- It feels so weird to be recording this,
but it's good because it's kind of holding me accountable.
I am not defined by what I eat.
I don't know, it's just a cycle that I just feel
like I can never win.
(peaceful music)
Hey, I'm Mei and I'm gonna be challenging
my eating disorder for two months.
I've been struggling with disordered eating
for as long as I can remember.
My eating disorder actually started presenting itself
as a binging disorder, and that led me to purging behaviors.
And then I did go to therapy for this.
I got diagnosed with a binge eating disorder.
In order to compensate for the amount that I was binging,
I started restricting during the day
and as I got my binging under control,
my restriction kinda just skyrocketed.
And that's when I developed serious anorexia.
From end of September, until end of December,
I was rapidly losing weight.
Thankfully, I went home for the holidays December of 2019
and my parents were like, "Uh".
They had me do a checkup.
I had an extremely low pulse,
so low that the nurse had to redo it three times
because she told me I should be dead
if I had the pulse that I had.
And after that, I started treatment for my eating disorder
and I did an intensive outpatient program for three months.
And that ended in March.
I kinda had things under control.
I knew I still had a long way to go,
but I did feel like I could handle it.
And then the pandemic hit
and it definitely brought me a couple steps back.
In October of 2020, I actually started treatment again.
I'm really lucky and I'm, instead of now being disappointed,
I honestly just feel more appreciative
that I can do it again.
So I wanted to do this challenge for myself.
The next two months are super food focused.
Coming up, we have Thanksgiving,
we have Christmas, we have New Years.
This is a really pivotal time for me
to make the choices of doing exactly the opposite
of what my eating disorder is telling me to do.
I know it's not gonna be a 180 where I,
I'm super comfortable and having the best time
eating all this food,
but I'm determined to make steps in the right direction.
I am terrified, but I don't think I'm ever gonna
not be scared, so let's just start this challenge.
I've really been up all night crying
because I'm so terrified
about all the food that I'm gonna be eating.
And it's so (beep) because I used to love Thanksgiving.
We're using vegan butter and all these oils
and fats and stuff and I'm just like. (sighs)
I'm not comfortable with, but I wanna be.
And I'm trying to just allow myself
to spend time with my family and have a good time.
But it's so hard when all I can think about
is how my body doesn't deserve anything
that I'm gonna be putting into it.
I don't know.
It's just like a cycle
that I just feel like I can never win.
Hey, so I put my big girl pants on, took a shower.
I'm gonna do this.
It's gonna be hard, but I'm gonna do it.
And I'm in my kitchen and I'm gonna help cook
and maybe it's gonna be hard, but you know what?
That's all part of the process.
Vegetables are all chopped up.
I feel honestly fine about that,
but now we are making the pie,
in which the crust includes two
and a half sticks of vegan butter.
In my little pea brain, does not sit well.
I dunno, maybe if I spend enough time with her,
we'll start getting along.
This just does not sit right with me.
I've barely eaten today and I'm literally
setting myself up for a binge.
My girlfriend is here and I'm
trying to get her to eat dinner.
And then she's like, "Look, you need to eat dinner too."
My first instinct was like,
"Okay, I'm just gonna have this cauliflower rice stir fry,"
which is literally just vegetables,
which is not enough for anybody.
I'm pushing myself, we're gonna add some Beyond Sausage
in it so I can get some protein.
I must admit, it's definitely better having something
that's not just vegetables in my food.
So one point for me, zero points
for eating disorder, as of now. (laughs)
I'm having such a battle in my head right now
of my eating disorder telling me I need to throw up
immediately because in no world should I feel full.
The recovery side of my brain that's like,
"You needed that food.
There's gonna be way more negative consequences
if you do throw up."
It feels so weird to be recording this,
but it's good because it's kind of holding me accountable.
I'm over it. (laughs)
I'm going upstairs.
In my head, I literally have two options right now.
And it's one, throw up everything that I just ate
or two, go downstairs and binge as much as I possibly can.
But I know that both of those options
are my eating disorder talking, so I need to
find the third option, which is just be present
with myself right now.
Sit with the discomfort.
I'm gonna do a meditation and try and center myself.
Hopefully that helps, we'll see.
