On 16th March 2021 I saved a life – that life was my own.
I had been in a very dark place for a long time and my physical and mental health were both at an all-time low. The stress and fear around covid, the strain of watching my husband’s health deteriorate daily – it had all led me into a spiral of depression. My coping strategy was to self-medicate with alcohol and food, which meant that I was gaining weight at an alarming rate and was filled with self-loathing, embarrassment and fear. As I said, I was in a very dark place.
Every day I would get up and start eating and I wouldn’t stop. I would, quite literally, eat all day long and keep going until I went to bed. It would start simply enough with a bowl of cereal, then I would have a couple of slices of toast. After the toast I would make a cup of tea and, while I made it, I would eat another couple of slices of toast. An hour later another cup of tea with 4 biscuits, kidding myself that I was rationing them. Then it would be time for “elevense’s” which meant a cup of tea and more biscuits or cake or chocolate. Lunchtime next! Several sandwiches followed by a cake or donut (or 2) and then time for more cups of tea (each time accompanied by a few biscuits of course) before a mid afternoon snack of choccies. The evening meal was, more often than not, enjoyed with a bottle of wine and followed an hour or so later with cheese and crackers. Not one or two crackers; I could munch through a whole packet in one sitting. My alcohol consumption was also increasing with a large glass of wine becoming the norm at lunchtime when I sat outside in the garden to have lunch, and yet another large glass of wine or a beer before the evening meal because it “helps me unwind for the evening”.
At the end of each day I would take a cup of tea to have in bed and would retrieve the bar of chocolate that I had hidden in my dressing table drawer and quickly devour it, frantically hoping that nobody would hear the rustle of the wrapper being torn off. I would then turn out my light and lay awake for most of the night feeling sick and having stomach ache from all the food and alcohol I had binged on during the day. I’d spend hours berating myself: how could I be so greedy; why did I carry on eating even when I started to feel sick; no wonder I was so ugly; didn’t I realise I was literally killing myself with food and drink; I was going to develop diabetes or have a heart attack or a stroke if I carried on like this. So it would go on, right throughout the night. Telling myself how useless I was until eventually I would promise, absolutely convincing myself that I really, seriously meant it, I would solemnly promise myself that tomorrow I would do better. Tomorrow I would change. Tomorrow I would get up and eat a healthy breakfast, take some exercise, throw away all the bad food and booze and absolutely take myself in hand and I WOULD NEVER EVER BINGE ON FOOD OR ALCOHOL AGAIN, EVER!
Inevitably, like all addicts, I would get up the next morning and the cycle would start all over again………….and again………..and again……….!! My behaviours of secret eating, offering plausible excuses for “social” drinking and making extravagant promises that this is absolutely the last time I will do this are all typical of an addict, whatever their drug of choice might be.
Eventually my fear became so great that it didn’t disappear at dawn but followed me throughout my daylight bingeing hours. Every time I ate or drank a tiny voice inside of me would tell me that I was killing myself and I knew that voice was slowly getting louder and demanding to be heard. My blood sugar was well into the pre-diabetic range and was climbing rapidly, my weight and BMI were in the severely obese category and my physical health was shocking. Going upstairs in my house had become so difficult that I had to go on all-fours to heft myself up, turning over in bed was a 3 stage manoeuvre and I had constant heartburn and breathlessness. I had gone from being someone who, whilst still overweight, could swim a couple of miles and cycle for 25 miles to being someone who couldn’t even walk a mile without a break because of breathlessness, sore hips and backache.
Drastic action was needed, and I finally accepted that it had to happen quickly, before I was completely lost to food and alcohol addiction, and so the research began.
