From Binge Eating to a Healthy Shame-Free Weight — Lessons from My Long-Winding Journey

Rigorous exercise regimes, calorie tracking, and intense dieting aren’t lasting solutions

I was a yoga-vegan, organic-eating type of guy.

“Oh, you must have good genes,” some would say about my athletic appearance. I didn’t say it because I didn’t want them to feel bad.

But no!

My dad was 6ft 4” with a massive gut that hung over his belt. At the expense of being nice to my mom, I will stop by saying she struggles with her weight.

Others would comment, you don’t have much body fat because you’re vegan.

No!

The last few years have seen an influx of vegan junk foods in supermarkets. These are highly processed plant-based foods, full of various chemicals. The new wave of “fat” is being seen within the vegan community.

Through not listening to “experts” in weight loss and conducting independent research, I found enjoyable and easy methods for maintaining a healthy weight.

A Brief Stint with Meat

Before being vegan for the last 13 years (but there is an experiment period I need to share later), I was a vegetarian for 12 years.

I had just returned from a wild adventure living in ashrams across India for 3 months. Not being able to eat meat in the ashrams, I thought I would continue that when I returned to London.

I hesitated, but then I had one last Double beef burger before leaving Heathrow Airport. I am unsure if it was “bad karma” or infected with mad cow disease, but after eating half the bugger, I felt like hurling my guts all over the table.

Yes, I thought, I will stay vegetarian.

Exercise Doesn’t Have All That Much To Do with Losing Weight

I worked as a duty manager in gyms for 5 ½ years when I returned to Australia. So, I know pumping iron or doing a spinning class aren’t long-term solutions to losing weight because I saw these overweight people for years in the gym.

I loved their enthusiasm. They were lining up to get in the gym at 6 am, rain, hail, or shine (and it gets bloody cold in Melbourne, Australia, in winter). But they weren’t losing any weight. I noticed their legs and arms looked toner, but that was it.

Like my dad, their bellies hung over their Nike shorts.

At the gym, I didn’t get along with the Operations Manager. This is a massive understatement. It was World War III. I put in a complaint about him with Human Resources. But not before getting help from an ally, the Administration Director, who shared my disdain for him.

After she read over my complaint, I joked about the cheap ass supplements she uses to lose weight. They weren’t working.

“You know what? I know these supplements aren’t working. But my husband has lost 23lbs,” she said rather causally.

“Wow, that is impressive. What exercise is he doing?”

“None. He walks twice a week. The weight loss, I think, has more to do about his food intake.”

This got me thinking.

Repeatedly Experimenting with Food

Food has also played an important role in my life. Throughout my early sporting career as a teen in Aussie rules football. From eating a large bowl of pasta before a game to “loading up on carbs” for the next day’s game. To eating KFC zinger burgers to recover from a hangover from being out the night before celebrating a win.

12 years ago, when visiting my mom, I dumped a load of potatoes and tomatoes I had grown, along with some cans of diced tomatoes, on her kitchen bench.

“Mom, I am giving up eating potatoes and tomatoes!” I proudly exclaimed after being told by a yoga teacher this could be contributing to my knee pain.

“Of course, you are, dear,” my mom casually replied. She had gotten used to hearing about my weird ass food experiments. She was more worried when I wasn’t trying strange things.

I have experimented with many ways of eating. Giving up nightshades. Not eating food grown below the ground. Not eating food grown above the ground. Juice fasting. Intermittent fasting. Water fasting. Mono meals. Soup diets. Fruitarian diet.

From Vegetarianism to Semi-Fruitarianism

If my ally’s husband is losing weight and I stay lean, what’s the connection?

“There are people in the south that live on eating only coconuts and bananas,” Swami Bramananda stated. I was in Rishikesh, India, doing a 3 ½ year Advaita Vedanta and Sanskrit course. I think many students were getting fat in the ashram, so this comment was more in response to us students eating too many gulab jamuns.

Before starting this course, I was a vegetarian at the time, eating 2–3 blocks of chocolate a week. All my other food intake was tip-top. Except this.

My body craved sugar. It wasn’t that I wasn’t disciplined. I had a Nazi-like strictness with my yoga and eating regime. But my body needed sugar like my lungs needed air.

After some further investigation on banana-eating people, I found fruitarians. They eat only fruit, and a sub-type eats only bananas. While I thought that was a bit much.

I did start eating 6–8 bananas, with water, blended up each morning.

Does Eating Sugar Spike Your Blood Sugar?

“Well, I am sure that your blood sugars will come back extraordinarily high,” said the obese Sri Lankan Doctor whom I was seeing to have a blood test. Every 3 years, I get a blood test to see where things are.

It was more done in reaction to when I first became a vegetarian, and people keep asking me, “I heard vegetarians are always low in iron.”

I told the doctor that wouldn’t happen as I don’t have much fat in my diet, I would urinate any excess sugar.

He rolled his eyes. I looked at his massive gut and rolled my eyes (salty, I know.)

I went back to the doctor to get my blood test results. I passed with flying colors. I was in tip-top shape.

I learned and confirmed my body needs a lot of sugar.

When you accept and are comfortable with who you are and what you are doing, people stop questioning you.

Because when you speak with calm confidence, people allow you to be. You no longer are seeking others’ approval.

Do your research. Find what works for you. Know that it may not conform to social norms.

Lesson 1: Learn what your body needs and how to give it to yourself healthily.

