SELF poll reveals 65 percent of American women are disordered eaters

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SELF’s groundbreaking survey reveals that more than six in 10 women are disordered eaters. Another one in 10 has an eating disorder. Find out if you’re at risk and how to get healthier, starting today:

Michelle Marsh, 32, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seems like the perfect dieter. If you ran into the 5-foot-1-inch, 103-pound marketing specialist checking food labels for calories in the supermarket or powering through one of her seven weekly workouts, you’d envy her ability to control her intake and burn off any excess, too. But Marsh, who had her first baby nine months ago and is now below her prepregnancy weight (“I’m the tiniest I’ve ever been!” she says), could be the poster girl for an unrecognized epidemic among women: disordered eating.

No, she doesn’t starve herself to an unnatural weight (like anorexics) or throw up daily (like some bulimics), but she doesn’t seem to have a healthy relationship with food or her body, either. “I spend about half my time thinking about food and meal planning,” she says, although her meals don’t require much planning — she usually restricts herself to the same foods every day (oatmeal, brown rice and two small corn tortillas with chicken and a sweet potato). “I weigh myself every morning, and if the scale goes up a pound, I exercise more. If I gained 5 pounds, I’d be very upset.”

Sound familiar? It should: Sixty-five percent of American women who responded to a national survey by SELF are disordered eaters. Eating habits that women think are normal — such as banishing carbs, skipping meals and, in some cases, even dieting itself — may actually be symptoms of the syndrome. Although disordered eating doesn’t have the lethal potential of anorexia or bulimia, it can wreck your emotional and physical health, says Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and SELF’s partner in the survey. And it’s everywhere, afflicting women like your sister, your friend, your co-worker — or you.

The online SELF survey garnered responses from 4,000 women ages 25 to 45 to a detailed questionnaire about their eating habits and found that most disordered eaters fall into one or more of six categories. “Calorie prisoners” are terrified of gaining weight, tend to see food as good or bad and feel extremely guilty if they indulge in something that’s off-limits. Secret eaters binge on junk food at home, in the car — wherever they won’t be found out. Career dieters may not know what to eat without a plan to follow; despite their efforts, they’re more likely than other types to be overweight or obese. Purgers are obsessed with ridding their body of unwanted calories and bloat by using laxatives, diuretics or occasional vomiting. Food addicts eat to soothe stress, deal with anger, even celebrate a happy event; they think about food nearly all the time. Extreme exercisers work out despite illness, injury or exhaustion and solely for weight loss; they are devastated if they miss a session. Like Marsh, who Bulik describes as a calorie prisoner and an exercise addict, many disordered eaters piece together a painful mix of destructive habits. Others may shift between categories over the years, ricocheting from restricting to bingeing to purging, for instance.

Even more frightening, the SELF survey reveals that an additional 10 percent of women suffer from outright eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, meaning that a total of 75 percent of all American women — three out of four — eat, think and behave abnormally around food.

And despite the stereotype that eating issues affect mostly young women, SELF found that those in their 30s and 40s suffer from disordered eating at virtually the same rates. No wonder, given that we live in a culture that spawns best sellers with titles such as “Skinny Bitch” and fetishizes stick-thin, ageless celebs on tabloid shows and Web sites even as our obesity rate continues to rise. “Dieting is a national pastime for women,” says Margo Maine, Ph.D., an eating disorders specialist in West Hartford, Connecticut. “As a society, we don’t see the problem.”

Indeed, 67 percent of women surveyed (excluding those with diagnosed eating disorders) are trying to lose weight, mirroring the number who are overweight or obese. A few eat nutritiously and exercise moderately. The rest turn to risky tricks: Thirty-five percent use diet pills, 26 percent cut out entire food groups and 13 percent even smoke to slim down, they confessed to SELF.

The result is failure; extreme measures don’t work. Just ask career dieter Kathie, 42, a mother of two in Fairfax Station, Virginia, who asked that we not print her last name. Raised in a clean-your-plate house where sweets were locked away in a metal cabinet in the basement, Kathie went on her first diet at age 10. “A neighbor and I tried to see how long we could go without eating,” she says. “We lasted three days.” Because her access to treats was restricted, Kathie didn’t know how to handle them when she got to college. “The freshman 15 was more like the freshman 80,” she says. “I inhaled everything.” Two decades of dieting followed. “I did the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, Atkins, everything,” Kathie says. “My mother joked that I had my fat closet and my skinny closet, and I could never get rid of my fat clothes. I felt doomed to be fat.”

Kathie is finally on the road to a healthy weight, but not due to dieting. She opted for gastric bypass surgery four years ago and has lost 110 pounds. (She weighs 192.) “I’m raising my kids differently,” she says. “I put food down, and if they’re hungry, they eat it. If not, that’s OK. We have cookies out. The last thing I want is for them to battle their weight their whole life.”

The fact is, Kathie might never have been able to permanently lose weight by restricting her food intake. “Low-calorie dieting — going below 1,200 a day — can cause your metabolism to slow to a crawl,” says Sondra Kronberg, R.D., director of the Eating Disorder Associates Treatment and Referral Center in Westbury, New York. The upshot: You can gain weight on a low-calorie diet because your body will burn off fewer calories and store more of them to protect against starvation.

But not all disordered eaters are obese or even overweight; 53 percent of dieters in our survey are already at a healthy weight and are putting themselves at risk by attempting to change it. “For many women, dieting is about trying to exert control,” Kronberg says. Your job may be stressful and your boyfriend halfway out the door, but you can control what you eat and how often you work out. “When a woman who isn’t overweight tries to drive her body lower than it wants to go, she could do herself permanent harm,” warns Diane Mickley, M.D., director of the Wilkins Center for eating disorders in Greenwich, Connecticut. Without adequate body fat to supply hormones critical to bone health, you can develop an aggressive, irreversible form of osteoporosis as early as your 20s, leaving you with the easily broken bones more common to women in their 70s. Malnutrition can also cause hair loss, brittle nails and even nerve damage.

Dieting can be psychologically harmful, too. How many of us live in a state of misery because of the size of our thighs? A lot: Thirty-nine percent of women say concerns about what they eat or weigh interfere with their happiness. “I exercise every day,” says 30-year-old Alisa, who typically runs an hour on the treadmill and lifts weights for 30 minutes. “If I eat dessert, I run 20 more minutes. I don’t have time for my family and friends,” she says tearfully. “It’s an issue I deal with every day.”

So does 28-year-old Patricia of Nashville, who shuns trendy clothing and covers up in modest outfits because she’s embarrassed by her body. At 5 feet 8 inches and 178 pounds, she admits her overeating pushed her to try laxatives, skip meals and fast, all to no avail. She gave up laxatives because they didn’t keep the pounds off, but Patricia still overeats sometimes, usually fast food. “I don’t want anyone to see me,” she says. So she hits a drive-through, eating two cheeseburgers, fries and a Coke in her car in minutes. “I’m numb while I do it, and I feel guilty afterward,” she says. “I think about food 20 percent of the time.” Four percent think about it nearly every waking moment. “Imagine what women could accomplish if they spent that time and energy on things other than body issues,” Bulik says.

