What EDNOS means to me

NOTE: This is my comment in response to Nicole's of nicoleandgwendolyn.com's blog post: I have homosexuality. Her well-researched and thought out blog post outlines why she does not believe in EDNOS. I've been wanting to write about what EDNOS means to me for a while, so I copied my comment into a post. 

Sometime in the early 90s, I was reading a book on a train ride home from Ottawa. I honestly don’t remember the name of the book or its author, but it was about compulsive eating. Something about making promises to oneself. With that I made my own promise: I will stop purging and just allow myself to put on weight. And with that promise, I stopped purging. (I thought that I can always diet to lose the weight later.)

But, nothing else changed. I still had the bulimic thoughts and mentality. I still binged, but I allowed myself to gain weight. When I became “too big” I went on a diet to compensate.

What was wrong with me? I knew that when I stopped purging that I had not fixed anything. I knew I was still f***ed up. Am I a recovered bulimic who is doomed to struggle every day for the rest of my life to not eat everything in sight?  Just because I stopped purging I was now normal?

I can tell you that in a blink of an eye, I was not fixed/recovered just because I stopped purging.  

Because it’s not about fixing the compensatory behavior, it’s about fixing the mentality. Some of us purge, some of us exercise, some of us stop restrict, some of us chew/spit and some of us gain weight and diet thereafter.

In my case, I replaced purging with dieting as a compensatory behavior. Sure, dieting isn’t as dramatic, but it is still a behavior compensating for the eating disorder mentality. (Unfortunately, dieting is common and viewed as a safe and effective way to control eating, when it is an eating trigger.)

I’ve been struggling with eating, weight and food for more than twenty years. I’ve been searching for answers and seeking help.  In 2010, I decided to see a cognitive behavior therapist and she provided me with an explanation for my constant struggle: an EDNOS diagnosis. More importantly, she helped me to change my negative eating behaviour.

I don’t use it as an excuse; EDNOS verified what I had suspected for years: that there was something wrong with my thinking and that what I was thinking was not normal. 

Upcoming posts (not necessarily in this order):

• I'm fat: is there something unresolved in my life?
• More on a food neutral household
• With respect to food, I've been a four year old preschooler for most of my life
• Blog anniversary - including my first giveaway!
• Lunchtime logistics
• Start a new healthy habit - seriously, it's coming

Sandy Naiman: How I got an eating disorder at 62

If you haven't had the chance, please read this healthzone.ca article, "How I got an eating disorder at 62" by Psych Central's blogger Sandy Naiman. I found many interesting points and provided answers to my EDNOS diagnosis.

Here are my thoughts from the article:

I’m 62 and 5-ft. even. I’ve been an extreme yo-yo dieter my whole life, but it’s growing harder and more oppressive every day.

Harder and more oppressive every day is how I see my own dieting journey. Losing weight and dieting became increasingly impossible, my motivation and "willpower" to succeed was slowly replaced by anxiety and disdain of deprivation.

Disordered eating is defined as any sort of irregular eating behaviour that, while not exactly healthy, doesn’t fit the characteristics required for an eating disorder diagnosis. Chances are good that you’ve observed disordered eating at some point while listening to a group of women agonize over restaurant menus.

Recently, NEDA (National Eating Disorder Association) successfully pulled a Yoplait yogurt ad from the air due to the portrayal of diet negotiating language as healthy and normal. It's very common (I too, thought this was normal and healthy) but it's not healthy or normal. I blogged about the Yoplait ad here. 

"Anorexia, bulimia and what are known as “eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS)” – including binge-eating disorder – are serious, potentially fatal mental illnesses, according to a 2011 report by the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED).

Once I stopped purging twenty years ago, I was no longer bulimic, but I knew that nothing changed psychologically. But if I didn't have bulimia, what was wrong with me? It wasn't until I entered into therapy that I learned about EDNOS, and now I can at least put a name and get treatment to get out of this hell hole.

“It’s well accepted by leading researchers that eating disorders are genetically pre-disposed, tend to run in families and have nothing to do with metabolism,” Tartakovsky says.

"Your metabolism is just slow," is a common catchphrase many well-intended people would tell me. I'm glad to know that the genetic aspect of my condition has nothing to do with my metabolism.

“Furthermore, genes turn on and off all the time,” Woodside explains. “Some genetic loading may be activated by dieting – this may be the most common environmental trigger – and other loading may be activated by other factors, such as the biological changes that occur in puberty.”

