Whether it be over eating, restricting, constant dieting, over-exercising, purging through laxatives or vomiting our behaviour around food can lead us to feel alone and hopeless. Often this can bring with is body dysmorphia where we look in the mirror and see something that is not there (whether that be too big or too small or even that we are a healthy weight when we are not). 

Often disordered behaviour around food can find it’s routes in trauma and recovery is sometimes slow - however it is possible.

Some signs that you may need some support around food are:

• Unusual behaviours around food such as skipping meals, adopting very narrow and restricted meal plans, eating in secret away from other people, consistently eating too much or too little.

• Unusual behaviours around meal times such as not eating, constant bathroom visits, different food to everyone else.

• Needing to get it out: when there is a compulsion that it must come out either by way of voting, laxatives, supplements or exercise

• It’s becoming an obsession: talking lots of about unhappiness with your body, shame, self-loathing or disgust around your body. Hyperfocus on healthy eating and constant checking in the mirror and being impacted by the sad, angry or disgusted feelings that come up as a result

• Out of Control Binging which is not about enjoying but more a loss of control.  You may keep promising to yourself “this is the last one” but the next minute you are reaching for the next one.  Maybe it’s that “tomorrow will be different” only to find that it isn’t.  The quantity of food that it is possible to eat seems limitless sometimes with just brief pauses between starting again.  

• Out of Control Restricting: a sense of power and control that you are able to impact the number on the scales and a sense of success when you see it happen.  Shame may be there around eating anything at all.  You know this is not healthy but feel unable or unwilling to stop it.  

• Out of Control Exercise: you may feel like you are compelled to exercise and when you miss a day the messages in your head become deafening that you are now bigger than you would be if you had exercised. Exercise becomes obsessive, doing more and more.  Perhaps you carry on regardless of injury.

You may oscillate between binging and restricting and may have a version of purging to try and balance it all out. Whatever your problem with food, having a safe, non-judgemental space to explore it free of guilt and shame can be the beginning of a journey into recovery.