It’s that time of year again, the time of year when companies who profit off your self-doubt and insecurities push this message of weight loss = a good life. They directly or indirectly tell you that what’s holding you back from your dreams is the number on the scale, that if you dropped a few dress sizes you’d be healthier, you’d be more likable and desirable as a thinner person, if you got fit you’d be popular and sexy, the only way to be accepted in society is as a thin person, an on and on. But don’t fret! It’s a new year, and now you can tell yourself “this year I’ll be able to reach all these dreams by losing [x number] of pounds!” … with the help of their product.
It’s a disgusting campaign that I see every corner I turn, every webpage I pull up, and very flier in my mailbox. It can’t be avoided. Even if you don’t use their product, it’s been drilled in your head that lower weight = better life. A lot of people start their resolution journey with good intentions; it is true that a healthy diet and exercise regime could help resolve, lessen the effects of, or prevent numerous health issues. The keyword lies in “healthy,” far too many people fall victim to believing the number on the scale or the size of their trousers equals their self-worth. That their fat shows the world all of their shortcomings. That their cheat meal ruined them and they need more control. These beliefs led to unhealthy habits in the name of weight loss.
The other day my friend told me that writing a post about my struggle with anorexia could really help people. That’s what this started as, a blog post entirely about myself, not aimed at anyone, just informing people what I struggle with. While writing, I had this constant issue of romanticizing my disorder and what it’s doing to me. Yet, if you told me to aim this discussion at another person, a person struggling, I would flip and be totally real and raw with how horrible it is.
It’s tough for me to write about my eating disorder, not only because of my own romanticization, but because it’s hard to admit to myself that I still struggle. I could be crying over a small number of calories and shout at you that “I’m not anorexic anymore! I got that under control!” I’ll genuinely believe that too, as I type this I’m shaking my head saying to myself “do you really still have this issue? You’re an adult. Is it lying to claim you’re still anorexic? I got help, that’s in the past now! I’m just thin.”
In the past 7 days, I’ve eaten maybe 2 bowls of cereal and had 2 small bottles of vitamin water. This morning I woke up with blood in my mouth because my gums were bleeding from the malnutrition. I slept all day yesterday because I overexerted myself the day before. I planned to write a few paragraphs of a new blog post and hit the gym, despite the fact that I haven’t eaten in days. “I don’t have a problem,” I tell myself.
Yet if you told me that paragraph was written by someone else, my heart would ache for them, I’d want to give them a hug and tell them they need help. It seems so obvious they have an eating disorder and their body and mind are deteriorating. If I read that person’s weight stats I’d physically ache and be in fear for them. However, when I read it about myself part of me goes “yeah but [excuse, excuse, excuse], I’m really ok!” I don’t know when I developed my eating disorder but I know it got severe around 14/15 so my Excuse Generator and the Rationalization-tron 3000 have over 10 years of perfecting.
My disorder didn’t start as a resolution, but I know many people’s did. So many people start a new year diet and say “just get down to [x] pounds, and you’ll have succeeded” but then it’s not enough, and it just spirals. Those already struggling are frequently triggered by the unavoidable advertisements that seem to say “every bit of fat on your body is you showing the world how worthless you are” and if the person struggling doesn’t fit the standard mental image of someone with an eating disorder, they can get away with their crash dieting and twice daily gym sessions, they may even receive praise for it, only making the disorder worse.
When my disorder started to get worse, I had a weight I wanted to get down to so desperately. That goal weight quickly just became “goal weight 1” followed by 3 more. I didn’t just deprive myself of food; I deprived myself of happiness. When I was 16 there were these stores I wanted to shop in, they were hip and cool (to my 16-year-old self), so I told myself “once you’re down to your 1st goal weight you can shop there.” Almost weekly I’d walk down Newbury St, and I’d pass the stores, sometimes multiple times, sort of looping the block, just to look in and see what kind of cool people were shopping there and their hip clothing. When I was getting closer to my goal weight I got bold and actually went in one of the stores; I picked up clothes I wished I could wear and told myself “if you get down to that goal weight you can shop in these stores.” Using this tease as a motivator, I had reached goal weight 1 and had saved up a fair amount of money by the following week.
