It has taken me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I have had an eating disorder. Actually, I've had more than one. Whenever I've sat down to openly write about my personal struggle, I've backed off. I've had thoughts like "other people have had it much worse than me", or "what if people don't believe me?". But you know what? This is my story, this is my truth. And maybe there's a chance it can help someone else.
The first eating disorder I had was binge eating disorder. BED can be defined as "Frequently consuming unusually large amounts of food in one sitting and feeling that eating behavior is out of control". I don't know when, exactly, this started, but I was young. I have a clear memory of sneaking into my kitchen at my childhood home to hoard food, or stick my hands in the Chinese leftover containers. I was an anxious child, and food comforted me. So this soon turned into something I could no longer control. BED hit its peak when I was in high school, particularly when I got my drivers license. I was then free to drive myself to fast food restaurants and grocery stores. I used the gas money I got for driving other girls to school to buy food. Boxes of poptarts that I would consume in one sitting. The largest size french fry I could get. I used to get so anxious going out with my friends that I would eat a fast food meal on my way to the party and then hit up another fast food chain on the way home for more food. This behavior continued through college and into my twenties. When I was living with roommates in my twenties, my drawers were full of empty wrappers. I did the fast food thing again on my way home from work, eat a full meal from McDonalds and then have another dinner once I got home. I could not stop. For me, food was like a drug. It made me feel better, it numbed the pain. I believe that I was unlovable, and I pushed people away. I also straight up did not care enough about myself to take care of myself. I knew that what I was doing was not healthy, but I didn't care.
At my highest weight, in 2013.
Until, one day, I did care. A lot of you know this story, but when I was in my mid to late twenties I started to feel really sick. All those years of eating so unhealthy was catching up with me. I couldn't walk up the stairs without being out of breath. My blood pressure was high and I was borderline diabetic. With the help of my parents and a doctor, I decided to make a change. I can tell you right now I have eaten fast food MAYBE 5 times since then, when it used to be a daily occurance. Something snapped in me and I just did not want to rely on food to comfort me anymore.
And then, I started to have the opposite problem. I was eating, and eating really healthy, but I was restricting myself. I still had the URGE to binge so I made up for it by being extremly strict about my diet. Counting every calorie, exercising away everything I ate. I was only eating around 1,200 calories a day, which is enough for a child, not a grown woman. I lost weight- 135 lbs to be exact. And the smaller I got, the more people would tell me how good I looked. So I started to believe that in order to be loved, in order to be considered beautiful, I had to remain skinny. So even when I hit my "goal weight", I would panic if I ate a piece of bread. I would cry if I skipped a workout that day because I worried I would gain weight. If I was going out to dinner I would research the menu ahead of time to pick out EXACTLY what I "could" order to fit into my healthy lifestyle (this usually meant a turkey burger, no bun, with broccoli. Literally. every.single, time). And yeah, for a while, I was really thin. But it did not solve my mental health struggles, and even though people told me I looked good, I was not all that happy. People told me to "keep it up", so I thought I had to keep going.
Me at my lowest weight, and even when this photo was taken I was upset that my arm "looked big".
So where am I now? I wish I could tell you I am healed. But the truth is, I still struggle with disordered eating. I have binged. (Not that often, but I have). I have the urge to binge. I can't keep anything in the house that is not individually packed or something I COULD binge on. I still worry about what I am eating. I still panic if I eat a special treat. I look at pictures of myself when I was at my thinnest and yearn for that body, and wonder if people around me are judging me that I am no longer that thin. I worry that people still see me at my heaviest self, because there are times when I look in the mirror and see her. I pick apart every single picture of me, zooming in on the parts where I look "big" and overanalyzing it. I panic before going out (when we could go out), worried about what I will eat. Family gatherings are extremely hard for me- I know I can't sit in front of the snack table, I may not be able to stop myself. I worry that people are judging what I eat.
I am triggered easily. I am triggered by numbers- if other people share their weight. I start to analyze whether my weight is way too high compared to them. If I see a calorie count on the menu I shut down. I am triggered by before and after photos, again, comparing myself to that person. I am triggered by foods labeled "bad" or even "guilt free". I am triggered when other people say things like "I ate badly today" or "I have to run off what I ate". It makes me think of everything "bad" I did and that I have to "fix" it. I am triggered when my friends who are smaller than me talk about how "Big" they are because I start to panic that I must be absolutely obese.
There is not really a word for what I struggle with now. There is obesophobia, which is the fear of gaining weight. I have that, 100%. I am 20 lbs over my "goal weight" now and I beat myself up for that constantly- and always have to remind myself how much muscle I have gained. But there's also the dealing with guilt and the straight up PANIC that can sometimes come with eating. On Thanksgiving, I told myself over and over that I was not going to worry about what I ate, and then suddenly I was crying, worried I ate too much. Just yesterday, I made a loaf of banana bread. When it came out of the oven, I stuck a fork in it to see if it was done and I was immediately overcome with the urge to binge and eat the entire loaf. Not sure why, it just happened. So I threw the loaf away. And then felt bad about wasting food.
Although I am not healed, I am healing. I am working on my relationship with food and my body every single day. I am learning to love my body as I am and that my body does not determine my worth. I am learning that food is not "good" or "bad", it is just food. I am learning to listen to my hunger cues and eat when I am hungry, trying to choose foods that will fuel me and give me energy. It is a fight, every single day, and sometime it just plain exhausts me.
This is me now, still a daily struggle but I am strong, and I am enough, just how I am.
So friends, that is my story. Thank you for reading, and thank you for loving me through it all.
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