An insight into intent
Many things annoy me and the thing that’s annoying me today, particularly in regards to eating disorders, and disordered eating is the idea of ‘challenge food’. For those not in the know, challenge food is the label our ED treatment teams put on the food that our ED has already labelled as bad and unsafe. The idea being, that throughout recovery you ‘challenge’ that hypothesis and discover that food is not good or bad and is just food, and thus you step closer towards recovery. What annoys me however, is that I think that this over simplifies the whole process and actually strengthens our ED, if we step over and miss out on all the nuance involved in this challenge. Hear me out…
Pizza is a delightful slab of dough, layered with various ingredients and cooked to perfection. Pizza is innocent and delicious. Doughnuts and cakes are incredible pieces of chemistry whipped together using magical forces that turn things like flour, butter and heat into heavenly mouthfuls of greatness. Eating around, with, and in front of people is a wonderful time, filled with conversation, mutual enjoyment, and laughter. We are meant to be connected to one another.
For various reasons our disordered minds have turned these innocent victims (amongst many others) into demons that we think we need to vanquish through the act of challenging them. This is obviously not true. We don’t challenge victims, we challenge the culprit, and the culprit here is our mental illness.
When treatment teams, aka ‘trained professionals’, collaborate with our various ED’s and agree to keep things on the surface and label different foods as being a ‘challenge’, I believe we are all reinforcing the weird old rules that our mental illness has invented… As well as neglecting to focus on what the real demon is and where the challenge actually lies.
Our thoughts before, during and after the pizza are where the challenge exists. You can make pizza the enemy if you like; but if you’re not questioning the thoughts that YOUR brain is thinking, MORE than the food you’re eating, then you’re missing the point.
It’s a mental illness that shows up as an eating disorder, and it’s the sickness in our head that we need to deal with. The food is fine, as I said, it’s innocent. Our thoughts are the culprits here, so name them, talk about them, and leave the victim (the food) out of it.
Like most things, this requires nuance, and if you’re wanting to recover or enter remission from an ED then you had better start embracing it. You may still need to consider the foods that your ED tells you not to eat, but rather than picking apart the ingredients of the food or the food itself, you need to be picking apart the ingredients that make up the rule that you ‘shouldn’t’ eat it.
For example, if we challenge the thought…:
Slug (my ED): Pizza is bad, don’t eat it, you gross pig
Me: Interesting Slug, what’s going on there?
S: You don’t deserve it, you haven’t worked hard enough.
M: Don’t deserve what?
S: Food, the taste of something you enjoy.
M: Why don’t I deserve something that I enjoy?
S: Because you’re useless and didn’t do what you said you would
M: Does pizza come with conditions of who can eat it?
S: No… but you can’t because you’re gross
M: You already said that, and you said that pizza doesn’t have conditions. Hitler ate pizza and he was way worse than me.
S:.... Yeah well you’ll get fat
M: You said I’m already a gross pig, so why would it matter?
S… Because you’re dumb
M: Dumb, gross, whatever it is that you say I am, why are you saying it?
S: To make you feel bad
M: Why?
S: Because you’re dumb and gross?
M: But you said I was dumb and gross this morning when I was eating an apple sooooo….
S: …. I’m still here
M: Yeah but you were here for the pizza, here for the apple, and you’ll always be here, so I’m inclined to believe it doesn’t matter what I eat.
S: ….
In contrast, this is a chat that treats poor innocent pizza as the demon;
Slug (my ED): Pizza is bad, don’t eat it, you gross pig
Me: No it’s not, my therapist said that pizza is just food. It’s wheat, vegetables and cheese and I need carbohydrates, fibre and dairy.
S: You don’t need carbohydrates, you haven’t used enough energy
M: But I did my exercise and I haven’t eaten all day
S: You should have worked out harder, but you didn’t, because you’re lazy
M: I’m tired I just need to eat something, please
S: Fine, eat it, you lump. Eat the pizza, tell people you ate the pizza, but not too much, you always eat too much
M: I just have to eat one slice, I’ll just eat one slice, that’s all I need to do
S: Fat
M: I know
S: Worthless
M: I know. But I’m getting rid of you
S: I’m still here and there’s nothing you can do about it, you can’t even eat a slice of pizza without me, you fucking loser.
M: …But it’s just food, and I need it to live.
S: Yeah, and you need me to stop you from turning into the fuckin horrendous beast you were destined to be. You can’t do this without me. Eat the pizza, we’ll talk about it later.
M: Please just let me eat.
S: Shut up, don’t sit down…
(Obviously these are both scenarios that I’m making up as I type, but I also have over 2 decades of experience with living under the spell of Slug, as well as 10 years of working towards remission, so… there’s that. )
The main point I’m trying to make however is that if you’re continuing to focus mostly on food in your recovery, you are simply repeating the same patterns, just in a slightly different colour. Kind of like that blue/black/gold/cream dress that broke the internet a few years ago. It’s the same bloody thing.
Does a mountain climber challenge the mountain? No. The climber challenges their ability to climb and the various techniques, equipment, and thought patterns that are guiding them. Does a rally driver challenge the track? No. Does the computer programmer challenge the computer? No. Am I challenging my kitchen when I whip up a meal? No.
We are challenging what we believe to be the truth, and what we think we know, and are capable of. Our intent is the difference here. If you are truly wanting to get on the path to mental wealth, then stop focusing on the food and start focusing on you, because that after all, is where the ‘mental’ part of that situation lives.
TLDR; Food is not our enemy. Our thoughts are. Focus your attention on the intent behind your decisions, not the delicious pizza.
