Binging, Bodies & Blessings

Welcome back to the Solidarity podcast

where we share stories to connect with one another, find comfort in life’s challenges & to celebrate the solidarity that is, being a woman.

Over the next two weeks I want to talk about bodies, health and my own personal struggles I have faced.

I feel like this is important to talk about going into the holiday season because I know for me, this is the hardest time of year to keep it together with my goals and battling the issue I deal with- which I will get into in a second.

I do apologize, my neighbor’s dog has been barking incessantly for the last few hours and I got nothing.  So I do apologize if you hear the barking in the background.

I do want to preface with the fact that we all have our own stories, our own journeys and issues.  I will be mentioning binging which is classified as an eating disorder.  I have not been officially diagnosed but it doesn’t take much to see that this is an issue I struggle with even if it’s not a full blown, life encompassing eating disorder in my own life.  If this is something you struggle with in any facet and it’s too much to handle, take the next few weeks off. I do not want you to be set back in any way or trigger you into a difficult place.

So a few weeks back I had the honor to speak on mental health, caring for our bodies, coping with mental health issues such as anxiety and depression and burn out.  I got to share my own journey and some of the practical things that I do to manage myself and stay a functioning part of society.  My friend Lauren graciously asked me to join her live, it is on IGTV on @laurenrachellefitness - she is a doll, go follow her and watch that I’ll link it below.  Lauren has been my cheerleader for a while now. I’ve gotten the privilege of watching her walk through some serious life and pray with her from one side of a trial to another. She is an absolute gem and she has poured into me so much over the last few months as I’ve taken my health journey to another level.

She’ll be sharing her own story on the podcast this season, and I’m super excited for you to get to know her but I want to start this episode off with something that she taught me.  You have to show up- everyday.  Even if it’s in the smallest way.  You have to show up for yourself and the people around you.  You have to have a support system and you have to hold yourself accountable.  You need to set small achievable goals and then celebrate the heck out of them because life is worth celebrating and a life lived full is a life lived hard and that is remarkable and the fact that you are alive and doing life is worth the dance party.

So when you hit that goal and you nail that mindset win, I want you to celebrate like you haven’t celebrated before.  I want you to dance and laugh and text your friend in all caps that you WON this day, this hour, this week. You overcame.  Because that is what you will go back to in the dark moments when you don’t feel like you can go another step.  When you don’t think you’re going to make it.  You have to have something to go back to- something that your person can remind you of- that will keep you going to the other side.

Most of us are struggling with the double whammy of physical and mental health issues.  So not only are we trying to overcome the physical weight that is holding us down, but we’re trying to conquer the mentality that will get us there.  And they go hand in hand and sometimes it feels impossible to move one without the other but we just aren’t strong enough to do both at one time.  And that’s where your accountability partner comes in.  That’s where they walk along side you and they give you the extra strength to lift those weights up and make it happen.  They give you the inspiration to go the extra mile.  They lift your chin up and point you back to Jesus when you dropped your head in exhaustion.  Get yourself a person to walk through the rain and to celebrate those wins with.  And if you don’t have one, pray and ask for one, or reach out to me, I’ll be your person.

I’m going to share my story with you today.  I shared it for the first time ever on Instagram a few weeks ago.  Now, I’ve shared a lot of vulnerability over the years, but I’ve never gone to this place.  This was my shameful dirty secret place.  This was the version of myself I couldn’t look in the mirror.  But as God does, he takes away shame, He moves mountains and He lifts the chains so that we can testify to His goodness and grace with our stories.  I wanted to share this in the podcast in a more permanent form because I think it leads into next week’s episode about caring for your body wholly, really well.

So allow me to share my broken pieces with you in hope that next week, we can start putting it back together, together.

