Out of the Pantry: A Disordered Eating Journey

By Ronni Robinson

Pre-teen Ronni is a seemingly normal girl growing up in the suburbs, until the day her mom hides cookies. Soon after, Ronni has an unexplainable compulsion to eat more and more and more junk.

In secret and shame, she overeats and binges through tween years, high school, college, an abusive first marriage, and even a lovin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Juniper Drive Press
• Release date: Jul 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781735184814

Ronni Robinson

Ronni Robinson is a writer and indoor cycling instructor in the suburbs of Eastern Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband in their newly minted empty nest, as both kids are off to college.Ronni has been freelance writing since freshman year in college (a long time ago) and has appeared in aSweatLife, Ravishly, The Temper, 50 Shades of Aging, Healthy Women, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Courier-Post, The New Brunswick Home News, and Parents Express magazine.Ronni's passion is helping others who are struggling with eating disorders. She lives on Instagram, and also does public speaking about eating disorders and emotionally abusive relationships.She has competed in dozens of triathlons, including three IRONMAN triathlons and four half distance IRONMAN triathlons. When not writing or perched in front of her laptop, you can find Ronni in the gym. Out of the Pantry is Ronni's first book, but hopefully not her last.

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Prologue

Alyssa, honey, Mommy is hungry, so please save me the crust when you’re finished, I lied to my daughter. I wasn’t hungry; I just had to have the crust. My disordered brain could not stop focusing on it.

Okay, Mommy.

Though I felt a sense of urgency on the inside, I managed a smile. Promise?

Promise, she smiled back.

My little girl had no idea of the urgency of my request—how important it was to me that she save me the crust. While I hadn’t given in to binge eating in five months and considered myself abstinent, in recovery from an eating disorder, I still fixated on food and often still battled compulsive eating tendencies. At odd moments, I was still grabbing food without thinking when I wasn’t hungry. I was still watching the clock until the next time I could eat.

I was working at the cotton candy machine at my children’s school carnival. Alyssa, a fourth grader, was hanging out with me and another mom when she said she was hungry, so I took her to the pizza stand and bought her one slice and a bottle of water.

Though I knew I would have my own slice a little later as part of the food plan I’d developed for the day, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wanted to eat the crust of her pizza, which I knew she didn’t like. I rationalized that it would only be one additional pizza crust that was outside my food plan, and I also knew I would be accountable for it, dutifully recording it in my daily food log that evening.

A large slice of pizza on a flimsy paper plate can be challenging for a nine-year-old to balance on her lap. It didn’t take long for the pizza to slip off the plate and down to the ground. Even though it landed crust-down, and I’m a five-second-rule mom in the house, we both knew the pizza was trash.

As we approached the pizza stand for another slice, I explained to Alyssa that she needed to hold the plate tighter so the pizza didn’t slide off again. I was still thinking about that crust and reminded her, somewhat urgently, that Mommy wants to have it. We got her slice and she sat back down. I served some people cotton candy, and the next thing I knew, I saw my daughter walking back the fifteen steps from the large trash can in the middle of the food area after throwing out her plate.

She threw the crust away.

The crust that I had asked her for more than once. I could feel my heart beating faster. Desire ran through me from head to toe. My only goal, my only focus, was eating that crust.

Alyssa! I told you to save that crust for Mommy! I scolded, an uncharacteristic harshness in my voice.

Sorry, Mommy, I forgot. She looked down to the ground, but then her head popped up when she saw a friend, and she skipped off.

Don’t you know how important that crust was to me?

Without thinking, I strode to the trash can and confirmed that my daughter’s paper plate, with her napkin placed neatly over the remaining bites, was sitting right there on top of the rubbish. I grabbed it and started biting off chunks of crust while returning to the cotton candy station. Though the crust was burnt, and less doughy than I liked, my mind had been made up to eat that crust. There was no turning back.

Suddenly, my brain clicked. I realized that at a school event, in front of many parents, teachers, and children I knew, I had retrieved food out of a public trash can and was eating it in plain view. And I had practically yelled at my daughter for throwing it away.

Shame coursed through me.

We lived in a small upper-middle class suburb northeast of Philadelphia where everyone knew practically everyone. I fought the urge to poll my parent friends and acquaintances about whether they’d seen what I’d done and then make up some sort of excuse to explain myself. What could I possibly say? Are they all whispering behind my back? Shit!

Shit!

I was definitely not as recovered as I’d believed. With all that I was learning in therapy, at Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meetings, and from the books I was reading, I’d thought that I was done with this kind of behavior. But an eating disorder is insidious—especially one like mine, which had taken root firmly during adolescence and flourished well into adulthood. Clearly, I still had a lot of work to do.

