But I guess I should really start here first: Just before that, I decided to make peace with my body. It's been a war zone since age 10, when I started my first diet. Calorie counting. 1200 a day. I was under the impression something about me was wrong and needed fixing.
At first, I begrudgingly obliged. Who wants to give up pizza and soda and FOOD at that age? Who should, really? At a time when your body and brain are developing, deprivation isn't probably the smartest.
Eventually, though. Eventually I did what I always aim to do: win. I played the game every day, how few calories could I consume? I lived on Diet Coke all day and then had dinner. Approximately 300 - 500 calories a day. No more. I lost 15 pounds in a summer. Everyone was so proud.
Photo from a book I filled out every year. Kept crossing it out
Then junior high started, and I could buy my own food from the a la carte station. I bounced back hard, binging on Swiss Cake Rolls and Nutty Bars. The weight came back. I was ashamed.
Somehow I managed to maintain a sort of normalcy for several years. I stopped focusing on what I was putting in my mouth all the time, for the most part. That voice would always speak up every so often, and I'd be skipping breakfast and sometimes lunch. In retrospect, when I graduated high school I might have been chubby, but I looked pretty damn good really.
In college I definitely put on the freshman 15. I had a very thin boyfriend at the time and I remember always hating myself for being bigger than him. I was reminded again that I was too much and needed to be less. Diet pills forced down my throat. But then I would hide illicit food in my room to eat later, where no one could see. I didn't know what binge eating was then. I was full of secrets and self-loathing.
Even though I've pretty much hated my body, I managed to avoid dwelling on it. I'd disassociate from myself, essentially closing my eyes and plugging my ears and la-la-laing when I was forced to try on new clothes that left me devastated and cursing the bloated image in the fitting room mirror.
In 2011, my mania, although unknown to me, partnered up with my body dysmorphia and I started counting calories again. And working out excessively. Often twice a day, sometimes three times. I told concerned friends and family that it was normal. I lost a ton of weight. I'd never been so proud of myself.
Part of me wishes I was still doing this.
It wasn't maintainable, and I backslid. I slowly put all the weight back on. I worried that my friends who had been so encouraging and impressed by my feat would be disappointed and repulsed by me.
I worry constantly that people are repulsed by me.
The idea of losing weight only triggers the part of me that wants to starve, to be so thin people worry that I'm sick. And I am sick. Eating disorders - which you might think I have because I'm fat - are a sickness and I struggle constantly with mine.
So I decided to give intuitive eating a try. Not a diet. A way to repair my relationship with food and my body. I decided to try to love myself, to see me for who I am. I was getting comfortable with that. I was starting to believe I was worthy, just as I am.
I thought telling my psychiatrist that I'd been struggling with my binge eating was a good idea. I was not right.
He told me that if I couldn't get it under control, he'd put me on a pill to help. I tried to stutter out that it was triggering, and I didn't want it, but he was rushing me out the door. I sat in my car and cried. Cried at being a failure. Being fat. Disappointing everyone in my life.
I rushed home and started digging through my pill bottles for the weight loss drugs. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was too fat, too disgusting to take up space.
I managed to talk myself out of the pills. I went back to my intuitive eating workbook. But I'd be lying if I said I don't think about my weight and food every minute of every day. That sometimes I skip a meal because I want to punish myself for existing.
All that progress, then two minutes of fat shaming and I'm back at square one. I'm 10 years old again. The Diet Coke Diet calls to me. Hunger pangs but I fight it, I don't deserve to eat yet.
You might noy guess by looking at me. Inside, the war rages on. I'm not sure I'll ever win.
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