Goodbye Gum

I’m throwing away my gum. To someone without an eating disorder, this seems like a waste of perfectly good gum. But to me, this is a huge step in the direction of recovery.

My first article in this column was about emotional eating and the struggles I’ve encountered while dealing with it. For a while, things got to be really intense—it felt impossible not to emotionally eat almost every day. So, just as every human naturally does, I developed a coping mechanism. This coping mechanism came in the form of gum. When I felt the urge to emotionally eat, rather than eating, I would chew gum. This might seem like a good idea, but it’s not: it simply replaces one unhealthy behavior and dependency with another unhealthy behavior and dependency.

I got to be attached to my gum. I would chew it before breakfast, after meals, etc., not because I was trying to use it to restrict, but just to stifle my appetite (which, by the way, is just restricting). I became very dependent on food to get me through the day, and gum did the same thing without threatening my eating disorder as much. I had myself convinced that it was a healthy coping behavior.

It wasn’t until I had a conversation with an old friend whom I met in treatment that I realized how secretly toxic this new behavior was. She simply said to me, “I can’t chew gum anymore. It’s a behavior and I won’t use it.” For some reason, her saying this seemed to snap me out of my disordered haze. I hadn’t realized what a slippery slope gum presented: first, you tell yourself that you chew gum instead of emotionally eat, then, the next thing you know, you’re chewing gum three times a day instead of eating three meals a day.

So, when I was ready a week or two later, I threw away my gum. I decided to ride out my emotional eating waves—I would just choose not to do it when it didn’t feel appropriate, but, as there is a balance with emotional eating, I would also choose to do it when it became appropriate. And, so be it: I was able to ride out those emotional eating waves successfully, and after doing so for a long period of time, my urges just went away. Now, not only do I choose not to chew gum—I don’t feel the need to, either.

I’m not telling you to throw away the pack of chewing gum you have in your purse or backpack. Maybe you like to freshen your breath after a meal—that’s normal! I’m telling you to throw away whatever behavior, especially the unadmitted ones, that you keep in your purse or backpack which are holding you back from recovery. Mine happened to be gum; yours may be coffee, tea, exercise, or something completely different.

Whatever it is, you owe it to yourself to say goodbye.