Holy cow, this is me. I discovered in cognitive therapy that all of my overeating, bingeing and obsession with junk food is directly related to decades of dieting. I can recall the feelings of dred and deprivation when my synchronized swimming coach told me to lose weight at the age of 13.

In her clinical practice, Bulik has seen adults with three manifestations of eating disorders. The illnesses can: start in adolescence and persist through mid-life, start in mid-life, occur in adolescence, with a recovery period, then recur in mid-life.

I'm the first manifestation, starts in adolescence and persists through mid-life. After 23 years, I'm tired of food and weight ruling my life.

15 MAJOR TRANSITIONS THAT CAN TRIGGER A LATENT OR FIRST-TIME EATING DISORDER

Wow, I may be on the way to becoming a normal, healthy eater who is not ruled by cravings, anxiety and five wardrobes spanning various sizes, but that can come undone by a major life-event. Good to know. 

“I didn’t want to preach against obesity,” Gura said. “I wanted to move to a better place in my life, to stop struggling, to accept myself.”

Yes, I want the struggle to end.

THERE IS HOPE

When I began cognitive therapy, I had no hope that I could change but my therapist told me that there is hope. Now, I know she was right.

These disorders are obsessions. They are not choices. They’re an irresistible urge to behave in a certain way, against your conscious wishes.

Obsession is how I often describe myself. Obsessed with the food I eat, obsessed with food I shouldn't eat, obsessed with my weight.

The addiction is to the behaviour of dieting, not the food, explains Woodside.

I didn't understand this statement until a friend said, "I know what makes me overeat, it's all about the carbs." That's when I understood it's not about the food (sweets, bread, french fries) it's about the behaviour that comes from dieting. If a diet tells me to limit carbs, I think about carbs, I crave carbs, I develop anxiety stemming from a fear of eating carbs, anxiety increases feelings of hunger, and I eat carbs to relieve the anxiety. It's not the carbs, it's rebelling from restricting yourself from eating carbs.

Both Bulik and Woodside say they are upset by the shortage of clinics and psychiatrists and psychologists treating eating disorders because they are misperceived as illnesses only affecting adolescent girls and young women.

In addition, do doctors recognize the more subtle signs of EDNOS in their patients? My family doctor completely dismissed me when I tried to get help a few years back telling me that, "dieting is hard for a lot of people."

The average waiting time for an assessment is now four months at Toronto General Hospital.

Wait times at clinics far from my house always deflated my resolve to get help. I went to a private cognitive behaviour therapy clinic. I called and had an appointment shortly thereafter. Expensive, but I was worth the investment.


What do you think? Does this article speak to you?

Previous post: French fries vs. the chef's salad

Not a normal eater

“You just have to stop eating so much.”

My friend’s words irritated me. Of course I know that. I’ve been dieting on and off for years. It was the final trimester of pregnancy, and I was starting to think about the daunting task of losing all the baby weight.

I responded: “I’m telling you, there is something different between you and me. You don’t think about food the same way I do. You don’t obsess and think about food every minute of the day. There is something wrong in my head and I don’t think there is any point in attempting to diet unless I address that first.”

My friend is one of these people who can have a box of cookies sitting on her desk for weeks at a time. She has never struggled to lose or maintain weight. She is a thin person and thinks like a thin person. I have no doubt that if her brain and thin thinking could somehow be inserted into my head that she would have an easier time losing the baby weight (and more) that I’m currently lugging around.

I was going to do things differently this time. This time, I had a new plan: step 1: go to therapy and reprogram my thinking. Step 2: start diet and lose weight. In September 2010, I was ready to implement the plan.

In the first appointment we talked about my eating/weight issues history, including bulimia, perpetual cycles of weight loss and gain, countless Weight Watchers' memberships, and previous attempts at therapy to address these issues.

I developed bulimia shortly after retiring from seven years as a competitive synchronized swimmer. Even though I stopped purging twenty years ago, I continued to binge-eat (or perceive myself as binge-eating) and never resolved the underlying issues of the eating disorder. I learned that my suspicions were correct and that I am not normal eater, and I have an eating disorder. It's called Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS).

We discussed what I wanted to get out of therapy and setting goals; having a normal relationship with food. I want to be a person who can have ice cream in the freezer, chips in the pantry and a bag of cookies on my desk. I don't want to be ruled by cravings and feelings of guilt and dissatisfaction. I told my her that I wasn't hopeful that I could change. Without skipping a beat, she told me that I should be hopeful.