I quickly dismissed the usual calorie counting diets as I had tried them all before and knew they wouldn’t work for me as they didn’t address the issues surrounding addiction and binge eating disorders. I knew I would start out with all the best intentions but, within a few weeks, or even days, the urge to binge or drink would take over and I would be back where I started in that horrible downwards spiral. Eventually I narrowed it down to 3 options; weight-loss surgery, injections of an appetite suppressant and a diet that cut out all conventional food and alcohol. I then sat down with my family and told them just how desperate I was feeling and how frightened I was. I don’t think they really understood initially, until I got to the hard part and told them the extent of my eating and drinking, and that shocked them. Even the people living with me had no true idea of how far things had gone because I was so good at hiding it (I have heard it said that if you want to hide a body you should ask an addict for tips!). After much snot and tears I went through my options with them. They were all firmly against the idea of bariatric surgery due to the risks involved both during and afterwards and I had to admit that I had some serious misgivings about it myself. We then discussed the appetite suppressant injections which are administered through the local pharmacy, the main worry here being that, whilst it might work, pumping my body full of drugs was also not without risk and wouldn’t address the behavioural side of my eating problems. That left us with the diet option. It took a bit of explaining and understanding but, simply put, this option involved following a very low calorie diet (VLCD) which amounts to around 650 calories per day. No conventional food is consumed at all, but 4 food packs per day are eaten or drank which provide all the nutrients needed to stay healthy. This appealed to me as it gave me a very clear boundary around food and alcohol and was simple to apply – if it isn’t part of the food packs don’t eat it. Only black leaf tea, coffee and water are allowed outside of the packs. Drastic? Hell yes! But it removed all the foods and drink that I binged on thus giving me as near as you can get to total abstinence from food. What really swung it for me though was that it also included weekly CBT and mindfulness sessions which are geared towards addressing the triggers, habits and behaviours that had led me to this point and I was convinced that my mind was the key to getting well again.
Once my decision was made, I signed up straight away and waited for my first weekly box to arrive. I signed up on a Saturday and was expecting my box of food packs to arrive the following Thursday, which would mean I had a week to eat and drink as much as possible before the next Monday when I would start on the plan (because diets always start on a Monday right?). Surprisingly I found that I didn’t particularly want to eat any of my usual unhealthy foods, that little voice inside me kept saying “if you eat that you’ll just put more weight on and have to lose that too”. I had already calculated that if I lost weight at the average rate for the plan of a stone a month it would take me at least 12 months to get to a healthy weight and I certainly didn’t want to make this journey any longer than was necessary. I had concerns about whether the “food” would be palatable enough for me to stick to in the long term, so had signed up for an initial 8 weeks thinking that it surely couldn’t be so bad that I would be unable to even last that short time! In any event, the food packs arrived much earlier than expected, on the Monday, and I surprised myself by deciding to start the next day – a Tuesday!! I was already breaking my “dieting traditions” so maybe, just maybe, my mindset was already changing.
The first few days were not as bad as I had thought they would be and the food packs were actually really tasty. Those portion sizes though, they were less than I would give a toddler! I was eating with a teaspoon to make it last longer and trying to eat slowly with frequent sips of water. By day 3 I was starting to feel hungry and had a headache from the carb, sugar and alcohol withdrawal, and I was grumpy with a capital grrr!! Even though I knew I was being totally unreasonable with people I just couldn’t stop myself and my family were keeping out of my way. We were all eagerly waiting for the promised ketosis to kick in when I would, theoretically, stop feeling hungry, have a burst of energy and my body would start consuming my fat stores. On day 4 I woke to no headache, no hunger pangs and felt more clear headed than I had in years, oh the joy of ketosis! This was it, my body was eating into those fat cells and all I had to do was stick to the plan, drink plenty of water and watch it all melt away. I lost 11 pounds in that first week and another 4 in week two making a total of over a stone in 2 weeks. This was going to be soooo easy, all I had to do now was the mindset work that my counsellor and mentor were teaching me and how hard could that possibly be?????
A year of working on my mindset involved some very uncomfortable conversations with myself and learning to feel my emotions, good and bad ones, and not “eat” them. I had to learn how to deal with temptation, cravings and grief without using food or drink as a crutch. That part of my weight-loss journey is a whole other blog post which I promise I will post soon!
As always, this blog has been written from the heart and I’ve done my best to be as open and honest as I can about my addictions. I would love for you to share your thoughts with me as it’s only by sharing our vulnerability and opening up that we will be able to stamp out the stigma attached to addiction and mental health issues. We all need support and understanding in our lives.
Love Gilly T x
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