October 24th - Progress is slow and sometimes painful

All I have to say is that I really hate that progress and recovery from an eating disorder is often pure hell.  Not so much because of the physical effects, but the emotional struggles that have to take place in order to retrain the brain to recognize healthy eating and what satiety is.  I had another visit with my team at the eating disorder clinic this week and we decided to start back up a tactic that I had some success in the past before my migraines had started several months ago.  This is used commonly in eating disorders and also in other mental illness treatments.

Because my binges tend to be pretty intense, there is no expectation for me to start right away at trying to wait 5 minutes before bingeing.  Instead, I will be simply trying to hold off as long as I possibly can (which usually is less than a minute) and then try to extend the time as I can.  That being said, since my last blog update, I have averaged a binge about every other day primarily due to high stress and depression.  What is hard is that I do have some positive things to look forward to in my life but the sad and depressed feelings are just coming on so strong and all I can think about is to shove my mouth full of food to make it better.  Or at least to take the edge off.  This is probably the best I can describe the constant battle that goes on in my head and I would imagine in alot of other individuals heads that have binge eating disorder.  It is a constant struggle to turn to food as a coping mechanism.  Not because seeing food is a trigger to anything (although for some it is) but as a comfort measure.  Thats why I can go out to dinner with friends or family and be just fine eating a regular meal.  It is when I am by myself or find some way to get away to be by myself and hit my stash of food and binge away in order to make things feel better.  

Thankfully, I have found another avenue to process my emotions and at least delay binges by writing blog posts here while also working to expand my efforts to create awareness about binge eating disorder and mental illness.  Especially now that things are picking up with starting the vlog channel on YouTube.  As some of you may have seen on Instagram, the editing of the opening credits has begin as well as the initial taping and writing of the outline for the first video.  My hope is to have the first video out within the week and then see how things go as to how frequent I will get videos out after that.

I know I have said this in every blog post up until now, but I want to extend a profound thank you to each and every one of you guys that have extended your kind words of support to me both for my struggles as of late and for the campaign taking off.  It has helped me push even harder seeing the outpouring of support grow exponentially.  Thank you all and I will talk to you all soon again!

I encourage you all to subscribe to the Hope For Recover YouTube channel so when the first video is uploaded, you can be the first ones to be able to view it!

Hope For Recovery YouTube Channel