But if you’re dieting, you can’t think about anything else. “Dieting causes you to obsess about food by altering serotonin levels in the brain,” says Timothy D. Brewerton, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. “Diets around 1,000 calories may cause symptoms of depression, such as low sex drive, irritability, anger and social withdrawal.” But even moderate-sounding plans can make you miserable. When Yolanda Castellini, 31, of Clarksville, Tennessee, goes below 1,400 calories a day, “I get physically ill,” she says. “But I’m always on a diet.” At 5″6 inches and 155 pounds, Castellini is just barely overweight but firmly in the calorie-prisoner category. “It’s a cycle,” Dr. Brewerton says. “Women diet to feel and look better, but they inadvertently make themselves feel worse.”

Even skipping a meal — something 37 percent of the women surveyed do regularly to try to lose weight — can cause emotional symptoms within hours. More worrisome, withholding calories can lead to another disordered behavior: repeated binges. Everybody has inhaled too many cookies at one sitting now and then. While not exactly healthy, scarfing whatever’s in reach when your blood sugar is low isn’t technically a binge. What is? Eating an unusually large amount of food quickly and feeling out of control while doing it. One in four women binge. “I do it when I feel rejected, especially in love,” says Rochelle, 41, a teacher in New York City. “I’ve gone from one pizzeria to another, eating slice after slice and worrying whether there were hidden cameras that would record my eating. I’ll eat until I feel sick.”

“Bingers eat instead of dealing with their feelings,” says Kathryn Zerbe, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Jamie, a 31-year-old in Bremerton, Washington, doesn’t know what used to push her to overeat. “My son would be playing, my daughter napping and my husband wasn’t home — that’s when I’d do it,” says the stay-at-home mom. “An entire cake would be gone. I’d feel horrible afterward and wouldn’t eat for the rest of the day. I never got on a scale because I didn’t want to know how much I gained.” Even though she gradually began to eat healthier and lost 34 pounds, “I could eat a cake right now,” she confesses.

Despite her struggle, Jamie is lucky. Often, bingeing causes weight gain and anxiety, in turn leading to calorie restricting, fasting and purging. Even frequent overeating, if not technically bingeing, is risky. “If you habitually push past your satiety boundary, you lose touch with your internal stop signs,” Bulik says, possibly putting you on the road to bingeing and restricting.

The survey also found glimmers of hope in women such as Amey Cramer, 27, of Orrtanna, Pennsylvania, who weighs 210 pounds and says she’s a former food addict. “I used to eat anything I wanted,” she says. “I’d eat when I was happy, sad; it didn’t matter. I felt awful all the time, and one day I realized I can’t do this anymore. I’ve made little changes — exercising three times a week — and already lost 15 pounds,” she says. “I still eat chocolate, but in smaller amounts, and I use olive oil instead of butter. Now I think life is great.” That’s a happy mind-set we can all aspire to.

Diet dangers: What’s normal, what’s not?
All of the habits listed below can be disordered. “The litmus test is whether the behavior negatively affects your health or interferes with your daily functioning,” says clinical psychiatry professor Timothy D. Brewerton, M.D. If you’re worried, see “How to Get (and Stay) Healthy Again.”

• A very strong fear of gaining 5 pounds
• Following strict food rules
• Dieting for more than three-quarters of your life
• Use of diet pills or laxatives
• Fasting or juice cleanses to lose weight
• Overexercising
• Cutting entire food groups from your diet, except for religious reasons
• Eating the same “safe” foods every day
• Extreme calorie restriction
• Thinking about food more than 50 percent of the time
• Obsessive calorie counting
• Intentionally skipping meals to lose weight
• Bingeing or vomiting
• Smoking for weight loss
• Lying about how much you’ve eaten
• Weighing yourself daily, if it becomes obsessive. (See “Weight Debate.”)
• Consistently overeating when you’re not hungry
• Eating a lot of no- or low-calorie foods
• Having concerns about your eating or weight that interfere with your life (e.g., you won’t see the doctor)
• Considering foods to be good or bad
• Visiting pro-anorexia or pro-bulimia Web sites
• Adopting a vegetarian diet solely for weight loss

Can you stop eating when you’ve had enough?
Sure, everybody takes a bite or two (or three) too many now and then — but overdoing it too often may indicate disordered eating. In the SELF survey, we asked women to tell us how much their hunger levels have to do with their eating habits.

Healthy behavior
21% of those surveyed eat only when hungry.
18% rarely eat when they’re not hungry.
49% sometimes eat when they’re not hungry.
12% often eat when they’re not hungry.

Is getting on the scale daily healthy?
It may actually be a trap for some women. Sondra Kronberg, R.D., advises against daily weigh-ins. “The danger is that you may give up on healthy eating or binge if the needle doesn’t drop.” There are other ways to gauge weight and health — like how your clothes fit or whether you can walk 30 minutes without getting winded. But some experts say regular weighing is crucial to maintaining a loss.

Ultimately, the decision comes down to the individual. If small changes on the scale stress you out, focus instead on how eating well and exercising regularly make you feel. But if a daily weight check keeps you honest without causing angst, step right up.

A shocking rise in eating disorders
More than 10 percent of women ages 25 to 45 in our survey have a true eating disorder, separate from the disordered eaters discussed in this story. “This is a very high number, although we can’t compare it to other studies because there really isn’t comparable research,” says Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D. “But when we included women who are just outside the diagnostic boundaries, we found that many more are struggling than we knew. The definitions need to be expanded so women at risk can be treated.” New terms from the American Psychiatric Association aren’t expected until 2012; the current ones are below. (Many of the symptoms are similar to those for disordered eaters but more extreme and/or frequent.) To find a referral to a therapist in your area, go to NationalEatingDisorders.com.

Anorexia may be diagnosed in women who weigh 15 percent below normal for their height and age and who starve their body and do not menstruate because of low body fat but still believe they’re heavy.
Bulimia is defined by binge eating at least twice a week for three months while feeling out of control, followed by self-induced vomiting, starvation or purging.
Binge eating is ingesting an unusually large amount of food very fast while feeling out of control at least twice a week for six months. Binge eaters don’t purge.

How to get (and stay) healthy again
More than one in four women cling to restrictive diet rules (never eating after 6 p.m. or eating only nonfat foods, for instance), fearing they’ll gain pounds without these guidelines. Reality check: “In my practice, relinquishing rules often leads to permanent weight loss,” Bulik says. The formula for success is to add healthy foods and habits rather than restrict or force yourself to overexercise. The payoff will be both psychological (you’ll be happier) and physical — if you treat your body well, chances are it will naturally settle at a healthy weight.

Even out your eating
Disordered eating is all about extremes (too few or too many calories, hating your body when it’s big and loving it when it’s skinny), so a moderate approach can head off unhealthy choices. Step one: Eat breakfast every day, Bulik says. “It’s key to avoiding bingeing later.”

Separate mood from food
The next time a bad day sends you to the cookie jar, walk into another room and set a timer for five minutes, Bulik suggests. While it ticks, talk to yourself: What is bothering you? Is there a better way to deal with it? Even if you do go back to the snacks, you’ll at least have begun examining how your feelings drive your eating, an important first step.

Think differently
Focus on whether you’re getting nine small servings of veggies and fruit every day rather than what you think you need to cut out of your diet. “It’s the difference between having an attitude of self-care and one of punishment,” says Sondra Kronberg, R.D.

Take it slowly
If you do need to lose weight, make doable changes one day at a time: Add a veggie to dinner; take a walk after lunch. If you want help eating healthfully, consult a nutritionist. (Find one near you at EatRight.org.)

