Do you ever look at other people who seem to eat normally and wish you could be like them?
Does it piss you off that you have eating issues and they don’t?
Do you think that its just not fair you have to deal with all this?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you answer yes to all because there was a time when I would have too.
While I was still binge eating, I would observe friends eat and get jealous of their normalcy. On top of that, for many years I worked in restaurants and I’d see all kinds of eating habits – people who I related to, people who I thought were worse off than me, and then those people. The ones who seemed to eat normally, that stopped when they were full, had zero desire to overeat, and it killed me.
“Why can’t I be like them?!”
But all these thoughts I was having, about wishing things were different or that it’s not fair, weren’t going to help me change anything.
All it did was bring me down.
I know when I was in the thick of it, or really any part of it, I’d feel sorry for myself and end up drowning my sorrows in sugar and processed foods as I thought about how much better my life would be if I could just kick binge eating to the curb.
When we feel shitty, we treat ourselves shittily (that’s really a word, I looked it up), a.k.a. we stop caring, and eat, eat, eat.
Instead of wishing you could be like someone else, just be like you. Embrace who you are, your circumstances, and everything that’s happened for you.
I know this may be hard to swallow (unlike all that food, am I right?! Bad joke, I know.), but being a binge eater, an emotional eater, and/or a compulsive overeater, is the path you were supposed to take.
You are exactly where you’re supposed to be.
You can argue with this, but what’s the point? Arguing with reality is a losing battle. Accepting reality prevents having a battle at all.
This doesn’t mean you give up, it means you stop wishing things were different and accept that this is how it is right now.
There’s nothing you can do to change what’s happened or where you are in this exact moment, but you can change how you look at it.
Think about a time when you were so mad at someone for something they did. At the time you were furious! But now, you’re over it. How you told the story of what happened then is different than how you tell it now. The events didn’t change, but your thoughts about them did.
You entered a place of acceptance and therefore you were able to move on and stop dwelling in a negative space.
The same thing can be done right now.
You decide how you want to perceive what your life is like right now. And I’ll tell you, the more accepting you are, the easier it will be to move forward and get to the other side of this.
No matter where you are right now, hating your circumstances, or yourself, is not going to help you get to where you want to be.
Hating doesn’t bring forth positive action. I’m sure you can find examples of this in your own life.
“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” – Maya Angelou
As you’re sitting there, looking at those people who can just stop after eating half a sandwich, who genuinely don’t want dessert, who don’t spend their time at parties obsessing over the food spread, remember that although food isn’t their issue, something is. Maybe they drink too much, are chronic shoplifters, are depressed, are drug addicts, or have any of hundreds of other issues, big or small, that people can have. You don’t know, just like how some people may not know you’re a binge eater and that you can’t control yourself around food.
Wishing you were like other people is not a useful thing to do.
You’re amazing, just the way you are. You may not see it right now, your struggles may be clouding that for you, but believe me, you have so much amazingness that’s just waiting to be felt by you.
