When eating becomes a search for abundance

I often describe the first round of recovery ever from my eating disorder as "basic." That is to say because all the psychoeducation and the skills and the conceptualizing of why I was engaging in these behaviors was brand new to me, and it rocked my socks off. I did what they told me to do. I followed the meal plan, I journaled about my emotions, I put body image affirmation post-its on my mirror, and so on. And it "worked." I don't put quotes around that because I inevitably relapsed. I do not think every time we slip in recovery and then get back up again is indicative of having recovered wrong the last time. Needs change, circumstances change, resources change, and eating disorders swoop in to fill new gaps where it makes sense, often unseen and thus un-mitigated by us because they look different this time. After Basic Recovery, I got the word "dynamic" tattooed on my ankle to remind me exactly this: my life will always evolve; my personhood is dynamic, not static; and I don't need to panic when things that were easy get hard.

The rounds of recovery I've had since that time got incrementally more existential in their themes as my eating disorder returned to solve new, more complex problems, that couldn't be resolved with DBT and mood logs anymore. Its most recent iteration was centered on a word I may one day tattoo on my other ankle: abundance.

In eating disorder recovery spaces, we often talk about many agreed-upon, relatively non-controversial human needs that cause problems when unmet: comfort, achievement, visibility, for instance. Slightly more "radical" needs to suggest the eating disorder can meet might include sensory stimulation, rebellion, or numbing from emotional pain. Radical in that I've heard it argued that labeling these as "needs" is a cognitive distortion, that thinking of them that way (rather than as "preferences"), creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that makes deprivation harder to tolerate. I mentioned while giving a talk about the autistic relationship with food once that the cultural gold star we give to people who tolerate deprivation without complaining can actually be a trigger for demand anxiety, and I received feedback that surely everyone can benefit from a small amount of tolerance for deprivation, as long as they don't take it "too far," right? These were eating disorder providers, mind you. Sure, we can't always control what we have access to, and deprivation is likely inevitable in many circumstances, but I would encourage someone to focus on doing whatever is necessary to meet the unmet need in those circumstances, not to convince themselves that the need isn't really a need in order to grow thicker skin.

Loss is inevitable, right? Everything good eventually ends, and that's hard to bear. Deprivation is not inevitable. Purposeful exposure to deprivation does not shield us from the pain of loss. And furthermore, not all brains habituate, or become desensitized, to distress through repeated exposure. So deprivation may be practice for one person and absolute torture for another, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's just how we're wired. Our "bootstraps" hyper-individualistic culture doesn't really like that, but I digress. All that to say, abundance can feel like the opposite of deprivation.

If you're averse to "positive vibes" self-help speak, me too-hang tight for a second while I concretize this. I don't mean abundance in the sense that it might be referred to in a manifestation journal or in the sense of luxury and opulence. I mean the deep need we have to feel certain, even briefly, that there is enough.

Enough time. Enough comfort. Enough possibility. Enough future. Enough softness. Enough room to exist without immediately confronting limitation, pressure, or deprivation. For many of us, binge eating becomes a way to manufacture that feeling when the reality of our circumstances is otherwise that there is not enough anywhere else.

Think about the temporary emotional experience of being able to eat a lot of food—whatever that means to you, nutrition facts be damned: perhaps visually high-volume foods that take up many plates; a menu where every single option fits within your unique medical dietary restrictions; access to name-brand foods when you're used to only buying store-brand to stretch your dollar; the list goes on, and it's not all technically under the "binge eating" umbrella. Engaging with and enjoying an abundance of food is not inherently a problem and in fact can solve problems sometimes. The opposite of this experience doesn't necessarily feel like not having enough. It feels more like compression. Compression of time, energy, pleasure, choices, identity, possibility, emotional bandwidth, the future. Many people with eating disorders live in a chronic state of compression in which everything becomes smaller, tighter, more monitored, more urgent, more finite.

An abundance of food may temporarily allow for the opposite of compression, the creation of a pocket of life where there are no limits, there is no waiting, there is no "not yet" or stopping point, there is no scarcity and no requirement to conserve or fear of consequences if you don't. For a brief moment, the nervous system experiences overflow instead of restriction. I'm not just talking about "I'm hungry" but "I need to feel like there is more for me than survival."

