Today I’m handing over the microphone to my ex-client Giorgina. Giorgina was my client for a couple of years a while back and has since then gone on to study at The Institute For Integrative Nutrition herself in order to help others with their own food and body image struggles. Witnessing her come full circle has been a beautiful experience and I’m honoured to have her share her journey and experience with disordered eating here today. Giorgina, handing over to you!

PS: Giorgina and I are hosting an Instagram Live this SUNDAY, 2nd of August 2020, 6pm AEST/10am CEST on my Instagram, where we’ll be diving deeper into her ED and recovery journey, what it’s like to work with a Holistic Health Coach and what it’s like to become a Holistic Health Coach yourself. If her story resonates and you want to chat more with us, then come join us tomorrow.

Hey there! My name is Giorgina, I'm 25, I'm Italian-Guatemalan, and I'm currently living in London. When Stef first asked me if I would like to share my recovery story on her blog, I immediately said yes.I thought it would be an easy task to undertake. Well, it's day three, and I am only now sitting down at my desk, starting to type on my keyboard. It's my story, and there's nothing I know as well as I know my own life adventures, all my little secrets, and tales...but the act of writing them down, black on white, is anything but a walk in the park.

When my journey with binge eating started is hard to define, I think I had a distorted relationship with food as long as I can remember. I only understood I had an eating disorder when I started working with Stef back in 2016. Let me backtrack a few years and take you through my personal journey, I'll try to be as concise as possible but bear with me.

Growing Up

As a little girl, I loved food, especially desserts - I was, and to this day still am, a sweet tooth. I grew up in a family that loves good, healthy food, as well as home cooking. We always ate delicious meals, and for the most part, we followed a healthy and balanced Mediterranean diet. It was rare to find sweet treats/ junk food in our pantry; my mom doesn't like sweets, so it never occurred to her that my brother and I might be interested in eating them. My dad has always been very into exercising. We would go hiking, skiing, swimming, and many other activities, much to my dislike. I used to be an extremely lazy girl growing up, sports were not my thing. The only way my dad could get me to reach the top of the mountain was by promising me I could have a slice of carrot cake, or by giving me little squares of chocolate along the trail.

Fast forward to age 16. My parents had been divorced for more or less 11 years by now and I was living with my mom and one of my brothers in Tuscany. We moved homes a few times so I had become good at adapting to fit in and feel less of a stranger in new environments. At this point, Tuscany was the place I had lived in for the longest, and I had two very close friends from whom I was inseparable. One day, over dinner, one of them revealed to me she was anorexic and was being treated by doctors and psychologists. The news came as a complete shock to me. I was worried about her and I wanted to make sure she would go back to eating normal. Little did I know back then that dealing with an ED is more than just how little or how much you eat. As the years went by, I became my best friend's "safe place” where she felt comfortable to eat normal and would even allow herself to have things she wouldn't usually eat. It was only later on that I discovered she felt comfortable eating that way because I was overweight, and she felt safe knowing I was heavier than her. Some time after this realisation, I decided I didn't want to be the fat friend any longer. I wanted guys to approach me the same way they approached my two friends.

So I found a nutritionist and started my weight loss journey. Nine months went by, and along with the 10 kg loss, I also lost my best friend. She couldn’t handle the fact that I had lost weight and subsequently cut me out of her life. Although losing my best friend was probably one of the toughest things at the time, I was also happy and proud of myself. I didn't have those extra kilos anymore and people finally saw me (isn't it interesting how people see someone when there is less of them?). Along with compliments from friends and family, I found my first boyfriend.

Unfortunately, during that period of my life, my brain learned to associate weight loss with happiness. In retrospect, I know that what I then believed was happiness was truly only superficial satisfaction that could easily be swept away. For the next three years, I was an overall "happy" person with a normal eating pattern, with a few red flags here and there, but nothing major.

Then came the day I started university, the place where I found the best friends I have ever had in 20 years of life; the first semester was what I remember as my cloud nine moment, I was happy in a way I hadn't been before. However, it was also during this time that I started to develop some unhealthy eating patterns. During weekdays, I would eat tiny portions, but then on weekends I would go to town on food. I would store food in my room and since I would spend most weekends alone, I felt comfortable eating whatever and however much I pleased. I was living a split life - one where I publicly was labeled as the healthy girl that ate like a bird, but was sneaking and misusing food in secrecy. The latter, the side no one knew about, ate all things unhealthy until I felt so full it was painful to bear.

Things got worse when I went on my first internship. My dad was living in Hong Kong, and since our relationship had suffered throughout the years, I decided to go there to "fix" our father-daughter bond. Little did I know that was far from what it would turn out to be. I got more and more upset at the situation with my dad, my inner mean girl grew louder and stronger, and the binges became increasingly frequent. I would take any opportunity I had to eat anything I considered off-limits. Just like that, I started the process of numbing myself from all the anger and resentment I was feeling. Time went by, my internship came to an end and by Christmas I was back home in Tuscany sitting in my favorite armchair, feeling empty. I was scrolling through Instagram, and I happened to read one of Stef's posts (she and I went to the same university, and everyone knew her as the 'health blogger'). I decided to send her an email saying hi, that was my only intention. That day marked the start of my recovery journey, December 29th, 2016. 

Working With Stef

At the beginning I wasn’t sure if this work was right for me. I felt I didn't have a strong enough reason to, I didn't really consider myself to have an ED. I believed binging was just the way I ate and that was just how it would be for the rest of my life. But when I started working with Stef, I realized how we are quick to dismiss disordered eating because of the diet culture we live in. It normalizes behaviors like mine and those of many other people. 

