Health Show to hear about victory over eating disorder
Burnaby mom inspired by daughter has made positive lifestyle changes
At least with alcoholism or drug addiction, abstinence is possible. But someone recovering from bulimia can’t just stop eating.
“I ask myself, ‘ Am I hungry?’ ” Aeryon Ashlie said. “Probably not. Am I hungry or am I sad? Am I upset and just trying to fulfil something with food?”
Ashlie, a recovering bulimic, is sharing her story at the Vancouver Health Show this weekend. It will be the latest of many public appearances she’s made since deciding to do something about her bulimia six years ago.
The 27th annual Vancouver Health Show, which begins at 10 a. m. on Saturday and Sunday at the Vancouver Convention Centre, features tips on diet, exercise and lifestyle choices, food stalls, and exhibitors promoting vegan, gluten- free and non- GMO diets and health products.
At the Burnaby home she shares with her daughter, Ashlie got rid of her trigger foods — cookie dough, ice cream, chips, popcorn — and makes exercising and cooking healthy food in an air fryer a daily event with nine- year- old Mekaella.
Ashlie’s Oprah moment, the moment she said a- ha, came one day after a tiny knock on the bathroom door followed by an inquiring “mommy?”
“My daughter was about three and we were on our own,” Ashlie recalls. “I was in the bathroom, I lifted the lid of the toilet and began to purge, then heard her little voice. I got up, saw my reflection in the mirror. I’d seen that reflection so many times, but this time that reflection caught me and I thought, ‘ This could be my daughter some day.’ If I don’t do something drastic, if I don’t change my behaviour, that could be her in 25 years and that would kill me, knowing I influenced her to do that.”
Ashlie said she had tried every diet pill under the sun, every appetite suppressant and cleansing and fasting fad.
“I was basically dieting for 25 years,” the 43- year- old single mother of one said. “And, basically, self- loathing my body for 25 years.”
That’s when she removed the triggers, when she enrolled in cognitive therapy, quit having a glass of wine for a while because she feared lowered inhibitions, started her journal, got the air fryer.
But just because the triggers are removed doesn’t mean temptation is. There are still times that, as Ashlie puts it, Bulimic Aeryon shows up unannounced.
Now, however, instead of indulging Bulimic Aeryon, she takes her arrival as a warning.
“I recognize now it means something is going on, something I’m not paying attention to.”
It could be stress. It could be she’s upset or angry.
“And instead of dealing with it with food, I can write in my journal, I can talk to my mom. That was a big shift for me. It’s in how you catch your thoughts, how you deal with your thoughts and not have triggers in your house.”
She has self- published a couple of ebooks and has a couple more on the way, including one called Food and You. It’s a relationship she’s embraced for almost seven years now, one she’s happy to share.
“People with eating disorders tend to be perfectionists, that’s why they never reach their expectations,” she said. “That’s part of the healing, realizing I won’t be perfect, that there is no such thing as perfection.”
If I don’t do something drastic, if I don’t change my behaviour, that could be her in 25 years.