Emotional Eating Recovery and Discovery of Dieting OCD (A Therapist Story)

I have LABORED over putting this blog post out there for weeks. Putting my own story out there of how I have recovered from an eating disorder feels SO VULNERABLE and SCARY to me. I feel like I am exposing myself to the world, like I might as well be naked, on stage, before a crowd.

That said, I have had an EXTREME PULL in my gut for SO LONG to help people on this issue of healing from disordered eating.  I consider healing from an eating disorder to be one of my greatest accomplishments.

I have used what I have learned on my own journey, along with the knowledge that I have learned from other people to heal myself. I have used that same knowledge to help the clients I see in my practice for years. Now, I really want to be able to help you. 

I know what I have done works, because I am living proof.  My clients are living proof that you CAN get rid of that obnoxious voice that eats away at you about food and your body day in and day out. You can make that voice go away and live a life that is peaceful and free of its never-ending TORMENT. 

The desire to help others live free of that voice is my motivation to overcome my own fear that I will be judged (because I know I will be) or that I will be criticized (because I know I will—that’s inevitable.) At this point, I feel that helping others is more important than keeping my ego safe.  I hope you can gain some personal insight through my own story, and hope that there is a path toward healing your relationship with food and body image.

My relationship with disordered eating began when I was very young.  Like so many other kids, I grew up around my mom always being on a diet and watching her weight. I remember her always looking at herself in the mirror, and usually not being happy about the way she looked. I am sure that had an influence on me. I can remember sitting down, pulling my shirt up and looking at my belly when I was around four or five years old, thinking “is my belly too big?” I remember not thinking much of it after that and forgetting about it. It still strikes me that the influences around me at even the age of four or five had an effect on me.

The next time I remember wondering if there was something wrong with my body was in second grade.  I remember sitting in class and I would look at my legs and then look at the other girls’ legs, and worry that mine looked bigger.  It made me self-conscious from time to time, but it did not really grip or stop me from doing things I liked to do.  I still had a pretty happy relationship with food, I liked to eat, and I really didn’t worry about what I ate too much at that time. I loved looking pretty, putting on dresses, and twirling around in them thinking I was the prettiest thing that had walked the earth. Those were still fun times, but again, I can see how society’s influence was beginning to take hold.  I remember kids judging other kids based on their size in school at that age, and that Disney princesses were beautiful and thin.  

When I turned 11 I remember things changing pretty drastically.  My parents divorced that year, and food then became a tool for me. I was very angry and sad about my parents’ divorce. At that time, my life felt extremely chaotic and out of control. I grew up a Daddy’s girl when I was little, and my Dad moved in with another woman that I did not like, and she did not care for me either.  I felt, in my mind, lost, sad, and alone. My Dad’s intention was never to actually abandon me, but in my young mind, I felt like nothing was the same and I was alone. The world that felt perfect to me, had ended. I lost my childhood home, the stability of two parents in the same household, and I thought my relationship with my Dad had changed forever.  My younger brother even eventually left to live with my father permanently and I stayed with my mother full time, so I felt like I had even lost the stability of a sibling being by my side through the turmoil.

Food became the thing that I COULD control. My parents could tell me where to sleep, where to live, and where to go. But they couldn’t make me eat. I refused food routinely, dropping so much weight that my Mom even took me to see a doctor because of the weight loss she noticed. Try as they might, my parents couldn’t make me eat if I didn’t want to. This felt very powerful to me at that age. I remember defiantly saying “No! I’m not hungry!” I can remember times when my Dad would try to get me to eat, and I would refuse like it was a battle to win, even if I was actually hungry. It was the one thing I could hold onto in the middle of a very ugly divorce. The divorce and my life was chaos, but my control of food felt like my stability.

Eventually my eating did improve for a brief period of time. I moved in with my Mom permanently by the time I was 12, and much of the chaos seemed to have stabilized in my mind. By 13, however, the battle with disordered eating truly took a downfall. My friends had become concerned with weight, body image, and appearance as adolescence took hold, and so I followed. I went on a diet for the first time. It was a secret, no one knew about it. But I would quietly refuse food, attempting to restrict. I got compliments for the way I looked, that I was “so skinny”, and that only fueled the fire.  By 14, I could no longer manage the restriction.  I would become so hungry that I would binge, and then I would either purge or exercise excessively to burn off the calories. 

