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Writer's pictureNadine Bennett

Looking back: disordered eating, body autonomy and swim feeds

This post is part of a series looking back on my experiences in navigating a life-changing ADHD diagnosis while also trying to prepare for my first solo marathon swim, and how these two things collided together in the most perfect way.

 

I’ve chosen to share my story openly so that it might help others who also dream of accomplishing big scary goals but feel held back by challenges they face in their own lives, no matter what those might be. I also hope my writing creates discussion, understanding, acceptance and inclusion for those that seek it.


This is a deeply personal journey. You're invited to engage in positive and productive discourse with me if you'd like, always happy to chat, but negative judgement isn't welcome here. Kindly move along if these posts – and me – are not for you!


I've chosen to not put a trigger warning on this post as "disorder eating" is already in the title. It may seem like a courtesy to do so but newer thinking suggests trigger warnings can cause just as much harm, the warning itself can create anticipatory anxiety and a heightened compulsion to keep reading. Yeah people, this here topic is fucking complicated.


You'd think maybe I'm embarrassed to talk about my eating disorder, but I'm not.


This shit should be talked about.


It's estimated 7.8% of people globally live with an eating disorder.

Less than half of those people will ever receive any kind of treatment.

Approximately 13% of those people are women over 50.

Approximately 25% of those people are men.

Median age for the onset of binge eating disorder is 21.


I'm sharing this part of my story because coming to accept, love and celebrate my body was a big part of my mindset work in preparation for my first solo marathon swim, In Search of Memphre ("The Search"), a 40km/25mile swim crossing Lac Memphremagog from Newport, Vermont to Magog, Quebec. I spoke about my ADHD diagnosis in my first post, and that I had also screened positive for binge eating disorder (BED). It brought to light many things about myself I'd been ashamed and afraid to explore. And I know many women and men who struggle with negative body image and/or have eating disorders, and those who don't but want to better support those who do. I'm sharing this to honour them as well.


Through my preparation to swim The Search, I worked on accepting and loving who I was, as I was, and that that included coming to terms with how I felt about my body. This post is a celebration, and hope. And this is who I am.


This shit should be talked about, if it helps you to talk about it.


How my eating disorder evolved...


I wasn't born disliking my body, I remember being really young and feeling free and happy with myself. It was something that happened over time, gradually. I think it started mostly with external things that made me feel like something about me needed to be better.


I started to develop a negative self-image pretty early on. I swam competitively as a kid, and I remember standing on deck in my swimsuit, being probed with pincers by a stranger who was measuring my body fat. Mine was too high, and apparently concerning. I was young and didn't know what to do with the information I'd been given. These are amongst my earliest memories that my body didn't meet a specific ideal. At the time, I weighed only 115lbs.



As a youngster I was very aware and wanting to meet social norms around 'skinny equals good', and thus valued. Skinny as a desirable ideal was everywhere in tv marketing and print magazines too, and commenting on someone's body size was done more commonly than it is now. I don't think it was ill-intentioned when directed towards me, but it did hurt and it informed the idea that there was something about me that needed to be better. I became very self-conscious about my body in my teen years especially, hiding it under dark baggy clothing so that it would be safe from scrutiny. I internalized the notion that I wasn't enough as I was, and that my body as others saw it played a role in this.


I've been an "emotional eater" for as long as I can remember too, I turn to food when I'm happy, sad, stressed, tired. It was often, I'd overdo it, and eventually I'd hide it out of shame. I knew it wasn't normal or healthy, but it was relief and made me feel better in the moment. I couldn't seem to stop though, and that brought more shame. It was only as an adult that I made the connection between all this and my ADHD symptoms. Here goes:


  • My brain's wiring creates a dopamine deficit, and I look to raise it by using external sources - for me it's food, something readily available and very satisfying, especially foods high in sugar and carbs which raise both dopamine and serotonin.


  • My brain's wiring creates emotional disregulation, which for me presents as 'big' emotions, I feel my emotions very intensely and sincerely, even though I've learned to mask by internalizing them when it's not appropriate or comfortable for others to see them on display. If I was struggling with school, I turned to food. Having a hard time fitting in, food. Didn't meet expectations, food. Feeling sad, food.


  • Layer on the anxiety disorders, which started to manifest physical symptoms in my university years and evolved over time. My anxiety also directly impacts the intensity of my ADHD symptoms, if my anxiety is heightened it presses down on them hard, making them more extreme than they already are.


  • The more extreme the symptoms overall, the stronger the drive to quell them.


By the time I was in my early 40s, I was almost 100lbs heavier than in my age group swim days. It crept up slowly, and I couldn't make peace with it. So many other parts of my life were going really well, I had a great husband, a job I liked, family and friends that cared about me. But my eating was still disordered and that drive was stronger than ever. And if I managed to get it under control even for a bit, that control would eventually just slip away.



Discovering my joy for swimming again started to change things, but it wasn't enough...


