Music. Conversations with. My name is Shaili Kukandorn and I live with bipolar 2 disorder. Sharing with others is healing both individually and collectively. Sharing our stories will educate others, bring more understanding, shed more light and smash more stigma. Our voices need to be heard. Our stories aren't over yet. This is Bipolar. Hey besties, it's Shaylee. I am back and here to do another solo episode.
A lot of real actual people have been asking for more solo episodes that are on specific topics, and I'm going to try to make them a little bit shorter. And I wanted to let you know before we. I have a space there where we have a private chat where there are people available pretty much any time of the day because there are people from all over the world and it is growing.
We also meet once a month and just a peer support group meeting and sometimes we talk about topics and sometimes we just check in and it seems like that's the thing that people are looking for and the chat and just having other folks that really get it understand. So to be a part of this, you can go to my Instagram page at this.is.bipolar and subscribe to be included in all of that. For my returning folks, thank you, thank you for being here.
And if you're new, I'm so glad you found this podcast and I hope that you can feel a little less alone or walk away with some information. Today, I wanted to talk about disordered eating. Thank you. I wanted to specifically talk about it because I get tons of messages about it. I've done polls and question asking, and it is a huge thing. There is disordered eating. There is weight gain from medicine. It is a huge thing that really affects a lot of us.
I want to say right up front, I don't have and never had an official diagnosis of an eating disorder. So I call it disordered eating. I did go to a doctor and there is acknowledgement that it could have been, but because it wasn't year round, it wasn't diagnosed. I want to say that ahead of time, just so everybody knows and is clear from where I am coming from. If you are someone that is triggered by talking about disordered eating or eating disorders, please take care of yourself.
Ever since I was a teenager, I struggled. I started in puberty gaining weight and had a lot of friends that were a lot smaller than me. I was a bit bigger than everyone. I probably carried in one extra 20 or 30 pounds than other folks. Yeah, especially some of my friends that had other eating disorders. I started the cycle of dieting very young. During puberty. And the more that I would try to diet, the worse it got.
And I remember just thinking that my life would be so much better if I could just be thin and the amount of headspace that these thoughts took up. And I would start to try and diet. And then I hung around with other teenagers, the pizza, the going out, the candy, all the things. And so I would try not to until I couldn't. And then I would binge. I didn't think that this was a problem because Because back then, if you had an eating disorder, you had anorexia or you had bulimia.
I did not purge. And so I did not think it was an eating disorder. I just felt badly about myself and thought that I ate too much. And I berated myself for all the things, blamed myself entirely and my lack of control and just my failing as a human, which is terrible. During the winters was worse. Went to Weight Watchers with a neighbor. It was good and bad. It was really cool because I was the youngest there and it was really comforting. I actually learned a lot about food and about exercise.
Unfortunately, with my personality slash illness that I didn't know about yet, I can become hyper-focused on something. So it did get unhealthy. There are some things that I deal with still today. Don't believe this, but I remember things they would say that still haunt my thoughts, which is don't drink your calories. And to this day, I have a hard time. I love diet I use Splenda for things, especially with drinks. I'm weird about it. I also have sensory things.
Drinks are like my big markers in the day. I get my latte in the morning, I have a machine, and then I have a cold coffee in the afternoon. I can absolutely drink. Sugary drinks or drinks that are more than zero calories. But I struggled to drink juice or an actual real pop. And I tried to drink real pop because I didn't want to be doing Aspartame or Splenda, but I'm now so used to the taste that it tastes gross to me.
I remember one thing that stuck in my head too was, and it's horrible and please don't believe it. And I get that they were We're trying to motivate. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. That's horrible to think about. And food does taste good. Looking back now, I had hypomanic symptoms. And so then the eating, disordered eating would be off to the side. It wouldn't be front of mind. When I was busy, lots of ideas, the binging wouldn't really happen as much.
And I would forget to eat sometimes, but then just eat the junk food. So it's a long time to look back. I'm 46 now. So it's hard to completely comment on those except for the fact that it took over my mind. When I would lose weight, I still had the feelings. I still had the sadness. I still had the overwhelm. I still had the anxiety. And although it was funner to clothing shop and I felt like I was more worthy.