In high school, I got compliments constantly for being an “amazing runner” or a “dedicated” athlete.  I even got a plaque my senior year for being the “most dedicated player” on my field hockey team. Most people had no idea how much I was struggling inside.  From the time I was 14 to 21 were the worst years. Playing a high school and college sport masked how much I worked out. I would exercise no matter how I felt. Even if I was sick, exhausted, or even through serious injury, I was convinced that not working out was being lazy or uncommitted.

I would also often get looked at with envy by some other girls who said “I wish I had abs like Shelby! Shelby has Britney Spears abs!”  Those comments felt amazing initially, but I would later forget about them and became unhappy with myself yet again. All of those experiences fueled the eating disorder more, but on the outside, I was the picture of health that other people wanted to be. Inside, I hated my body, I never felt good enough, and I was SO TIRED of the voice in my head never leaving me alone. I only felt accomplished if I had stuck to the diet plan for the day, stuck to my exercise regimen, and the scale was a certain number.  

Even if I did feel good for a brief period of time, I was scared that I would lose what I had gained so easily.  I felt like I was hanging onto that victory by a thread. 

When I was 21, I met my husband.  Something changed when I met him. He really communicated that he liked who I was, my personality, how driven I am, and how easy it was to talk to me. He loved me for me, and not for my body.  This really helped me to feel so much more secure inside, that it was really ME that was important, not my size. 

Finally, I wanted to stop purging.  It took two years to really feel like my stomach was back to normal and I could digest food normally again, but I did it.  I was and still am so very proud of that accomplishment. It was a first really big step for me.

All of that said, my journey to healing was still not over. I still struggled with emotional eating, stress eating, and had body image issues.  I wanted to be thin, but I didn’t want to have a bad relationship with food or my body. I was so confused by all of that. I tried several diets, and I tried to just eat “the healthy way.” I counted calories, I still exercised a lot, but not to the point of overkill. I would go through periods of eating plenty of junk food, to none at all. I really wanted to “stick to a diet for the right reasons” but just couldn’t. I still found myself constantly thinking about food, my body, what time I could eat, constantly looking at recipes, health advice, and feeling concerned that I was eating “the right foods” according to whatever diet plan I was following.  I also felt so overwhelmed and confused by the never-ending conflicting advice there was out there about the BEST way to eat and take care of your body.  I still would feel horribly guilty if I couldn’t stick to “the plan” that I had designed for myself, and like I had failed if I gave up or the scale did not reflect the numbers I wanted to see.  I still weighed myself frequently, sometimes multiple times per day. That desire to be thin really did still grip me, even though I technically did not have a specified eating disorder anymore.  

A few years passed like that and my husband and I got married when we were 25.  A few years later I gave birth to our first son, Max. My breaking point of just wanting to be thin and struggling to do a diet with ease hit an all-time low about a year or so after having Max.  Weight gain after pregnancy was really triggering for me. I can remember sitting on my couch with my husband at my side, just balling my eyes out to him. I felt so successful in every single area of my life, but I could not rid myself of this monster in my mind.  Things had gotten better, but I still did not feel at peace with myself.   

I can remember crying to my husband that I had been President of the National Honor Society for Psychology in undergrad, I was a leader in my class in graduate school, even speaking at our graduation ceremony. I later had become President of the Maine Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (our state chapter of our national organization). I had opened a successful therapy practice, my husband and I had bought a home, and we had an amazing little boy. I felt so unbelievably confident in my ability to help people with their relationships, their emotions, and their lives.  I often had colleagues asking me for help on cases that they could not figure out, and I seemed to unravel them with relative ease. I felt fantastic about all of my accomplishments, but I could not shut off that internal monster that wanted to rule my thoughts about food and my body. The voice of what I was going to eat, when I was going to eat, how much I had to work out, and feeling guilty if I didn’t work out. The voice that I woke up with and went to bed with EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I cried to my husband, “how is it that I can figure so many things out and that I am so good at everything that has to do with emotions, the mind, mental health, but I can’t figure this ONE THING OUT?”

I vowed in that moment to figure out how to end that suffering, and then to help everyone else who struggled with the same thing to end it too. Since that day, I have been on a crusade to really understand what was happening to me, heal myself, and then heal others. 