Embrace change
“No matter how fit you are when you’re young, your body will be different when you’re older,” Kronberg says. “If you don’t value who you are besides that body, you’re in trouble.” Instead of trying to reclaim the thighs of your youth with brutal workouts, buy clothes that make you look amazing right now.

Find relatable role models
Victoria Beckham? We’re sure she’s a nice person, but as a body type to emulate, she doesn’t make the cut. Choose someone who reflects your values, such as a friend or a more down-to-earth celeb.

Do it for the girls in your life
When you announce in front of children how fat you feel, think about this: Do you want them to hate their body, too? Kids pick up on everything, and you can be a positive role model. Try saying things such as, “I really like the way this dress looks on me,” and unapologetically enjoy a variety of foods around them. Your confidence will send the message that it’s possible to love your body at any size. (msnbc.com)

Alanis Morissette ha confesado a la revista Health que padeció bulimia y anorexia a los 14 años, justo cuando comenzaba a bucear en el mundo de la música.

La actriz considera que estar “en el centro del ojo público” le hizo desestabilizarse y que, para “adormecer esos sentimientos” sufrió un trastorno con la comida que le duró hasta los 18 años, cuando un buen amigo habló con ella del problema. Afirma que lo más gravé duró entre cuatro o seis meses: “apenas comía. Vivía en dieta permanente de tostadas, zanahorias y café”.

Hace unos meses la cantante también se quejaba en la revista Reforma de la frivolidad de los medios de comunicación a la hora de valorar el talento, demasiado pendientes de la imagen.

Esto trae unas consecuencias, no solo para las mujeres y los hombres que cada día llenan los medios de caracteres, sino también para la sociedad en general. Muchas veces olvidamos la importancia de ser auténticos en beneficio de gastar demasiado tiempo cuidando (o lastimando en el caso de algunos excesos) nuestra belleza.

Sin embargo, debemos ser realistas. Todos elegimos hasta qué punto cedemos a la presión y, aunque queramos lograr cosas para lo cual se haga imprescindible nuestra imagen, debemos establecer los límites de lo que estamos dispuesto a hacer o no, igual que los establecemos a lo largo de nuestra vida en otros aspectos.

Solo una nota más. Cada día estas fotos (que son de las más normalitas) pasan desapercibidas por miles de sitios y es cierto que son esos mismos cantantes los que deciden sacarse fotos tan sinuosas, pero ¿no crees que además de la imagen cuenta la responsabilidad social?, ¿el hecho de saber que puedes crear trastornos con ciertas imágenes no es casi tan importante como verte sensualmente impresionante?

Seguramente no, vivimos en un mundo en el que “todo vale” y en el que lo que ocurra al vecino nos es indiferente. Pero no seamos hipócritas, es así porque nosotros hacemos que sea así cada día, no porque el mundo nos lo haya impuesto.

oh da! ce n as da sa ma accepte la emisiune

dar nu stiu daca se va intampla. o sa incep sa lucrez la “CV” … momentan constat cu stupoare ca nu pot dona sange. nu am greutatea care trebuie. ma gandesc sa mi cos bucati de plumb prin haine si sa beau apa muuulta inainte

haha? da, m am uitat la prea multe filme despre eating disorders. clar

ah si la un pint pierzi 650 de calorii (aprox cat iti recolteaza la o donare: 450 ml) o da! i sooo wanna do it!

ew. even the numbers are gross. ugh this fat has got to go.
i’m goin to bed. peace

You guys, not playing around with the TMI tag today. Not to be read while eating!

NTKOG #67: The kind of eating disordered girl who decides to cheat her body out of a few calories by the weirdest method possible. To wit, the “chew up your food then spit it in a bucket” diet.

I am: quite fond of eating. The whole process. Including, y’know, the swallowing step.

I am not: the main character in a Lifetime Movie.

The Scene: My apartment. Ballsy though I am, I couldn’t quite bring myself to trying this one in public, so I picked up a slice of pizza and a piece of carrot cake at the mediocre pizzeria down the street.

None of this food actually made it into my stomach.

For context, The Ex is actually the one who gave me the “chew it up and spit it in a bucket” diet idea. Over the many years we were together, periodically he would jolt up in bed during pillow talk moments and crow, with a just-cured-cancer awe in his voice: “Instead of bulimia, why don’t people just not swallow?! Why don’t they just chew up the food and spit it in a bucket?” My answer: “Uh, ’cause then someone would have to clean the bucket?” But the idea always compelled me, so why not give it a shot.

Once I got the food home, there were two big questions: 1) What am I going to spit the food into?; and 2) omg seriously what the fuck?! Although there wasn’t much to do about the second question, I solved the first by spitting the thoroughly chewed mouthfuls into the paper plate that the pizza came on. (No, I won’t gross you out with pictures. Have you ever vommed pizza? It looked like that.)

I rather expected that the experience of chewing up food and spitting it out — and keeping it in plain sight! — would trigger a for-realsies bulimish response and send me puking immediately, but it honestly wasn’t as gross as I expected. I chewed every mouthful basically down to paste — much more thoroughly than I’d chew a normal slice — and tried to focus on extracting and enjoying as much flavor as possible. And the actual chewing bits were nice, but spitting the bites up on the plate? Kind of reminded me of vomiting, though with less velocity.

I think it’s because when we’re normally chewing food, the high-profile flavors hit your tongue immediately (pepperoni! spicy sauce! gooeyness of cheese!), and in the normal bite-swallow-repeat process, you don’t have time to fully experience the more understated flavors (like how a thick, cardboardy crust has a bland sort of cornmeal sweetness to it). And when do we actually experience those flavors in full? When we’re vomiting, of course.

That, and slick, slippery mouthfuls of pre-chewed food just sort of falling from your lips? Um, yeah. The comparison is pretty close to begin with anyway.

The carrot cake was even weirder, ’cause the cake part was stale and dominated by thick, cold cream cheese frosting. There were really only a few chews in each bite, then I was left with not much to do but swirl some rapidly heating sweetened cream cheese around my tongue before sliming it out onto the plate. You guys. This was just about as attractive as it sounds.

The Verdict: What, are you friggin’ nuts?! Don’t do this. Don’t ever do this. It ruins the taste of good food, provides none of the satisfaction of swallowing and digesting, and makes you look like an absolutely crazy person. Although it is perhaps the least invasive form of psychotically disordered eating, um, maybe let’s all agree to just actually eat food like normal people and maybe not freak out if we go a few calories over?

Sorry, The Ex, to put a damper on your diet scheme, which is brilliant on paper. But all this ended up accomplishing was filling my Scottish-Jewish heart with guilt for wasting $5 on food I didn’t eat, and forcing me to take out my trash in the middle of the day. ’cause, I mean, ugh.
___

Guys, even without gross-out “after” pictures of the process, can we all agree this is totes a TMI Thursday? Keep up the appetite-suppressin’ bloggy goodness by stopping by LiLu’s awesome blog and checking out her TMI Thursday archives.