Instead of hiding, however, I immediately sought out my husband, who was walking around the carnival with our seven-year-old son, Devon. I pulled Efrem close so I could whisper in his ear. I just ate Alyssa’s pizza crust out of the trash can, I explained, adding, What is wrong with me?

As calm as always, he hugged me close.It’s okay, Ronni. I’m sure no one saw you. Try not to worry about it.

Thanks, I said. Easier said than done.

Next, I sought out a friend at the carnival who had confided that she had a similar eating disorder and who also attended OA meetings. Ever the practical person, she told me, It’s done. Put it behind you and move on.

I knew she was right, but it wasn’t until the next day that I could begin to understand what had happened and why. And to realize that I was still letting a mere object—food—control my thoughts and my life.

But it’s hard to break patterns—of thinking, of eating—that go back more than thirty years.

ONE

Can’t Wait For The Cookies

One afternoon when I was in third grade in the late 1970s in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, I rode my bike the three-quarters of a mile home from school. I loved biking instead of walking because I loved getting home faster.

Cherry Hill was a pretty large suburban city, located about ten miles east of Philadelphia, in southern New Jersey. Some neighborhoods were upper-middle class, but we lived in the lower-middle-class section. It had been really important to my dad that we have that Cherry Hill zip code because my parents’ other friends had moved there prior, and he wanted it to appear that we could afford to live in ritzy Cherry Hill too. I heaved open the garage door and stashed my silver banana-seat bike inside, closed the garage, then raced to the front door to let myself into the house with my key.

Hello? I yelled out to see if my older brother, Alan, was home from school yet.

He hollered back that he was up in his room. My parents were both at work.

I dropped my book bag in my bedroom upstairs and then zipped down to the kitchen, sliding across our linoleum floor that looked like a giant pizza with shades of red, yellow, and orange swirled together. I opened the snack drawer and found, as usual, crackers, some of my mom’s Stella D’oro cookies that she dunked in her tea at night, and some other odds and ends that didn’t appeal to me. But it was Friday, and Mom would be home in about two hours with her weekly grocery shopping, so I knew some better cookies would be coming into the house soon. Meanwhile, I’d have to settle for something else, so I spread margarine on two pieces of bread for my after-school snack.

When Mom arrived, it was my job to take everything out of the bags and place it all on the table so she could put the stuff away. Lettuce, ground beef, potatoes, and green beans were all stupid and boring. What I really wanted to see was what type of cookies were on sale that week. Pulling out a bag of Chips Ahoy!, I got pretty excited. I knew I couldn’t have any then because it would spoil my dinner, but I was already planning how I’d have some the next afternoon with a glass of cold milk. Dipping the cookie and then slurping the milk out of the cookie was one of my favorite things to do. I’d repeat the action until the cookie got soggy and dissolved in my mouth, and then I’d do it with another cookie, and another.

Whenever Mom did buy cookies at the supermarket, I gobbled them up during the week. They tasted so good that a shimmer of happiness seemed to float down on me while eating them. These cookies she bought on Fridays were meant to last our family of four until she went shopping a week later—though that rarely happened.

Since it was Friday night, we’d be having tuna salad mixed with hard-boiled egg and homemade mac ’n’ cheese for dinner. After the groceries were put away, it was my job to help Mom get dinner started. My mom was an okay cook, I guess, though she never experimented. She served the same food week after week. I didn’t eat big portions; I probably ate less than my brother, but then, I was the youngest.

While Mom prepared the tuna, hard-boiled eggs, and mayonnaise, I was right beside her, layering elbow noodles with the cheddar cheese that I had shredded. When she accidentally elbowed me in the shoulder by mistake, she said, Oops! I took a step away; I didn’t want to be in her way. But when she bumped me, I wished she had lovingly rubbed my shoulder and maybe said something fun, or even playfully bumped me with her hip. I wanted the moment—like so many small moments between us—to feel kind instead of cold.

Mom rarely talked to me about anything other than practical matters, especially at the end of a workday; I figured she always had her dental assistant work on her mind.

My thoughts turned to my friend Jennifer and her mom. If I was hanging out at Jen’s house, Jen’s mom, Mrs. D, let Jen and me help in the kitchen and eat whatever we made, which usually meant oatmeal cookies, white chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and chocolate chip cookies. Jen’s mom kept glass containers on the counter filled with different types of baking chips and sprinkles, and sometimes I’d sneak in the kitchen, grab a handful of chips, and chow them down before anyone spotted me.