In the past when I had wanted to learn more about a particular issue to help my clients, I would become a little bit obsessive over learning anything I could get my hands on until I had mastered that topic.  So, I figured I would do the same thing here. I started with reading all the books I could find, I went to eating disorder trainings and seminars, I listened to podcasts every minute I had on the road or that I was doing mindless chores around the house. I talked to other professionals in my field who specialized in eating disorders. I literally gobbled up everything and anything I could get my hands on that resembled food and body problems.  I read and researched things from the diet industry, from the mental health industry, and things from medical health industry. Some of it was amazingly useful, and other things weren’t useful at all.  Eventually, after five years of research and dedication to learning, I did find many answers to my questions and I found a healthy way off of the dark road I had been on for so many years. 

Ultimately, I did finally find my way out. Now I listen to my body and give it what it needs, instead of listening to outside sources of how to take care of my body. I no longer wake up thinking about food. I don’t go to bed worrying about my body. I don’t calculate how much I should be exercising. I move when my body wants to move, and I let it rest when it is tired. I love buying new clothes and don’t worry about the size. I feel pretty and I enjoy how I look. Best of all, I have so much more room in my mind to think about other things and do other things other than focus on a diet. I feel free and at peace with my body and in my mind.  It has been the greatest gift to find peace in that area of my life.  

Once I felt healed myself, I started helping others. I was on a mission to educate everyone and anyone that was open to listening, about how to heal their relationship with food and body image. I began helping my clients to learn the things that I had discovered, so that they could also live a life free from food worries and body hatred. 

One thing that kept driving me nuts, however, was that what so many people struggled with did not have a name. I kept returning to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders). It is the diagnosis book used by mental health clinicians to diagnose mental health disorders. When I was working with a client who struggled with body image and disordered eating, I found it wildly frustrating that my clients did not fit into any diagnosis for eating disorders.  Frankly, after I stopped purging, I didn’t fit into any specific diagnosis for eating disorders.  Most of the clients I saw (predominantly women) did not fit into the very narrow and specific criteria listed for the major eating disorders.  They were a lot like me for the last ten years that I struggled with disordered eating, emotional eating, stress eating, and body dissatisfaction. Yet, they were suffering just as much as anyone who struggled with an eating disorder who DID meet the criteria. They were also a lot like most of the women who struggle with dieting in America.  I thought to myself, “How can this be? This is insane that nearly every woman that walks into my office seems to struggle with dieting, dissatisfaction with their body, and the desire to be thin—but this isn’t considered problematic by the book that diagnoses these things.”  I was beyond puzzled.  To me, there is NOTHING normal about waking up and going to bed every day worried about your weight. There is nothing normal or okay about being preoccupied with food several hours of the day, and feeling guilty if you eat a food off your permitted foods list. That said, in my history, I related to all of their stories, because we essentially had the same story. Sadly, nearly ALL of the women I saw and still do see, struggle with food and body image in some way, yet most of them do not meet criteria for any major eating disorder.

You see, the DSM has three major eating disorders that tend to be used the majority of the time to diagnose eating disorders.  They are Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, and Binge-Eating Disorder. Anything that does not fall into these categories is listed under Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified. So basically, if you don’t meet criteria for a specific diagnosis, you get dumped into the Eating Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified category. There are a few other types of eating disorders, but for simplicity sake, I won’t list them here as they are less relevant to the points I am trying to make. These eating disorders that I have listed, are most often accompanied, if not always accompanied by a fear of weight gain or being over-weight.   

The majority of my clients were not underweight, and most never were underweight. So that ruled out anorexia.

Most of my clients also had no purging or compensatory behaviors (vomiting, misuse of laxatives, diuretics, other medications, fasting, or excessive exercise.) This ruled out bulimia.

Many would say that they had a “binging problem”, however, when I asked them further, they actually didn’t meet criteria for binge-eating disorder either. They really actually just struggled with emotional eating or stress eating.

They all did struggle with diet cycling (on and off again dieting), fear of weight gain, dislike of their bodies, constant thoughts about food and their bodies, and guilt if they couldn’t adhere to a diet. They felt badly about themselves, were often tearful, and just wanted this terrible experience to end. This clearly was a problem that plagued them—just as it once had plagued me. I have been able to help these girls and women out of this problem, but it really still bugged me that people struggling with the so much of the same chronic issues had no specific understanding of what it was and what to call it!