Literally, first thought when I woke up was,
"I'm gonna skip breakfast."
'Cause my family eats Thanksgiving at 2:30,
so if I skip breakfast, then it's fine.
Then I can eat.
No, what we're not gonna do today
is start off on the wrong foot.
I feel like that meditation last night
actually really helped me.
I'm really just trying to use those affirmations
and just reassure myself, I guess, that I deserve the food.
My body is not that different than anybody else's,
I deserve it just as much.
Another thing I'm doing in treatment
is just trying to do the opposite
of whatever my eating disorder tells me all the time.
When I was about to get dressed this morning,
I was like, "Okay, I wanna wear a really big shirt
because I don't wanna see my stomach."
But I wanna look cute.
We're gonna do a fit check, so one second.
A little bit of my stomach's showing and that's okay.
And when I get full, it's also okay.
Happy Thanksgiving from my family to yours.
- [Mom] That's a good tradition.
- I just got seconds.
Literally the first person to get seconds.
It's Thanksgiving, you're allowed to have two plates.
You're supposed to have two plates, honestly.
(smacks)
I'm so full. It's okay.
- [Girlfriend] It's okay.
- And the real fear begins.
Mhmm. - Mhmm.
- My family's all outside,
I literally just had to remove myself.
Everything in me is telling me to throw up right now.
I ended up having one big cookie and then two pieces of pie.
Oh my god, now I'm just so disgusted with myself
even though I saw everybody else literally
get the same amount of pie as me.
I'm gonna try and do the same meditation
I was doing before until the urge kind of passes.
Literally, as soon as I stopped recording,
I walked into the bathroom and was about
to make myself throw up, but I'm not going to.
I'm going to document myself actually walking down
because I don't need to throw up.
My mind is telling me that I do.
It doesn't mean anything, 'cause my mind is lying to me.
Hi.
So we're fighting the urge.
So I had to change out of my shirt.
I'm wearing this big sweatshirt, now.
And honestly, I feel a lot better.
It's kind of disappointing that I had to revert to this.
I think this is a better alternative than throwing up.
I'm still pretty proud of myself.
So we are two days post-Thanksgiving
and this was so much more successful
than I thought it was gonna be.
Knowing that I could have thrown up,
I could have continued that pattern,
and I almost did, I really almost did.
And as soon as I walked outside and sat down,
my leg was literally shaking for the next hour
'cause I couldn't stop thinking about it.
But I told my family and I told my girlfriend
and I was like, "Hey, listen, please don't let me leave.
And if I do, please come with me."
And it's such a marker of growth,
being able to ask for help that I know
that I need instead of just ignoring it.
Yes, I do feel proud of myself for how Thanksgiving went,
but it's also like, I'm still really struggling.
I haven't really gotten myself out
of these extra large sweatshirts.
So, in my family, the day after Thanksgiving
means Christmas. (laughs)
I'm already thinking literally a month ahead of time.
Because on Christmas Eve every year, we make fried dumplings
and I'm so scared to eat something fried
because I don't eat fried food.
I just wanna be able to eat meals
and not think about it so much.
This whole part of my recovery is about thinking about it
because I need to be conscious of what I'm doing.
So, right now, thinking about my meals is important.
But hopefully one day it won't be.
Today, though, I've really been eating.
The reason I'm so hungry
is because I didn't eat enough yesterday.
And I've just been fighting myself over eating a lot.
I am literally looking at every single thing
in my kitchen 'cause I wanna binge so bad.
And I'm trying to get away from that
and I'm trying to push the feelings away,
I'm trying to just sit with it.
Shout out to my girlfriend brushing teeth buddy.
So they don't do some dumb (beep) in the bathroom.
No throwing up today.
It is currently December 7th
and I just had arguably the worst binge
that I've had since starting my recovery.
Honestly, I don't remember 90% of the last hour.
There's such a difference
between nourishing your body,
eating the food that you need to eat
versus complete loss of control and feeling
like I can't stop no matter how badly I want to.
I actually reached out to one of my friends
who also struggles with this kind of thing.
She sent me a link to this yoga exercise
that's supposed to help with bloating.
She recommended these
because I guess it helped her feel physically
a little bit better after a binge.