This was in the 90s right it was when very thin models was the standard but it didn't change my life I just thought if I could just get thin and then if I always had a boyfriend then that would mean that I was worthy it was very messy luckily not everyone ascribed to that I am sure that I was a much harder critic on myself than others those charts that I think are big fat lies as well. Looking back, I'm like, you're adorable, girl.
I said this was going to be a shorter episode. I'm going to fast forward into my 20s. This is when what I'm looking back at, bipolar disorder really became prominent in my life, which I did not know. I thought it was just depression. I would get depressed before treatment had very cyclical episodes. So I would start getting depressed in October, have a little lift in at Christmas. And by January, it was full on darkness and I didn't enjoy anything in my life. Everything went gray.
I could do the things that I had to do because I don't know the level of depression. I was in bed any other moment that I could be. But I was able to still go to school and still go to university and such. It. Realize now that I had suicidal ideation. I didn't want to die. I just wanted to go to sleep until it got better. And because it was cyclical, it usually did. I knew I would feel better in the spring, so I would just try to hold on.
But someone told me they could have given me something for me to disappear. Until that time, I probably would have. If you are having similar thoughts, please know that suicidality isn't just a plan. And please, if you have thoughts of wanting to go to sleep forever or for a long period of time or until you feel better, please tell your doctor. I think that food and exercise was the only thing I could control when I was depressed because I couldn't control how often I cried, how terrible I felt.
And so it was also a distraction and it was something that gives you a bit of a serotonin boost and especially with, we know this with carbohydrates. And this terrible cycle began where food noise would get really loud in my head and I would be scared of it because I knew I gained weight every winter. And then I would start to control, which started the terrible cycle. I would restrict and control and try to count calories and try to go back to the point system with Weight Watchers and just...
So strict that all I could think about was food and junk food and lots of food. And it's like I couldn't eat enough to fill that void. I would go for long periods of time and restrict, restrict, over-exercise, exercise to punish my body and not just be healthy. Exercise until it hurt. Not in that I worked my muscles in a healthy way, but definitely punishing myself hours. It wouldn't really count if it wasn't really hard.
I would also try to cover it up because it's embarrassing and it felt like less of a symptom of something and more of a blood moral failing. And I remember specifically with some friends, I remember an Easter where we went and bought mini Cadbury cream eggs and we bought them in bulk. I remember putting half of them away and sneaking them and eating so much.
I ate until my stomach hurt and I remember hiding that I was eating that many of them and feeling so ashamed counting how many and getting up and going to the washroom during dinner or just when we were hanging out with our friends and just eating and because I didn't want them to see that I was eating that much more than them. Usually, I could get to the afternoon or the evening and then at home at night.
I cannot explain to you if you have never felt this but the amount of noise and how loud it got and I just literally felt like I would perish if I didn't get some sugar or some food now and I just wanted to stop the intrusive thoughts and the thinking and the going over and over and the sadness and all of the things so loud in my brain and the anxiety and the breathing it felt like doing that would give me a break from you know
the terrible-ness that was going on in my body. So at that time, you're desperate to do anything. I would go to the corner store and I would buy chips and chocolate, everything that I had deprived myself for a week or however long I would go.
Sometimes it would only be a couple days. I had to make up this facade with the local worker at my corner store because I would pretend I was having friends over a party because of the three bags of chips and a couple of chocolate bars and just all the things. And it was humiliating and then feeling bad. And then the next day swearing that you're going back to it and then trying to make up for it by not eating for a whole day. And then the cycle would just get worse and worse.
The other side of it is in the summer, I would lose all the weight and I would even lose more And it was this terrible cycle because I would forget to eat or I'd be so hyper or be summer. It didn't matter even if I did eat more because I wasn't sleeping and I was busy all the time and always moving, whereas I was in bed all the other time.
So it was this terrible cycle of gaining in the winter and then in the summer, losing the weight and back and forth and back and forth for years before I was diagnosed at 32. So teenager into my 30s. In my teaching practicum, I was scared of holidays because the staff room, right? I remember my practicum, it was teacher appreciation, and I was in one of my absolute worst depressions. Every time I went to the washroom or recess, I waited until there wasn't a lot
of people in there. I would get more sweets. I was going through a really bad depression in my practicum and I was in a really hard classroom, not with the kids, but the teacher was not supportive and really hard on me and really hard on the kids. And I came in wanting to be the type of teacher that I am and she was a very strict teacher. It was sold fashion. She made them do lines and everything. thing.