I remember being so happy that day; it may have been the first time I was happy in a long time. The entire time I was shopping I was sort of singing in my head “you’re [x] pounds la la, you’re [x] pounds la la” I bought so many (overpriced) hip dresses, and skirts, and lacy little tops, that made me feel like I was cool. When I got home my mom gushed about how cute my new outfits were, and they were, you could barely get me to take them off. I had to spend a little bit of time to save up money to go shopping again, so by the time I could I had lost a bit more weight. In the 1st store I went in I couldn’t find much that fit me, I liked the whole “too thin for this” baggy look on some clothes, but others I wanted a nice fit. I’d constantly hear “sorry, we weren’t shipped an extra small in this style” and as disappointed as I was that I couldn’t get the cool piece of clothing, I took this as a victory. I was too skinny for the “waifish hip girl” store!
The next store I went in I noticed I was being followed, I thought they might think I was shoplifting, so I put my bag in plain sight and dug through the racks for extra smalls, I was actually so proud of my “accomplishment” that I turned around to the employees who were following me (there were 3 or 4) and asked “what do you have in stock in an extra small?” they kinda smiled at each other, and they all helped me and watched as I tried on outfits. It felt strange, but I felt perfect. I finally discovered the reason they were following me; they wanted to offer me a job so I could be considered to be one of their models. I nearly screamed, inside I was thinking “I’m finally thin enough and dress cool enough I can be the kind of model I wanted to be!” but being 16 and afraid to explain the modeling bit to my mom, I said no. (Note: what came out about this company later means I really dodged a bullet.)
This went on; reward and punishment, as I got sicker the rewards and punishments got sicker. I’d “reward” myself with drugs, and I’d punish myself with self-harm. I was eventually hospitalized, after that I was released into an eating disorder specific PHP program, I only lasted days there before they ran my lab work and told me I had the start of organ failure, they told me without treatment I might not make it to the end of the month, 2 if I was lucky. I didn’t believe them, I was upright, energetic, and I felt fat since I had just been in the hospital for a while. I was hospitalized in an eating disorder specific stabilization unit later that day. The girl across the hall from me kept coding and apparently the girl who had been in my room didn’t make it. I didn’t feel like I needed to be there, these were actually sick people, I was nowhere near their level. To this day I can’t believe I was sent there (and treated there for so long) Today I look at their website and read “who require the most intensive level of care” and think “that wasn’t me. I was fine!”
I am a naturally skinny person, the hospital couldn’t get me up to a BMI that wasn’t considered underweight, and they couldn’t get me anywhere near their goal weight for me. I had been there so long, and there were no more treatment options they could try, they waited until my vitals were somewhat normal for a while and had to discharge me with a BMI that was still considered anorexic. Because my BMI was so low, I could not go into their eating disorder residential program, and after discharge, I never received eating disorder treatment again.
My eating disorder heavily influenced my drug use; eventually, it became my “cure.” When I was a teenager I never drank alcohol or smoked marijuana, the last thing I wanted was liquid calories and a drug that made you hungry. As I got older my eating disorder became more embarrassing; I remember crying in a restaurant on a date over how fattening the food was … numerous times. Who wants to sit in a restaurant with their grown-ass date crying over calories? So I sucked it up and started drinking, I’d drink until the anxiety about eating went away, I drank until food sounded appealing, and if the liquor didn’t work, I’d use some more drugs. After all, a sloppy, strung-out, and drunk 19-year-old was more socially acceptable than an adult woman throwing a fit and crying in the bathroom of a falafel shop over some french fries.
It became so I couldn’t eat without being drunk, not buzzed, drunk. Most of the drugs I was doing suppressed my appetite, so I was rarely hungry. I had to stimulate my appetite, so I’d drink, and I’d drink a lot. I lost a lot of weight the first year I lived away from my parents. They noticed and commented, I’d tell them I was fine, and that was the end of it. The drug use alone was making me sickly thin, so during my rare sober moments I was happy with myself, but for the most part, I was always too intoxicated to care. My eating disorder turned into addiction.