I’m so pumped for my fast! I can’t wait! in 28 day’s I should weigh around 117lbs. ah it’s wonderful. and i’m not gonna cave or have to worry about my mom being on my back. i already told her i’m going to be fasting after Thanksgiving and she was fine with it so, I’m pretty sure that just means she know’s I’m fat too. :/. Anyhoo. I’ve been looking at thinspo all day and reading pro ana blogs. I’ve also been…eating…alot. it’s so stupid! i can’t even remember half the crap that went into my mouth today. tommorow will NOT be repeat. I have no desire to have to fast longer than 28 days. hmmm what else….I’ve been really bored all day. I’ve been ether on the computer or watching TV. I think it’s becasue I stayed home insead of going to school today – I just didn’t feel like it lol. and my mom let me stay home so w/e and don’t go thinking i’m gonna flunk out or anything. I’m a senior with straight a’s. I like flip out when I get a grade lower than a 90 lol. well that’s all I have to write about. talk to you chickies later

peace love and skinny

Well I decided to make this blog to see if I prefer it to xanga really lol. if you want to read some of my old blogs go here. I’m pretty open and I type what’s on my mind so I’m fun lol. lets see. I’m starting a 28 day water fast the day after Thanksgiving and I can’t wait. I’m gonna put up a page about what happens on a 28 day water fast and how it burns FAT not MUSCLE contrary to popular belief. and I’ll be putting up a lot of other useful links. and if anybody has any questions or just wants to talk or just needs some support comment me and I will definitely not leave you hangin’ =)

I’m sure you have all heard Kate Moss is in trouble again! Seriously, she walks away from one problem, and into the next. For someone so successful she doesn’t seem to have a head on her shoulders. But I’ll leave that rant for another day. When asked in an interview with a fashion news website called WWD if she had a motto, Moss was quoted as saying: “There are loads. There’s ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’ That’s one of them.”

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”? Hmm personally I’ll have to disagree but of course I would. I’m one of the lucky women who know that being “skinny” is NOT sexy. I don’t know what the perfect weight or perfect figure is and frankly I don’t want to. At the moment I am reading a book called “The Secret”. There is a chapter dedicated to being healthy and watching your weight. We can use what is called The Creative Process to CHOOSE our weight. I’m not here to “preach” or try make you believe what I believe. But I realised I have followed this way of thinking way before I was ever introduced to the book and I will continue to follow this way. Because I believe in this way of thinking I now know that I am my weight because I know I’m not fat and know I never will be. It’s quite hard for anyone who hasn’t read the book to believe in this way if thinking so I’m moving on from the subject. And like I said before I am not here to start convincing anyone to believe me. Everyone has their own way of dealing with weight and no should be told what to do when it comes to controlling their weight but I feel strongly about the fact that no one needs to deprive themselves of food or cause harm to their body when doing so. Everyone has their own way of thinking and if you believe in the likes of diet pills, counting calories and the other tortures to staying slim. That’s your business.

Looking at someone who is too slim makes me uncomfortable, everyday it’s all we read about and it’s sad to think we have to be categorised by our weight and the way we look. Too be honest I’m delighted I’m not a celebrity having to deal with that everyday. I actually feel quite sorry for them. The fact that Kate Moss said something so ridiculous really annoyed me. This woman is a Mum to seven year old Lila! A Mum is every daughter’s role model. How can she say something like that and not expect her daughter to follow her footsteps?! I have a little sister, I have young cousins, and I have friends both old and young. I know they will never feel they need to be skinny or go through any harmful procedures to become skinny. That’s because they are smart. If there is anyone out there who is suffering from illnesses such as anorexia or bulimia, I pray that you recover and that you see sense before you seriously harm your body. Reading about this Kate Moss scandal, I found out there is such a thing called pro-anorexia sites. PRO!! Maybe I’m being completely naive again but I couldn’t believe there was such a thing and that these sites are allowed to actually operate. I decided to have a look at these websites, what a bad idea! My blood boiled when reading! Whoever decided to set this website up makes it all very convincing. She calls it “beauty”? Shame on her! Although I refuse to name these websites in fear of anyone visiting them, let me show you what I read:

“Because of how it started, and because of the nature of human beings, this is site on the surface is about eating disorders. You rarely see people going online and searching for “fatspiration” or “how do I get obese. I guess in sense, this is IS about anorexia and about eating disorders, but it is about so much more. XXXXX is about acceptance; about confidence; about opinions that we all hold within ourselves about how we see ourselves and how the world sees is. This site, in the most general sense, and also at its core, is about the word “beauty.” Just as I said that you won’t find people going around and searching for “how do I get fat” online, you also won’t find them going around and looking for “how do I become ugly.” You won’t find ads on popular sites trying to sell products on getting fat or ugly.

But what is fat? What is ugly? Are these just terms related to beauty in the same way “slow” could be related to running? Different cultures define beauty in different ways. Within cultures, different people define beauty in different ways. And even people, at different phases in their lives, may define beauty in different ways. If one thing is certain, it’s that people have different opinions, and these can change depending on where you are, what you’re life looks like, and even what century you were born into. This site is about beauty. This may be the one place where it is okay to say “this is what I define beauty as.” You determine what you want for yourself, and for once, be in a place where people will respect you for it. It may not be what they want for themselves; it may not be how they view beauty. But that doesn’t mean YOU have to see it their way to be their friend. It doesn’t mean that you have to be one way or another to respect them.”

Basically, this website refers to the promotion of anorexia nervosa (pro-ana) and bulimia (pro-mia) as a lifestyle choice rather than an eating disorder. In my opinion half of what is above doesn’t actually make sense? Not only reading it, the photos I have just seen are unbelievable. It makes me sick to my stomach. These young and beautiful looking girls are sending images of themselves into this website for others to see! There is also a section called ‘pictures of the week’. I’m repulsed, I really am. I really can’t believe it. I’m in complete shock! These websites should be banned! And I hope any parents who allow their children to use a computer, blocks them. I hope to god anyone who reads this blog can honestly smile over how their body looks. Because the images I just saw are NOT beautiful! Everything and anything about being skinny is not beautiful, and I know neither is being obese/over-weight (I won’t be completely naive and patronising here). But please don’t put your body through anything to become ‘skinny’ whatever ‘skinny’ is. Appreciate you taking the time to read this.

KT_H

In my online wanderings I came across a site that caught my attention and so I spent a bit of time checking it out.  After some communication with the owner (Angela) I am offering the site as a resource on this blog.  The name of the site is  “The Silent Suffering”  and can be found by clicking   HERE.     Angela has created a beautiful site with many resources.  Angela has a heart to help others and more importantly a heart for God.  Allan

The following is taken from “The Silent Suffering.”

WHY CREATE THIS WEBSITE?

Because I have had anorexia for 20 years.

Because I have a story to tell.

Because God wants to do something through me.

Because my eating disorder has taken everything from me except my life.  But it’s come close to taking that, too.

Because I have a deep desire to help others who struggle and I don’t want them to have to go through all that I have.

Because eating disorders are some of the most misinterpreted, misunderstood illnesses in existence.

Because even medical care professionals don’t always “get it”.

Because there is a dire need for education and awareness.

Because sufferers and families need support.

Because eating disorders kill.

WHY “THE SILENT SUFFERING”?

Because contrary to popular belief, eating disorders are not an affliction of the spoiled, or a disease of vanity.

Because eating disorders are not always visible to the eye.  Not everyone is emaciated.  Not every eating disordered person who gains weight is “recovered”.  You don’t have to look like you have an eating disorder to have one.

Because an eating disorder is not about food, or weight.

Because eating disorders come from hurt, pain, and loss, and cause a deep, scarring torment that never fully leaves.

Because the worst pain cannot be seen. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not real, or that you can’t feel it.

