Hi everyone. It’s been a while since I posted. I’m not sure if anyone even recalls any past posts of mine, but I had a very dark year. I’ve grown a lot. Some of my past issues have improved vastly, while others I am still struggling with.

My past post I thought I had “beat” whatever eating disorder/food obsession I was going through. I said “being close with myself changed everything” — and it had. Until I fell off the wagon. Don’t get me wrong, I have slowly improved my relationship with food over the past year. I went from not caring about food at all and naturally being a stick until I noticed a few extra lbs, and went into a severe orthorexic/dieting/yoyo dieting phase until about March when I decided to stop dieting and exercising altogether for two months, but also started binge eating as well during that time and put on even more weight. Ever since then, I’ve had a much more balanced relationship with food, but then random spurts of binge eating. I can tell it’s more of a habit/boredom/being alone without anyone to judge me thing than out of complete emotional distress. The problem is though, is that whenever I do it, I become so depressed afterwards.

It usually happens every time I go out at night with friends and get drunk or smoke weed. You’re probably rolling your eyes. I know drunk munchies and high munchies are a thing! “Just stop doing that!” you’re thinking — and I think I will. I guess my problem with it is that I never used to have issues like that. Yeah, I’d eat a little more when stoned or crave pizza when drunk, but it would never trigger full on binges. I want to go back to being able to enjoy my life and have fun without it triggering binges. But of course, when I’m under a mind-altering substance, my decision making is flawed and I don’t make these responsible choices. I think I probably will have to stop getting drunk and smoking for a long time to get this under control before I can have fun like that again.

I guess my issue is that the longer this goes on, the more I realize I can’t run from it. I used to think it was a “phase” — when it was only 3 months in, I thought it’d be over soon. Then six months, then 8 months, you get the point. It’s been about a full year now since this whole process started. I realized that I am just shifting attention from my ex boyfriend and our life onto this. This is my new “distraction”/”obsession”. This is that new thing that keeps me occupied.

Why cant I be obsessed with good things?! Don’t get me wrong, like I said before, I am a LOT better. Instead of forcing myself to not think about this or care (which never worked), I just have been filling my life up with other good things. My dog, the gym, and very heavily focusing on my career and an upcoming move. I have been putting a ton of my free time into my freelance graphic design side gig and planning for this move. It does fulfill me whole heartedly — my art and design is the one thing I had before any boyfriend. It is the one thing that is true to me. But it still doesnt feed that obsession in the way that food or my ex did. I’m hoping that this move will be the change I need to turn my life upside down and shake out all the bad stuff. But I don’t know that for sure.

My hope is that progress simply isn’t linear, and that this will phase out eventually when I enter a different chapter of my life. I’ve never had food or body image issues until this past year, so I feel like this isnt “ingrained” into my psyche. I want to believe that I can work past it and have a healthy relationship with food again. I guess I’m just hoping for reassurance on that. I don’t want to be battling this forever. I want my life to be about other things. I want to be how it used to be, when I was so happy and carefree and busy that I forgot to eat (not starving myself!) or passing on treats or not eating out of emotion. I miss those days so much.

On top of that, I know I’m damaging the hell out of my body. I definitely don’t over-restrict, but I know I’m throwing my body off by dieting/eating clean for a while and then suddenly gorging. Even if I don’t binge all that often. This is so bad for my body and I know I need to just eat normal and healthy for a few months in order to get myself back to normal. Maybe this will have to start now. No more drinking or smoking for a while, and maybe I’ll be able to cut this habit. I JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO NORMAL!

Sorry for the novel (my posts are never short). Thanks for reading this if you have.