Food works so well to provide access to abundance because it is immediate, sensory, physically tangible, and in most circumstances (barring famine and food insecurity), endlessly repeatable (as in, we can cope with the grief of it ending by remembering there will be more if we allow it). Food is culturally associated with celebration, comfort, generosity, nurturance, excess, and safety.

Thus, a binge can create an almost immersive sensory environment of "more." More flavor, texture, fullness, stimulation, permission, comfort, intensity. Especially for those of us who experience chronic under-stimulation, emotional deprivation, existential anxiety, or internal constriction, this can become incredibly powerful. No wonder, then, when we exist in a capitalist culture that treats frequent access to abundance as gluttonous or throws the word "addiction" out to scare people into swinging the pendulum back to constriction, to consume less in order to feel worthy of more, we come to fear abundance. Fear, however, doesn't eliminate a need. It just keeps us from meeting it. The need remains. Deprivation becomes the new reality.

One thing recovery has taught me is that abundance often exists in much smaller, quieter forms than I'd initially thought when I opened Pandora's box after a lifetime of deprivation. Sometimes, abundance looks like:

• Waking up long before you have to be somewhere and realizing you can snooze your alarm over and over again if you want to

• Having a completely unscheduled afternoon

• Opening the first bag of a Lego set and realizing there are a dozen more ahead of you

• Browsing without a shopping list

• Wandering through a bookstore

• Keeping a cabinet of "just in case" ingredients in the house

• Discovering a TV show with 10 seasons left

• Realizing your pet has years left to live

• Hearing someone say "Take your time"

• Staying somewhere cozy during a rainstorm with nowhere you need to be

These moments can create a nervous system experience of spaciousness instead of scarcity—not necessarily happiness or even excitement, but an awareness that there is plenty of room for you to exist right now as-is. I encourage you to reflect on your own available sources of abundance. I've categorized them by type to help with inspiration:

1. Temporal abundance

• Arriving early instead of rushing

• Reading slowly (e.g. a page at a time with pauses and space to look up words, annotate, and think) instead of optimizing productivity

• Conversations that meander without needing efficiency

• Weekends that don't feel over-planned

• Feeling like you still have many versions of yourself ahead of you to discover

Binge eating may sometimes serve this purpose: "I don't have to stop eating yet."

2. Relational abundance

• Someone who stays on the phone with no rush to hang up

• People who make you feel welcomed instead of tolerated

• Evidence that a relationship can and will survive a mistake

• Knowing support is still available tomorrow

• Feeling wanted without needing to perform for it

Food can become a substitute form of reliable availability: "This comfort will always be here."

3. Existential abundance

• Planting something that will grow later

• Annual traditions

• Long-running stories and fictional universes

• Being around young children or young animals

• Discovering there are still thousands of books, songs, places, and experiences you haven't encountered yet

• Moments that make life feel expansive instead of narrow

Sometimes binge eating is an attempt to escape the unbearable awareness that everything is ultimately finite: mortality, the movement of time, the objective fact that bodies change. We see experiences that temporarily loosen the grip of scarcity: "For this moment, at least, there is more than enough."

Why does all of this matter in eating disorder recovery?

Approaches to recovery that focus only on stopping behaviors often feel emotionally hollow. When "recovery" is synonymous with structure, moderation, symptom reduction, meal plans, self-control, or making "healthy choices," but the experience of abundance is not replaced, we may feel condemned to a life defined by carefulness and limitation.

Recovery isn't just about removing harmful coping mechanisms but about asking how you can build a life that feels expansive enough that you no longer need to induce abundance artificially through food alone?

That doesn't necessarily mean luxury, productivity, or endless positivity. Cultivation of spaciousness, pleasure, softness, continuity, options, beauty, sensory richness, rest, and enoughness that doesn't have to be "earned" can allow for recognition of abundance in forms small enough for the nervous system to actually trust they're safe to sit in and enjoy.