Eating Recovery Day
Tuesday, May 1, 2018 is Eating Recovery Day. Please spend that day celebrating your own recovery or the recovery of someone you love. If you are in the throws of an eating disorder and find it intolerable, please seek help. You are worth it. See below for my own personal experience.
I used to fantasize about being one of those people who could eat a pint of ice cream in a moment of emotional turmoil. Like the skinny actresses do on TV. They get stood up for a date or something and console themselves with Ben & Jerry’s. And they don’t go puke it up afterwards. And they don’t gain any weight and they just move on with life. I could never, ever do that. My relationship with food would not allow it. I don’t really fantasize about that anymore. It really doesn’t even occur to me to do that now. I mean I do overeat on occasion, but nothing like I used to and I more often than not choose not to because I don’t want to pay the price – shame, guilt, food hangover. Thank God for a recovery from that kind of food obsession. It completely controlled my life and at one time, I was convinced that’s how my life would always be.
It started so innocently. I was in the 8th grade and not fat, but not tiny like the other girls in my class. I had always been the tall one and had never been described as tiny. “People always like the tiny girls,” Mom had said. And she was right. I remember it was Halloween night and I was going steady with a popular boy in my class. He leaned in to kiss me and put his hand on my stomach. And I did not have the flat tummy of a tiny girl. I was immediately self-conscious and it was the first time I saw myself as fat. We broke up soon afterwards and I started a diet. I was just going to eat better and exercise. I didn’t have a plan for how much I would lose. I just wanted to be thin. If I could go back in time and tell my 13 year old self that this “innocent” diet would be the beginning of a 25 year struggle with food and to ask someone for help with learning to love herself exactly as she is, well, yeah that’s not going to happen and I would have been too stubborn to listen anyway.
By the time I started high school the next fall, I weighed 90 pounds and I was definitely thin. Almost skeletal actually. Rumors swarmed that I was bulimic. Teachers talked to me about my weight. Friends’ parents called my mother to express concern. I went to my pediatrician who put me on an antidepressant for a month. I went to a specialist because I had developed anemia. I went to an obgyn because my periods had stopped. I was freezing cold all of the time and developed a stress fracture in my shin from all of the running I was doing. My cross-country coach made it her mission to cure me. She encouraged me to gain weight and my main goal in life is to not disappoint people so I did start to gain weight after my freshman year.
I crossed over into binge eating toward the end of high school. I just couldn’t stop eating. I loved food. Or rather I loved stuffing myself and not feeling anything. I can see now I was likely depressed and lonely. I didn’t have many friends and I was anxious about college. I gained a lot of weight, which did not improve the depression. College terrified me and I overate. And overate. I started abusing laxatives, which then led to throwing up whatever I ate with intermittent restriction of food. I felt completely out of control. I saw a psychiatrist at school and she prescribed Prozac. Things did not improve. I hated being at college. I couldn’t focus on my classes. I hardly had any friends. I only thought about food. I dropped out after a year.
My whole life became consumed by an unhealthy cycle of periods of starvation and over-exercising until I surrendered to a food binge, followed by violent purging often resulting in vomiting up blood. I had also discovered my fondness for alcohol, which made my eating disorder all the more complicated. I’d see a therapist for help and then get drunk and not go again. I’d start a medication for depression and then get drunk and forget to take the pills and never go back to the doctor. I lied about my eating and drinking and hid it from my family, but obviously they were aware something was awry. My weight fluctuated so rapidly over the years. I was either “in control” and starving, sober, thin and absolutely miserable. Or I was “out of control” and bloated, fat, drunk and absolutely miserable. All of the up and down ravaged my body. My teeth were destroyed by the erosion from all of the stomach acid. The insanity of my behavior did a number on my mental health. I was full of shame and guilt all the time. I was embarrassed that I had nothing in my life that I enjoyed besides eating. I remember actually thinking that this would be the rest of my life. That I would never travel or have hobbies or have friends or have a real job that was meaningful to me. Nothing meant anything to me except for when I got to eat next.
I saw doctors and therapists and once did an intensive outpatient program. I’m sure I didn’t listen to anything anyone told me to do. I wasn’t ready to give up the only life I knew for a life that terrified me because I didn’t know what it would be like. The funny thing is that I didn’t want recovery because I was afraid I would be “OK” with being fat. That if I stopped “controlling” my food, I would get fat. And my logic was completely ridiculous because I was fat by the end. I couldn’t control anything at all. And maybe that’s what it took to finally give up. To be so completely at the end of my rope. To be done, done, done. I wish it happened sooner, but I guess it took what it took.
I ended up going to a 30 day treatment center for my alcohol use, which was just the first step. I couldn’t hear anything from a doctor or therapist when I was drinking all the time. The eating disorder actually improved dramatically with the sobriety and I thought maybe I was cured, but I soon saw that my same old ideas about food and weight were alive and well. I was still overly concerned about my weight and often restricted what I ate. I did not binge and purge for a long time, but it finally did happen. It was one of the only tools I had for the emotions I didn’t want to feel. I finally got professional help from a very good therapist who specialized in eating disorders and I started seeing a psychiatrist for much needed medication to treat my depression and anxiety. Learning to take better care of myself took a long time and I can’t even say exactly when “recovery” happened. It’s just a really long process sometimes I think. I didn’t just stop binging and purging overnight. The times just became fewer and further between and then they just sort of stopped.
My eating is pretty “normal” now I think. And what I mean by that is that I think I eat like any other normal person. Sometimes I overeat, sometimes I undereat and sometimes I eat “just right.” Sometimes I feel like I need to drop a few pounds and I go on a diet. I love running, but I try to incorporate other exercise into my life too so I don’t hurt myself. I have not purged in years and I hope I don’t ever do again. Now when I think about it, I just think, “I don’t have time for that, I have too much other stuff I want to do.” That’s pretty awesome I think. My favorite part of all of this new part of my life is that I don’t think about food much at all. I mean I still love to eat, but I love a lot of other things too. I love my husband, our dog and cat, travelling, my family, my friends, my job, writing, movies, etc. My life is an actual life today. I no longer need to fantasize about being the TV character who can eat a pint of ice cream and not gain weight. I mean who really gives a rat’s ass about that anyway?
