental way) and forgive yourself and move forward. These are the are simple tools toward a healthy life – at least for me. I urge all of you who struggle with B.E.D. to seek professional help – by way of therapy and a nutritionist. You deserve to take this time to care for yourself! Remember that!

Be well!

KatieB