So, what did I do? I dove into the DSM even further, trying to find something that more closely resembled what was experienced by me before I got healthy, and by so many of my clients.  I kept finding myself repeatedly circling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

When I read the diagnosis for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, here is what I found written in the DSM:

            DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (300.3)

1.  Presence of obsessions, compulsions, or both:

Obsessions are defined by (1) and (2):

1. Recurrent and persistent thoughts, urges, or impulses that are experienced, at some time during the disturbance, as intrusive and unwanted, and that in most individuals cause marked anxiety or distress.

2.The individual attempts to ignore or suppress such thoughts, urges, or images, or to neutralize them with some other thought or action (i.e., by performing a compulsion).

Compulsions are defined by (1) and (2):

1. Repetitive behaviors (e.g., hand washing, ordering, checking) or mental acts (e.g., praying, counting, repeating words silently) that the individual feels driven to perform in response to an obsession or according to rules that must be applied rigidly.

2.The behaviors or mental acts are aimed at preventing or reducing anxiety or distress, or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent, or are clearly excessive.

1. The obsessions or compulsions are time-consuming (e.g., take more than 1 hour per day) or cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
2. The obsessive-compulsive symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or another medical condition.
3. The disturbance is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder

Well, after really reviewing this seriously, I started to think about what it really means to struggle with dieting, being overweight or fearing weight gain, and what I had learned about treating eating disorders. I started to really see the relationship between OCD and Dieting.

When people have been dieting for years, they tend to become pretty obsessive about the whole process.  Perfectionistic even, and OCD does demand perfection of its victims.  When I used to struggle with disordered eating, dieting, and fear of weight gain I thought about food and my body ALL. THE. TIME, and my clients had complained of this too. In some form or another the women I talked to thought about meal plans for the day, how to “stick to” a diet, and how many calories, fat grams, or carbs any given food had. The women I have helped thought about how they looked, how clothes feel, body weight, and often how confused they were about the “right way” to eat, given all of the conflicting information out there.  When I was going through this, sometimes those thoughts felt loud and obnoxious, and other times they felt like an annoying low buzz in the back of my head.  The women I supported felt the same. Just constantly thinking about these things felt exhausting.  These thoughts were intrusive and unwanted, just as they are with OCD. When I was going through my own recovery, I really wanted so desperately to stop thinking these things, but I couldn’t. The women that I saw felt the same. These thoughts definitely created marked anxiety and stress for me….I worried about these things all the time and felt tormented by these thoughts.  I know from talking to countless women at this point, that this was also their experience when struggling with how they felt about their bodies, and struggling to maintain a healthy relationship with food.

I also tried desperately to get these thoughts to go away, by engaging in compulsions—DIETING COMPULSIONS. When I read the criteria in the DSM and looked at it in a new way, I really started to think and feel that dieting had become the compulsion to adhere to for so many girls and women—including me before I recovered. Compulsions attempt to reduce anxiety temporarily, as does dieting. Unfortunately, it does not last long term. OCD demands perfection, and so does dieting, so it becomes increasingly difficult to adhere to its demands. Especially when you have your body’s own natural biology compelling you to eat.

So, think about it, you obsess and worry about your weight and appearance (the obsessions), you can’t stop thinking about it no matter how hard you try. In order to reduce the stress, anxiety, and worry of weight gain, you try harder and harder to stick to the very strict and rigid rules (compulsions) of your diet. You ONLY eat at certain times. You will only have certain portions dictated by the diet. You will not eat certain foods, except at very specific times. The MORE you stick to these RIGID RULES, the less anxiety you feel. The LESS you stick to these rigid rules, you feel guilty, highly anxious, and driven to go back to the compulsive actions to push away that DREADED OUTCOME of the FEAR OF WEIGHT GAIN OR BEING FAT. (Compulsions are performed to prevent a dreaded or feared outcome).  

A so called health tactic, DIETING, has become a prescription for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Let me break this down even further:

Obsession: worry and fear of weight gain, thinking about food and body all the time, so much so that these thoughts become unwanted and intrusive.

