Acknowledge your feelings
I am someone who really needs structure in her life. I’m an impulsive and fluttery person and structure and predictability keep me balanced. That sounds kinda boring, but because of my personality I really need this in my life. I always long for change and new things to happen, but as soon as it’s there it throws me off my game.
The urge to binge
So what enormous life changing things happened to me? Well, my boyfriend and me used to have the same working schedules. So I got used to have dinner together, workout together, be a couch potatoes together and go to sleep together. I might make it sound like we never did anything apart, we do live our separate lives, but I just got really used to spending our evenings like this. Anyway, my BF recently got a new job. Therefore he now has another working schedule than me, and that means that I have to spend (most) of my weeknights alone. I like spending time by myself (watching Pretty Little Liars, polishing my nails, taking a long warm bath etc.) but to me it has a downside as well: I feel the urge to give into binges again. It’s something that I didn’t have to deal with for a long time, and I have to be honest; this urge kinda scares me. I worked so hard to get where I am today, and I’m just really scared that I relapse back into my old behaviour.
Social control
I tried to analyze why this urge is suddenly bugging me again, and I think it has something to do with the fact that there is no one around to keep an eye on me. It’s not like Cees (my BF) is always telling me what to eat and what not, but his presence feels like social control to me. And without him being around, this form of social control is gone. It makes sense though, because if I look back on the eating disorder I had, it got better as soon as Cees and me started living together. I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) eat in secrecy anymore so I had to break these bad habits.
Acknowledge your feelings
I never wanna go back to where I came from so I’m going to fight this urge with every piece of willpower in my body. To me, the first step was to discuss this problem with my boyfriend. It might seem easier to bury your problems under a pile of your favourite comfort food, but it doesn’t solve anything. Saying it out loud made the problem even more real and forced me to go deal with my shit.