Son dos enfermedades muy frecuentes, sobre todo en las chicas jóvenes, como consecuencia de la importancia que se concede al aspecto físico, influye a muchas personas que se sienten descontentas con su imagen.

La Anorexia nerviosa es una enfermedad mental que consiste en una pérdida de peso derivada de un intenso temor a la obesidad y conseguida por la propia persona que enferma a través de una serie de conductas.

Síntomas de la anorexia:

•    Negativa a mantener el peso corporal por encima de un peso normal mínimo para edad y altura
•    Intenso temor a aumentar de peso o engordar, aun cuando tenga peso insuficiente.
•    Percepción distorsionada del peso, tamaño o figura de su cuerpo.
•    En las mujeres, la ausencia de por lo menos tres ciclos menstruales consecutivos
•    Sentimiento de culpa o desprecio por haber comido
•    Hiperactividad y ejercicio físico excesivo
•    Excesiva sensibilidad al frío
•    Cambios en el carácter (irritabilidad, tristeza, insomnio, etc.).

La Bulimia nerviosa es un trastorno mental que se caracteriza por episodios repetidos de ingesta excesiva de alimentos en un corto espacio de tiempo en forma de “atracones” y una preocupación exagerada por el control del peso corporal que lleva a la persona afectada a adoptar conductas inadecuadas y peligrosas para su salud.

Síntomas de la bulimia:

•    Se comienza con dietas para mejorar el aspecto físico.
•    El deseo de comer alimentos dulces y ricos en grasas es muy fuerte.
•    Los sentimientos de ira, cansancio, ansiedad, soledad o aburrimiento provocan la aparición de ingesta compulsivas.
•    Después de un acceso se siente una gran culpa o se ensayan diferentes métodos para eliminar lo ingerido (vómitos provocados, laxantes, etc.).
•    Ansiedad o compulsión para comer.
•    Vómitos.
•    Abuso de medicamentos laxantes y diuréticos.
•    Seguimiento de dietas diversas.
•    Deshidratación.
•    Alteraciones menstruales.
•    Aumento y descensos de peso bruscos.
•    Aumento de caries dentales.

Fuentes:

http://www.educar.org/articulos/bulimiayanorexia.asp

http://www.geosalud.com/Nutricion/anorexia_bulimia.htm

http://www.todoanaymia.com/

To the old man with balding white hair, glasses, wearing the black windbreaker and drinking his coffee while he was barreling down Cliff Drive in Newport Beach this morning while you drove an oversized, raised Ford F150 that screeched before it almost hit me in the crosswalk I would like to say a few words to you… I REALLY DON’T LIKE YOU and THANK YOU.

I REALLY DON’T LIKE YOU because  you put me into fear of paralysis and wheelchair aerobics to the tune of Richard Simons for the rest of my existence and THANK YOU because you gave me one of the 3rd biggest wake up calls of my life……

How much time have I spent past and present obsessing over the imperfections of my body? Way too much. How much time have I argued that if only I ran 6 miles a day and not just 3, my life would be so much better? Insanely too much. How often have I been thankful that all of my limbs work and are fully functioning? Not enough. How often do I thank God for making me a healthy, beautiful woman who can go get any job and travel anywhere in the world without physical hesitations? Never…until today.

When I saw the crosswalk sign flash the little blue person walking I didn’t look both ways I simply, arrogantly ran. Taking for granted that not only could I walk, but I could run and that given the present space and time I was fully desrving of running and not getting hit by a car or a truck for that matter. But, that truck came so close to me that I just froze as it halted just a foot away from my whole body. I was smack dab in front of it. How lucky am I that I wasn’t hit? How lucky am I that I writing this blog without a scratch on my body. So lucky. Sooo sooo sooo lucky!

Today, I am grateful that that truck almost hit me because it has put my body into a new perspective to me. All day I have seen my hands typing, making art, picking up a child, hugging a friend, I have seen my feet walk to my car to go buy my favorite Pumpkin Spice Latte and hold the arm of a little girl while her Dad and I swing her in the air on 1…2….3!!!!! I’m grateful for my body just the way it is today…healthy. It’s my goal to accept my body just the way it is….beautiful, healthy and perfect in this very moment.

Thank you again little old man with “Big Truck Syndrome” you gave me a gift by almost mauling me into Dover Drive….the gift of “Gratitude for the moment.” Thank you..thank you…thank you…

xoxo

HonestChitChat

I read one quote about love today by Theodor Storm… “Liebe ist nichts als die Angst des sterblichen Menschen vor dem Alleinsein” (Love is no more than the fear of the mortal human being of being alone). Storm was deep inside a romantic, while he uses his own experience with love and the painful truth of suffering through rejection and unfulfilled love. So true.
And then I watched new moon and again “love and pain” was the leading theme. In which Bella would put herself into danger just to see him and just to get the vision of being close. Love is so powerful it decides over us whether we ask her for or not, pain is the result no matter what and as many before also Bella agrees that the pain is what eventually shows her she is alive.
I try to tell myself the same thing each day and maybe that is why I am hurting myself. I need the security of being alive. Being in control is one way, but a painful way, because no one can ever control everything and even though my urge to be perfect is so incredibly strong it will in the end just leave me wounded and scared.
I have no sense of what else could be right, whatsoever, I am looking to find the answers to my nightly questions, the key to the lock of myself bearing the power of my soul to lead this life. I am lost still and all I do is try and all I can do is keep moving towards the right direction, whatever that may be.

I think she's got a case of the terminally unique.

OK.  There is a phrase called “terminally unique” that is used in various recovery forums.  Broken down, this can refer to thoughts individuals have such as:

“No one has ever felt this way before.  I’m so alone in this feeling.  No one’s as isolated, or weird, or as quirky as me.”

In other words, think of the hipsters you see on Comm Ave in Allston.

All joking aside, I’m sure we can all connect to this feeling on some level or another.  (All of you – especially you theater kids – cannot escape this one.)  At some point in our lives, we’ve all been in a crap mood, sitting on the sidelines and thinking there is just. no. one. as. lonely/special yet single/depressed. as. I. am.  For the average individual, this feeling is awful, yet bearable.  For the person who struggles with any kind of addiction, this kind of thinking can be fatal.  I’m not being dramatic.  It really is.  For this kind of reasoning leads to depression, which leads to isolation, which leads to addictive behaviors.  (Because addictive behaviors are CLEARLY one’s best friend when no one is around!)

I will very readily admit I have a case of the terminally unique, and I think this kind of existence can be very prevalent in girls and women with eating disorders.  Why?  Think about a starved woman.  She stands out from others.  It’s a visual way of communicating to the world that something is off-balance, but also a way of communicating that she can perform an inhuman feat that no one else can: extreme self-discipline.  Therefore, terminally unique. 

This concept is the reason I cherished my “glamorous” city existence for so long, ripe with pomegranate martinis, Carrie Bradshaw-inspired outfits, and knowledge of all the trendy restaurants.  I wanted to be one of Boston’s young and beautiful.  And to be that, I had to be thin.  When I was really sick in 2005, I remember hanging out solo in Fenway at Boston Beer Works.  Some guy had temporarily attached himself to my arm because of our terminally unique shared fondness for blueberry beer.  He pinched his forefinger and thumb around my tiny arm, smiled, and sputtered incredulously,

“You’re so….tiny!  Oh my God, I love it.”

Therefore driving the ball out of the park in the means of cementing my belief that you had be super skinny to get a guy, or to do anything in life for that matter.  But I digress.

