You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge. But sometimes acknowledgment on it’s own isn’t enough. Being cognizant of a problem doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily do something about it. Until you hit a wall - or perhaps the wall comes to find you.
My relationship with food has always been a conflictual one. I’m quite the professional at drifting between extremes - starvation and binging are my go to weapons of self-destruction. But like any good magician, with time and practice I’ve mastered the art of keeping everything under control. However, lockdown season has made those disorder eating tendencies of mine grow the hell out of my secret pandora box.
You can only self destruct for so long until you fall the fuck apart. The start of the school year made me reach the end of the rope. Handling the mess of this pandemic special online school edition is enough of a job, add obsessive calorie counting and ultra running training and you’ve got the perfect recipe for disaster.
My brain’s logic has been hijacked by my unstoppable rigid af self-imposed discipline. 100 km a week no longer did it for me. It took more and more to hit this mental sweet spot of satisfaction. 2 hours turned into 3, which turned into close to 200 km a week. It’s one thing to train like a freak when it’s your only job, but when other things come into the picture, keeping this high pace going becomes a real challenge.
I knew I was running toward self destruction the day I started thinking of ways to lose more calories during my long runs. Maybe I should increase my pace? How about I run on this surface instead of that one? Numbers were not solely numbers anymore. They became a new target to unconsciously self destruct. 3:30 hour of training is not pretty enough of a number, let’s aim for 4.
Luckily for me, my body hasn’t (knock on woods) yet suffered from injury. But the damage is weighing hard on my mind. I don’t run 170 km a week purely out of passion. 50% out of passion. 100% out of a desire to consume more calories . Would I put myself through another painful set of intervals solely to eat an extra slice of pizza at dinner? Abso-fucking-lutely. Over the past 7 months, food became the centre of my universe. My drug of choice. My obsession. My happiness. The way to fill this bottomless void inside of me.
I ate too much food in one sitting? 3 hour run tomorrow. Non negociable. Suck your guilt up and do it. If you don't watch for it, compensation can be the slow start of something that turns into a full blown eating disorder. It is now time to put the break pedal on this extreme imposed self discipline and put the gas pedal on unconditional self compassion.
Let the withdrawal begin.....