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Megan R. Bartlett, Class of '99 - Contributing Writer

It’s Valentine’s Day morning and I know my sweetheart and I are going out to dinner that night. I tell myself “I’ll be good all day” (which essentially means “I’ll eat no junk food”) so that I’m really hungry for a nice meal later on.

Follow up:

I down a glass of orange juice and grab a granola bar on my way out the door. When I arrive at work there is a box of heart-shaped butter cookies dusted with red sugar sitting open on the table in the meeting room.

I look longingly at them but tell myself, “I just had breakfast. I don’t need a cookie.” I manage to do ten whole minutes of work before my feet walk me back out to the meeting room, as if I’m nothing more than a puppet on strings, and my arm extends towards the cookies, fingers opening and then closing around not one, but two sugary delights.

“Okay, but this is really it! No more,” I say to myself on the way back to my office. I finish the cookies before I even get back to my desk. They’re really tasty. “Totally worth it,” I try to convince myself.

How many of us have started our days like this? We begin with what we think are good intentions or we vow to avoid all of our favorite foods for a period of time.

We may even rationalize such food avoidance: “I’m not eating any cookies because I’ll be eating a lot later” or “I can’t eat anything like that today because I ate too much yesterday.”

It’s easy to make such promises to oneself and, in my experience, even easier to break them.

What happens when we cave in to the desire to eat foods that we had otherwise forbidden ourselves to eat?

Many of us are able to eat just a small portion of that desirable treat and move on with the day.

Others of us, myself included, may feel annoyed that we broke a promise to ourselves. We may feel out of control of our eating or ashamed at ourselves for eating something “forbidden”.

We may feel a switch flip within us and say, “To heck with it! I’m just gonna eat whatever I want all day long and then start over with a clean slate tomorrow.”

If you, like me, are included in this latter group of people you may be at risk for Binge-Eating Disorder.

Someone with Binge-Eating Disorder consumes a lot of food in a short period of time (more than s/he would normally eat during a single meal).

S/he does not purge or use laxatives but does worry about gaining weight and thus might diet for a few days after a binge.

S/he is concerned about body image and weight and may feel ashamed about the inability to “stay in control” of food.

S/he tries to control what s/he eats by avoiding certain “trigger foods”, those that seem to lead to a binge.

I know these symptoms very well because I spent fifteen years struggling with them.
In my recently published book, Getting Out of B.E.D.: Overcoming Binge-Eating Disorder One Day at a Time, I describe my history, my daily struggles with bingeing and food avoidance and my journey towards recovery.

Especially now, during National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I urge you to talk to a campus counselor if you or someone you care about is struggling with an eating disorder.

For more information about Binge-Eating Disorder in general or for information about my book, you can visit my website: http://www.gettingoutofbed.com.

Please also feel free to email me with any questions or concerns (megansbook2006@yahoo.com). Peace, joy, and health to you!