by J.K. from ANAD newsletter

I remember deciding not too long ago that if I could just stop bingeing and start eating right my life would be "perfect." If I could just get control over food, I told myself, bulimia would disappear from my mind and from my life. How very wrong I was.

At that point, I was dealing with my bulimia in the same way as a doctor who would treat a sick person’s sneezes rather than her cold. I was trying to treat the symptom of bulimia (overeating and purging), rather than the disease itself.

Bulimia does not deal with food or overeating or bingeing. Food is not the problem. I believe, however, that bulimia does deal with hunger. Each binge is a signal that the bulimic is starving to death and is desperately seeking nourishment. This hunger, however, is one that does not come from physical emptiness, but rather arises from an emptiness deep within a person, an emptiness of self. Food is not the problem behind the hunger and food is not the answer.

I do not deny that I am hungry when my binge voice starts screaming in my ear. I immediately admit that I am terribly hungry. But I then ask myself, what am I hungry for? What am I truly, honestly hungry for? Rarely am I hungry for food. Food is instead a way of feeding emotional hungers that I otherwise do not know how to feed.

Sometimes I realize I am hungry for the approval of others. Sometimes my hunger is for the company of another person when I am lonely. Sometimes my hunger comes from the deprived little girl that still lives within me. Physical hunger is rarely a part of my binge voice. Food is not my problem. Control over food is not my problem. My emotional hungers and my inability to feed those hungers in the right ways is my problem.

Never will I be able to eat enough food to fill hungers that are not really crying out for food. I will never get enough of what I do not really want or need. It is only by feeding my true hungers and shedding my food security blanket that I can feel nourished and satisfied. Only when I stop starving myself to death by gorging myself with food will I fully live.