Now that I’ve got that shpiel out of the way, let me segue into current varying schools of thought in the eating disorder research and educational world.  When eating disorders were first getting talked about and treated, doctors and therapists thought that it was mainly a social disease.  In other words, they thought eating disorders were different from disorders like autism and schizophrenia, which have a genetic component.  Well, just recently, scientists have started to figure out that there is a genetic component to eating disorders (i.e., the hypothalamus is shaped differently in the brains of eating disordered clients, all anorexics and bulimics contain susceptibility genes, etc).  As I blogged in an earlier post, Aimee Liu recently wrote an informed book, Gaining, about the genetic component to eating disorders.

Let me start by saying that I agree with Aimee: there is most certainly a genetic component to this disease.  Also, her book provided me with various studies that delineated the different subdivisions of anorexic and bulimic personality traits (which are different).  However, I reject her rejection of Caroline Knapp and others who continue to fight the battle against the social forces which are clearly a factor in the development of an eating disorder. 

I stand by my old biopsychosocial model – any mental illness or disorder is caused by a combination of biological, psychological and social factors.  Not one alone.

In Appetites, Caroline Knapp contends that most white, affluent, over-educated women struggle with a sense of self-deprivation that is similar to what anorexics experience.  In Gaining, Aimee disputes this, asking the question, “And do all white, affluent, educated women in fact feel compelled to deprive themselves?” 

Maybe not all, but I’d wager that about 95% of the women reading this blog have struggled with their literal and metaphorical appetites at one point or another.

In her blog, Life After Recovery (http://www.eatingdisordersblogs.com/life_after_recovery/), Aimee critiques Michelle’s Lelwica’s book The Religion of Thinness.  She writes:

“I’m afraid that Lelwica and I are looking at the same picture from two very different perspectives. She’s standing at a distance and painting the landscape with a broad brush, while I’m looking close enough to see the actual faces and lives of individuals.  She’s including every woman who looks at fashion magazines or thinks twice about having a hot fudge sundae.  I’m interested in the factors that distinguish those who easily maintain a healthy weight from those who are psychologically enslaved by their obsessions.”

This is what I fear: that Aimee’s dismissal of social and psychological commentary further propagates the terminal uniqueness that only makes eating disordered women more enslaved by their illness.

Why?  To say all eating disordered women possess these similar genetic traits may isolate the one girl out there who doesn’t quite fit into the bulimic or anorexic genetic jackpot.  She may think, “See?  I don’t fit into the anorexic stereotype.  Therefore, I must be too fat or not sick enough.”  (Thereby establishing her terminal uniqueness, even from other eating disordered women.  As she throws up her breakfast.)

Don’t get me wrong.  Aimee has made a huge contribution to the field, and I cannot thank her enough.  However, I am wary of her tendency to discount women writers who recognize the dangerousness of the media.  It is out there, and it is a dangerous force.  I worry that she is isolating the field and not uniting it.  I worry that she is isolating women, instead of joining them in a battle against an unhealthy society.

PS, I consumed an entire Ghiradelli chocolate bar in the writing of this entry, clad in sweats and glasses.  Am I cured from my own terminal uniqueness?  Nah, not cured, but definitely on my way.

(Image provided by me.)

Eating disorder recovery is no easy task…

I feel very lonely and lost without my eating disorder. I want more then anything right now to have it back. It’s still there, waiting  inside me, but faded and has definitely dwindled…I don’t like this at all. I wish I was healthy enough to say, “GOOD, GETTHEFUCKOUT AND LEAVE ME ALONE” but I can’t. I don’t know what I’m doing. I want it back. I want it back so bad.

For awhile, I’ve avoided pro ED sites and things online but I find myself going back once in awhile, more and more. I miss the chat, I miss meal plans, life plans, schedules for myself. I miss goals. I miss scheduling every second of my life, based around food. Why? When I say it I’m like, “Why would anyone miss that?” and I still have no idea. I do though.

I can’t stand the way I look. 131 pounds. 131 POUNDS. It’s the most I’ve weighed in my entire life. I could I let myself get this way? It’s 20 lbs heavier then I’d like to be. I can’t believe I look like this. I can’t believe I look like THIS. My brother lifted me up the other night and carried me. He said, “Whoa, you’re heavy” when he has ALWAYS, ALWAYS said, “You weigh like, nothing!” every other time he’s lifted me. What a good fucking time to say that. When I’m doing so “well” and then he says that and it throws me off and I KNOW I’m heavier now then I was before. Why did he say it? WHY did he SAY IT?!!!

I’m so stressed tonight and sad and I don’t want to eat again. I miss being hungry. I miss being starving. I miss flat tummy and being dizzy. I want it all back. Again, why? WHY? Why am I so fucked up that I want to digest nothing but tea and diet pills? What’s wrong with me? There’s something wrong with me.

I don’t want to eat.

I don’t want to purge.

I won’t do either.

Gain a new body shape. Why weight any longer?

By 2050 nine out of ten people are expected to be overweight or obese. (YouGov study on behalf of the British Society of Gastroenterology 23.11.09).

Diets such as Atkins have proliferated – as have weight reduction services such as Weight Watchers and Lighter Life – and yet the numbers of people concerned with weight issues has risen exponentially.

Perhaps the problem has less to do with the physical action of eating food and more to do with the psychology of wanting to eat, that lies beneath food issues.

Does being overweight contribute to low self-esteem – or is the opposite the case?

Professor Chris Hawkey, President of the British Society of Gastroenterology made a key speech on Monday 23^rd November that the “problem facing our society is not the content of our diet but the quantity we are consuming and the consequential impact on obesity. We need to do away with quirky diets and get people to realise what will keep them healthy in the long run.”

He believes that the obsession with extreme diets has led to mass undermining of well balanced nutrition. This will lead to dramatically shortened life expectancy caused by obesity and an upsurge in obesity-caused liver disease.

Extreme diets and slimming aids can lead to short term weight loss but rarely work in the long term. Each year globally £30 billion is spent on the diet and slimming industry.

The Study by YouGov found that 62% of those questioned think that obesity will continue to grow for the next ten years. It found that 49% of Britons classify themselves as overweight.

But what if the problem is about self-perception rather than actual weight?

We at Powerchange are developing a psychologically-based programme for people who want to lose weight (or to put it more accurately) regain control over their weight but don’t know how to motivate themselves. It will not be a diet or nutrition-based plan.

Possible psychological causes for both obesity and other weight-related conditions such Bulimia and Anorexia can include: 

• Low self-esteem
• Victim syndrome
• Family learned behaviour
• Unhappiness
• Feeling trapped in other areas of life
• Low motivation and lack of life goals

I am about to empirically test whether people can recapture control over their bodies by first re-wiring certain limiting beliefs. The initial one-day pilot programme will ask the participants to work through a series of psychological tools to enable them to restore self-esteem and control over their thinking before exploring new methods of motivating willpower. The aim will not be to simply lose weight but to gain a new body shape through taking back responsibility for the body and what goes into it.

If you are interested in this new pilot study please respond by emailing roy@powerchange.com or by phoning 01903  744399.  What have you got to lose?

I find it interesting to look at the way society judges people. Self-consciousness is a trait people are told to shake off but then so is self-confidence.

Gok Wan’s show focuses on women with no self-confidence. They are told to tell themselves they are beautiful and walk down a runway to the cheers of their friends and family.

