Episode 324: It's so common to hear from people that they want to go from having an eating disorder to just being a normal eater. And while this can be the long term plan, this should not be the focus while in recovery and as part of this episode I explain why.
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Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcripts, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head over to www.seven-health.com/324.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.
Before we get on with today’s show, I just want to say that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder and you want to reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to help and help you get to that place. I’ve been working with clients for the last 16+ years and I’m very good at what I do. If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time or following these videos for any length of time, hopefully you’re able to pick that up, but if you haven’t, you can go watch some of the testimonials that I have or read the testimonials on my website.
But if you are suffering with an eating disorder and you want to reach a place of full recovery, irrespective of how long it’s gone on, I would love to help with that. If this is what you would like, then please send an email to info@seven-health.com and I can then send over the details.
00:01:18
So, let’s get on with today’s show. Today I’m talking about a topic that I think a lot of people are confused about or definitely have questions on or come into this with maybe the wrong thinking connected to it. What I often hear from people who are very much at the beginning stages of recovery or are contemplating starting recovery is the idea of “I want to be a normal eater”, with the idea being that “I want to be a normal eater immediately.”
This always seems a little strange to me because you have someone who has been living with an eating disorder – and often when I’m talking to people, it’s for a really long time. It could’ve been going on for multiple decades that someone has been living with an eating disorder, and they could be in a situation where they’re not eating very much food for the majority of the day and they’re only having more food in the evening time. The restriction can look like lots of different things, but they’re not getting enough energy for what their body needs.
In terms of the restriction, energy across the board is low, but often there’s one macronutrient that is particularly low. So as part of their restriction, they restrict a lot more heavily in terms of carbohydrates because carbohydrates is this thing that is much more feared, or they restrict protein. Not normally protein, but fat is the other one that is often restricted.
So they’re not getting enough energy, full stop, but they’re really not getting enough of this one macronutrient by quite a lot more because of how much restriction’s been going on.
Typically then added into this scenario is that there’s lots of exercise and overexercise, and exercising even when someone’s sick or even when someone’s injured. And this can be taking up lots of time from someone’s day. It can really run the gamut in terms of how much this is an impact or how much time this is taking up in someone’s life, but exercise is often a big part of someone’s eating disorder.
So you have someone where they have been living in this way, where there’s been not enough food coming in, a lot of exercise going on, and this has been happening for years and years or even decades, and then the thought is “I want to immediately become a normal eater.”
00:03:34
The analogy that I will share with this is: Imagine that you go into a pool and you then swim underwater. And then you stay below the surface of the water, holding your breath for a really long time – as long as you can pretty much do it for. Then you resurface so that you can now take a breath. When that happens, the goal isn’t “I immediately want to take breaths in the way that a normal person would take breaths who hasn’t been submerged underwater for” – 30 seconds, a minute, 2 minutes, however long you’ve been down there.
This is the thing with recovery; if you’ve been submerged underwater metaphorically, when you resurface, there is going to be a period where there is more gasping for air. There’s going to be a period where you’re trying to bring in more oxygen and you’re trying to get out more carbon dioxide because you haven’t been able to do that properly for a long time because you’ve been submerged.
This is the way that I think about recovery. Your goal in recovery is not to be a normal eater. Your goal in recovery is to eat like someone who is in recovery. The point of eating more in recovery is that your body has a lot of repairs that it needs to be able to do. There are so many things that the body is meant to do on a day-to-day basis that have been missed out upon because the body’s had to turn off certain functions, turn down other functions; it had to triage what it could do because there haven’t been enough resources.
So what you’re wanting to do as part of recovery is bring in adequate energy that allows all of these processes that have been missed out upon to actually take place. This means that you’re going to need more energy than the average person. It means that when I’m looking at someone’s eating – because when I’m working with people, I will typically get them to keep an awareness log. This could be just in the beginning. It could be while we’re working together, we can figure out what’s best for someone. For some people, keeping an awareness log actually helps them be more accountable and leads to them being able to eat more and make more pro-recovery steps. For someone else, it doesn’t. So we always work out what’s going on and what’s best as part of that.
