Are you a Restrictor or are you a Permitter?
Are you depriving yourself of food before you’re deprived of love and attention in the worldly world? Or are you storing up before the love or attention you currently have runs out?
Big question, right?
But a question that I trust almost every single woman on this planet can answer: quick and clear and Geneen Roth, author of Women, Food and God, agrees. Her definition of the two types of compulsive eaters have strung a cord with me.
Being a Restrictor means relying on order, diet plans, calories, glycemic indexes and more.
Being a Permitter means giving yourself the permission to eat all the time, anything. You literally go through your days endlessly eating everything in reach, while being in complete denial about it.
I’ve been both, how about you?
No matter if you’re part of the former or the latter group, you believe in lack and have lost trust in yourself and this world. Your actions are simply ways of trying to control or numb what has happened in the past, is happening in the present and could happen in the future.
The Restrictor believes that she can bring order to her feelings and life by controlling her body and her basic needs. She believes that being skinny means being safe.
The Permitter tries to just go with the flow, believing that if she keeps on eating, she’ll numb the pain and somehow, someway deal with her emotions and fears that way. Or not at all.
Both ways of eating and therefor living are ways of living a lie. A lie that should’ve stopped a long time ago but stayed with us through our adulthood. We’re scared that if we stop controlling or numbing, our feelings, the feelings will overwhelm us, kills us, make us unable to move on.
Well, the truth is, feelings can’t and won’t kill us. We’re stronger than that and we have the power to deal with them.
Yes, we may have needed these strategies in the past, but now they’re no longer serving us. Instead, they’re making our lives miserable and keeping us from actually being alive.
So, how can we stop living in the past and actually come to a place of balance and trust?
1. Become Aware of It
When you first notice yourself wanting that huge slice of pizza the entire pizza for yourself, even though you’ve just had a meal and are stuffed already, be curious. Instead of judging, say to yourself: “How interesting that I feel I need that pizza now even though I’m not hungry.”
When you notice that you’ve gone a day without eating and that same pizza is killing you, unnerving you, making you angry and agressive because it shouldn’t be there, respond with delight. “How interesting that this pizza is causing this reaction in my mind.”
2. Return to Your Body
The next step to stopping that insane behavior is to come back to the present moment, come back to your body. When you notice you’re beginning to eat even though you’re not hungry or you’re starving but you won’t allow yourself to have even a bit of an apple, come back to your body.
How does it feel? What does it say? How does your skin feel against the fabric of your clothes? How does your hand feel touching your face? How does you belly feel in this very moment? Pinch yourself if you have to, go through your hair, but always try to come back to your belly and just give it the chance to communicate with you.
Being aware of your body in moments of anxiety and stress can not only calm your nerves but it can also lead to a more wholesome and healthy relationship with food.
This is a process and won’t happen over night, but today, you can begin.
Like I said, I’ve belong to both groups at different points in my life. How about you? Have you ever felt that restricting or overeating has helped you to cope with certain situations in your life or has it made everything even worse? Do you have other strategies that you used to come back to the present moment and stop that vicious cycle?
Check out Love Yourself Friday Edition #38 – Are You a Restricter or a Permitter? on YouTube.
I’m sure you won’t be surprised, but I am surely a restricter.
Curiosity. That is something I am learning to pack along with me wherever I go as it is so powerful. When I can be curious about my experience, I give myself the chance to choose my response rather than just doing what I always do. It empowers me to change.
Very well put and it’s true, The more curious you are about everything, the more open you are to experience something truly new and different and change your response to old habits and destructive ways.
I am a complete restrictor. I was just a normal kid eating normally, then in high school skipped meals… then as I got older it was hit or miss. I would eat or not eat while alone. I didn’t care. Too much trouble to cook while I was alone. I would eat when my hubby was home. Then grief and such happened, things changed, life happened… there were rounds with restricting to various degrees. worst being this last one. Which no one caught on to for almost two years, and they all acted so surprised, like they knew nothing about anything… they had all seen it before years ago!! dummies. whatever. I was good, no perfect at it… I took pleasure in it. It made me feel good. It replaced the worthlessness that I felt inside. I had little control over anything in my life… but this I could control… I controlled this. Every bit of whatever I decided to eat, was in my control. Or drank. I decided. I was proud of myself, in a weird way, but still, I hadn’t been proud of myself for anything in a long long time. So, it was better than nothing. And no one else said they were proud of me. I was only a restrictor. 🙂
But you are so much more and you can be proud of things that have nothing to do with weight. You’re an amazing artist and you have such a great way with words. In the end, being skinny is nothing to be proud of. The body is not who you are. You are so much more. xxx
Awe thanks, I am glad you think I am a good artist… 🙂 and a good writer. I enjoy both. lately I have written more than drawn. And I am not “skinny” by far. I am merely what I always was. nothing more, nothing less. I am just older…lol. And I think that is what people right now are having issues with. Younger people still have what I call “baby fat” on them, that youthfulness to them… that fills out their skin.. they don’t have wrinkles they look flawless that way. You lose that we you age. see, and now, I look at my mom who is only an inch taller than me 26 years older… and I can’t be around her. I may know in my head I need to be okay with where I am… she triggers me. All she does is complain about how “fat” she is… blah blah.. and it sets me off. I tell her all the time to stop. Goes over her head.. So I just can’t be around her. Just as you age, skin changes, body changes.. it is weird. menopause does something to you. iam not sure what.