I grew up in a healthy household.  If you knew me then, you’d know that was an understatement but I don’t really want to get into all of that.  All you need to know is that I managed to have an affinity for binging and hiding certain foods when I got ahold of them, whether it was in or out of the house.  When I moved out on my own, I went wild.  I gained a lot of weight very quickly and I turned what was an occasional thing into a regular occurrence of binging foods that made me feel safe and that made me feel happy- at least in the moment.  It was to fill the void and it did a really horrible job because it always ended up making me feel even worse about myself.  There were times I’d eat 3 packs of ramen at once just because I could.  Or I’d eat a whole container of my favorite soft icing covered sugar cookies from Kroger.  I’d eat a whole box of mozzarella sticks or a whole pint of ice cream.  Usually it would happen all in one night and I’d go from insatiable to devastated, depressed and obviously sick  .  When it came time to get married I didn’t love my body so I tried to clean up my eating and I lost a few pounds, but I still wasn’t where I wanted to be.

In that first year of marriage I gained thirty pounds.  Depression, anxiety, unstable situations, death, miscarriages, constant access to junk and zero encouragement for moderation was quite literally a recipe for disaster.  I remember looking at a photo of myself that thanksgiving and I threw up a little in my mouth. I was bigger than I had ever been before and not only did I physically feel awful, I felt horrible about myself.  I hated my body, my mind had gone to war with itself and I was really struggling.  At points I was suicidal and no matter what I did, I always ended up binging to fill whatever need I wanted met.

The problem was, my desire at the time was to have a baby and reality was, I was not going to have a baby by eating.  In fact, my doctor made it very clear that if I kept eating the way I was, I was going to end up diabetic and I was making my PCOS worse with my diet.  After I learned more about what PCOS is, what it meant to have insulin resistance and the why behind some of my health problems- I realized that while I did have a problem with eating, my health issues were also fueling my eating habits and my mental health issues and it was all effecting each other in a vicious cycle that could only be broken by pushing the whole house down and starting over.  Now obviously I couldn’t literally do that, but figuratively I did.

I started eating in a way that brought me back to the basics of nutrition and the building blocks my body needed to not just survive, but to thrive.  I started working out and giving myself the movement and the nutrients I needed.  Radically, in a month, my body shed 20 pounds, my mind became joyful and clear, my relationship with God started to look up and in turn, the relationships with those around me improved.  I also became pregnant.
Now I’d like to say that everything from then on was great and that I was healthy and happy and all, but that’s simply not what happened.

I regressed.

I was pregnant and then bam. Lockdowns. Restrictions. Fear. Anxiety over the possibility of another miscarriage. Money. Stress. Sickness. Uncertainty.  It was all too much for a girl who had just changed her ways a month ago.  I broke down and I returned to comfort.

I was sick from my first trimester and it caused me to only want goldfish, pretzels and real cherry popsicles.  I’m pretty sure that’s all I ate for weeks.

Then I started bleeding and I thought I was miscarrying- it was just a small pocket of blood in my uterus that had popped, nothing to worry about- but I lost it emotionally. I turned to a ginormous bag of sour patch kids, a costco-sized bucket of pretzels and goldfish and I ate like it was nobody’s business.

Once the nausea passed it got even worse.  Daily ice cream, weekly trips to Sonic for mozzarella sticks, big lemonades and concretes.  I could easily eat an entire pan of cheesy bread from Dominoes.  I mean it was insane.  Some weeks I did better than others and I would eat in moderation or I’d go healthy for a few weeks, but I always regressed back.  Especially late at night when it was just me and Hayden would be kicking away.  I just wanted my fear and anxiety to go away so I’d eat.

