I love Paleo. I don’t think that’s any surprise to someone who’s been following this blog. Our family has spectacular, tangible results: I overcame PCOS, my son’s ASD symptoms reduced dramatically, my husband started running faster, and my baby stopped crying non-stop.
What I haven’t been as forthcoming about are the emotional struggles intertwined with my successes. I’ve mentioned them lightly in the comments or in matter-of-fact ways on several posts, but I’ve skirted around allowing myself to be genuinely vulnerable—to myself, to my family, to anyone.
I have a long history of using food to grasp control of my life. Through overeating, undereating, counting calories, weighing and measuring, not caring, making year-long food resolutions. It doesn’t matter. I could take anything healthy and manipulate it into something where I had an illusion of control.
Paleo–in all its nutritious glory–is no different, except that the strict nature and potential for social isolation exacerbated my dysfunctional relationship. Because it works so well for me, the pendulum swings from both ends swiftly—complete joy over my progress to complete shame for not following through. The best physical results coupled with some of my worst emotional results.
Food Schizophrenia
My Paleo wears many hats; I give it different personalities and roles that are sometimes healthy, usually not. At times, it is the perfect diet. During others, I hand over complete control—to a non-human, non-thinking, non-judgmental way of eating.
I abuse myself by believing that Paleo is anything more than that. It has no feelings and surely isn’t paying attention to when I eat a cookie (or twelve). It doesn’t redeem me from my health sins and is not invested in the outcome of my life. It’s food. And it’s just there.
I’m working hard on this area of my life and I’d like to believe I’m completely over these problems. I’m not. Even just writing them down, I realize how deep they run. In the next post I will share some of the personalities I’ve given to food, with follow-up posts addressing how I am healing myself from binge eating.
This is a difficult topic to speak of publicly, but I’m thrilled to share this journey with you and invite you to be vulnerable with me. Please feel free to ask questions, share experiences, and heal together. See you Thursday.
Oh yes, and Happy New Year. 2012 is going to be a good one.
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Tags: Paleo, PCOS, PCOS Nutrition, PCOS Treatment, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
You go girl. I’m right there with you on this issue! Thanks for putting into words what so many of us struggle with.
Sunny, thank you! You are such a support to me and help me feel a whole lot less crazy. I knew I couldn’t be the only Paleoista struggling with this. Sometimes, all the blogs make it seem like it’s the healthiest thing you could ever do, so why would ANYONE fall off the wagon for a couple of days/weeks/months/years. Glad to know I’m not alone.
Thank you for your honest post. I also battle with binge eating and appreciate your thoughts regarding your own struggles. Looking forward to reading your additional posts.
Erica, thanks for being vulnerable with me. I had this post in my head for a long time, not really wanting to address it. I would rather everyone think I’m perfect
But, it turns out I’m not and it’s so inspiring to hear that other women struggle with the same issue I do, and that we can work on it together.
Perfect is not what it’s all cracked up to be! By sharing and getting this information out there, we are helping each other learn. I look at my mom, 52 years old, and she’s just now starting to be able to work on these things. I think our generation with it’s honesty and ability to share through the Internet, are changing things so much and in such a positive way. We all continue to struggle but if we can share that burden and show each other then it helps us know that it’s not because we are any less of a person!
Sunny, you should be writing this blog! I am incredibly grateful that we have the ability to share through the internet. These are things that I may not be ready to share vocally, but writing my thoughts really helps me come to terms with who I am becoming. I’m just grateful to have so many people participating in the conversation.
I appreciate you writing about this openly because it is so common to view food this way and the more people talk about it, the better.
Have you ever thought if your disordered relationship with food was triggered by PCOS? That maybe because you felt uncomfortable in your body or the way you ate made you feel like you needed to control food? Or the other way around? Because I used to think that I was just a poor person feeling disordered but realized that perhaps PCOS partly made me act that way. Had I been happy in my body eating the way I ate when I was a kid, maybe there would have been no need to explore a way that would make me feel OK and try million different diets to get rid of PCOS.
This differs from my original idea that PCOS was caused by me eating wrong. Any thoughts?
Hi Laura, you bring up some really great points. I’m not sure what triggered my disordered relationship. I had an eating disorder when I was 16–eight years before receiving a diagnosis–but who’s to say I didn’t already have PCOS? I know when I learned about PCOS, I felt so hopeless that it only got worse. I kept thinking I would turn into a man and never have children, so I had no purpose in life. These thoughts didn’t help with the disordered eating… It’s a lot like the chicken and the egg debate. What came first? Did my disordered eating cause PCOS? Did the PCOS (and accompanying anxiety/stress/depression) cause my disordered eating? I just don’t know…
I’ll have to do some thinking and perhaps inject a post about this somewhere in the middle of my original timeline for this series. Thanks for your insight-it gives me a lot to ponder.