And basically I came in and she was like, I hope you don't think you're going to do that critical thinking of that new thing. I have you as a student teacher because I need a break. And so everything I did, even though it was what I was taught in university and what I felt in my heart was right to teach, wasn't. I was being squished in that area too. It would be like compacted with the depression and the disordered eating and all the sugar levels.
At that time, I had gained probably, I think, over 20 pounds in less than two months. She asked me one day, are you going to be quitting? And I was like, no, I can't quit. Or I didn't want to look bad because I'm a student teacher. I'm trying to get my degree. And so she asked me if I was going to quit. And I was like, oh, no, why? Because I didn't feel like she would know how I felt inside. And it ended up she didn't know.
But she said, oh, some of my colleagues were talking. and we were thinking that it looks like you might be pregnant. And y'all, that destroyed me. I was not pregnant. I, in fact, had just gained weight due to my disordered binge eating. That was humiliating. I think that made me spiral worse, which exasperated the binge eating. It was just never explained when I went to the doctor. They're like, Like all year round, I was like, oh, no, only in the winter or only when I feel sad.
And they were like, oh, that explains it. I always went for help when I was depressed. I didn't know the other parts were hypomanic, right? And looking back, I thought that was just my lot in life. It was very different when I was pregnant. I felt released from it when I was pregnant because I had permission to eat. And so because I could eat those things at all times, I didn't.
I really felt a freedom from the hold of binge eating was the winter that I was given the SSRI that actually worked for the depression in those months, but actually eventually caused me into a severe hypomanic episode, which got me diagnosed. know. So I took that medicine and it actually didn't matter. I could binge and wouldn't affect my weight because I was busy all the time. I was happy. I was excited. I was hypomanic. I was up all the time.
That was a year of being thin. And of course, when I would get thin, I would buy all the clothes. I wouldn't buy any clothes when I wasn't. And so then when you'd feel bad, I wouldn't have any clothes that was lovely or nice. And then I'd look at them in my closet it and just mourn over that. So that was a time where I had an opposite reaction of a lot of people that it made me thinner. It made hypomania come.
I stopped telling friends and my husband, there's no way I could hide it from him, but I just stopped talking about it because it would happen every single year at the exact same time. And why can't a doctor help me? I went to a naturopath. It just nothing helped. I got my thyroid checked, all the things. It was really powerful. When I got my diagnosis, I went to a therapist and I was telling them about this because it took a while for the medicine to work.
So I was really scared that it was going to start again. And so I started talking about it. And I remember her telling me that it was very common with folks that live with bipolar disorder. And that was the first time the relief that I felt was. Amazing because it felt like I wasn't a failure as a human.
I didn't have to feel so terrible and I was exhausted from the covering it up because you get digestive issues, which give you bathroom issues or makes you gassy, which makes this quite humiliating. I felt a lot of freedom there. And then she said, getting your treatment and being on your medicine might help. You might gain weight from your medicine. As I started to take my medicine and feel better, and it started working, it really helped. And my medicine still helps with my depression.
I haven't had one of the dark, deep pre-medication depressions. In fact, I didn't have anything that wasn't situational that I would call a deep depression. I've had a little bit of low-grade depression, which which still terrible, but nothing like that. And because that was taken away, the eating disorder didn't happen. I felt almost like a freedom from it when the medicine started working.
So I realize now it was completely attached to the depression and the food noise a lot, along with the other noise was quieted and almost silenced. And so I was and am so grateful for that. But I do still get nervous around Christmas and Easter, those times where there's a lot of yummy food. I am always worried in January that I'm going to wake up and it's going to be back or I'll wake up and have gained all the weight overnight.
And yeah, and it seemed like with my medicine that it actually helped. Where am I at now? Where I'm at now is I've noticed since COVID, the food noise has gotten a little bit louder. I refuse to diet because I don't know how to just watch what I eat. As soon as I start thinking about losing weight, I get that food noise. And actually, over the years, I don't know if it's my metabolism slowing or my medicine.