I genuinely thought I no longer had an eating disorder, sure I had a few “moments” now and then, but they say the thinking never entirely goes away. I thought I was as well as I was ever going to be. What I couldn’t see at the time was that there was no recovery period, that I was merely using substances (primarily alcohol) as a band-aid. I never questioned why I had to drink before a meal, I never questioned why I had to drink before sex because the thought of looking at my body disgusted me, and when I became physically alcohol dependent, it was just my life. All those negative thoughts were drowned out, and I thought I was better.
That is until I started to try to clean up. Honestly, part of the reason I wanted to give up drinking was because I thought it was making me fat. I look at pictures of myself during that time, I’m far from fat, but you can see a distinct alcoholic puffiness about me. I was terrified to give up drugs because I thought they were the only things keeping me thin. When both were finally out of my system I started losing weight, I was ecstatic. What I didn’t notice was that I stopped eating. When I’d feel faint or weak, I chalked it up to my awful withdrawal, but there was more to it than that.
It didn’t take long for me to replace alcohol with marijuana. Weed is one of the only drugs I’m a total lightweight for, it doesn’t take much for me to be extremely stoned and I become non-functional, for that reason, I didn’t pick it up as much as alcohol. I could still socialize, shop, and work while drunk, but I could barely turn on the TV stoned. In my head, I was still sober because “weed didn’t count as a real drug,” but here I was using it the exact same way I used alcohol in the beginning. When it was time to eat, I’d prepare my food far enough along that stoned me didn’t have much to do, go get high, and eat without anxiety. I spend most of my time alone so it never really dawned on me that this is what I was doing.
Now I’m actually in recovery from substance abuse with no more “band-aids” to cover the problem I never addressed. I’m embarrassed to admit that I can’t bring myself to eat. I’m embarrassed to say that I’m an adult; a grown woman with a great job, lovely townhouse, and engaged to a wonderful man, but the thought of putting real sugar in my coffee makes me cringe. Admitting these things humiliates and scares me. It’s humiliating because there isn’t enough talk about adult eating disorders, and that’s why things like resolutions gone awry can be so dangerous, there are people who legitimately believe adults can’t have or develop eating disorders. There are so many people who would think I’m just doing it for vanity, but I look like shit, and I can’t stop. I’m willing to bet some people reading this think I just want (or wanted) attention, so I’m causing problems in my life, but I isolate so much, partially out of shame, that there’s nobody to seek attention from. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, and I wish these thoughts weren’t in my head because, to be honest, the reason admitting to it scares me so much is because I’m afraid of treatment. The thought of going through eating disorder treatment again petrifies me. I’m not ready, and that’s embarrassing too.
My anorexia is ruining my life. I scare the shit out of my fiancé because he never knows when all this starving myself will make me drop dead. I haven’t been to a regular medical doctor in years because I’m afraid to see how much more damage I’ve done to my organs. I don’t want a bone scan because I don’t want to be told I have osteoporosis before I’m 30. I already know that just a few years of abusing myself like this as a teenager gave me irreversible problems, I don’t want to know what even more severe weight loss and another nearly 10 years did.
My entire digestive tract is utterly destroyed, this causes immense pain and a lot of issues in day to day life. I have tachycardia and hypotension (there’s a word for it when they are co-morbid, but I can’t remember.) I recently had to start shaving fine, fluffy hair off my entire stomach and might have to Nair my arms because I have developed lanugo. I lose feeling in my extremities so often that I regularly knock things off my nightstand because I have no feeling or control over my arm, I have physically grab it and lift it with my other hand because my forearm feels like it’s made of concrete. My circulation is awful, my hands and feet are always cold, I constantly have pins and needles, and the slightest pressure will make an area go numb (for instance I have had to walk away from my computer multiple times while writing this because the pressure on my wrist from the edge of my laptop has made my entire arm numb.) My muscles have wasted away leaving me looking shapeless.
