NNothing in my life brings more joy and deeper shame than food. I live in public and love to eat. As a food writer, my livelihood depends on it. But personally, I live with binge eating disorder and it can feel like what I eat is actually eating me.
My family is Italian and their love language is food, so food is also a portal to all my memories, good and bad. Nonna's lasagna at Easter and her zeppole at Christmas were the best times. Worst: Foil trays of fried food at funerals, licorice platters I ate—and now hate—after my little brother choked and was rushed to hospital by paramedics. Emotional eating has always been normal for me.
As a child, I enjoyed smuggling chocolates into the bathroom, locking the door, quickly emptying them, and then hiding the wrappers.
During my final year of school, I gained a lot of weight, and soon after, I lost weight just as dramatically, by depriving myself of calories and exercising to the point of exhaustion. I'm caught in a vicious circle.
This level of restriction was unbearable, but after that I tried every day. Most days I failed. The moment something I considered “unhealthy” touched my lips, all bets were off.
At first, gorging myself on all sorts of goodies felt like a pressure valve, a euphoric guilty pleasure that the audience simply perceived as a celebration. But when it became commonplace, increasingly private, the pleasure began to fade. With each binge—another perceived failure—complacency turned to self-hatred.
Binge drinking is like a runaway train: fast, out of control, stopping at nothing.
There is also nothing condescending about going to bed when your stomach is painfully tense. It's unbearable. And abruptly leaving life is not an option.
Ten years ago, my food “noise”—the insatiable, inescapable internal monologue—went into full gear when I began writing about food while studying journalism. In many ways, it made sense to turn a passion into a profession. I was already constantly thinking about food. Now my career has crystallized around it.
I wrote a panicked email to the Butterfly Foundation, which specializes in eating disorders. This led to me being diagnosed and treated for several years pre-Covid, but keeping a log of everything I ate between sessions just seemed to make my fixation take a different form.
During lockdown in Melbourne, I worked from home as a full-time food media editor, and my work and my disordered eating fed each other. During the day, I covered restaurants transitioning to takeout. At night I ate the same take-out food.
Since coming out of lockdown, communication has been difficult and industry dinners have begun. I was so preoccupied with overeating in front of my colleagues and peers that I tried to slow down my thoughts with alcohol. One night, coming home with no restrictions, I joylessly and in pure desperation ate everything I could find. I vomited violently, the blood vessels in my eyes burst and the whites turned red.
Hardly anyone knows about this, because much of what makes overeating so severe is not just the disorder itself. A veil of shameful secret surrounds him. The more you overeat, the more lonely you feel, and the more lonely you feel, the more you overeat. It's the most common eating disorder in Australia, but nothing has isolated me more.
My most successful recovery to date occurred when I quit my job and took three months off to develop more balanced habits. I focused on eating three meals a day with two snacks, as my doctor recommended several years ago; it seems simple, but it has been a game changer in preventing overeating. As if from a clean slate, I rediscovered my love of writing about food as a freelancer.
Overeating now makes me feel much less choked up than before. But there are days when I would give anything to drown out the noise of food. By reconciling my career with my condition, I am learning not to be ashamed of obsession and endless internal chatter, but to curb it, to understand it.
Because after spending half my life at war with myself—mind and body—if there's one thing I know about shame, it's that it thrives in the shadows. What if I let the light in?
-
In Australia Butterfly Foundation has free and confidential support for eating disorders by calling 1800 33 4673. In the US, help can be found at nationaleatingdisorders.org or by calling the ANAD Eating Disorders Helpline on 800-375-7767. Other international helplines can be found at: Hope for an Eating Disorder.
-
Sarah Cox, clinical psychologist and manager of the Butterfly Foundation's national helpline, reviewed this essay before publication.
