A Touchy Subject ~ Part II

Hello & happy Friday & can you believe Christmas is in a week??!!! How did that even happen??? I’m ready-ish. Just a few more little things to buy (which i’m sure will turn into a lot of little things), and a few more cookies to bake. I have my work holiday party later today at a fancy restaurant that I could never afford to eat at otherwise, so that’s pretty exciting. And if we get a little break from the rain this weekend, I’m hoping to check out a couple of Christmas events.

OK, now onto a more serious note. You can check out A Touchy Subject ~ Part I if you want to get up to speed, as this post is a continuation from that.

I should probably mention how this all started. I was in grade 9 at the time. One night I made myself a bowl of ice cream with hot chocolate powder and Rice Krispies sprinkled on top. It was really good, so I decided to have another. A little while later, I went to have a shower but before I got in, I took a look in the mirror and for the first time, I saw a bunch of flab that seemed to have appeared overnight. I basically felt like a giant cow and I couldn’t believe I had let that happen to myself. And then I thought about the 2 bowls of ice cream I had just eaten and decided that it just couldn’t stay in my body. So, it didn’t. I remember thinking, “well that was easy.” And there you go. From that point on, for way too long, a vicious cycle had begun. In my mind, it was win-win. I could eat whatever I wanted but not get fat because I would simply get rid of the food.  And when I ate, I ate. Anything and everything in sight. I went back and forth between that and not eating anything at all and the weight just came flying off. I started to feel weak and sick, but it just didn’t matter.

It didn’t take long for friends and family to start commenting on my weight loss. Compliments quickly turned into concern, which was an even bigger compliment to me. One day, I went to the mall with my boyfriend at the time and I fit into a pair of size 1 pants. I was elated. My boyfriend basically said that I looked sick and gross, and as sad as it is, that made me happy.

It’s hard to believe that my body put up with that phase of my life. For a solid year at high school, my lunches consisted of a small bag of gummy bears and a can of diet coke. And nope, no breakfast to start my days. Even worse, I smoked cigarettes throughout high school and used them to curb my appetite on a very regular basis. I was consuming roughly 500 calories a day, sometimes less, which is way too low. Dangerously low. And those calories usually didn’t include an ounce of nutritional sustenance. But guess what? I was wearing size 2 jeans! Worth it, right? Not one little bit.

I had a part time job that I usually went to right after school which was great because I could get away with not eating dinner. I might have a few carrot sticks or rice cakes, maybe a plain bagel on a good day. If I happened to be at home, I’d sit down and eat dinner with my parents. Lots of dinner. Then I would sneak off after…and you know the rest.

I remember being at a friends party one night when I was about 15. Her parents ordered KFC for everyone and WOW did it ever smell delicious. Of course there was no way in hell I was going to let myself have any of the chicken, but I did give in and have one of the small little dinner rolls that came with it. I was SO mad at myself after. Seriously, just livid. I felt like a complete failure that had absolutely no self-control. When things like that happened, I would tell myself “ok, well tomorrow you have to make up for it,” and I’d basically eat nothing.

The farther I get in my nutrition program, the more I realize how lucky I am. There are so many health consequences that can result from eating disorders, both short and long-term, which for the most part, I was able to avoid. I deprived my body of the vital nutrition that it needed to keep me going, yet somehow it still didn’t fail me. I call that a miracle.

Thank you for tuning into Part II. As I mentioned before, writing about my disordered eating journey isn’t easy, but it’s good for me and I think it’s something that I really needed to do at some point, even all these years later. It’s helping me understand now what I couldn’t understand back then. A healing process that was a little delayed.

Have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you soon!