The cheers are short lived, if that person continues with the attitude that they look so good, they will soon be told that they are self-obsessed.

As a size 0 in 2006

I am very honest about the eating disorder I developed when I was 15. I look in the mirror and I see somebody who is ugly. I cover myself with pretty clothes and tell the world I’m sexy, but inside I feel hideous.

People judge that I am full of myself, when the reality is that if I projected what I really thought, I wouldn’t be any fun to be around.

My choice has been to feel ugly but to tell the world I am beautiful, that way, maybe one day I will come to believe it.

Yesterday afternoon I fell off the wagon. Well, let’s face it; I didn’t just fall off the wagon because while I was lying dazed and confused, I was then repeatedly run over by the damn thing. So, what caused the wagon carnage?

I reside in Happyville, the place where I went to university. One of the reasons why I still live in Happyville is because of Sunday lunch. As a fresher I joined various societies and one society in particular invited all students to regular Sunday lunches. These lunches provided an opportunity for us to get to know other students and also other non-studenty types (grown ups or ‘real people’). I can rarely recall a Sunday passing when I haven’t gone out with friends for Sunday lunch.

Over the years many friends have come and gone but a (hard?!)core group of us remain and chose to remain because we put down roots in Happyville. In part, some of these roots can be attributed to the role that Sunday lunch played in providing something constant in an otherwise chaotic and ivory tower like student bubble.

On Sundays I see friends who still live in Happyville but many friends choose to return from other towns and cities where jobs or families have taken them because of Sunday lunch. When I started flirting with my eating disorder I told myself that I’d know I had a problem if I started skipping Sunday lunch. As the eating disorder began to take hold I still went to lunch on Sunday because it afforded the opportunity to eat ‘properly’ once a week.

Yesterday I went to lunch and as I was eating I began to feel my stomach filling up, a sensation which fills me with disgust and signals a lack self control. I knew what was coming. I could not continue to justify breaking the rules, MY rules in this way. Yet, I smiled, laughed, joked and maintained the façade of being OK.

I walked home from lunch filled with self loathing, each step I took towards home was filled with a combination of relief (vile fattening calorie laden food will go!) and dread (I would have to account for this in treatment). Such was the urgency to expel my lunch and guilt I didn’t bother to take off my coat before I started to make myself sick. I needed to regain my control and that despicable lunch had to leave. No ifs, no buts, it was going, it must be gone.

Since starting treatment three weeks ago I have resisted making myself sick. I suspected the various handouts I had been given would say something about what to do if this situation arose. As I flicked through various papers containing text, diagrams and graphs I found a sheet that said ‘if you make yourself sick, the meal/snack does not count as part of regular eating’. I took from this that in order to adhere to my treatment plan that I should eat again. I was still full from lunch and resembled a balloon that needed to be popped so I ate a cereal bar.

The voice, that voice would not be silenced and I felt no relief. I’d fallen off the wagon so I did the logical thing and broke the rules. Again. I’ve spent weeks at a time caught up in the cycle of binging and purging and eventually the cycle was interrupted in the form of a friend calling me on Skype.

Where does this leave me? Today my body is broken and my mind feels sad. I am losing the will to fight this battle. I am trying to hold to the notion that I have a life to live for; friends, family, a job and a career ahead of me but I’m slowly but surely slipping away from those things as I continue on this path of self destruction.

Since I outed myself as writing a book, a few people have asked me what it’s about. I have a notorious relationship with the “about” word – one of my favorite quotes about writing is from the poet Heather McHugh, who said, “Poetry is not about about.” But the fact is, it has to be about something, and I have to be willing to confront what that something is.

Yesterday, I heard myself telling someone, “It’s about finding my voice – and using it.” Other days, I think it’s about my Om-Shalom, East-West, Jewish-Buddhist journey. Oh, and motherhood. And practice. And self-acceptance, redefining achievement, making a life.

Yesterday afternoon, after a weekend crammed full of visits and parties, I crashed. My mind kept trying to pull me into the “why?” place and the “should” place – why am I feeling this way, I should do such and such differently. I made a conscious attempt to stay in my body instead. I just sat in a chair at the kitchen table describing to Greg the energy I was feeling, the yucky, roiling around, full of birthday cake, overdrawn energy. That alone helped. He went out for a run and I made dinner while the girls splashed and fought and played in the bathtub.

When he got back around 5:30, it was officially nighttime and Aviva and Pearl were in their pj’s eating dinner. “Want to go power it out?” he asked. I haven’t been running since my hernia surgery, but I have been walking, and walking more than running is historically where I have connected with my power, my sense of stride or swagger, my whole arms-swinging, foot-pounding, angel-talking body. Greg asking the question got me out the door, even though I had just eaten a huge bowl of pasta and was feeling sluggish.

I practiced just letting my body be full as I sped up the dirt path across the street and then down the hospital steps and up the hospital steps and down and up and down again, then through campus and neighborhoods and campus again to the dark track and even darker bike path, by which point I was crying, talking out loud, raging at people who have died, realizing what I’ve learned from them, coming to some conclusions, and then letting those go too.

And at one point, I had this thought: I am writing a book about bulimia. It felt like a bummer to admit it, but at least on some level it’s undeniable.

It’s true and it isn’t the whole truth, but it’s the part of the truth that feels ugly, the part that’s the most hidden, shameful, unattractive, difficult. The part I’m the least inclined to say out loud. I want the book to be about other things, shinier things. But at this point, I think the book is trying to tell ME what it’s about, rather than the other way around. There’s more to write, and I’m finding that I’m going there, writing new things, trying to write from the gut and not the head.

And then, there was this stroke of brilliance. Jew-limia. This was a Greg-ism early this morning as I was describing some of this to him. I first heard it as “Giulimia” and immediately pictured Rudolph Giuliani as bulimic, which struck me as funny. But then I understood. It’s ugly, yes. It’s over, we get that. But the aftershocks – all these years later finding my voice and using it – are inseparable from the experience of binging and purging as a teenager, of staying small, of keeping things in and not knowing how to get them out in a way that could be powerful rather than self-destructive.

All of this is inseparable from my journey spiritually, my journey as a mama, as a life coach. It is all one journey. Sure, I could sit here and say that I don’t know what this has to do with being Jewish (besides for the fun word play), but is that true? Do I really not know? Or is saying “I don’t know” just false modesty or avoidance?

The only way past is through. And here’s the thing: this is serious stuff. So many women are disappearing themselves, denying their huge spirits, feeling powerless. It is not okay. This may sound like a cliche, but if telling the truth about my experience and making some sense of it in the larger context of my life’s journey can help even one person, then it will have been worth it to risk being so exposed.

So for today, here’s to Jew-limia, to honoring all the parts of our journeys, ourselves, to owning what we know to be true. Here’s to writing my heart out, and pounding the pavement, and looking right at the ugliness, and raging at the ones who left us, and letting our pulse rates get out of hand with the blood that is coursing through our veins. Here’s to opening hearts and mouths and letting the words, the sounds and the fury, come pouring out. Here’s to being alive.