Swimming has always made me feel happy, and as I started signing up for more events and accomplishing longer swims, I saw a strength in myself that was new. It was freeing to hang around in the water in a bathing suit, no one cared how you looked, how pudgy you were, if your thighs were chubby. What they did care about was your longest distance yet, what you were signing up for next, and what was in your feed bottle. My swimming community near and far had bodies of all sizes, dreaming up crazy things and smashing big goals.


I grew up thinking if only I could just be thinner, I'd be happier - but swimming brought that happiness for me. I stopped caring what other people might think of my body and willfully blinded myself to external messaging about body ideals, which helped me let go of many of my insecurities. But it wasn't enough, I still didn't actually love my body yet.



This is the part that yes, is a little embarrassing. It's embarrassing that it happened but I'm not embarrassed to talk about it, if that makes sense. As I started to prep for The Search in 2022, things seemed to get much worse, my ADHD and anxiety symptoms were harder to manage, and my impulse with food got stronger. Looking back now, it makes sense:

+ mom passed away, I was still grieving

+ perimenopause in full swing, hormones all wonky, further increase in anxiety

+ now add on ADHD-driven binge eating impulse control issues

= shit show


I gained even more weight, and now worried for both my body and my long-term wellbeing. I shame spiralled almost daily, and I couldn't tell anymore where the line was between my ADHD symptoms and self-harm I was inflicting on a body I just didn't love. I considered weight-loss medications, but decided they weren't for me. No shade to anyone who uses them though, my opinion, people should do whatever they need to find peace about their bodies. It's hard enough, and not anyone's business to judge how it's done.


I learned to love my body when I lost the ability to move it as I pleased...


But before I could figure myself out, my summer swim training was interrupted by a serious accident, and it would change everything about how I thought about my body. I stumbled on something and fell HARD into the corner edge of the island in the centre of our kitchen, it dug deep into my gut on the right side. The pain became intolerable, and I ended up in the emergency room, barely able to walk upright. It felt like my ribs had collapsed on my lung, which wasn't far off. I'd broken a rib clean off my sternum, possibly two, they couldn't quite tell. The doctor popped his head into my exam room and exclaimed with excitement, "wow that's not something you get to see every day!"



Recovery sucked hard, I'd never been in so much physical pain in my life. I was immobile for awhile, couldn't sleep or take care of myself well. The support of my husband, family, and friends kept me smiling and looking forward. And my cat. A few months later, I thought I had recovered enough to start swimming, but had complications and stopped again for awhile. All in all, it took about 6-7 months for me to feel normal enough to resume training fully.


That's a long time to sit and reflect, especially when you can't do much else. From day to day, I became increasingly aware of what my body was feeling, how my body was healing, and the fear my mind had about movement and re-injuring the area. I started listening to everything my body told me. This all happened around the same time I started working on the self-exploration stuff I talked about in my first post in this series - a really important time for my personal development, powerful even...the groundwork was being laid for change.


Cleared to get back in the water, I started with just walking back and forth for a couple of weeks, then floating on my stomach, then swimming slowly for 15m at a time. I was gentle with my body, gave it the time it needed to recover between each swim, respected what it needed to feel safe with movement again. For months to follow, every time I exited the water I felt both pain and joy together, a message sent to every part of my being to cherish what was being regained. Coming back to the water was emotional, and I felt a deep sense of gratitude that my body was healing, that it would let me swim again.

It was experiencing this gratitude in my return to the water that made things very clear to me: underneath it all, I wanted desperately to love the body I already had, love myself as I was, and immediately. I could still work towards changing the way my body was shaped if I wanted to, but I needed to love it now or part of my journey to find confidence and honour who I am would remain unfulfilled until I did. I needed to be at peace with this part of me.


And so one day I did exactly that. I stepped out of the water in gratitude and committed to myself that I would love my body fully and wholly, as I was, in that moment, flaws and all.

Not after I managed to lose some of the weight...

Not after I met anyone's ideal of a woman or athlete...

Not for anyone else, but for my acceptance of myself...


I won't tell you what to do or how to get there, only you know you best.

My hope is that you find a way to shift any mindset holding you back.

You get one life, and it's really not all that long.


Coming to accept and love my body was a wonderful turning point, yet it didn't change the part of my binge eating disorder that was being driven by my ADHD and anxiety. But it did open the door for getting help, and once my symptoms were brought under control things started going really well for me. We're all deserving of dignity and care.


Wear the two-piece, if you want to.



Body autonomy and swim feeds...


This part of my story gets a little more difficult, I suppose it sounds weird.

Holding back judgement is important, I hope you read this with curiosity instead.


Part of my journey to prepare for The Search was to explore everything about myself that could help me get across that lake. I discovered some feelings that felt...kinda odd, and legit intense. Part of my relationship with my body is a distinct fear around loss of control, more so than say the average person. We don't need to go into the reasons for it, let's just say it comes from negative lived experiences and over time these things affected me.