But typically, if I’m looking at someone’s awareness logs, one of the questions I’m asking myself is: If I knew nothing about this person and all I had was this to go on, would I be able to predict that this person is in recovery from an eating disorder?
And quite often, the answer is absolutely not. If anything, I would be looking at this thinking, does this person have an eating disorder? Are they currently dieting? So your goal shouldn’t be “I want to be a normal eater.” Your goal should be “I need to be eating like someone who is in recovery.”
00:06:40
Another analogy I’ll often use with this is you can have two people; let’s imagine you’ve got two people and one of those people has got into 100,000 worth of debt. The other one, they don’t have any debt at the moment. Then you have these two people and both of them are saying, “I’m going to put away the same amount of savings each week.” They’re both putting away the same amount of money; they’re going to have very different experiences in terms of what happens to that money because of their level of debt that they’re carrying.
The person who has no debt is going to notice that their savings is starting to go up. The person who does have debt is probably going to notice that “Actually, with the level I’m currently saving, I’m not even getting out of the debt. This isn’t even covering the interest payments that I’m now paying because of being 100 grand in debt.”
This is why, again, you shouldn’t be trying to be a normal eater, because if you’re trying to be a normal eater, what will most likely be happening is, one, you’re probably still not covering what you’re needing to cover just for today, plus you’re not dealing with any of the debt that has then accrued over the last years or decades that this thing has been going on.
For the person who is 100 grand in debt, their savings has to be a lot more aggressive and in a lot higher amount to be able to get back into a place where they’re like this other person who hasn’t accrued that amount of debt.
00:08:10
One of the things I would also add with this – and this is something I’ve noticed from doing this for such a long time – is that the majority of people who go on to develop an eating disorder, when we start to reflect on what their eating was like prior to having an eating disorder, their eating was higher than the average person.
It’s very common when I have conversations with people and they reflect back, they’re the ones that said, “You know what, I was always the person who was eating those three sandwiches” or “It was this joke in our household that I would be outeating my two bigger brothers” or “It was really funny; at school I used to sit down with the boys’ football team and I used to eat lunch with them, and they’d always be joking that I could eat more than them.” Maybe you don’t have those exact experiences, but there’s some reflection that “Actually, when I think about what my eating was like before the eating disorder, I did have a big appetite.”
And often connected to that was “This wasn’t a problem. I didn’t think this was a bad thing. I didn’t think it was an issue.” Now, sometimes people do think it’s an issue because their parents have told them this is an issue, their parents have said, “You shouldn’t be eating this amount of food.” If someone was in a larger body, maybe it was made out to be even more of an issue of “This is what you’re doing to yourself” and it’s turned into this thing.
But what often happens when people reflect is that “Prior to the eating disorder starting, I needed more food than the average person.” So I am asking you to do the same. If you’re living with an eating disorder, I don’t know at what point it started, but reflect back to, what did your eating used to be prior to any kind of intervention on your behalf or on someone else’s behalf? So if your mum took you to Weightwatchers or you decided to start dieting, prior to those things happening, what was your eating like? The vast majority of times when I have this conversation with people, it’s “My baseline was much higher.”
What this means is that this is what it’s going to be like for you forever. If this is what it was like before the eating disorder, this is what it’s going to be like after the eating disorder. So even when you’re fully recovered, your baseline is going to be higher than the average person – and this also means that when you’re in recovery, if you’re trying to eat like a ‘normal’ eater and you’re using “What are the people at work eating? What is my partner eating?”, etc., the likelihood is that that level is not even going to be enough just to cover your day to day, let alone the debt that has accrued from being in this state for such a long time.