I don't know what it is, but I am currently living in a bigger body than I have in a while. I hear that noise and that voice coming back and so I really am working on not punishing myself. I still struggle with overeating but not to the point where I felt physically ill and physically sick. Over the last years I've had a little bit more anxiety about it. I've had the noises getting louder. I have really worked hard on my thinking and my loving myself. I actually follow a lot of body positivity.
People fill my feed with different sized bodies and it's still there, but I don't punish myself. And I just buy bigger clothes that I feel good in instead of always mourning the smaller clothes or punishing myself. And so I don't know what that looks for me in the future. I don't know if it's my meds, but I'm playing with dosage and with my doctor, of course. And yeah, there I'm a little bit nervous. I noticed that I'm eating more when it's there.
I have these thoughts like, oh, I'm never going to be able to eat that again if someone's made something I love, like a dessert. And now I've just realized that I could have that every single day. And so there isn't a need to eat 10 Nanaimo bars or five or three. I can just have one. And so that is one of the things that I do. and I don't restrict. If I'm craving the thing, I have the thing. I just don't eat the whole thing all the time. But it is a struggle. I don't have any answers.
I just refuse to punish myself. I refuse to diet. And I just am trying to love myself exactly where I'm at and celebrate and dress myself for exactly where I'm at. And I'm so excited about right now and just watching my children and we've just been careful to be open about what I have struggled with and they are very different than I was and it's a different time. Is there still extreme pressure on women? A hundred percent.
Is it worse because of social media? A hundred percent but also there is more acceptance. It was basically an unspoken rule that I couldn't wear a crop top and you. Now, I see all sizes and I love it so much. I still have those, like I said, the Weight Watchers or the internal voice, but I am more often than not, I am loving myself. I did want to just talk about this for people that feel completely alone and discouraged.
I'm also med compliant and committed to my meds. I don't want to ever go back to the depression. So for me, living in a bigger body is worth it to not feel how I felt before. Do you know what I mean? I sometimes still think, oh, maybe if I just let myself get a little hypomanic or did less meds, then I could lose some weight. I have those intrusive thoughts, but I refuse. I have written down how I felt before and that I never want to feel like that again.
So if you're someone struggling right now, just know that you can find freedom. The more you fight the thoughts, I work alongside the thoughts. And so the more I push them away, the harder it is. And some of you, I know it is your medication and it's horrible. I see you. I know what it feels like for it to completely take over your life and your thought life. I'm just telling you that you're not alone and you deserve to feel mentally healthy.
I just want to encourage you. Try your best to see that in sticking with treatment. I want to come up with something so that I can be more helpful. But the only thing I have to offer is my story. Comfort to you that you're not alone. Some of the strategies that I use, I use affirmations and also definitely reminders. And I just try to remind myself what my body has been through and how she has been there and carried me and continue to carry me through all the hard things.
She has carried babies and I try to think of it outside of myself as a thing I can love and my body is not. not all I am. And I just love the quote, I forget who it's from, my body holds my magic, or all bodies are good bodies. That's a little bit about my story with disordered eating. I hope that it comforts someone out there.
If you are someone that's struggling with this, and you have bipolar disorder, or your general practitioner doesn't understand about bipolar disorder, just know that you... Can push back and talk to your health professionals and can get help in that area. I look back and wish that I would have been able to get therapy, wish nothing more than some freedom from the thoughts and your willingness to love yourself regardless of the size of body that you live in. So love you.
Please let me know your thoughts. I would I'd love to hear from you either on Instagram at this.is.bipolar and hear your experience. I hope to do a panel on this with other folks that struggle as well. Or you can email me at thisisbipolarpodcast.gmail.com. And sometimes I take a while to answer, but I always will. I am hoping with you and for you for better days. Please hold on, friends. I don't know when or how, but I know there can be better days.
This is bipolar. Thanks again for tuning in. And you can find video versions of This is Bipolar on our YouTube channel. We also have all our previous episodes of the podcast on Apple, Podbean, Spotify, and Google Play. We spend most of our time on Instagram at this.is.bipolar. There is a vibrant community there where we have conversations and post different ideas and different strategies. and we'd just love for you to join us there.
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