Before you read this post, I’d like to preface it with the following: I wrote this post and asked a respected colleague of mine to read it and respond to it. This particular colleague works almost exclusively with clients who suffer from eating disorders, and had mentioned to me that it might be triggering for some. We talked for several minutes about it, and I decided I should attempt to make it clear that my wish for this post isn’t to trigger those who struggle, although I certainly see how that might happen, and truly apologize in advance if that is your experience as the reader. My wish is to challenge each of you to think about your own coping skills, and what your journey might look like were they were taken away from you, for whatever the reason. The post isn’t meant to be about my own struggles, and writing it isn’t about intending to out myself in regards to those struggles.

The true intent behind the post is to share my journey with you all. A journey about having a coping skill, losing that coping skill, how that experience changed me, and the lessons I’ve learned along the way… I’m a very structured, regimented person. I’ve never been called “controlling” in any relationship I’ve had, and yet I’m incredibly controlling over myself. I insist on things being tidy, organized, and consistent. While this post could easily digress to a self-diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, I will not allow, as that is a whole different post. The point of this particular post is to discuss my experience with temporarily losing the best coping skill I’ve had to date, how I dealt (or didn’t, depending on who you ask) with it, and how it’s changed me.

With a history of eating disorders and self-hatred, I’ve turned to exercise (combined with strict healthy eating habits) over the past 7 or so years to control my weight and feel better about myself. Although exercise is a good thing, all things must be done in moderation–yes, including exercise and healthy eating. Although I was able to curtail my eating-disordered habits, the obsession remained. And by turning to exercise, I merely was switching seats on the Titanic: I switched to a different method to control caloric intake and output, all with the intention of changing my body…meanwhile, the boat was still sinking. The obsessions and compulsions remained.

I recently had small medical procedure that required I not exercise for at least 3 weeks. Mentally, I was completely unprepared. The first day of not being able to work out, I absolutely panicked. My partner came downstairs to find me in tears sitting on the couch. I told her I’m terrified of not having this coping skill to default to. I used the endorphins that exercise naturally provides me as an excuse (albeit honest and somewhat legitimate) as to why I was, in part, already feeling down. I relied so heavily on those endorphins daily, that I didn’t know how to feel good without them. I can only equate it to not taking one’s antidepressant. All of a sudden, that which we rely on to change our chemical make-up and make us feel good, is taken away.

Her reaction to my mini-meltdown somewhat surprised me. Rather than be supportive, like I’ve always known her to be, she responded with anger. Irritatingly, she proclaimed, “you think you have this whole eating-disorder thing under control, but you don’t. You might not be acting out in an eating-disordered way…” (keep in mind, she’s not a therapist, so her description was vague and unprofessional, at best), “but you’re so obsessed with exercise that you’re freaking out over 3 weeks. It’s not healthy”. And then she said the words I’d be dreading since we met. “If you don’t go and get therapy for this, you’re in big trouble”.

Me? Therapy? A) I’m a THERAPIST! How could I not help myself? B) I’ve BEEN in therapy for this…for much of my life! What else is there to do? Aren’t I just doomed to a life of being obsessive about my weight?

That argument did several things for me. I reached out to a very specialized Eating Disorder therapist (I was avoiding being in “big trouble”). I stopped feeling like I could tell my partner if/when I was struggling without my exercise. And eventually, as luck would have it, I calmed down. The time without exercise required me to face the reality that I cannot possibly gain 20 pounds overnight. I am a smart girl and I know how weight-gain works. I know how many calories are in a pound and how many calories my body, on average, expels each day just to survive. I also know how many calories I was consuming during that period of not working out. My intelligent mind knew my fears were irrational; my emotional mind was in a sheer and absolute panic.

But being couch-ridden for several weeks forced me to address these fears. As luck would have it (the world was challenging me, perhaps) I had a negative reaction to my procedure and started accumulating fluid in my abdomen. To be more specific, I accumulated 8 pounds of fluid in 2-3 days. I was forced to weigh myself daily to keep track of this for medical reasons. My natural inclination was to panic, but I was forced to use my emotional mind in a different capacity. I had to keep myself calm, and as they say, carry on. I had to force myself out of my comfort zone and use self-soothing tools (besides exercise) to keep it together. The accumulation of fluid got so bad I had to get it drained medically…twice. It took about a week for me to really get back to health (although still I wasn’t allowed to work out for several more days) and the most incredible thing happened…to my complete shock and surprise, I didn’t gain a pound. Not over the week, and not over the three weeks.

All of a sudden I found myself “permitted” to exercise again, and I didn’t feel the obsessive need I had felt for the past 7 years. The relief I have felt over this newly-found reality is impossible to describe. A battle I’ve been fighting since childhood has truly gone from a 10 on my list of obsessions and/or daily priorities to maybe a 4.

Not only did I survive the last month of no exercise, but most importantly I learned other ways to self-soothe. I learned to use my emotional and rational brains together. They are now teammates, not enemies. And they, as a team, are working together with my body to create…wait for it…health. Not the kind of health that we think of when we see thin, fit people out for a run (don’t get me wrong, that can be one way to evaluate health. It’s no longer the ONLY way I want to evaluate my own), but real, true, integrated health.

I’ve been cleared to exercise for almost 10 days, and my return to the gym has been slow. I hit it hard the first day, and caught myself stuck between the (mental) progress I had made, and the desire to rebuild the muscle I had lost over the month. The soreness from my first day back forced me to slow down over the following few days (another disguised blessing, perhaps).

Since then, I’ve been returning to my workout routine with eyes wide open. I have skipped days at the gym, because I know I can. I have loosened up on what I feel I can and can’t eat, because when I wasn’t feeling well, I ate whatever sounded good; essentially, whatever I wanted. And again, my weight stayed the same (with NO WORKING OUT!).

To be clear, this post isn’t intended to suggest that exercise and healthy eating don’t make a difference. I still am a big proponent of both. But for me, and my experience, I think that reducing the stress on myself was exactly the prescription my body needed.

One of my own past therapists, a woman who is a firm believer in the mind-body connection, once told me that as soon as I can learn to “let go” of all of this, the weight will, to some degree, fall off. She stated that the body uses fat as a protection. Heavy people often face lots of battles (from themselves, from their health, from a thin-obsessed society, from the world) and the irony is that the weight, the very physical thing perpetuating some of these battles, is the same thing that is protecting one’s self. It’s a true, physical barrier. People can’t get as close. While I want to be clear that this was her perspective and not mine, it did end up being true that for me, as I learned to let go of some of my own battles, my body responded in a physical way. My body, which wouldn’t lose a pound no matter how hard I worked out and how carefully I watched what I ate, stayed the same…!

To a degree, this post feels ironic: I’m talking about how much I’ve changed through this experience, but at the same time am focusing on the number on the scale. The reality is, that number, for almost 30 years, was all I’ve ever had to keep track of my self-worth. And it is for THAT reason, that I feel such relief. I learned, finally, that my self-worth can stay the same, with or without exercise, with or without “healthy eating”. My self-worth truly is a reflection of how I feel on the inside, and that can stay the same, even if I let go of all the control I’ve (thought I’ve) ever known.