I don't know if it shows in the articles here on WIP so I don't know if this comes as a shock. But I noticed something recently. It seems that I have a problem. And that problem has a diagnosis.
Now, I'm not saying I'm a doctor who knows how to do a diagnosis. I'm saying that based on what I've learned over the years about myself and about psychic illnesses, I'm quite confident that I might have a mild case of this particular mental illness. (If you believe in such a thing as a mental illness, that is. I don't know if I do. I'd like to believe I can control my mind and that this problem of mine isn't actually a problem at all but the result of my conscious, active choice making.) Here it is.
F50.81.
For those who do not know ICD codes by heart, that code refers to binge eating disorder.
As said, I can't be sure that diagnosis applies to me. But there's some evidence (aka anamnesis) supporting it:
- I gained a lot of weight back when I was vegan. The food was so good I couldn't stop eating it even if I was full.
- When I did keto, if I made a batch of keto dessert, I would continue eating it until the batch was gone, even if I started to feel bad. (I would get away with this by first stuffing other people with at least one third of the batch before attacking it myself.)
- Now when I'm carnivore, if I so much as taste something other than meat, my brain starts telling me to consume all kinds of wrong things. (Example: last Thursday I had one sugar free licorice drop. Next thing I knew I had almost an entire jar of low-quality peanut butter, insane amounts of Port Salut cheese, and a sugar free ice cream - on top of my normal diet and regardless of the stuffed and nauseated feeling I got from the peanut butter.)
It's like my brains tells me that the day is lost, buddy, you'd better make the best of it and have ice cream / cake / candy / low quality peanut butter - you'll start afresh tomorrow. And I, the idiot that I seem to be, listen to it.
Mind you, I never had this problem as a kid. I was always skinny, no matter what I ate. One spring when I was 13, I had a bag of cheetos every day. But back then I also didn't follow any specific diets. I just ate like an omnivore without stressing about it.
So perhaps the root of my problem is precisely that - the chronic need to follow a specific diet. And as with any specific diets, there are restrictions, and when you restrict your diet, your mind starts craving exactly that which you cannot have, resulting you to eat neglected food groups in abundance at times.
This could mean that the solution to my problem is to ditch all diets, which at this moment means turning from a carnivore into an omnivore again. But guess what? I've tried. I try introducing food groups back into my diet regularly. And it always ends bad. I tried cheese - got stomachache. Tried unpasteurized, unhomogenized cheese - got depressed. Tried lentils and vegetables - got depressed.
So I don't know. I'm at a place where I feel great eating beef and eggs and butter and seafood every day, and only those, and feel no need to overeat. I'd like to eat vegetables - they're so freaking yummy - but I dare not try them for the risk of losing control of my eating again.
I dunno. Maybe baby steps is the way?
RK