Gonna try and do this yoga
and then I already reached out to my therapist
and we're gonna talk about this tomorrow.
Good morning.
So it is almost Christmas, it's December 23rd,
and I have been catching myself skipping breakfast
almost every day.
I'll wake up and I'll be like,
"Oh my God. I need to go back to sleep
so I don't have to eat yet."
So this morning I caught myself doing that again
and I'm finally holding myself accountable.
Me making this decision to get out of bed,
make my breakfast, is progress.
I made a big bowl of oatmeal.
And recently I've been seeing a lot
of these kind of eat with me things on TikTok
and I honestly find them really comforting.
Eating alone can be really hard
and watching those videos kind of makes me feel
like I have a little eating buddy.
If you need that, I'll be that for you today.
Let's give our bodies what we deserve.
So I'll go first.
Really good oatmeal.
Okay, your turn.
Hopefully it tastes good.
Hopefully you picked something good.
I'm gonna finish this, you finish that
and I will check back with you.
Okay, hi.
So I just finished lunch
and I have the most insane urge to binge right now
because sometimes I almost use binging as like a scapegoat.
If I binge, then I have a reason to be upset
and I have a reason to kind of feel these feelings
of shame that I'm already feeling.
And it's easier to accept those feelings
when I can blame it on something.
But that's very self-destructive
and I don't deserve to feel bad right now.
I ate a really good breakfast.
I ate a really good lunch.
I'm taking myself on a drive, I'm gonna go somewhere pretty
and I'm just gonna distract myself.
Sometimes, that's what you gotta do.
One thing to note is that I eat oatmeal
for breakfast almost every day.
And that is something that I'm trying to get away from
because it is a safe food for me.
Right now, it's more important that I'm eating anything.
And I'm gonna continue to try and integrate
not safe foods as time goes on,
but since I've kind of been on a rocky thing,
I'm just kind of giving myself a break.
My sweet mom who meant literally nothing by this,
came up to me and was like,
"Wow, that's a really big bowl of oatmeal."
Previously, if I had heard that,
I would have thrown it out or did something
so I wouldn't have to eat it or say I was full, whatever.
This was the same amount of oatmeal
that I eat literally every day.
And I know that this is the amount of oatmeal
that makes me feel full and makes me feel satisfied
and energizes me for my day.
And today it's particularly hard
because it's Christmas Eve and we're making cookies today.
Oh, I'm so sick of just thinking about food all the time.
I deserve this food, my body deserves this food.
And people like me for a whole lot of things
other than how I look.
This might not sound like a big deal,
but I just put creamer in my coffee for the first time.
Literally, maybe ever.
I know I could have drank this coffee black,
I know I could've added water, whatever.
Nobody was here to tell me
that I should make the other choice.
It was all me.
I'm having a really hard time
accepting this whole COVID situation.
I'm like stressed about my parents' health.
I'm stressed about the fact that I'm gonna
have to isolate for at least two weeks.
I'm stressed that I could have it.
I'm stressed that something could happen to them.
And now I'm sitting on my bathroom floor
trying to talk myself out of throwing up.
I binged and that's okay and I don't need to throw up
and I don't need to compensate for it later.
This is so hard.
I'm gonna take a nap or something.
(laughs) The anxiety that's already coming out of me.
My parents and I have been having
to isolate from each other.
We haven't been able to literally be in the same room at all
'cause both of my parents got Corona.
We are finally, this is literally our first day,
able to all be together and I'm so happy about it.
And we're gonna be redoing our Christmas.
I think a big part of me has been really grateful
that it didn't happen.
And I hate, hate, hate, hate admitting that
because no part of me at all is glad
that my parents got sick.
It was truly constant anxiety
and everything was just so overwhelming.
But there was this little part
of me that was kinda relieved.
And I didn't have to have this meal
that I knew was gonna happen.
Now I'm vegan, but at the time I was just vegetarian
and I was so glad that I was vegetarian
so I didn't have to eat any of these wontons.
Again, I could have said this year,
"Oh, too bad. I can't eat it, I'm vegan, there's no way."
I've actually been able to acknowledge that
and I'm moving past it, now.
I find substitutions.
Stuff like that are huge, huge, huge markers for me
in terms of my recovery.