I think this is a really important thing to recognise, because when we think about the concept of “I want to be a normal eater”, there can often be a lot of bias and a lot of beliefs wrapped into what we mean by ‘normal eater’. Often, ‘normal eater’ is code for “I want to do ‘eating disorder lite’. I want to do the version of this where I eat a bit more than what I’m eating now, but it’s pretty healthy. I’m not having any cravings for things that are ‘unhealthy’.”
Actually, what someone’s describing as a normal eater is this very orthorexic version of what they believe or what the eating disorder believes they should be eating. What they’re aiming for as a normal eater is still disordered, and it’s not going to be ever enough for what they need.
I’m not against the idea of getting to the place of being a normal eater – and again, we need to then define what that really means – but being in a situation where “I know what I need to eat throughout the day and I’m able to do that in a very normal way. It’s not a challenge for me to be able to eat the breakfast and the lunch and the dinner that I need and the snacks that I need. It’s a very normal thing for me to be able to do that. I’m not constantly fighting off hunger, I’m not having these huge cravings that I’m really struggling to be able to meet. Yes, I can have cravings and I can really enjoy certain food, but it’s all very manageable, and it’s not this chaotic situation.”
That’s where I think someone can very much get to, and where everyone can very much get to, but when we’re looking at what a ‘normal eater’ is, we need to be able to define that in the context of you and work out what that’s going to look like – and that’s most likely not going to look like what most people are defining as ‘normal eater’ because that’s typically someone who is dieting, that’s typically someone who is eating in this very orthorexic way, it’s typically people eating not enough for what their body needs.
I think that’s another reason why I don’t believe your goal should be to be a normal eater in recovery. Your goal is we need to get more food coming in.
00:13:18
The other thing I would say connected to this is what often I hear from people is, “But I really love healthy food” or “I don’t crave calorie-dense food or unhealthy food” or fill in the blank of this food, whether it’s pastries or chocolate or ice-cream or pizza or burgers or fish and chips or whatever the food may be.
And look, for some people, they do. They can be in the depths of their eating disorder, and man, they are having these really strong cravings, and it is taking a lot of strength each day to not be having particular foods. It is always on the brain and they’re always thinking about this.
But there are a lot of people – and I would possibly say even the majority of people – where that is not their experience. They’re eating in a way where “These feel like the kinds of foods that I want to be eating.”
The reason why I think this can be happening is people mistake “These are what I like” for “These are what feel safe.” It’s very hard to have a real craving for something when “This is the thing that I feel really scared about eating, and what happens if I eat this thing and then I want another one and I want another one? Or what happens if I eat this thing and it opens the floodgates?” So there’s all this fear baked into this. It then makes sense that “Hey, I’m not going to be having these strong cravings around this stuff because that’s the thing I definitely don’t want to have happen.”
What I tend to see happening is that a lot of the cravings that people start to have come about later on during the recovery process. It comes about later on, once there’s been more of this allowance, and once the body’s been given these foods. There’s the realisation of “Actually, I do enjoy that food”, or at the very least, the body recognises “This form of food, which is much more energy-dense, which I really need, has now become available, so now my craving for this has really skyrocketed because I’m trying to save us. I’m trying to help you to be able to do all the repairs and to do the things so that we move out of this state.”
So I think that for so many people who are not getting those cravings, one, it’s connected to the fact that there is a fear that is there that is blunting it. Even if it doesn’t feel like that’s the case and someone’s like, “No, I just really love these types of foods”, I think from a nervous system perspective, from a body perspective, there is this fear and those types of foods have been catalogued as a threat, and it’s now gone on for so long that “I just don’t even think about that thing because I would never go and get that thing, so that’s why I’m not craving it.”
I also think that often, the more depleted someone gets, the more that these kinds of foods can definitely fall by the wayside and not be thought about. And again, that’s not the case for everyone; sometimes the more depleted someone gets, this is when the cravings really start to rise to the surface, but often it’s just not the case.