A Downward Spiral Into Uncontrolled and Unhappy Over-Eating

I went through a painful breakup. The emotional pain was excruciating, not to mention going back to living alone and dealing with my loneliness for the first time.

I identified myself as emotionally repressed.

As a means to feel my emotions. I needed to give up the strict control I had imposed on myself. Where else better in my life to start giving up control than in my eating?

Being a vegan organic isn’t an easy lifestyle, such as going out with pals for dinner.

“I thought you didn’t eat cheese,”

I remembered my earlier days living in the ashrams in India. When special occasions take place, you have a Bandara. A devotee of the guru would pay for a big feast with super delicious food to mark the occasion.

From these large feasts, I got my taste of paneer (Indian cheese). And I was in love. It was a love affair until we had a messy divorce when I “became” a vegan.

On my first weekend in my apartment alone, I had organized to meet up with a mate at an Indian restaurant.

In my pursuit of unlocking my controlling tendencies, I thought I would eat a meal with cheese. “Panner masala and one rice, thanks,” I squeezed out in a guilty tone to the waiter.

I explained to my mate why I chose to eat this. He nodded in sympathy.

I didn’t know then that this would cause a massive backslide in my eating. Having this meal once prompted me to have this meal twice a week as a takeaway. After a few weeks, I started eating pizza with non-vegan cheese.

“I am eating pizza 5–6 times a week, also with 1–2 blocks of nonvegan chocolate,” I ashamedly said to the same mate 3 months later.

I felt like one of those downhill slalom skiers. When they hit a gate, they scarcely tumble out of control down the hill until they smash into a tree.

I was on this downward trajectory, but I wasn’t finished yet.

Only after a few weeks of intense eating did I notice that the weight was coming around the sides of my waist. A week later, when I sat in my car, I could feel more of my waist touching the back of the car seat.

I was getting fat!

I was determined to continue to give up control and let myself go. I had trust in myself that, eventually, this would pass.

I Was a Scary Train Wreck

So I kept my diet of 6 pizzas and 2 blocks of nonvegan chocolate a week, for 4 months.

I was on a plane returning from New Zealand to Australia from a week-long work trip. I started to feel sick in my stomach. Each night for dinner, I had margarita pizzas and a block of chocolate in my room at night in the hotel. Plus, the occasional bowl of chips and tiramisu.

I wasn’t holding back on my indulgences.

I started to feel saliva build up in the back of my throat with a pizza taste. I felt like I was going to vomit.

I had the thought high me like a thunderbolt. I was done with emotional eating. It was a calm and confident thought. Not forced. It came from a deeper place of realization that I was waiting patiently to take place.

Light Bulb Moment

What I didn’t realize about my ally’s husband was that he was eating healthily. But the key was he was eating healthy food that he liked!

It made me think back to when I was really happy with my eating; it was when I ate a lot of fruits. I love eating fruit. Also, I love eating curries.

Turns out I don’t have “good genes” related to weight. I have the same “fat genes” as my dad.

I have now transitioned back to eating bananas for breakfast, salad wraps for lunch, and curries or soups for dinner.

Lesson 2: Eat those healthy foods that you actually love eating. There are many out there.

You Aren’t Your Self-Created Identities

Give up the identity you have created with your exercise and eating habits.

Without saying it, I was a proud yoga-eating vegan, organic guy. But I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time.

What I know now, after painful exploration, is that we create identities around what exercise and food we eat.

Look at my Facebook even now, and you see me busting out a Mayurasana (peacock pose.)

I subconsciously loved showing off my progress at my yoga proficiency. How muscular it had made my legs.

Also, I saw myself as being superior to all meat eaters.

I had to look down on others because I felt beneath them. I sat in fierce judgment of others.

I was deeply envious of people that expressed themselves freely. I would ask myself, why are some people so comfortable being who they are?

Why cannot I be free to express myself in public?

If you have been yoyoing on fad diets and are finding it hard to naturally allow the weight to drop off, do the emotional work to free yourself.

It’s like the fat girl that gets fat not because she loves eating huge amounts of unhealthy food but because she doesn’t want a man to get close to her. She fears intimacy, due to daddy issues.

Use food and any identity you have created as a starting point to investigate your inner landscape.

I found the process painful, healing, and liberating. The therapists haven’t been cheap, buts it’s been well worth the effort.

The positive outcomes of doing emotional healing:

• New positive friendships.
• A renewed relationship with my mom.
• Being comfortable sitting at home by myself.
• Running 3 times a week, because I like it.
• Doing a little yoga, because I like it.

A certain ease sits inside yourself when you are comfortable in your own skin. You carry yourself differently when you don’t need others’ approval.

Lesson 3: Perform healing for the emotional carpet hiding under the rug of your (over) eating

You can exercise 6 times a week for a couple of hours a day, but if you spend the rest of your day eating unhealthy food, you are doomed.

Understand your own body. Not everyone will be able to eat a shit load of bananas.

Give up the terrible food and find foods that you like to eat and that are healthy. Then eat like a king or queen.

And to paraphrase 17th-century poet, William Cooper, be the monarch of all your survey by understanding yourself and what works best for you.

You are not a group of sub-set identities at your essence. These identities are the only layers you have created to hide from feeling your emotions and to fit in with society.

Find your own path to maintaining a naturally healthy weight free from guilt and shame.

And one that is self-empowering, allows for ease and makes you feel great about yourself.

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