What do you think about the term “binge”? What do you think “binge” means? What would a “binge” look like to you?
To me, because the term “binge” connotes all kinds of negativity, I hesitate to use the word, period. However, the word pervades our language in many ways, and I now want to address it.
In a nutshell: I do not believe a “binge,” as it is largely understood to be, is dangerous or bad or wrong in anorexia recovery. In fact, in my opinion, eating a load of food in a short period of time sounds quite logical for someone emerging from years of starvation.
In my personal experience, I have checked into treatment many times, and every time, the intake person at the hospital would ask if I had ever binged. This question apparently is important to medical providers, as the answer provides diagnostic data. If I have a history of binges, I may have a predisposition for binge-eating-disorder, and therefore, I need to watch my food intake for the rest of my life. I need to monitor my emotions with relation to eating, to stave off any dreaded overeating episodes.
I may or may not have such a predisposition, but to liberate myself from the shackles of anorexia, I have to convince myself that voracious eating is perfectly okay. And if one looks at a starved person – a person starved for most of his/her life – rebound-eating, or shoveling food in, for months upon months, seems like a jolly idea.
I have another example of how ridiculous, and even sad, negative appraisal of binges affects us, to our detriment, in recovery. One time when I was in treatment, a fellow patient, a male in his thirties, who was obviously very undernourished, revealed in our therapy group that sometimes, he binged on cereal. And one morning, by goodness, he proceeded to exceed his breakfast meal-plan and eat five extra bowls of cereal. At a loss of what to say or do at the time, the caretaker overseeing our meals, as well as the other patients, stayed silent while this man continued his treks to the cereal boxes and back to the table. However, once we gathered in our therapy group, we spent an hour-and-a-half trying to figure out why he ate all that cereal. What was his deal? What emotions triggered such insanity? These questions seemed important at the time.
The gentleman in question cried all through group, because he had no idea why he ate all that cereal; he just had a compulsion to do so. Why no one considered the fact that his body may have run the show for that meal, or, in other words, his biology overrode his id, ego, and superego, because he was starving, strikes me now as peculiar. I now understand the five bowls of cereal; I understand those better than I do the regimented, titrated meal plans we hated and fought. Inside, all of us in recovery from restrictive eating disorders actually want the whole kitchen, not the tidy meal plan. If we get honest with ourselves, or if we just start eating, the desire to eat everything – “binge” – becomes the norm.
If anyone is triggered by my binge justification, please accept my apologies. However, for those who have decided to recover, but who are panicked because they “lost control” and gulped down the cereal aisle, I want to say, never fear. In the last two years, I have eaten whole cakes in addition to a full day’s-worth of other food. It happens. I was full; I felt weird, but I certainly enjoyed the cake.
Also, I want to add that eating loads of food, what one may call a “binge,” can occur throughout anorexia recovery. You might have tried unrestricted eating over the course of a couple of years, but you still “binge,” or feast-eat, because your body still needs the energy all the food, in that particular moment, provides. Those of us with long histories of anorexia should expect feasts at all stages of recovery, no matter how much weight we have gained. I have maintained the drive to feast over the course of two years; part of the reason why I still want to eat so much originates in my repeated returns to restriction (because of fear), despite the fact that I have gained a lot of weight and am currently within the normal BMI-range. No matter what my weight, or when/where in my recovery, feasting benefits me, if my body asks for it. In fact, I need to do more of it.