00:16:35
This also explains why it’s very common for people to have extreme hunger as part of recovery. Your body is trying to get you to eat more food and trying to get you to bring more energy in, because as I said, there’s all of these repairs that need to take place.
With the extreme hunger, it can happen at different stages. For some people, as soon as they start to eat a little more, this is when the extreme hunger starts to really pick up. For other people, it’s a few months in, and it takes getting past some kind of threshold where “My digestion’s now working a little better and these other hormonal changes have started to occur”, and now this is when the extreme hunger arises. And for some people, they never have that experience.
But the reason I’m mentioning this is I know there can be a lot of fear about this. There can be fear of “I’m losing control, this is my worst nightmare, I never wanted this thing to happen.” There can be fear of “I’m turning into a binge eater, I’m swapping one eating disorder for another eating disorder.” And I just don’t believe that to be true at all. Your body is trying to save you. It is trying to help you, and this is why there is this increased drive towards food – and that’s a temporary thing. Temporary could be this is a couple of weeks, temporary could be this is many months that this goes on for.
But your body is trying to do the repairs, and it needs the energy to be able to do that. And once it’s out of that energy debt, then you’re not needing as much energy as you were using before. But that’s dictated by the body. That’s the body that is now telling you that information as opposed to you saying, “Well, I’ve gained enough weight to make it into the normal weight BMI, so now I obviously don’t need any more food” or “No-one thinks I’m sick anymore. When they look at me, no-one thinks I have an eating disorder, so obviously I’ve eaten enough food.”
There can be all these judgements that we have about why now ‘should’ be enough, but just because you think it should be enough tells us nothing about where your body is truly at. When I’m thinking about this, I’m looking much more at, what’s going on in terms of your symptoms? What’s happening with your digestion, with your sleep, with your energy levels, with your mood? What’s happening in terms of your eating disorder thoughts? What’s happening in terms of your movement and compulsions around that?
There are so many different indicators that can tell us where you are in recovery versus just “I feel like my body shouldn’t get any bigger than this, so I’ve obviously done enough.”
00:19:19
As I’ve said a number of times, your goal as part of recovery is not to be a normal eater. Down the line, at some future point, that will occur, and we need to figure out what ‘normal eater’ means for you, because as I talked about, this is going to be different for each person.
But in the beginning – and ‘beginning’ can still be quite a long period of time because it really depends on how much you’re actually making a change, how big are the changes you’re making, what’s going on in terms of your exercise while you’re doing this – because you can have a situation where “Hey, I’ve upped my intake, but now my low-level movement has started to increase” or “I brought in this thing for breakfast and that was so challenging, and yet I’ve now removed that afternoon snack I was having.”
People can have long periods of feeling like they’re doing a lot, but actually, when we look at what’s going on, you’re not really making progress in terms of changing that energy balance in the body. So the goal, for as long as it needs to be happening, is eating in a way that is about recovery.
The goal is recovery eating and allowing the body to have the energy that it needs to be able to finally get out of this state, and to get out of it forever, so that this isn’t “I got to quasi-recovery and then I stopped here and stayed here for a couple of years and then things relapsed again.” It’s getting fully recovered so that this thing is truly a thing of the past, and “I’ve done all the physical repair and I’ve also done all the other pieces that are so important as part of recovery so that this is something that just doesn’t happen again. I’ve got to a stage where I have other ways of being able to deal with life and cope that don’t involve the eating disorder.”
So that is it for this week’s episode. I wanted to cover this because I think it comes up so often, and I think there is this real feeling “I must be doing something wrong if I’m not immediately being a normal eater and I feel like that’s what I should be doing”, and it really isn’t. You need to be eating like you’re in recovery.
As I said at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you would like help to reach a place of full recovery, then please send an email to info@seven-health.com, and if you just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, I can send the details over to you.
All right, that’s it for this week’s episode. Until next week, I will catch you then. Take care, and I’ll see you soon!
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