I have shared that I struggled with an eating disorder (binge & compulsive overeating) for most of my life. My weight used to yo-yo by 20-30 lbs. each year. I have been on a bunch of different diets, but nothing ever worked permanently because emotional distress caused me to feel hungry, and eating calmed my emotional distress.
When I was in regular therapy, I was surprised that my therapist was not bothered by the eating disorder. He said it was a symptom of the childhood trauma and that as I healed the trauma, I would let go of the need to binge eat. I found it hard to believe at the time, but he was right. Over the years, I have gradually let go of my need to binge eat to manage my emotions as I developed other, more positive coping strategies.
Despite working out regularly, I still carried ~ 25 extra lbs. I had accepted that this is what my body would always look like. That turned out not to be the case.
As my regular readers know, I have struggled with acid reflux all year. The reflux was so severe that I was unable to eat much for weeks at a time. I felt like an old woman living off of vanilla Ensures and melons because that was about all my stomach could handle. As a result of all of this, I dropped the extra 25 lbs. and have been a “normal” weight for the past couple of months.
I could enumerate the many negative aspects of acid reflux, but one positive aspect has been my inability to turn to food to manage my emotions. The last time I consciously chose to compulsively overeat because I was upset was in June, and I paid dearly for two weeks with painful reflux. Because of the reflux, I have been forced to disconnect managing my emotions from eating over the past eight months. As a result, I have severed the connection, which is something I honestly did not think could happen.
Additionally, my stomach cannot process eating a bunch of junk, so my eating habits have changed. Half of each meal must be something alkaline (a fruit or vegetable), which has forced me eat healthier. Also, overeating kicks off the reflux, so I eat five small snacks/meals a day rather than big meals.
It has taken me a while to mentally process that I am no longer fat. I was the fat girl in middle school and have pretty much worn that hat for most of my life. My life is not magically changed, but it is definitely an adjustment (in a good way).
Photo credit: Hekatekris
Blooming Lotus 
Good to hear you are better today, Faith. I can buy into correlation between acid reflux and body weight . Unfortunately for me, my weight is about 25-30 lb more today after my stomach ulcer which was causing severe acid reflux was somewhat fixed with medications. Now it is very hard for me to bring these extra pounds down.
Hi, V.
I say this only in jest — I told my sister that I now have the secret weapon for losing five pounds. All I have to do is skip my Rx meds for two days and each a chocolate bar!
I can see where this could happen. I am learning how to listen to my body and eat what it wants and then stop eating when it is full. I have made two HUGE eating changes, which is likely why my weight is staying down:
1. I have replaced higher calorie foods with fruits and veggies. If I don’t eat fruits or veggies with each meal, I get sick.
2. I have stopped overeating. If I overeat, I get sick, so I have learned to eat smaller portions five times a day rather than larger portions three times a day.
I am not sure if this helps, but it is working nicely for me.
~ Faith
I had an advantage as I was a marathoner. I knew how to take care of my PTSD body so when I was told about what it must be like for my PTSD body it was easier for me to ignore.
I did do the managing my emotions things for a while. I had to as I was in a custody battle and if I did not do what experts said or I would lose. Once the custody thing was done I could do what was right for me.
I managed my life so that as much as possible I did not have to manage my emotions.
Until proven otherwise the whole emotion thing is not credible if you are dealing with extreme trauma while the body was developing. Pretty much people who have never experienced what I have and am experiencing telling me what I must do and what it must be like. Based on what they have observed in people who have not experienced extreme trauma.
My PTSD is about having different reactions not different emotions. The emotions I do have have a physical cause not an emotional one. As close as I could come would be take a non PTSD body and give it a adrenaline drip and have the person try and negate the drip by meditating to a peaceful place. Ironically that I could do where most people could not.
It is kinda like how do some people drink alcohol for years and never get in accidents. Well they have never been tested so there is not way to know. A few people who can not function well physically with alcohol were tested and those results were attached to everyone. I do not drink by the way and do not think it is OK to drink and endanger other people. I am also aware that most people are as effected by the common cold as the legal limit.
So I processed the trauma with out the trappings of what must be true as it was not. I no longer have the same reactions so am not dealing with the same reactions. Simple and as complicated as that.
When you listen to a PTSD body it does not tell you nice things nor what experts assume you will be told.
I am currently working with the concept of being more rested. I took a month off and it was not a nice time. I did learn that I have no clue how to be rested. It took a month for me to understand how this PTSD body works. What happened I did get more rested and that lead to deeper processing.
The way it is working out is I am reaching different levels of rested followed by a plateau. I do not dissociate I am a multiple and so we do not all rest at the same time nor in the same way so it is more complicated than I thought.
I had thought in linear terms. where one was the perfect and therefore imaginary and 100 being what it is like for me after 72 hours of no sleep. Note: I do not have the normal reactions to lack of sleep as I have my PTSD body. I came to understand that my linear understanding of sleep did not apply to my new rested and sleep.
I do think that many people reset what they think is rested. In a way the reptilian brain says “yep I can deal you are rested..”
My reptilian brain is telling me something now that it never has before. “What ever.” It is very strange.
I would say that any model with accepts a year of re-flux as acceptable to needs to be revisited. My TMJ and Fribro were accepted except by me. They are gone as they were caused by not processing trauma. To say they were caused by trauma is not logical. I did not have them until I did not process therefore the cause is not processing.
I over all am working on my CFS. I am assuming that the cause is not processing.
There is really not context when I write processing as I do not consider having the memory come into consciousnesses any more than the start of processing. Hard as that wears me out physically. I know something is processed when I no longer have the same reaction, I know it is not when I have the same reaction.
It is kinda a weird thing and very fast. Something will happen my body just kinda goes “oh” and there is no more work that needs to be done.