I am a journalist and I just wrote an article about PCOS. It hasn’t been published yet and I have mixed feelings about it because I interviewed two doctors that have been researching PCOS for decades(!!) but they see no link between SAD or modern lifestyle and the syndrome.
They think that PCOS is with us even before we are born and that the symptoms start when girls get to their teens. Most people have their periods messed up right from the start – I did, that’s true.
But I also believe that (the researchers do not believe in this theory) PCOS might be an autoimmunity disease and that leptin resistance is (one of) the reason(s) behind all the symptoms. So us PCOS people might be very sensitive to many things and very insuline resistant but once you fix the diet and lifestyle (paleo), your body starts functioning and you HEAL.
The researchers do not think you can heal but that you live with the syndrome for the rest of your life. It was really hard to write the article because I disagree with the doctors and also becose they refused to link PCOS to depression, hair loss (I didn’t have that but some do) and difficulty to lose weight on standard diet (and many other things). I do not think PCOS is an ovarian syndrome but a very complicated (possibly an autoimmunity) disease. One that can be cured.
And autoimmunity disease is body rejecting itself. If your mind rejects your body (PCOS), how could the mind possibly let the body heal? So no, I cannot say which was first but luckily we do know what works. Love and paleo.
Laura, your experience is fascinating. For me, the connection between PCOS and the SAD/modern lifestyle is so stark, it can hardly be denied. All of my evidence is anecdotal of course, but I’m curious to know the reasons the doctors see no connection. I’m not saying they’re wrong; I would just like to get in their brains a bit so I can have a fuller picture.
I think they are right in that PCOS is with us even before we are born. I think we have a genetic predisposition, but I also think that can be aggravated by environment (such as SAD/lifestyle). I didn’t start my period until I was 16 and I come from a few generations of unhealthy women. But would that have been different if I’d ever eaten a vegetable that wasn’t a white potato before I turned 18? I’d like to think so.
I completely agree with you about the autoimmunity and leptin resistance. In fact, my nutritionist who focuses on women with PCOS also feels leptin plays a much bigger role than we previously thought. Insulin is important, yes, but it’s not the only hormone in the body.
I also agree that PCOS is less of an ovarian condition (esp. since not every woman even has cysts on her ovaries). It seems to align better with a very complicated metabolic disorder. As far as a cure, I’m not entirely convinced that there is one; however, that probably has more to do with my definition of a cure than anything else. I view a cure as something where the treatment can be removed. And since I didn’t use medication, my only treatment was diet. I’m certain I can’t change that. But if you tweak the definition, I think there is most certainly a cure for many women. Laura, so glad you’ve joined the conversation.
Jeffiner~~~
Love the post! Love your writing style! Totally identify with crazy eating habits and thinking around it. I will look forward to future posts. Don’t know how you dig through the “why” and understand it well enough to put it into words. Awesome. Wish I could.
Stacy, hello! SO glad you chimed in. I’m realizing a lot more women can identify than I thought and it makes me feel a whole lot less crazy and isolated. Turns out we’re all a little disordered–who knew?
The baby has a ton of food sensitivities/allergies/intolerances and every time I would binge, she would get sick. I can’t stop nursing because her gut is unhealthy, and I can’t keep living an endless cycle of guilt and shame over eating chips and salsa. I basically had a heart-to-heart with my food and said it was either Her or ME. The “why” is revealing itself as I ask the right questions (and I’ll share those questions soon). Thanks for reading. We miss you guys and are still dreaming of NY the moment I’m finished breastfeeding
Dear Laura,
Thanks for being so honest…this is a challenge for so many of us.
I’m 48 years old…discovered primal/paleo almost a year ago and I definitely beat myself up to being vulnerable to eating patterns that took me 47 years to establish. From being anorexic for two years to bulimia for a few years and everything in between, I definitely fight the compulsion to use food to exert control over my life, but, then again, I think my food behaviors are often the first tangible sign of lack of balance in my life overall…that maybe I AM out of balance.
You know m3isme, you’re on to something. I often wonder if these compulsions and behaviors aren’t there so much to hurt us and make us go crazy, but to act as an alarm system that something else in our lives is out of alignment. Of course, that adds the complication of figuring what exactly is out of alignment. Good luck on your journey. We’re in this together and I’m so happy you commented. There isn’t a quick fix for 29 years or 47 years or 93 years of compulsions, and we may experience one step forward/two steps back, but we’re moving and trying our best. There’s great strength in that.