So I have finally decided to start a blog. Maybe this will help me be able to keep myself accountable and to help me work on things by just writing and getting my feelings in the open.
During the past week there has been a lot going on in my life involving food. I feel that God is telling me that I need to deal with this now. So here is my story:
When I was about 7 years old I started starving myself. I did not know what I was doing was harmful, I just knew that I had to be skinny. It originally started because I did not want attention from my babysitters son. I know this sounds horrible, but he was black and at the age of 7 I thought that black guys only liked thicker women, so I figured if I lost weight he would stop molesting me. At school was forced to eat. Then when I would go out to play for recess after lunch, I would throw it up. All of my friends thought it was cool that I could throw up my food on demand.
At about age 10, I stopped starving myself because my molester was no longer in the picture. I thought that I could go back to normal. Then I started to overeat. I had all of these feelings that I never dealt with from my years of being molested. I hated myself for not telling my parents. I hated my parents for not protecting me. Most of all I hated the fact that I had no control of the situation. The overeating lasted until high school. Then I realized that I really needed to lose weight. I did not look like everyone else and I was not okay with that fact.
Now I wasn't the biggest girl, far from it, but what I saw in the mirror was a girl who weighed 1000 pounds. I hated looking in the mirror, walking by a mirror, really anything to do with a mirror. I started working out at this point since I was involved in sports. I became addicted to working out. I would workout at practice and then workout after practice. I was in PE every semester in high school. I could not get enough. I was not doing anything with my eating at this point, it was actually pretty normal. By the end of my senior year, in my advanced PE course, we were weighed. My coach looked at me and said "Don't look at the number on the scale, you have really toned up." I don't know why, but this infuriated me! I was going to prove him wrong. I felt like he was saying that the way I was wasn't good enough and that he was issuing me a challenge to be thinner.
Going off to college I had no idea how to eat or really how to be healthy. I gained the freshmen fifteen and then some. I was really in a state of confusion. I did not understand how I could let myself become so disgusting. During my junior year in college, I started starving myself again, and this continued for two years. Not only was I starving myself, but I was also throwing up whatever nourishment I allowed myself to have. I had become a purging anorexic. I can vividly remember eating a cup of grapes and immediately running into the bathroom and throwing up. I remember surrounding myself with other people who had the same issues that I did to learn more ways to get away with this disorder. Some of us would go to TGI Friday's and order a side salad with dressing on the side. This came with a breadstick and I would dip my salad in the fat free ranch dressing. After eating this 'meal' I would go throw it up in the bathroom without regard as to who heard me. I counted calories and restricted to the max. If I ate over 500 calories in a day I would feel like a failure.
I was obsessed with food, really the limitation of food, and the scale. If I could not weigh myself daily I would get horrible anxiety. I would cry, I would be absolutely hysterical if I could not weigh myself. Then I would make sure that I would not eat anything at all until I was able to step on the scale. I was up all day, I went to class and worked two jobs. I still do not know how I was able to survive this time in my life. I was not only starved, but also extremely dehydrated. I can remember pinching my skin and having it stay tented. I did not realize at the time that this meant dehydration, but after having kids I now know this.
My parents had read my skinny journal and tried to intervene at some point during my junior year. I just shutdown even more. I hated my parents for even acknowledging my eating disorder, especially since my mom was bulimic. I did not think that I had a problem. I loved the feeling of control that I had when I was starving myself. I had no control over anything else in my life, but this was something that I could control. My boyfriend at the time made me go to the Dr. I went and since my BMI was too high they would not diagnose me with anorexia. I was skin and bones with no fat on my body and the Dr thought that I was normal because my BMI was in the normal range. My BMII went as far as to have "Quod me nutrit me destruit' tattooed on my body. Which means 'That which feeds me destroys me'. This was my mantra for so many years and now is a constant reminder of my disorder. I felt so much power from this tattoo. I felt that this tattoo made me invincible and helped me to be thinner.
Then I started to really become obsessed. I started taking weight loss pills by the handful and started drinking in excess. This was not a good combination of not eating and drinking like a fish. I don't know how many times I had driven home drunk. I should be dead or in prison, but for the grace of God he had other plans for my life. I was in a downward spiral. I didn't know how to stop. I didn't know where to turn for help. My lowest point was drinking an entire fifth of gin within an hour and ended up in the ER with alcohol poisoning.
About a month after going to the ER, I met my husband. Now I felt like I had something to live for, a reason to survive. When I met him I actually wanted to be normal with my eating because I wanted to have a family. I put on weight, but since my body was so starved I gained what I felt was too much weight. Once I became pregnant with my first son I knew that I had to be healthy. I gained 50lbs with that pregnancy. After I had him, my eating was out of control. I didn't want to go back to restricting myself, but I didn't know how to be healthy. I was a binge eater. Then I lost some of the weight and started feeling okay about myself. But I still had this aversion to food. I have a love-hate relationship with food. I have no control over this aspect in my life.
Being pregnant with my second son, I vowed not to gain so much weight with this pregnancy. I did beautifully the first two trimesters and then I gained 40 pounds in the last trimester. I had no idea how this happened because I was doing everything 'right' when it came to eating. I feel like I am on a roller coaster.
Now 5 months after giving birth to my second son, I am trying to gain control of this part of my life. I am so afraid to workout or diet. I am fearful that I am going to slip back into my old ways. I don't want to have this disorder control me any longer. I want my sons to know what is healthy when it comes to food and working out. I hate that I still think about restricting my diet and going overboard with exercise. I am trying to learn how to eat well and being able to have a balance in my life with exercise. I no longer use a scale daily, I now use it once a week. I know that through God I will be able to beat this disorder. I hope that I will be able to reach others with this disorder once God helps me to work through this issue. I still hate my body. I hate looking in the mirror, but I am slowly working on this. God will get me through this
I have found a great website http://healthygirl.org/. Such an encouragement.
Crystal
Labels: anorexia, binge eating, bulimia