Body autonomy (or bodily autonomy) is having ownership over your body. I have a strong need to ensure my body is safe, and that I have control over what is done to it and what goes in it. Most people do to some extent of course, but imagine this as a heightened anxiety response that becomes a "thing" in your swim prep. And now imagine having to hand your feeds over to your crew to manage, on the boat and out of your sight - you're no longer in charge of what's in your bottle, or your body. Thinking about it feels very worrying.


Told you it was kinda weird, different, difficult. It's important to know that my feelings about my body autonomy have nothing to do with the competency of crew supporting me or their experiences and agreements with other swimmers - it had everything to do with how I feel towards my body, protecting it, I suppose. There's also a practical side to this too:

  • I follow a very specific lower-carb diet so that I swim fat-adapted (using my fat stores)

  • Adding unplanned sugars to my feeds runs the risk of increasing ADHD symptoms

  • Adding a stimulant like caffeine can have the opposite effect on me due to my ADHD wiring, it likely would have made me more sleepy instead of more alert


I ended up packing caffeine feeds, but we didn't use them, thank goodness. I drink a lot of coffee but I've never found it has much impact on my alertness, it calms me down more than it wakes me up, and what I enjoy most is the experience of having a nice strong-smelling cup. But I've discovered it's a great sleep aid for when I wake up anxious in the wee hours of the morning. As a stimulant, it actually calms my ADHD brain's hyperactivity, I get tired and sleepy and doze back off within about 30-45 minutes. I did have a nice cup of decaf tea on the swim as the sun came up though, and enjoyed it while looking at Owl's Head Mountain peering through the fog, the perfect moment to stop and take it all in.


Talking about this side of things isn't easy, swimmers are very grateful towards the people helping them and don't want to come across as too difficult or demanding. But for some of us, the swim feed plan has boundary implications that have to be in place and respected, it's a part of our deeper well-being. And respecting myself and not wanting to feel worry or anxiety about this kind of thing meant expressing those needs to others, which I did during our crew briefing session. I had to make sure they understood that following my feed plan was a necessity, there could be no surprises or I would see it as a boundary crossed, even if it wasn't intentionally meant to do that. We ended up having great communication on the water, and any changes to my feeds were discussed before they were made, a quick chat on feed stops was all it took. It made it easier for me to tell them what was going on with me as well once my tummy started acting up, and we figured out together what to do to keep feeds going in to my body. Communication is everything.


Not all swimmers want to reveal to their crew the intimate details of their mental head space about their own bodies, nor should they have to, as a matter of privacy. So here's a few thoughts that might help if you're ever in this situation:


  • Swimmers - you can pre-measure feeds into ziplocks to make things easier for your crew when it comes to feed mixing time, it also gives you some reassurance as to what's in your bottle. Add a note at the bottom of your feed plan about no surprises (or whatever your thing is), and go through the feed plan and your instructions with crew carefully before the swim, offer to answer questions. Make sure to have lots of options that DO work for you in your plan, your crew will need some flexibility in case your regular feeds don't go down well at any point.


  • Crew - if someone says the words "it's really important to me that..." or "xyz matters to me a lot", understand that your swimmer is probably setting a boundary. If it's not clear to you, ask questions, but know that your swimmer might choose to only explain the "what" and not the "why", or they might explain and you may not get it. Doesn't matter, it's simple - just support them by honouring any wishes they express.



I could finally see that the eating disorder side of my relationship with food was worsened by my ADHD symptoms that were out of control, but when I was in those moments I didn't think of it that way, it felt like I was willfully hurting myself, and that's where a deep shame crept in to my self-talk, which was responsible in part for eroding my confidence over the years. Maybe it was really both things together, fluctuating in measure over time. And here's the thing that really messed with my head for a bit: isn't it a contradiction that on the one hand I could willfully be hurting my health and on the other hand be anxious about what I'm given to consume when it's not in my control? Isn't that kind of fucked up? Nope, my new therapist said, makes perfect sense, think about it...only you get to hurt you.


And that, my friends, was a really shitty and sobering thing to acknowledge, accept, and work with. The hurting we do to ourselves sometimes isn't just about our habits, it can be deeper too - the ideals we're holding ourselves up against, how we think of ourselves when we falter, how we talk to ourselves when no one else is in the room. Give yourself the grace to be a messy human being and remember to still treat yourself like someone you love.


I'm grateful that I came to understand this part of me, it's complicated, and yes messy, but important. It's ok to have weird stuff, if that's how you're built. And it's not all that hard to manage on a solo swim, communication and respect should be part of the plan anyhow.


My body autonomy concerns were heightened on The Search because of what was at stake, a swim I had longer to do for years, a chance to prove to myself that I was capable of doing hard things. But my day-to-day is pretty normal, so yeah don't worry about it, if you're having a barbeque just invite me, I will happily eat whatever you're making.


As long as it's a veggie dog, bun toasted please.


And you've got ketchup, mustard and relish.

Gotta respect the classics.



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