Compulsion: Following all of the dieting behaviors rigidly. Restricting certain foods and not others, compulsively counting all calories, macros, etc. Engaging in exercise religiously. These compulsions are aimed at reducing a dreaded or feared outcome—weight gain. Compulsively checking and tracking nutrition information or exercise in your mind. (Compulsions can be mental compulsions, not just physical—thinking about weight, body, and dieting all the time.)    

Unintentionally I think that diets have led to a chronic problem of OCD in women, and quite a lot of men too. What has long been masked as a health behavior has actually been making us obsessive, stressed, overwhelmed, and sad because we cannot manage to stick the compulsions of dieting. 

In treating standard OCD and women who have symptoms of OCD related to dieting, I have learned that Diets and OCD look the same. OCD and dieting both demand perfection and adherence to the rules OCD/dieting put forth. Any wavering from the rigid rules and there is tremendous anxiety. I have also learned that both OCD and Dieting come with core underlying fears. Dieting comes with the core underlying fear of being fat or weight gain. If you have some other form of OCD, there is also a core underlying fear that you are trying to prevent. Again they look the same.

To me dieting has an extremely high likelihood of turning into OCD, so I have coined the term Dieting OCD in my own office to help it make sense for people. There is no actual diagnosis called Dieting OCD, it doesn’t actually exist in the DSM, I made it up. In my mind, however, millions of women are suffering from this, and I think we deserve a way OUT.

I did a deeper dive into the treatment of OCD when I started to understand what I was seeing.  Essentially the gold standard treatment is exposure response prevention (ERP) for OCD. You basically expose people to their fears, so they are not so scary anymore, and prevent them from engaging in compulsions. Sounds easy, but it can actually be challenging to do. Surprisingly, without realizing it, I was also essentially using OCD treatment to help heal my clients from disordered eating behaviors and problems.  It’s also what I used to heal myself.

I have found that no matter what the eating disorder, OCD appears to be an underlying component of most eating disorders and disordered eating patterns.  I have helped both myself and other women to gradually let go of the fear of weight gain and accept the body that they were given as a gift. I have supported them to resist the urge to adhere so rigidly to dieting, and over time, stop the compulsions. I have also supported them to correct and stop the obsessions that revolve in their minds day after day. Gradual exposure to what is feared (weight gain) and stopping dieting behaviors are all crucial to eliminating and ultimately healing from a disordered relationship with food and body. I have come up with my own combination of methods that work for people based on the knowledge and research I have done over the years, and honestly used myself. I can honestly say that the women I work with tell me how free they feel when food no longer controls them. I can honestly say that I truly feel the same, FREE.

If you have made it this far, it means you have heard my story. I thank you so so very much for taking the time to read it. I share my story with you, in the hopes that it will give you hope for a way out for you too. I want in my deepest heart of hearts to see you or someone you love heal from this too. I know personally, the living hell you are going through if you struggle with food and your relationship with your body.

You deserve a way out, you deserve to feel good about yourself and to feel FREE. I promise you, there IS a way out. I am living proof. I am here to help.

I plan to release my VERY FIRST Online Course titled BREAK FREE FROM DIETING OCD, coming in 2022!

In this course I will be teaching about the term I coined as Dieting OCD. I will also be teaching everything I have learned about emotional eating, stress eating, body image, and most importantly--how to FINALLY break free from their grasp and heal from these things ONCE AND FOR ALL. 

I would LOVE to be able to put you on my waitlist for this brand new program. I also plan to offer it at an extreme discounted rate in exchange for your feedback. It is going to be brand new, so it may need some tweaks and adjustments, it may not be perfect just yet, that’s where you come in! So hence, the founding members price will be at an ALL TIME LOW--JUST THIS ONCE! I do have confidence that I know all my stuff, but I want your feedback to make all the details PERFECT!

If you are FINALLY ready to take the first steps to get out of the stress and turmoil of disordered eating, emotional/stress eating, and problems with body image, just click the link below to register and be put on the waitlist. You will be on your way to being the first to know when the doors open! 

https://www.connectionsrising.com/break-free-from-dieting-ocd-waitlist-opt-in

I hope that if you see yourself in my story, that you feel less alone.  More importantly I hope that you can see a way out of the suffering that I know all too well.  I hope that you can see hope and light, and that change for you is on the way!

I hope you have fun learning and embracing all of the amazing and wonderful parts of you. 

Take Care,

 Shelby