Image: Silent Scream by Chitra Arunasalam

I’m eating, I am not purging, not even working out, I am gaining weight – I can feel it – I am miserable in my body, but I wanna be ok. I am ok. And yet I just want to lose 8 more pounds to be happy. Just 8. It’s not working though, because I eat. But everytime I start restricting I realize that it is not right, that I need to eat, that I need to be ok. And I want to be ok but I want to be thin, skinny, small… whatever… but I am so big and I hate to see my body in the mirror. I compare myself each and every day and feel huge. I evaluate pictures of myself and feel horrible. 8 more pounds to happiness. And I was thinking, if I would gain 8 pounds I would be devastated. Never ever do I want to weigh more again in my life. But then I sometimes see girls who are a bit bigger and they are just so beautiful and pretty and you can tell they love the way they look, they may even love everything about them. And I see imperfection, too, understanding that it makes you unique and special… but I still want to be perfect in every way.
It really is an internal struggle fought on the outside – the physical look of my body. It is ridiculous. I used to be happy every now and then, even at times when I was bigger. But I always carried those thoughts within me, this voice, which I managed to oppress successfully at times. Maybe I need to confront it, maybe I need to argue with it to make it go away. I should try.
I actually set up an assessment day for Intensive Treatment. It is expensive which sucks and I have been spending a lot of money again lately (I always do that when I know that I need it for something else, something important… I just waste my money). I’m not sure if treatment is the right thing for me. But maybe it is. I need to find out, so December 7th I’m taking that one step.

Then I realized that men show interest in me. Everytime I went out in the last couple of weeks, I met someone. But I am drinking each time and I am basically pretty ridiculous. Anyway, I realized that I am not ready for a relationship, that I am probably not really sure what I want in or from a man. I met a lot of different kind of men and they are all interesting in their own way. Even though I am seeing M. now for about 2 months and I like him, and we can talk openly and all that, I am not sure if I really want him to be in my life so much. I am thinking and comparing everything with D.. He is just not leaving me. And I just don’t want to commit to someone right now but at the same time I want stability and security in my life. I don’t know why I think a man could give that to me, but it’s always good to know that someone may be thinking about you, that someone cares and that someone is there if you are in need. And of course, caring for someone, loving someone and making someone happy is just as satisfying if not better. I love to be loved and I love to love, but in the past I made painful experiences only. In the end I was always left alone, rejected and broken in pieces. It’s hard to pick them up each time and puzzle them back together. There are certainly a lot of scares and missing pieces. But does that mean I should give up now? I have always believed. But maybe I should start believing in myself.
Will 8 pounds help?

Disease

So every so often I get off my ranting high horse  and ignore the issues at hand and just give you a plain old update of how I’m doing in this thing called life.

This post may be a combination of all three, although the ranting will be considerably tamed down.

For the past few months, I’ve noticed a lot of changed with my body.  Not feeling well in general.  I’ve gotten sick more often than normal.  Some general symptoms I won’t go into here because of TMI.  And, of course, the unexplained weight gain, which I have talked about in other entries.

We chalked it up to stress.  We chalked it up to post-surgery healing.  We chalked it up to side effects of my medications.

But if I learned one thing during this heart journey over the past several months it’s that if you know something is wrong with your body, if you can feel in every cell, don’t settle for maybes or ifs or perhaps.  Settle for answers.

This previous week I saw my regular internist and was, as usual, frustrated that regardless of me doing everything right to get back to my goal weight, it has plateaued at this higher-than-normal-for-my-height spot.  Significantly so.

In March and August I had elevated TSH levels–just under the limit for hypothryoidism.  Then the next test would come back normal.  Well, my last TSH was above the limit.  Enough to make it clear that my “thyroid gland has been slowly petering out” (words of my doctor).

It was a relief.  On many levels.  I could finally say it wasn’t my fault.  I could say I was right, that all of these strange symptoms were related and not just stress or due to surgery.  I could take a pill and hopefully see and feel improvement.

What makes me angry is that the TSH level was ordered while I was in the hospital in October.  A month ago.  Meaning the doctors there ignored it.  Which falls into this pattern of “You’re just a head case so we aren’t going to listen to your symptoms” that I’ve gotten from almost all doctors.  Cardiologists (it’s just the eating disorder.  stay hydrated.).  Psychiatrists (“Well, you don’t have a UTI according to this lab result” — at the hospital in October after me complaining of a bunch of symptoms.  None of which got any further attention.)

How much of my own mental well being would have been buoyed by me knowing what was going on in my body, by me not thinking it’s all in my head?  Why do doctors think that just because we have a diagnosis of mental illness on our charts we don’t know when something is wrong with our physical bodies, that we aren’t histrionic or a hypochondriac?  A doctor’s job should be to make sure that his or her patient is in sound condition.  But if we aren’t even listened to, how will that happen?

My advice, if you don’t get an answer, go to another person.  You are the consumer.  You have the right to be heard, and when it comes to your health, you need to be heard.

It’s about time people stopped asking me that.  I’d like to be able to say “great, thanks!” and mean it; at times I wouldn’t mind saying, “I’ve had a bad day” or “my weekend was a bit shit”.  I bore myself  having to change the subject from the unvoiced thought that, my whole life’s a disaster, I’m a complete waste of space/time, everything I do is doomed to failure, I’m a fucked-up mental and have been for years, for as long as I can remember now you’ve made me think about it you cheerful little shitter; how about you, my love?

Well it’s been worse since i put on what feels like 15 to 20 tonnes but i realise is more like 15 to 20 kilos.  I stepped on the bathroom scales again this morning even though I shouldn’t have done: not my scales, not even my bathroom, no longer my own person with my own place to call my own.  Not my body, not my choice, no control which I lost long ago even if I had the will to resist.

Resist what?  The insistence of others to consume, like a westernised pig, consume, pig, resume?  The strange, unsatisfying, horrifying ‘fix’, all the worst of i hate, things I never want to shove into my face but still i do it and, panicked, force it back up inadequately, hoping no-one will hear, cleaning up the traces around the toilet bowl hurriedly afterwards, convinced most of it’s still inside my overstretch stomach?

As the years go by I flip from anorexia to bulimia, bulimia to anorexia, back again, back again, no warning; I hate both.  Worst is when i’m so tired and depressed I can’t muster the energy to throw up and I put weight on so fast my whole body aches like I’ve taken a hammering from a shower of stale buns.

I’m too disgusted and ashamed to admit what number the scales spat back at me.  I haven’t been this enormous for nearly a decade but for all their bullshit, none of these people who make me “talk about it” actually care or will actually listen or try to understand; they just pretend to for a while, long enough to be polite in order to try and convince me otherwise.

Well enough of that now.  Why should their rules be the rules?  For all the crap about acceptance and pride in who you are, it never occurs to people that maybe some of us don’t want to conform the some kind of normality imposed by someone else.  Yeah yeah health health blah blah whatever.  Their ‘guidelines’ change every fucking week.  None of us are going to live forever and so what?  I often admire people who live their way, not by conventional rules.  And the fact is, a lot of people seriously aren’t happy living by rules imposed by a fucked up society.

The fact is i was happier when i was at that certain weight, not because everything was perfect but certain things were different and i didn’t hurt all over.  I fit into my clothes, I wasn’t repulsed by myself constantly, I didn’t binge and purge several times a day, I wasn’t terrified to eat a full meal, I didn’t mind if people saw my arms or legs, I didn’t dread going out in the evenings and desperately want to hide away because I was “too fat to go out”.  And so much more besides.

I just want to go back to that smaller size.  It’s not an unreasonable size.  I don’t care that some people considered it “too” thin or “too” anything because whose business is it but mine?