And I know i am more than my body.. i have a very smart brain… i have a lot to give away to others and i have a huge heart. I would rather give than receive. And because of the way that i have hurt my body with ED and self harm.. somehow at some point…. when i am more emotionally and mentally stable, i will figure out a way to help teens not cut and seek out help so they do feel like they are alone; let them know they are worth more than a number or a voice in their head that will only make them die because of a number that will only go to zero… when they have so much potential and are already so beautiful inside and out. all they need is one person to believe in them at an age when they are confused about themselves. and most are scared to talk to their parents about anything. What preteen/teen talks to their parents!! Especially if they think it is something bad. So at some point… i would like to start at a local middle school which is 5-7… but that is a ways off. but a goal none the less. 🙂
I love that goal, Karen. I know you’ll get to it sooner than you think. 🙂
Oh Karen, if I didn’t already have a twin sister…I would SWEAR we were twins separated at birth. My story is your story. I am ..in my early 50’s at a time where I SHOULD be menopausal…but I have not had a period since age 43….due to being a “serial” restrictor and, alas, inflicted with the consequences of anorexia nervosa…
I have too been strangely “proud” of being able to control one facet of my life…and my husband has been quite indifferent to my persistent “control” and bizarre relationship with food. I am currently terrorized by food…yet obsessed with “archiving” recipes from numerous food blogs….isolate more and more…and realize this is untenable …When my children go back to university…I will attempt to “address” my issues in ED hospitalization…as I feel too weak to even walk around much for fear I will faint in front of people.
I hope to get to the point where I can help others afflicted with such issues…as you so bravely plan. Much respect for you and your quest.
Thank you, Anne-Sophie for your wisdom and kind heart in addressing these extremely important matters…and aiding me in realizing that it comes down to finally allowing oneself to show a little kindness/respect to oneself…Continuation of self-loathing is no cure…or “tuning out”/numbing down of deep feelings via food restriction or…the opposite I fear so deeply…eating anything and everything….I have “veered” to this action a few times recently…and it scares me to actually observe myself behaving in a very animalistic way. I spotted Geneen Roth’s book about Women, Food & God and I plan on reading it as soon as possible.
I am very glad to have found this blog and….it just might save me!
Donna, it seems to me that you wanting to experiment with recipes from food blogs is your healthy side yearning to be free and enjoy food. BUT BUT BUT you seem to be in a very weak place, so try to be kind to yourself, recognize and celebrate your wish to become healthy and be free, but don’t overdo it. Much love!
donna, fight the fight…. do what you have to do. never give up. it isn’t easy… you will be up, doing good, then you can fall…. you will be up again…. it just is. I wish it were just be sick, get better…. but it isn’t. I just fell…. for the first time In a long long time… made my body hurt.. but I think it hurt my pride worse and, it opened my eyes. I realized I emotionally attached I am to ana. and I made a decision. I had said before I was letting go…. but I didn’t… not really. being in treatment made me gain weight… but I never healed, I never changed my thought patterns, or behaviors over those five months…. or in the past 14 months of being at home. and when I just fell…. I hit bottom hard. It hurt. So, I am going to let go this time… change the ways, thoughts, behaviors… every single part that needs to be changed, heal myself from the inside. allow myself to accept myself. to become better without ana because I can not do this again. I am getting too old, my body hurt too horribly this time in just a few days of restricting so badly… it brought back horribly memories of before I went to treatment. of how I felt, what I did. how I almost died. I looked at my son who will be 13 on aug 4, and I cried the other day and thought… no more. I need more than this. I am more than this. I hope that when you go to treatment, that you not only get healthy by gaining enough to get strong.. but change some of the thought patterns so that it is easier when you come back home. I wish you well… 🙂
Can we be a bit of both? I think I sit in both those camps some days! Really great article Anne-Sophie.
e-hugs
Elle
I agree. I’m part of both sides too. I think it’s part of being a woman in this time and world. However, if we can come to a place of balance and self-trust, we can break free from both ways of being.