As you could guess I gained 50 pounds.  I was sad but I knew I couldn’t do anything to change what I’d done so I could only move forward.  I had Hayden on November 29th, 2020 and my 6 week postpartum appointment was in early January.  I gave myself until New Years to eat the holiday foods and just chill out being newly postpartum and then it was done.  I was done.  I was going to lose the weight for good, get healthy and get to a place that I tried to before I got pregnant so that the next go around I would be smaller, healthier, have better habits and have a healthier, easier pregnancy.  And you know, I’m proud to say, I’m getting there.  I’ve lost the 50 pounds I gained and I’m down another 6.  Over the last 10 months I’ve lost 56 pounds total and I’ve got another 13ish to go to hit my goal.  Maybe another 10 after that if I really want to push it.  But right now I’d be content with just another 13.  More importantly, I just want to be healthy for my son.  I started slow and started with cutting out foods I knew weren’t healthy and I started learning how much I was eating and really counted calories.  Now I don’t do that anymore because I know my mindset goes to a bad place and I restrict way more than I should to the point where I’m not even eating 1000 calories a day which is NOT healthy.  I repeat, that is not healthy.  A grown woman should no t be eating 1000 calories a day.  Work with a nutritionist to decide how many calories a day you should be eating.  Throw the BMI crap away because it’s literally disgusting where it came from and it’s not realistic or healthy to maintain the kind of weights that that thing throws around. Literally don’t even get me started on that thing.

Anyways- I am proud of myself because I am seeing the loss in my clothes and on the scale but I’m also seeing it in the fact that I don’t get winded going up the stairs anymore. I’m strong enough to carry Hayden and all of his stuff without getting tired.  I can walk briskly up a hill without actually dying.  I am seeing the physical changes and the mental clarity and stability because I’ve made slow and steady changes that have contributed to a lifestyle change and I’m healthier for it.

That being said- it’s still not where my story ends.  Because regardless of what Instagram has you thinking- even the people that look like they’re getting it together- still don’t have it fully together.  There is still another level.  Another layer of secrets and shame and issues that I’m working through.  Remember the binging? Well, just because I’m getting healthier doesn’t mean that the complex just goes away.  It’s been 10 months of getting healthier and changing habits and I’m still struggling.  Now I don’t say that to be discouraging, because I can handle it and cope way better than I used to be able to, the story I’m about to share with you will prove that, but I want you to know that you can never be too careful.  Issues will still come up and that is why you can’t put your worth into all of this material stuff.  Your strength, your worth, your motivation and your inspiration has to come from God because none of this stuff will fulfill you.  Losing weight and getting healthier has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, it’s been a serious marathon and the amount of ups and down I’ve had, if my worth was in this, I wouldn’t be here right now.  It is by the grace of God alone that I am still alive and here today and so I’m telling you, as someone that has walked this, nothing is going to actually change until you remove your sense of self worth from things you can and cannot control and put it into the hands of Jesus.  I’ll get more into that in a second because I want to share my most recent story with you.  It’s what I call a serious mindset win after a serious fall.  They go hand in hand, so don’t be afraid of failure because it can shape your next step so beautifully and God has so much grace, restoration and redemption to go around and around and around.

So like I said, I’ve never been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I know I’ve struggled with binging.  In this year one of the things I’ve done is I’ve gotten really up front and real with myself about the things I’m struggling with and how to combat them.  I’ve been getting on my knees in prayer but I’ve also been getting up off them and getting to work because God has called us to action AND faith.  So after this long journey with my health & working on my self awareness about the struggles I have to better combat them- I came to the realization that I had a complex with food, especially bingeing. I started following Remi Bader on TikTok early last year and by sharing her own story with binging & how her mental health & eating collide, it allowed me to verbalize my own issue.  Through her God has opened my eyes about a lot of complexes I have, trauma I need Him to heal and patterns I need broken.

I have incredible self discipline when I want to. But my emotions rule my self control when I’m in a vulnerable state.  One bite during a vulnerable state of something that I’m addicted to - in this case, sugar, and I go off the deep end.  I’ll eat it all.  Hide the evidence & then beat myself up for weeks & deprive myself of all food until I’m melting down & forced to eat something.  I get ahold of myself for awhile & then eventually the cycle repeats. It’s something I’m working on actively & I fight regularly.  It’s why it’s so hard for me when people offer just a little bit because in person, with them, I only eat a little bit.  But they don’t see me sneaking to other rooms & finding food to eat.  They don’t see me go home & eat all of what I’m craving in one setting.  They don’t see me buying stuff with my old personal card and eating it in my car & disposing of the remnants so I don’t have to be held accountable.  So this is a good reminder, if someone says no, don’t press it.  You have no idea what they’re battling and going through.  Even a little bit might be too much.