I had some of my worse binges in those first few years. I experimented with purging and not eating at all, but I always went back to my comfort behaviour, binge eating. The environment at uni didn't help, and my emotional intelligence didn't aid me much throughout my studies. It was easy for me to pretend I was happy when surrounded by other people, mostly because I believed I was happy.

I would buy brioche bread and spend my weekends eating my flatmates' Ovomaltine spread and cookies. Sunday afternoon would roll around, and I would go to the store to replace the food I had eaten. I would make sure there was the same exact amount as when I first found it and that the package was positioned just as my flatmates had left it. My flatmates never noticed anything (if they did, they never mentioned a single word about it). The same scenario repeated itself weekend after weekend. It punctually ended with me sobbing in my pillow, hating myself, looking at my body in the mirror, and feeling complete despair. Thinking of those days makes my heart sink a little. I felt so stuck, I felt trapped, unhappy, and helpless. My biggest fear was that I would never be able to change things, that I would always be stuck in this binge and self-hate pattern. 

My weekly sessions with Stef were tough. She led me to places where I avoided going because it felt uncomfortable and painful to have to face those realities, but that's what built my self-awareness and my understanding of why I went back to that scary pattern again and again. It all definitely became worse before it started to get better, there's no hiding from that truth, but something kept that little flame of hope alive in me. So I kept showing up each day to do the work. Showing up doesn't mean quitting the destructive behavior from one day to another. It means creating awareness around it and being open to learning something new from each binge episode. It means catching yourself when you let your inner mean girl lead the chatter in your head, but instead of listening, you consciously start to turn down the volume. It means practicing unconditional presence and trusting the process.It means taking a few minutes each day to make yourself a priority and do something out of pure and unconditional self-love. It's not easy, it's a journey that requires patience and persistence, but it's incredibly worth it because YOU ARE ENOUGH, and YOU ARE WORTH IT. 

On days when I was completely down and felt like reverting back to my comfort behavior, my mom would tell me 'Fake it till you make it Gio, look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you love you. Repeat it, even if you don't believe it.'

The summer of 2017 was a big turning point for me. After being pescatarian for some years, I decided to go exclusively plant-based. I had always been fascinated by plant-based eating. Still, I struggled to give up dairy (there’s some fascinating scientific reasons behind our struggle to give up this food group!). I started by eliminating dairy, gluten, and refined sugar for three weeks. I realized I really didn't miss dairy at all. So, together with my mom, I committed to this new way of eating on August 1st. I was in bliss, I loved eating plant-based, I ate huge portions without feeling any sense of guilt, and I was again shedding off some weight. I felt like I was on top of the world! This new way of eating felt very liberating and I actually didn’t feel restricted at all. It was as if I had cut all the cords with the restrictive mindset I had carried with me until then. This feeling lasted for some months, but eventually, I again started craving certain things that weren't vegan-friendly. Like cookies, the ones with lots of butter, sugar, and chocolate chips. I didn’t want to give in to these cravings as I felt really committed to being plant-based, but also started to feel restricted again. Low and behold, cue the binge urges. And so there I was again, bingeing in secrecy.

After lots more trial and error, I have found a way of eating that works for me in the long-run and that is sustainanable. Experimenting with being plant-based has definitely helped me in my recovery journey, as it’s made me more aware of what I feed my body and how I physically feel as a result. However, I'm also aware that it gave me a false sense of being "in control" and kept some of my anxieties at bail - which all plays in favour of my inner mean girl. It’s a fine line between getting real enjoyment and satisfaction from eating a certain way, and feeding the old ED behaviour. Nevertheless, I have been gaining more awareness of the way I eat. I can now detect when I'm allowing my inner mean girl to sit in the driver's seat. Today, I'm still mainly plant-based, but if once in a blue moon, I feel like eating something that doesn't categorize as vegan, I know I have the liberty to choose if I want to eat it or not. I see myself eating a vegan diet for the foreseeable future because it brings me immense joy. Both my recovery journey and my adoption of a vegan diet don't follow a straight-line path, so many times I took five steps ahead and two steps back. Practice makes improvement, not perfection. Letting go of that need to do things perfectly is part of the process, and just because the road is a little bumpy, doesn't mean you aren't moving in the right direction. What matters is the upward trend.

Where I’m At Today

There’s been good days and there’s been bad days. It's been a rollercoaster journey, and on those less favorable days, I always felt like I had made no progress from the day I started working on myself. Still, if I look back, I can see how I have come a long way. My recovery story doesn't have an end, just like everyone else's. We discover something new about ourselves every day, and we heal a little more with each step along the way. Today I find myself studying to become a Health Coach because I want to be able to give back and help others see the light at the end of the tunnel. I am not fully recovered from binge eating, but I know I am making progress each day.

I hope that by sharing my story, I could help you have a little faith and know that the universe has your back. Don't give up when the tough gets going because it will be worth it. Gi, xx

Did this story resonate with you? If you find yourself in a similar boat to what Giorgina was in a couple of years ago, I invite you to connect with me and explore 1:1 coaching work. I’m also hosting an Instagram Live with Giorgina this SUNDAY, 2nd of August 2020, 6pm AEST/10am CEST on my Instagram, where we’ll be diving deeper into her ED and recovery journey, what it’s like to work with a Holistic Health Coach and what it’s like to become a Holistic Health Coach yourself. Mark your calendars!