It causes a lot of embarrassment in my life too; I didn’t realize I was losing so much weight and might have a problem until I was walking one day and my underwear fell off under my pants. I had to buy all new underwear in extra small last month, if I get any smaller I’ll have to wear children’s underwear, not something you want to do as an engaged, sexually active, 25-year-old. I wanted to treat myself to a designer (specifically Gucci) suit, only to discover they don’t make clothing for people as thin as me, most designer brands don’t. I have to lie on a lot of my modeling info because they won’t allow someone of my height to weigh so little or have such a small waist. Sometimes my fiancé has to hold my hand while I eat, while he does this I have to look him in the eye and see all the fear he has, or worse, he’s hanging his head feeling more defeated than I do and I’m overwhelmed with guilt. Sometimes I have to have my fiancé call me to convince me to eat. On 2 separate occasions since I got home from rehab, I have had panic attacks in restaurants when my dad has tried to take me out to eat as a treat because the menus had calorie counts in them.
This life is so painful, I already suffer from chronic pain, and being severely underweight doesn’t help. There’s not a single position I can lie in when I try to sleep that’s comfortable. I have to strategically place pillows so I don’t dislocate some joint in my sleep. I had to buy a special cushion for my tub because my spine, tailbone, and hip bones are so prominent that they dig into the hard shell of the tub while I try to relax, imagine hitting your funny bone on concrete, that’s what it feels like. I have to carry a pillow with me everywhere because all chairs are uncomfortable. Anything that involves my body touching a slightly hard surface is a nightmare. I have to use my own extra thick mats to do yoga or any kind of floor exercise because otherwise, I’ll want to scream in pain from the pressure on every vertebra of my spine. Comfort is something long forgotten to me.
I’ve reached a point of starvation where my body rejects food; if I tried to eat I’d involuntarily throw it up, I can barely keep water down. The mere smell of food makes me gag. I just had to dump out the coffee next to my bed because the smell of it was making me queasy and giving me a headache.
I’ve been attempting to hide my weight loss from friends and family, mostly by avoidance. In my head, I was so glad it was winter because wearing big bulky clothing isn’t so odd. But I’ve done other shady things that should have set off some alarms in my head. I took a picture of myself in a crop top and used a ring light and 2 softboxes so you couldn’t see my ribs. I angled other pictures or used props in pictures of me so you can’t really see my waistline or my collarbones. I’ve used editing apps to make my legs and arms thicker. When you’re doing all this to hide your weight loss, you should probably realize you have a problem.
I’m so terrified. I can’t tell if I’m a little faint or 2 breaths from death. This disease has changed my brain so much that I don’t know what healthy feels like, but I also don’t know how to identify when something is really wrong either. I’m just so scared. I’m not ready to die, not really, and not this way.
—This is the concluding part. If you want to read the rest that may be triggering/upsetting scroll down to where it says “content warning” otherwise go from here and stop where it says “End”—
I don’t share these things because I want pity or attention, far from it, if I had it my way I would have kept these things locked up tight. Admitting faults, weaknesses, and fears makes you very venerable. No, I share these things because I felt I had to. Partially for myself and partially for others. I had to write this for myself because, with all this suffering, there are over 4,000 words of suffering, not only do I still do it, I still romanticize it. I need to knock it into my head that I shouldn’t have to live like this, that clinging onto this disorder is my last “high” that I’m holding onto. I need to think about the fact that if I read this about someone else I would want them to get help as fast as possible.
I write it for the person who may notice they are slipping in a hole. Don’t be fooled, there is no control down here, there is no perfection or happiness. There’s only pain and the rush you get as the chemicals in your brain prepare you for what they must think is death, because that’s how this ends, recovery or death.
I also write this for the person who struggles, to let you know you’re not alone. Our stories may be very different, but at the end of the day, we are fighting the same demon. Maybe you haven’t fallen as far as I have, don’t let yourself. Don’t let the notion of not being “sick enough” keep you from seeking help, you’ll never feel “sick enough” trust me, get the help while you can and before you do the damage that I’ve done. Don’t be the victim of these companies who want you to suffer and hate yourself. Don’t let a time of year take your life away. The “control” and “perfection” this illness claims it will give us are traps, they are lies. This disease practically owns me now and I have no control over it, my impulses always win. I don’t feel perfect, I feel ashamed and scared. If I don’t do something this will kill me, and there will be nothing beautiful about my slow and painful death. I’m so very scared. I’m human, as are you, people love you and seeing you suffer hurts them and the idea of losing you breaks them. You might feel alone and like nobody loves you, that’s the disorder lying to you, it wants you to be isolated so it can consume you. It’s lies, you’re loved and deserving of help. If you can’t do it for yourself right now, do it for someone who loves you.
