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Tiffany Washburn is a 35-year-old stay-at-home mom and recovering binge eater. Here is her story:
Since I was 15, I have used food to deal with my feelings. Whether it was by not eating, using laxatives, or binge eating, it all served the same purpose: these behaviors allowed me to not feel things I didn't want to feel. As a teenager and college student, I suffered with anorexia and bulimia. After I got married, my eating disorder changed to mostly binge eating, or emotional eating. When I miscarried and felt nothing, I knew I had to find serious help.
I refer to my experience at Remuda as going from the land of the dead to the land of the living. It was that drastic of a change for me.
“The land of the dead”
Many, many years of suffering lead me to Remuda. At 21, I sought inpatient help at Baptist Medical Center in Kansas City. I spent 2 1/2 weeks there, over my Christmas break, and left with little knowledge about myself or my eating disorder.
Two years before I heard about Remuda, I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. My life consisted of sleeping, caring for my daughter, and binge eating. It was a horrible existence. I isolated myself from my family and friends. If I made plans with anyone, I found a way to cancel them. I didn't understand why I continued to binge and gain weight. I had been an anorexic, so I knew how to diet and lose weight. Now what was the problem with me? I felt like I couldn't even do that right.
For a year and a half, I met with a therapist about my depression, which was what I thought my problem was. I started taking anti-depressants, so I could function. The therapy allowed me to express my feelings about my frustration with depression, but we never talked about my binge eating or the fact that I used food to cope with life. In other words, we never got to the root of my problems, just those things that my eating disorder was causing.
Then I miscarried, and I felt nothing. All the normal feelings of sadness, loss, pain, anger, etc., that a woman feels after such an event were not there for me. Well, they were there, but I was so disconnected from my feelings that I didn't feel them.
I realized I had a serious problem. I knew that my eating was out of control, even though, at that time, I didn't put it in the category of “eating disorder.” I realized I had trained myself to stuff my feelings for so long in order to cope with my life, that now I felt nothing. I knew I had to find some serious help.
“The land of the living”
I refer to my experience at Remuda as going from the land of the dead to the land of the living. It was that drastic of a change for me. I made up my mind that, if I was going to leave my husband and daughter for 30+ days, I was going to make every moment worth it. And it was worth every single moment.
Upon arriving at Remuda, I was surprised that those suffering from anorexia and bulimia and those suffering from binge eating were in the same program together. The emotional eating program did have exercise classes and body image classes that were separate, but it was not a completely separate program.
At first, I didn't see the importance of that. It only took me a few days living in a house with six other women to realize that an eating disorder is an eating disorder, no matter what form it may take. And, to my surprise, the women there all understood that.
I never felt different because I was the heaviest woman in my house. They welcomed me with open arms, and we supported each other fully. We were all suffering, we all needed help, and we all understood what it is like to live with an eating disorder.
Remuda has set up an emotional eating program that is far and above anything I have ever heard of. It is TEAMWORK at its best. With one-on-one counseling, group classes, nutritionist meetings, exercise, and more, they see the whole picture. They even offer ways to volunteer in the community twice a week, to think of others for awhile.
As a person who had been depressed and isolated in my home for so long, the chance to go out and do things and have that support there was wonderful. I thought 30 days sounded like forever when I got there, but the amount of work you do while you are there makes the time fly. I could have easily stayed another 30 days and continued to learn and grow and understand my struggle.
One of the best experiences was the time I spent at independent living, which is living in an apartment away from the LIFE Program. The apartment living, with fewer roommates, planning your own weekly menus, buying groceries for yourself, cooking for yourself, and being able to practice the skills you have learned was essential for me. This allowed me to gain confidence that I could work the program when I got home. It gave me a great deal of assurance that I really could do this.
Remuda also helped me set up the support team I would need at home. My first appointments with my therapist, nutritionist, psychiatrist, and family physician were all made before I left Arizona.
Life after LIFE
I came home the day before Thanksgiving. Talk about a challenge from the get go. But I was so happy with myself and all that I had learned at Remuda that I think I could have flown home without the air plane.
However, it was essential for my success that I stay on schedule with my team appointments at home. And it has been essential that I continue to keep those appointments. Remuda suggests you continue seeing your support team for a year after you get home, and I see great importance in that.
The first six weeks were like a honeymoon period. I was excited to get home, I was confident in myself and the skills I had brought home with me, and all my family and friends were encouraging me at every turn. It was a wonderful feeling.
The next six weeks were more of a gradual return to reality. I felt I was “white knuckling” it. I was confident in doing what I knew I could do, but adding anything to that can bring about anxiety.
Working the program in treatment is nothing like working the program in real life. But treatment is essential. You have to take that large amount of time away from reality and focus only on yourself and your struggle.
After about twelve weeks at home, you begin to allow yourself to make some mistakes. Maybe you don't menu plan for the week. Or you tell yourself, “I have worked so hard, I am too tired to feel my feelings for awhile.”
It is at this point that I think recovery is the most difficult. At this point, you really must make a re-commitment to yourself and the life you want, or you find yourself slipping into old habits more and more.
Whatever it takes
For me, the key to continuing to move forward in my recovery is to stick with the essentials of what I know I need to be successful. And for me that is keeping all my support team appointments, planning weekly menus, doing weekly grocery shopping from that menu, spending time with my friends and family—and not canceling any of those, no matter what.
Learning to juggle this new life is challenging but exciting. Seeing the changes in myself and how I think and feel my emotions are the most exciting things. Keeping my commitments to my husband and daughter makes me so happy. My daughter's response to me being involved at her school this spring was, “Yay, Arizona worked!” I cannot express the great joy that brought me.
Recovery is hard, and it is ongoing. I mess up, make mistakes, and make bad decisions. The difference now is that I don't beat myself up about it. I don't think, “What is wrong with me.” I just begin again and tell myself that there is no “perfect recovery.”
One of my housemates at Remuda had a saying that has become my motto for recovery. It is, “Whatever It Takes.” Whatever it takes to live an honest, healthy, happy life, that is what I do. Whatever it is in that moment, I do it. Whether I feel like it or whether I don't, I strive to do that which will bring me the end result that I want for my life.
I am forever indebted to my team at Remuda, and I am so thankful I took the huge leap to go there. I didn't think I was worth it at the time, but now I know that I am.
The Remuda LIFE Program Offers Hope and Healing to Binge Eaters... read more
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