Disordered eating
and how we use it to suppress the monsters
I’m wary of calling something ‘disordered.’ We’re quick to judge what’s the ‘right’ way to do something and what’s not. Especially when it’s something that affects women’s bodies, we’re quick to dismiss it because it doesn’t live up to or fit into social norms. So much of female chaos, desire, longings, needs are quickly attributed to ‘trauma.’ But isn’t that because our needs and longings threaten male social constructs that constantly tell us the right way to be and the right way to live?
I’m more interested in how eating plays out, instead of labelling it. Like, if I’m eating when I’m not hungry and my body doesn’t need it, then that fills me with anxiety. It fills me with anxiety because I have a long and complicated history with it. It fills me with anxiety because the world has made me afraid of being out of control. And because I’m always a little bit worried about putting on weight. My girl friends, most of them, always seem to be a little bit worried about putting on weight. Problem is, this anxiety of putting on weight can ironically make me eat more. It’s like I have to do it so I can stop worrying that I’ll do it.
I think of it as the food-weight matrix. It’s not that I’m overeating all the time. It’s that food and exercise, putting on weight and losing it, this whole thing around food and weight, this matrix, this relentless treadmill that women are on, is tied a lot to my emotions, my hormones and my needs. It’s a monster that’s always there. So many women are on this treadmill all the time. So much that we don’t even question it. We don’t stop to think: who are we doing this for? And why? What are we trying to control? What will escape if we lost that control?
In the last few years, I’ve got a better sense of when I’m doing emotional eating, so maybe I can more openly talk about it now, but for years and decades, food was a monster.
When I’m eating healthy (instead of eating my emotions, say), I feel good and energetic and awake. But it’s like I’m too awake. I can feel every damn thing. I can feel everything more acutely. What someone said, what they didn’t say, how did they look when they said it. I can feel my own feelings more.
I’m generally easily excitable. I get excited when I talk to someone I connect with. I grew up hiding away who I was. I still hung out with a lot of people, but the real me was hidden away. I looked at other people to see how normal people acted and I tried to act that way too. It’s only now that I’m truly present, and it’s brilliant and painful at the same time. BUT it means now I have even less of a barrier between me and the world.
Even if I’ve had a great day with people, even then the weight of all that exposure feels overwhelming, and I can eat my way through that pain too. Same with boredom. I can’t stand boredom. Boredom – like boring meetings – is physically painful for me. So I might have a big urge to eat after a boring meeting and I might have a big urge to eat after a fun and overwhelming sense of connecting too. Phew, crazy.
When I’m eating healthy, all this stuff bombards me. Anxious or negative thoughts. Unresolved old stuff. Boredom. All of it. I’m a live wire, a raw nerve. Like I’ll combust if you touch me.
Emotional eating is numbing. It numbs our difficult feelings, just like alcohol and drugs, toxic relationships and overwork and too much TV. Anything we do mindlessly can be numbing and addictive. Maybe we do it because our needs, longings, our real emotions feel all wrong for the world. We think damn, there’s a monster living inside me, I have to stuff it and hide it and make it behave or it’ll go crazy. And we use food (or whatever our thing is) to stop it from going crazy.
Okay, meanwhile, find me here, reading a short two-minute extract from An Unladylike Secret (HarperCollins UK and Avon/HarperCollins USA). If this book doesn’t make you go to Devon and eat a scone, I don’t know what will.
https://www.instagram.com/amitamurray/reel/DJjEkVGo4pU/
Here’s me in Devon, somewhere where the sea is so wild, it can hit your train windows. Know where I’m talking about? Also, another charity shop top, though can’t remember from where.
And one of my favourite book bloggers posted this. You must check it out and follow her if you don’t already. It tells you the vital importance of stories, all kinds of stories, all sorts of women, all sorts of desires.