Another thing is I'm wearing a really tight shirt
that shows some of my stomach.
If I get a little food baby afterwards, that's fine.
And that's normal.
- Welcome to our family tradition.
- I'm actually excited to see how these are
with this Impossible Burger.
And when we first started this tradition,
we actually did it inside and it was a mess.
- (laughs) So now we fry outside.
Wow.
- Yeah, I'm usually not a filler, I'm a fryer,
so this is--
- [Mei] You're doing so well.
- I didn't realize how much I missed this.
- It didn't feel like Christmas when we were all sitting
in our own rooms on Zoom.
Quite a sad Christmas.
Okay, now toss it into the done pile.
Look at her.
Honestly, usually seeing this oil in there
would make so terrified,
but it is a little bit easier having people with me, right?
- Right.
(oil sizzles)
- Ooh, look at those brown edges. Wow.
- [Dad] Looking good, huh?
- Yay, appetizer time!
(wonton cracks)
- Oh.
- The vegan ones might be better.
The last two wontons.
My parents actually decided that they weren't hungry
'cause they had a little bit of a bigger breakfast with me.
I know that I'm still hungry, so I'm still gonna eat.
My therapist told me the other day, she was like,
"If you had a Toyota Camry and your friend drove a Prius,
you wouldn't just not fill up your gas tank
just because they didn't need as much gas
to get to their destination.
Some cars or bodies need more fuel than others."
So all of our bodies have different size gas tanks.
I'm gonna go eat this Mapo tofu.
I'm gonna eat it with rice because I know I like it better.
And yes, it will be harder doing it alone,
but they're still gonna be there to support me.
I deserve to eat when my body feels hungry,
regardless of what other people are eating.
My mom actually decided she is gonna eat, but he's not.
- I'm not hungry.
- Clean bowl club!
Actually not her, but, I did!
And it's okay that I finished it and she didn't.
Can you tell how much I didn't believe that sentence?
But it is, it really is.
♪ I'm so full and my brain is yelling at me ♪
♪ To do dumb (beep) but I'm not going to. ♪
I'm having dessert.
(inaudible) This might look weird,
but it's a graham cracker with frosting on it.
Don't knock it 'til you try it,
but it's my third one and it's so good.
So I have to say, it was a really successful day.
And as much that I would love
for these thoughts to just go away,
would make my life so much easier for sure,
I know right now, for me, that's not realistic.
So just dealing with them, coping with them better,
not listening to them as much
is a success for me right now
Ate a snack, but it wasn't big or anything.
My stomach is rock hard.
It like looks like a turtle shell right now,
it's so protruded from my body.
Literally everything in my body and in my brain
is screaming at me.
I just got off the phone with my therapist.
We talked for half an hour,
just talking about ways to cope.
Did some breathing stuff and I'm just trying
to distract myself, now I'm gonna watch some Netflix.
I've been getting a little too comfortable
with my oatmeal in the morning.
This morning, I'm eating some vegan Greek yogurt
with granola and blueberries.
And I was gonna put something less caloric,
instead of granola, but I knew I actually wanted granola,
so I'm eating (beep) granola.
And I also have make cream coffee.
A month ago, I would not be enjoying this
and I would be too busy freaking out
about what I was eating or whatever.
But this is actually really good, so.
(hums)
Two months down.
Honestly, these last two months
were some of the hardest of my life.
It really surprised me how much recording
this whole experience helped me
and how connected I felt to people
who haven't even watched this yet.
I'm filming this before it comes out, obviously,
but something about knowing
that other people would maybe be watching, following along.
It almost feels like we're doing it together.
My advice for people struggling with similar things
is just continue to push yourself.
Don't be afraid of being afraid.
I also think that you need to give yourself time
to make mistakes and give yourself time to take steps back.
As long as you're trying, that's all you can do.
This feeling of success and pride
is something I don't wanna let go of,
so I'm definitely gonna try and keep pushing myself,
just taking it one day at a time.
You ever want to come back to this,
watch me say this again.
You got this, we got this.
Every moment that you have free
of your eating disorder thoughts,
even if it lasts for two minutes, that's progress.
And one day, hopefully, that'll be our entire lives.
(peaceful music)