When the cookies were baked, I always ate at least three or four, while Jen was satisfied with one or two. Sometimes her mom gently told me, That’s enough, Ronni. Girls, go find something else to do. I felt a little embarrassed, but that feeling only lasted until I got caught up in our next game or activity.

Mrs. D always had a smile for us girls, and I enjoyed being in her warm company. She was a stay-at-home mom, and their house was one of the first places I realized that parents and children could speak kindly and compassionately to one another. Jen’s two older sisters and brother were fun to be around, and their whole family talked and laughed together.

Once, Jen’s mom and one of her older sisters sat at the kitchen table talking about a problem Jen’s sister was having with one of her friends. Her sister’s eyes were filled with tears, and Mrs. D sat close, rubbed her daughter’s shoulder, and talked quietly and calmly to her. Even with more people, her house always seemed calm and happy compared to mine.

That night, I could picture Jen and her mom making dinner together, standing shoulder to shoulder, wearing matching aprons. Her mom might laugh and swat playfully at Jen, and Jen would just laugh back and say something funny. I wished my mom and I were close like that, but we weren’t. What was wrong with me that my mom never tried to have fun with me or speak to me about anything deeper than my grades or how my baseball game went?

I closed my eyes for a moment and imagined a different scenario . . .

I always looked forward to Mom coming home from work because we would cook dinner together. I loved the one-on-one time spent with her sharing her knowledge of cooking. We would put on our identical aprons and then sit down at the table as Mom looked me in the eye, her hand on my arm, and said, Ronni, how was your day?

Just okay, Mom.

You seem a bit down; what’s going on?

Laura and Dana were screaming at each other during recess. Oh no! What happened?

Laura accused Dana of stealing her favorite pencil, but Dana said she didn’t take it.

What do you think happened?

Well, I don’t think Dana stole her pencil, but I didn’t want to take sides or get in the middle. I didn’t like watching them argue.

But when I opened my eyes, everything was the same. The kitchen was quiet except for the sounds of dinner preparation: no chatting, no giggling, no playful swatting, and no Mom looking me in my eye, asking about my feelings. On this night and every other, it was almost as though I were in the kitchen with a ghost of an imagined Mom.

The next day, I opened the snack drawer and grabbed the Chips Ahoy!, poured myself a tall glass of milk, and brought the package of cookies to the table. Alan was upstairs in his room, and my parents were both out doing Saturday errands separately. I didn’t have to ask for cookies, and there were no rules about how many I could have. I just thought they tasted great, and I liked to have a lot of them.

Next, I dug around for the comic section from the newspaper. Finally, I reached in the bag to grab a cookie and immediately drowned it in the milk—all but the tiny bit between my two fingers. I pulled the next cookie out, dunked it, then slurped the milk out. Then, I dunked it again and slurped it again, and I repeated those same steps with at least five or six more cookies.

When I’d finished the comics, I moved on to read the horoscopes—mine first, naturally, then the predictions for my friends. All along, I kept eating. Sometimes I didn’t soak the cookie in the milk but very carefully ate the little chips out, then ate the rest, which was tricky but doable. An eating technique that yielded me the most chocolate in one bite.

The word jumble came next. Into the package my hand went for another cookie and more dunking. I reached and dunked, reached and dunked. When I’d gotten as far as I could with the word jumble, I checked to see how much I had eaten, and the plastic tray was half empty. Yeesh, I better stop and leave some for the rest of my family.

Mom never told me that I was eating too many cookies, but she yelled at my dad when he parked himself at the table with cookies and ate a whole bunch, and I didn’t want to get yelled at like him.

Another day, I was in the kitchen helping to make dinner.

How was school today, Ronni?

Fine, Mom.

Any tests today?

Nope.

No baseball practice today?

No.

I set the table while Mom made spaghetti and meatballs. On this springtime afternoon, I was wearing shorts and a tee shirt, and my short pixie haircut was slowly growing into a short bob, like the famous ice skater Dorothy Hamill’s. I didn’t want that hairstyle for fashion’s sake; I had no clue about what was in style. I was just tired of looking like a little boy and had begged Mom to let it grow, though she liked it short because it was easy to comb. I happily tucked a tiny bit behind my ear to remind myself it was growing.

Mom stirred the pasta and checked on the meatballs in the oven as I got out forks, plates, and napkins, and poured beverages. All the while, I wondered how to bring up some things that had been bothering me: I was struggling in math class, and my friend Cathy’s parents were divorcing, which scared me. I wondered why Mom didn’t know to ask me? Couldn’t she see or sense that something was wrong? When I’d gotten a C in math on my report card last quarter, she’d simply told me to do better next time. I didn’t know how, and help wasn’t offered.

