The Hardest to Break

My last rule.


My final rule to shake from the ghost of eating disordered past is the most difficult one.
It is the one that I have the most emotional investment in, and the one that has the deepest hooks in my soul.

We all have one of these, and this is mine.

Breakfast.


I never eat it.



I think back to when I was a kid, getting ready for school in the morning was a blitzkrieg affair.
I hurtled through the shower, getting dressed, packing my homework and books into my backpack, and then downstairs to the kitchen, where every morning, without fail, I took down one of the china bowls, dumped in a pile of cereal, poured on the milk and sat down to eat.

This was the time I was at my healthiest relationship with food. I never purposefully skipped meals. I had never understood how girls who sat at lunch could nibble at a yoghurt and then go the rest of the day without eating. It blew my mind. I was always hungry. When I got up in the morning, my stomach often growled, and I raced through my morning routine to get to that cereal, and even though I was in a rush, I always enjoyed the cereal because I liked eating. There was no emotion attached to the act other than nourishment and pleasure.

When I was finished, I rinsed the bowl and ran out the door. Sometimes I didn't rinse the bowl. Sometimes, I was running late, and I nuked a bagel in the microwave and ate it on the school bus. Sometimes I had a spare five minutes, and I'd treat myself to scrambled eggs. I liked them with loads of black pepper.

I was always hungry when lunch time rolled around. I never thought twice about my breakfast. It was just part of my day.

Sigh.

I think back to that girl I was, and I feel so sad that she's in for such a rough time. I was always proud of how wholesome and normal I was compared to the numerous girls in my high school who did have eating disorders, or who were cutters, or who got knocked up at sixteen and got abortions or dropped out to raise kids.

My eating disorder got its hooks in me when I was older. This is probably why it ran away with me the way it did.

I learned to restrict.
I cut calories. I lost weight.
I tightened and obsessed and got smaller and smaller until people started to take notice.

Even then, I ate breakfast.
It was a cautiously measured and recorded 300 calories, and I didn't eat again until dinner, but I ate breakfast.

The one exception was on those rare occasions when I would binge.
Back then a binge was barely anything.

It would be after dinner
(which I ate at five in the evening every day and never allowed myself to eat again afterward).

Sometimes I was so hungry at night my whole body shook. I would curl around the hollow of my stomach that ached like an empty tomb. I would writhe in agony, counting minutes until the sunrise, when I was allowed to get out of bed, do my sit ups, and then go eat my breakfast.

Only, every so often, I couldn't make it.

I'd eat a bag of microwave popcorn with a handful of chocolate chips thrown in, or a stack of rice cakes slathered with peanut butter.
My stomach was so shrunken and shriveled at that point that those quantities made me feel overfull.
I would feel ashamed, and I would punish myself by skipping breakfast the following day.

If I could add the calories from my binge to the calories from the following day, divide them, and still come up with two numbers under a thousand, then I could relax.

This was how fucking insane I was.

When the pendulum finally swung in the other direction, boy did it swing hard.
It felt like all the will power I had ever had in my life was used up, and I had no self control around food.

Still.
I always started every day with good intentions.
After binges, I never ate breakfast.
Oftentimes it was because I was still painfully full from the night before.

After so long restricting and counting calories, I would restrict all day, eat a "diet dinner" and then at nine o clock at night, I would put away amazing quantities of food. My parents were constantly wondering where the gallons of ice cream they bought disappeared to, loaves of bread, and jars of peanut butter.

Still, every day, I rededicated myself by skipping breakfast.

It was all a giant cycle.

Diet mindset and disordered eating research shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this kind of restriction around food always results in a binge later. We cultivate a starvation mindset, and our bodies respond in kind blasting through our resolve and crushing our concept of will power in favor of survival.
After almost two years of being so restrictive around food, my body took back control. I ate everything I could get my hands on because it was so scared I would starve it again.
Instead of lying awake at night waiting until I could eat, I was lying awake berating myself for eating. I didn't remember how it felt to sleep unless I was so full I could barely breathe, nauseous and saturated in guilt. I fell asleep every night vowing the next day would be different and then doing the exact same thing, over and over and not understanding that the only way I would ever stop feeling crazy about eating was if I stopped vilifying the act itself.

It took me years, ten years in fact. I am finally, after spending almost half my life losing my mind fighting my body, I gave in. I started eating when I was hungry. I started stopping when I was full.

And here's the thing,
I did manage to eat breakfast once or twice in that time.
There were a couple of times while I was pregnant that I made oatmeal and bananas and ate them while my morning sickness told me "Do this, or I'll kill you."
There have even been a few times on holidays that I've munched a piece of toast with a large mug of tea.

But in my day to day, I keep pushing it.
I keep pushing it to nine...ten...or as of late 11am.

It's the earliest I can force myself to eat.

And it's going really poorly.

Perhaps with the baby's increased nursing, the extra walks to put him down for naps, and some stress, the days run away with me, and before I can think straight sometimes it's noon or one o clock before I've eaten, and then...I kind of binge.

It's nothing compared to where I was at before, but I can feel my feet slipping on that slope of excuses.

I deserve better.

I worked too hard. I still work too hard.

I cannot fall back into such a horrible void. I deserve to be comfortable.

I woke up with a grumbling stomach this morning, and I ignored it.
I fought it.

I shut it up with coffee.
I shut if up with errands and baby and running around.

Then it was eleven, and I was so hungry I was dizzy.

I knew the signs.

I knew I was going to binge, and there are precautions I take now so that I don't hurt myself the way I used to.

I make a smoothie with a shitload of fruits and veggies.
I eat some nuts and drink a big glass of water.

Then I take a break.

I force myself to sit with what I have eaten for at least an hour, so I know that if I am still hungry I can and will feed myself.

Anyway, they're still rules. They're still food rules. But they're in place to rescue me now instead of doom me. They're there to protect me and my baby.

And I know I probably need to eradicate them...

But that's going to have to start with the root of the problem.

And that problem is breakfast.

One little change, like all the others, that will eventually help me to get back to that little girl who listened to her body because she hadn't learned how not to yet.