“I return home with packaged food in my hands. As soon as I put it down on the floor, I immediately change my clothes, take my laptop off the table, and then grab two or three empty 1.5-liter bottles of water that I store separately next to the refrigerator. Pick up a bowl and drink a full glass of water. Take out some of the disposable food items from the bag you brought with you. First, take out kimchi, pickled radish, side dishes, or foods with a lot of vegetables on the table. Start eating them first. Place the kimchi or pickled radish under your stomach. “Then, when you vomit it up later, if the pieces of kimchi spill out and it tastes sour, it will be proof that you vomited out 99% of what you ate.”
– <Swallowing Practice>, Jini Park
is full. The first sensation you feel as soon as you open your eyes. It seems like all the undigested food I ate last night has gathered in the center of my chest. Foreign body sensation. I clear my throat, which has become a habit. I want to get something stuck in my throat out.
When it’s 9 o’clock at night, I look for salty, sweet, spicy and stimulating food that will satisfy me immediately. Then, I go out and buy a lot of food at convenience stores, bakeries, and ice cream shops. The more things you hold in your hands, the more anxious you become. hurry. hurry. When I get home, I tear up the packaging and start eating whatever I want. While eating, turn on the delivery app. Chicken, pizza, maltang, whatever. It arrives at my doorstep every day.
I quietly overlap what happens to me repeatedly with the sentences in <Swallowing Practice>. The two people were strangely desperate to eat, and were completely overwhelmed. No, a lot of women. Actually, the same thing is happening to us.
Going to an Eating Disorder Center
“How long does it take to eat all that?”
the teacher asked.
“Within an hour.”
After about two years of binge eating, I gained more than 10 kg. The overworked stomach and intestines were unable to digest almost all food. Still, I ate it. Baedal Minjok called me a ‘precious person’ and gave me a medal. After I finished eating, I felt guilty in front of the plastic and bones piled up in the house, but I soon forgot about it. I also ignored my desire to be healthy. The desire to eat took over my body. My appetite told me not to dare even dream of a healthy future.
Yes, I abstain. I don’t know how to eat just one serving. I don’t know how not to rush into binge eating. I need help. So the place I ended up at was the eating disorder center.
“There is a spring. If you put pressure on it, what happens? It springs. But a spring never springs unless you press it. The same goes for the urge to binge eat.”
He nodded with an unimpressed face.
“I weighed 74kg in high school, 64kg in my early twenties, 92kg in my mid-twenties, 74kg in my late twenties, and now 94kg.”
When asked how much weight he had gained during that time, he answered as follows. I had a hard time remembering, but that’s roughly it. My weight was on an upward curve, and my teacher said that if I continued like this for one more year, I would definitely gain over 100 kg.
“Eating normally.”
If ‘normal’ is a state in which the body and mind are not dominated by food.
In my twenties, I wanted to weigh something like 48kg. Smooth legs, slim waist. Plus abs. I learned that I had to desire those things. Having always been overweight, I couldn’t even dream of such a thing and thought I would be lucky to just find pants and underwear that fit.
As weight increases, daily life becomes more uncomfortable. There was not much freedom I could enjoy in the small, designed space, culture, and atmosphere. This was me who needed to be fixed. I sought herbal medicine diet and injections, and did PT , swimming, and Pilates every day. Above all, eating스포츠토토 was strictly controlled. I liked the strong mentality that could control me. I believed in the statement that if you lose weight, your future will change. Don’t eat it. Food is the enemy.
“It’s not that I don’t eat, it’s that I have to eat more often. I eat three times: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. I will eat food like medicine. I eat when the time comes. That way, I don’t have the urge to binge eat. It means my spring doesn’t get depressed.”
The teacher held out a piece of paper that had been pressed down. It was a meal plan.
That day, I sat across from a woman at the center and had a meal. She said that eating therapy is when people who can’t eat at all and those who eat too much, and those who don’t eat too much, come together and eat together. Although their shapes were different, they had one thing in common. That we all have trouble eating. The hand holding the spoon trembled. There was tension between the woman and me. It may have been because they were people who didn’t want to show what they were eating.
After finishing the meal, a short consultation with a therapist followed. The woman’s story began. The story is that carbohydrates are scary. A story about people around you who offer you food because you are too thin. Next is my story. The story of what I ate every night and how I ate it again due to indigestion and the frustration of doing the same thing over and over again. The woman nodded, and that nod made me feel like crying. We parted ways without saying goodbye.
It seems like food comes non-stop, six times a day, every day. There are still many days when I feel anxious in front of all kinds of food, but even so, I eat with an uncertain mind and eat even when I fail. I eat with women who find it difficult to believe in the irony that, contrary to their past lifestyles, they need to eat more often. I trace the memories engraved on my body and postpone today’s binge eating until tomorrow. Then the alarm rings again the next day. I think of people moving their mouths in response to that signal. I swallow everything I put in my mouth, hoping to digest it all healthily.
“Some people live like bugs in the mud with lumps of dirt in their mouths. But the reason such a life is not meaningless is because such a life dies and a life like light, covered in scars, emerges for a moment from the cracks of death.
“How does it feel?”
I wanted to be free. This is because I have never experienced the liberating ‘eating’. Starve or binge eat. I wanted to escape from two options. Will there ever come a day when we stop fighting with food? The teacher spoke to me again. Dieting is to stop. This is not aimed at losing weight. It’s about regaining healthy control over food. A healthy sense of control that I originally had. I wasn’t sure, but for now, I said yes.
<Rules>
1. Eat whenever the alarm rings, six times a day. Eat even if you are not hungry. Do not leave it until you are hungry.
2. Actively participate in dietary therapy.
Believe in the irony that you need to eat more often
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