Get out the parmesan cheese, Mom said in that voice of hers that showed she was there but not really there. Not connected or present. It’s what we all were in that house: unconnected to one another.

As we prepped, my dad came home from work and went straight upstairs to take a quick nap—not unusual for him. That gave me a few more minutes without worrying about him saying something awful, as he tended to, about a black man who was one of his customers today or how he couldn’t understand what some Asian store owner was saying. And it gave me a few more minutes with my mother, working in silence.

We always knew what day of the week it was in my house based on dinner. Friday was tuna and mac ’n’ cheese; Sunday was chicken with baked potato and green beans; Monday was hot dogs and baked beans; another night was meatloaf; Wednesday was spaghetti and meatballs; and Thursday was fish.

I had a simple palate, hating all vegetables and just about every fruit. When it was hot dog night, my mom always encouraged me to try the side dish of baked beans, but I’d tried them once and thought they tasted awful.

Ronni, have some beans!

Mom, they’re gross!

Try them again, maybe you will like them this time.

I doubt that, I said, twisting my mouth in disgust as I pushed the serving spoon away.

Mom didn’t have a dish she was famous for among friends and family, nor did she have any rituals surrounding certain foods or meals in our house or at our relatives’ houses, besides turkey on Thanksgiving. There were no special smells of her cooking that gave me warm memories. If I told her I was sad or mad, treats were never offered to soothe my pain. No one in our house seemed to truly enjoy food; it was quite simply eaten in order to live. No more, no less.

Since Mom, Dad, and Alan seemed to like her predictable dinners, Mom didn’t vary her routine. She and Dad said I was too picky, and Mom was certainly not going to short-order cook a different meal for me every night. My choices were even more limited since she never served an appetizer or dessert.

Dad was a salesman for Lance, maker of individually packaged snack products—cookies, peanuts, cheese crackers, peanut butter crackers, oatmeal pies, and more. His delivery truck was always parked in our driveway when he wasn’t out on his route, Monday through Friday, or at the Lance warehouse to restock items store managers ordered.

I’m not sure why we never ate Lance cookies. Wouldn’t we have received a discount that would have made them cheaper than supermarket cookies? Or would that have cut into his earnings? Alan and I weren’t supposed to go in the truck, though I’m sure Alan never gave a second thought to going in there, snooping around, and maybe sneaking something to eat.

At the dinner table, while twirling his spaghetti, Dad complained about one of his customers, as he usually did at least once every week or two.

Joe said that a lot of the product last week was broken and that his customers don’t buy scooter pies and peanut butter crackers that are broken. Asshole.

My mom held her silverware at table level and looked at him. Howard, maybe he has a point. Maybe you should open up the boxes before you deliver them and make sure you don’t give your customers broken cookies, she said.

Whose side are you on? he growled, throwing his hands up in the air. Why don’t you ever take my side? Jesus, Barbara. If I had to check to make sure everything wasn’t broken, I would never get anything done.

But Howard . . .

Don’t ‘but Howard’ me. You never take my side. He rose from the table and stormed out of the kitchen.

I kept my eyes on my plate. My poor mom. Even at age eight, I knew that she didn’t deserve to be treated like that, and every time Dad lashed out like that, I wanted to disappear. I stole a quick glance at Alan, whose eyes were downcast too. We all pretended the conversation hadn’t taken place, like so many other bitter words we ignored, and continued eating while Dad sulked in another room, never returning to his dinner. None of this was new. My parents used to yell and scream a lot, and from what I heard (or overheard while in another room trying to listen), I think my dad was wrong most of the time.

I wish I could say that after moments like this I went to Alan’s room and flopped down on his bed to talk about our parents, or what was going on with our friends or lives, but we were almost four and a half years apart with little in common. Our parents didn’t foster any connections or bonds between us; it was as if they didn’t know how to tell us, or show us by example, how important family was. I liked Alan okay, but I didn’t really want to hang out with him, and I don’t think he wanted to hang out with me either.

Though Dad often acted like a jerk, sometimes it was my mom whose behavior seemed wrong to me. When I was five, we moved about thirty minutes west, from Philadelphia to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. One night, after the realtor had been over to sign papers, I noticed she’d left a matchbook with the company logo on the table. I had seen my dad light a match for his cigarette a million times, so I decided to give it a try.

I stood over our trash can, which was lined with a brown paper bag from the supermarket. There I was, out of my dad’s line of sight as he sat watching TV in the den. Alan and my mom were out together on their bowling night.

Nothing happened after I struck the