Is four years still considered a hiatus?

I wrote this in 2018, and I am now ready to post it:

Wow, four years ago I took a hiatus from this project. From 2014 to the fall of 2015, I was on a slow trajectory of becoming more unhealthy and getting stuck in Anorexia. I am grateful for the people in my life who spoke into this and asked me to get help. I went back to my doctor to do blood work and began the slow and difficult process of re-feeding, yet again. I felt somewhat defeated as I had done this cycle before. But I also felt hopeful because I was doing it more because I wanted to and desired health for myself.

It was a process of re-gaining my physical health as I would still restrict and then reactive eat. I tried Whole 30, and a metabolism diet because I thought I was binging on sugar and thought I might be developing bulimia or a sugar-addiction. I tried the intuitive eating idea after reading the book by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. I made up a food plan that consisted of the exact same foods everyday, with the bulk of my food being a Subway sandwich and cookie. The people at Subway know me and my order. All of these things were me attempting to find a safe way to be healthy, to make my brain less anxious, to feel in control around food. But I was still eating only my foods, and only after 7PM when my kids had gone to bed. And I still wanted to avoid places and things with food.

Then, I rediscovered the blog by Tabitha Farrar in May and have been on a completely new path since then. In the past year, I've been able to express that sometimes my brain feels like I've gotten on the wrong path, I've gotten more anxious and narrow-focused. It's hard not to be obsessed with food and the anxiety surrounding that. When I read Tabitha's blog and book, Rehabilitate, Re-wire, Recover, she confirmed this feeling. Anorexia nervosa is a brain-based mental illness. My brain has been wired to fear food. And when my brain is around food, it shifts into the Parasympapthetic Nervous System, which is fight or flight. My brain was usually screaming at me to get away from food, to get it out of my house, to get it away from my husband and kids. Farrar explains that this was probably originally a mechanism that some people had during the days of migration. A person whose brain was wired with anorexia would go into migrate mode when put into nutritional depletion. So, I would have been the person that told the others to put the food down and move to a new area where the food was plentiful when we were running out of food or the herd was moving. All of this really resonated with me: the extreme fear around food and wanting to move away from it and get it out. I recognized all of these behaviors in myself.

But I had been going about recovery completely wrong. I thought that to feel safe around food, I had to completely control it. I asked my husband not to buy foods that I thought I would eat without control. I used to call these binges but have since learned that if I have a restrictive eating disorder, these are not binges. They are reactive eating experiences in response to restricting. So, I would try and eat only foods that I deemed safe. And these safe foods and safe experiences have changed so many times over the 20 years that anorexia has been activated in my brain. My brain always found a new way to change and adapt, so that I would continue restricting and be ready to migrate. But during the days of migration, the restriction served a short-term purpose to get the group to migrate to abundant food. And then people ate, and there wasn't nutritional inadequacy anymore. But for me, I kept going back to the restrictive and depleted nutritional state.

And when I would allow myself to eat unrestricted, it was still while in the Parasympathetic Nervous System. My brain and body were still aroused and anxious, and I was continuing to dig the trenches in the channels of my brain that said food is to be feared. And when you do have the foods that your body is asking for, you end up eating them in a quantity that is past satisfaction.

I started reading Farrar's book about re-wiring in May, 2018 and realized that to recover, I had to do all of the things that my brain is afraid to do. My brain is wired to fear food. I can re-wire it to not be afraid of food.

Some people may read this and misunderstand what I am describing with the general cultural hatred of fat and gaining weight. They are two separate issues, both worth addressing, and both very serious. A culture obsessed with weight, and food lifestyles, and ethical eating, and prolonging our lives, and our outward appearances creates an environment that is easy for eating disorders to get activated in those people pre-disposed to them. But there are many people who will go on diets and lose weight who do not have eating disorders, and their brains will not then be wired to fear food. Food will not become a threat to be avoided.

Here's an example to share how an anorexic brain responds to a food that it believes to be a threat. In May, 2018 we had teacher appreciation week. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to have candy or other sugar foods in my box or in the teacher's break room. One morning, I was teaching a reading lesson in a small group, and an e-mail popped up that said "Donuts in the break room". It was instantaneous. I read it. My brain perceive a threat, and I went into full-on, high alert, fight-or-flight mode. I was trying to plan the rest of my day to avoid walking anywhere near that room.