Point is, I have to work really hard to say no. Not because I don’t think I should be able to have things in moderation. I should. It’s just that in my case, it doesn’t stay in moderation. Trust me, I wish it did.

So recently, I had a breakthrough. It started a few months back when I verbally acknowledged my issue.

We were at Dustin’s Nanny’s and she keeps those incredibly sugary but delightful oatmeal cream pies.  I love them.  I ate so many when I was pregnant.  I knew there were some there because they caught my eye the second I walked in.  But I was in a room full of people who knew I was on my eating plan and that was holding me accountable.  So, his sister had brought Halloween candy & although I hadn’t been eating sugar, I had a moment of weakness, thought hey, I can handle one piece, right?  I deserve it.  Funny how Satan sneaks in with temptation and changes the narrative to things we deserve- which by the way we deserve literally death and Jesus redeemed us, so anytime you hear that you “deserve” something, steer clear because it’s not from God.  Anyways so I gave in & I had something I desperately wanted- my weakness- Reese’s.  But it didn’t stop there.  When everyone went outside I followed it up with a snickers, a Kit Kat and then everything else that was in the bag.  I mean I obliterated it.  It was my first binge since being pregnant- it had been 9 months & before I knew it I was in the kitchen hiding, scarfing down an oatmeal cream pie.  I was so ashamed that I hid the wrapper deep down in the trash and we left shortly after.  I was so embarrassed.  Why couldn’t I just control myself?  Why couldn’t I have the extreme discipline like I had so many times before?   Part of it was hormones, part of it was emotion & vulnerability & part of it was that I just really wanted a little something & I couldn’t handle it.

I was so embarrassed I wasn’t even going to tell Dustin.  But because he knows me better than anyone he knew something was wrong as soon as we got in the car.  I broke down & quickly blurted out my transgression.  He laughed, I laughed & cried a little bit and we moved on because in hindsight it was hilarious the thought of me hiding in the dark, unfinished kitchen, shoving an oatmeal pie down my throat.  Not my finest moment, but funny nonetheless.   I went home that night feeling better that I had admitted it to him.

After that I cut out sugar again for a while & got back to my weight loss plan. Then I went on vacation & had a little and then I had a lot because I was emotional, without my support system & I was tempted. And I gave in. And I came back and I somehow hadn’t gained any weight. So the last few weeks I’ve indulged. I’ve had a little here & there at events and parties and I’ve been continuing to lose weight because at the end of the day I’m watching my calories & working out & hydrating. It’s what people would call moderation. But that’s not something I can maintain. I know myself & a couple weeks ago, I almost binged. I’ve been eating a little here & there and when presented with the basket of Halloween candy Hayden got that week, sitting on my counter, while hungry, I snatched my favorite- those darn Reese’s, from the top. I ate it. And I immediately hid the wrapper. That’s a whole other complex I could go into, but won’t. At least not now.

As I went to hide the wrapper I knew I was coming back for more & I knew after the Reese’s were all gone I’d go to the snickers, followed by the Kit Kat’s & on and on with the pattern I used to eat with my own Halloween candy as a kid. I felt like I had to eat it all right then. I then remembered that when I told Dustin last time, I felt better; so I had to tell him before it got bad this time. Because I didn’t want to do it. I want Jesus to fulfill me, not food. I told him & he suggested I bag it up so he could take it to work & it wouldn’t be in the house.

So I distracted myself and made Hayden a bottle & then I met the need which was hunger. I made myself a graham cracker with peanut butter & a little bit of stevia chocolate because I knew I had a sugar craving that needed to be met so I didn’t eat the other sugar & I ate it, brushed my teeth and then bagged this up.

