Many of you may have read love2eatinpa, Confessions of a Compulsive (Recovering) Eater, when she was still blogging. We have kept in contact & I asked her to write a guest post for me. For those of you that have issues with compulsive or binge eating, I hope her story helps you. You can also click on her link to read posts that she wrote before she stopped blogging. Please bookmark if you don't have time right now - it is a great guest post! By the way, she likes her face & name to stay incognito so that is why she puts circles on her face.
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Thank you, Jody, for offering me the opportunity to guest post.  You have been so encouraging and supportive of me over the past year or so, I’m honored that you would want me to write something for your blog.

For those one or two of you who may remember me, my name in blog land is Love2EatinPA and I wrote a blog called “Confessions of a (Recovering) Compulsive Overeater.”  Though the blog is still live, I haven’t written a post since September.

Readers digest summary of my story – I had been a compulsive overeater, food-addict, basically eating disordered, for over 30 years since about the age of 8 or 9 .  It wasn’t until I was just shy of 40 that I realized my crazy obsession with food had a name – compulsive overeater/binger.  This was a good thing as it gave me something to work with.  I immediately started going to OA meetings, went to therapy and then started a blog of my journey. I learned that things that had happened in my childhood led me to turn to food for love and comfort.  I had low self esteem and didn’t trust myself or my choices. I perpetuated these traits into adulthood with bad choices until I went to therapy.  Therapy enabled me to discover the roots of my sickness so I was able to wrap my brain around them, put them behind me and move forward with recovery.  I also read some great books and met some great, smart, supportive people in blog land along the way. 

I am now over 3-1/2 years binge-free. This journey has not been easy.  There have been bumps and sharp curves in the road, but I have navigated through the best I could and I am all the healthier both physically and mentally from it.

Though I have always been athletic, and began running and doing road races in my late 20’s, including a marathon, my weight always fluctuated because of my binging.  I am 5”3” tall and weighed 172 pounds at my highest, but weighed less when I had the ‘ah-ha’ moment about having an eating disorder.

Once recovery began, my weight went down and I had the confidence in myself to take on, at age 42, another athletic challenge in my life.  I decided to do a triathlon. 

Though I could goof around in the pool with my kids, I never swam seriously.  That was a huge challenge for me, but I was determined to tackle that and second discipline of a triathlon, biking.  I at least had the running down.

 
I became passionate about this new endeavor.  I wanted to teach my kids about stepping outside one’s comfort zone, setting goals, working hard to take the steps to accomplish the goal, and then subsequently achieving the goal.  My kids were there to high-five me when I crossed the finish line of the tri.  What a feeling!

I had set out to do the one tri last summer.  I ended up doing three before the summer was over.  I was hooked and was already on the lookout for races to do this summer.

However, some of those bumps in the road came up in late September.  I pinched a nerve in my back.  Within a week of that, I got athlete’s foot and that became infected.  That led to a yeast infection.  As I was recovering from all of the above, I wrenched my back closing the hatch of my jeep Cherokee while balancing a basket of laundry on my hip. 

Needless to say, I was benched and could not work out for a pretty long period of time.  I began to have a little pity party for myself and began eating emotionally. 
While I did not binge, I definitely overate.  Those few extra hundred calories almost every day added up and I put on about 10 lbs over the course of a few months.  When I was cleared to workout again, I went back to swimming, biking and running, but eating too much became an easy habit that was hard to shake.  I knew I had all the tools to get back on track, but I struggled to utilize the tools.
 

Finally, in May, yes it took until May, I got myself back on track.  I have taken off the weight in less than three months by going back to eating ‘clean’ again, in conjunction with training for this season’s races.  I have done two tri’s already this summer and plan to do two more this month.

While the tri training didn't really help me overcome my ED, it has become a passion in my life.  I'm sure energy that would/could go towards thinking about food is now focused on my training.  I am always looking for ways to improve myself at all three disciplines.  It is so rewarding to find new training techniques and put them to use.  It keeps training interesting and I like challenging myself to improve my times. Also, eating well and keeping my weight down really pays off in conjunction with my training in how I look and feel about myself.  A win-win situation.

No food tastes as good as feeling strong, capable and empowered.

While I realize that food issues will always play some role in my life, the older I get, the more I learn and the more confidence I get.  I now know how to deal better with certain situations and foods so I don’t fall into the vicious cycle again.  Or if I do happen to fall into the cycle, I can quickly pull myself out. 

The eating right and exercising is a journey, a lifetime of lifestyle, not a destination.

Please feel free to comment away!