Recovery Story: Free from extreme hunger and food obsession

   Christophe's Story

Christophe, from Lutcher, Louisiana, is 24 and an Analyst.

My story starts during my Senior of high school when some friends and I decided to get really lean for the summer. I didn’t know it at the time, but that decision eventually led to an eating disorder that took me six years to finally escape–the dieting led to cravings, the cravings led to binges, and the binges led to purging.

I’m a happy, outgoing guy in my early 20’s and probably the last person most people would expect to have an eating disorder. That is one of the many reasons that I knew I had to share my story; so, in January of 2019, I started sharing my experience on social media and created a website to explain the insights that helped me recover.

A big goal of mine is to help demystify eating disorders, specifically binge eating and bulimia. There is a lot of focus on the mental side of eating disorders in the mainstream, which is great, but in my experience, the physical side is just as important and is often overlooked.

Some of the thoughts and symptoms that arise when your body thinks it’s starving can be quite confusing and make you question your sanity. For instance, I vividly remember walking past a large garbage bag of stale bagels in the garbage outside of a NYC bakery and fantasizing in my head how great it would be if I could eat them without anyone seeing.

It wasn’t until I dug deep into the science of starvation that I understood that, given enough restriction and enough time, these food obsessions and symptoms can occur in anyone.

With these new realizations, I finally worked up the courage to allow myself to eat to satiety while accepting any possible weight gain. Before I knew it, I was free from the extreme hunger and food obsessions that had controlled my life for the past six years.

If I could go back a few years and tell myself one thing it would be, Your body and mind aren’t “broken”, they just think you’re starving.

 Find Christophe on Instagram @metabolism_recovery and at www.metabolismrecovery.com