You see, I knew if I came back from getting Hayden to bed & Dustin asleep, I would eat that whole bag of candy right there, in one sitting. And then I’d crumple all the wrappers into a paper towel & when Dustin inevitably asked me where it all went I probably would’ve told him I ate some and put the rest in the cabinet or thrown it away. Because that’s what happens when I binge, I feel so ashamed & I try to cover it up. And once I start, there’s no stopping me until every last bite is gone. But that night, I prayed. I bagged it up. And I walked away. I won that night.

And I shared it on Instagram.  I don’t know why, I felt prompted to.  Like someone else was going through what I was and I was just supposed to share.  That I was supposed to be vulnerable with the one thing I was hiding from people.  Because it’s nice to hear people say “wow, you look great, how much weight have you lost?” but you don’t want them to know that right after that you felt so validated and awesome that you went and ate an entire bag of candy.  See why it’s so important that your self worth isn’t attached to anything but God?  It’s a downhill spiral, I promise.  And I also promise that next week I’ll get into realistic tips, coping mechanisms, verses and how to actually walk this journey.  I just really wanted you to get my background and my story this week.  I wanted to give you time to think about your own journey and to think about the things that you feel led to work on.

I’m sharing because I know some of you need a win right now.

Maybe you’re feeling ashamed or you’re feeling yourself get depressed & you’re searching for something to fill the void.

But you know once you start again, you can’t stop & it’ll just make your situation even worse because you’ll hate yourself for doing it again. For not being strong enough.

I get it, I’m right there with you.

So I’m being transparent & really, really vulnerable- because nothing I’ve ever shared has scared me more than this does, because I KNOW someone needs to hear it.

It’s possible to get the win. It’s possible to overcome. So I’m going to start sharing my mindset wins so you can start to acknowledge your own & have support and I’ll be sharing them on my Instagram stories.

The other day instead of finishing the pan of brownies that came home with us from an event, I put them in the freezer because they’ll be just as good in a couple months and right now, they’re only going to be a hindrance.  That was just one small, quick step that I could take.  It shows progress because if it’s out of sight, out of mind, I’m okay.  But a couple of years ago, heck months ago, if I knew it was in the house, it was going to get eaten.  So I can see progress, it’s just slow and steady and it’s an uphill climb.  But I am thankful that I’m not doing it alone and I’m certainly not doing it out of my own strength.

I’m realizing I can no longer hide because I know I’m not alone and you shouldn’t have to do this alone- and you don’t have to hide either.

There is freedom in the light & Jesus offers so much freedom & grace if you’ll take it.

Whether your addiction is food, porn, spending money, tv, gaming, drama, work, toxic relationships, drugs, alcohol- whatever it is- you can be free. I promise.  We’ll get into it more next week but in the meantime, if you need support, I’m here to talk.  But even more importantly, Jesus is always here to set you free.

God wants to bless you, you just have to say yes, get on your knees in surrender, ask for guidance and then get up and go and follow and do the things you’re called to do.  I hope you’ll tune in next week to hear more about what God has to say about us taking care of our bodies and some really realistic and valuable tips that have helped me and others to do that.

I do have to go because Hayden is knocking on the door, he wants in.

Thank you so much for listening in this week. If you’d like to share your story, shoot me an email or DM. You can follow me on Instagram @riley_quin and you can also sign up for my monthly email list on my website rileyq.com or click the link below.  If you feel called to, please share with a woman who you know needs to be strengthened and encouraged. It would mean the world if you’d leave a podcast review on Apple podcasts and let me know your favorite part of this week’s episode. Thanks again & be sure to subscribe and come back next Wednesday when we’ll really do a deep dive!

As always, I’m so glad you’re here. You’re wanted, needed and loved. I see you, I hear you and you my love, by the grace of God, you are enough.