I guess I also write this for the person who doesn’t struggle. Maybe exposing my pain and shame will help you understand someone in your life who is struggling. Perhaps you didn’t believe eating disorders could get so bad, or that adults could have them. Whatever this did for you, I hope it opened your eyes in some way.
My final word is: check in with yourself, listen when others express concern, listen to your body when it hurts. Don’t be the victim of your resolution.
I have to stop writing, over 4,000 words in only a few hours when you haven’t eaten in days? I’m not even sure this makes sense. My brain is fried.
—End—
CONTENT WARNING BELOW!
CONTENT WARNING!
Ever since I’ve gotten home from rehab I have been unable to control my desire not to eat, my weight has plummeted. I now weigh under 90 pounds at 5’7″ (that’s less than 41 kg at 170 cm for my metric friends) making my BMI under 14. The DSM-5 categorizes anything under 15 to be an “extremely severe” case of anorexia.
One of the worst parts about this disease is how it’s breaking my heart. I have to lie to everyone, including my fiancé, and myself. I’ve been telling the lie for so long that nobody questions it. Even though I could go on tirades about how much I can’t stand them, I really do want kids, or at least one. It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot recently, I’ve been lying in bed crying, yearning for the ability to have a child.
Of course, I can’t tell Phil this, we’ve made our decision, so I tell him everything is fine when really I’m breaking down inside. I did try to tell him once, I tried to get a minute with him to talk, just to know if he would ever even consider having children with me, but he was too caught up with work and I lost the courage to press the issue.
When I was 19 I went through something that’s a story all of its own, but I was told I may not be able to carry a pregnancy to term. Now I’ve had amenorrhea (loss of menstrual period) consistently for over a year, but it’s getting closer to two and I’ve had issues of these sorts for so long. I’ve likely lost my ability to get pregnant, and I most definitely couldn’t carry at my weight.
These thoughts have been tormenting me since the summer, and it doesn’t help that for some reason Amazon thinks I’m expecting. As an engaged woman, I am constantly asked when we plan on having kids. Every single time it breaks my heart a little more. With the holidays just past, it’s even harder. So many people do the cliche announce the pregnancy on Christmas or New Year, I really want to be excited and happy for my friends, I really do, but there’s a pang of jealousy that almost makes me angry. Angry at them, angry at myself, angry at the world. This is something I absolutely hate about myself, it makes me feel like a monster. It’s not that I would ever wish this on them, it’s the pain of jealousy and this feeling of “quit rubbing it in everyone’s faces” even though I know damn well if I were in their shoes I’d be 10 times as obnoxious.
I know the only way to make it even slightly possible would be a full detox and recovery, but what am I supposed to do? Send myself off somewhere with a specialty team for a few months, and when I come back just hope for the best? I’m still too scared to go to treatment, even though I know that every day that passes is doing more damage. That kind of treatment is far beyond my means anyway, so there’s no sense in hoping. It’s heartbreaking to know you did this to yourself. It’s heartbreaking to know I’ll never get the choice. Of course, I have my fears about the whole process and what kind of mother I’d be, but those brief moments where I forget my reality and I think about it, I think about what it would be like to hold a child of my own and I think about how wonderful of a dad Phil would be, and what kind of house we’d live in, what instrument we’d force the poor thing to learn, and blah blah blah gross. It’s tremendously painful when reality hits. I had to take a break after writing that bit because I was so heartbroken. I’m done with this section. I can’t think about it anymore. Anorexia took away my ability to have children. Done.
I know I’ll have friends in 2 camps. 1 will be “well it’s for the best anyway, overpopulation and your genetics and blah blah blah” and the other will be the obnoxious chorus of “but there’s always adoption!” No. No, there is not. I am not and will never be a candidate to adopt. So I’d like to ask people from both camps to save it. I’m hurting enough.
Ok, now scroll back up for my final words.
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