A Change in Diet
Ashley Sara DeKam
During the two decades of suffering the chains of my complex eating disorder, my Trigger Foods metamorphasized on a fairly consistent basis. “Healthy junk food” was nearly always my undoing. To the outsider, organic granola, whole grain muffins or protein packed oat bars appeared to be a perfectly normal choice of consumption. Yet for me, there was no such thing as just one bowl of granola, one muffin, or one oat bar. It was either the whole bag, box, or even case, or none at all. Black or white. No gray area in my mind. It became ritualistic.
As I said, the binge food of choice changed every few months. My longest stint lasted about 3 years with one product in particular. I had a day here and there in which I was able to abstain from buying the food (of course I was wise enough NOT to keep the food in the house – are you kidding me SELF Magazine?). But I certainly did not have restraint enough to prevent me from driving to the store (or sometimes multiple stores in order to purchase exactly what I “needed each and every day - or sometimes every other day) to compulsively buy the eight bars, jar of almond butter, 30 almonds, and three apples I needed to get my fix.
During my years of enslavement, I so wanted to be free of my compulsions and drive to consume these “Trigger Foods.” Yet, despite the fact that I was at least changing from one food to another, and not seeing that previous Trigger Foods had sustained their incubation period and were no longer unsafe (granola now most assuredly grows stale in my cupboard), I never believed it to be possible not to crave these items in outlandish amounts…until I began to feed my brain.
Once I made the step to begin truly nourishing my body and brain with the things I needed to attain proper and essential health, the idea of “normalcy” no longer seemed entirely out of reach. I began consuming items most assuredly not listed under my “Safe Foods,” like heavy cream, butter, and gasp…bacon! Not only did my list expand into an encyclopedia, but my whole world and vision became larger than life