My Disorder Story

I was born prematurely, which means that I entered this world weighing less than most other babies. However, as luck would have it, I liked food. I think my mom let me eat as much as I wanted because she was worried. There has been talk of "forced feeding," but I don't give it much credit. My mom was a neglected child, so one thing she could never withhold from her children, and rightly so, was food.

By the time I was 5 and my sister was 8 we were by no means "fat," but we weren't "scrawny" either. We were basically "normal" maybe "chubby." One flippant comment about our weight from a family member worried my mother and thus began a life of dieting. Stupid grandmas.

I would like to think that I had a healthy relationship with food, but it was as perverse as you get. You deny yourself the things you like in order to be "pretty." But, bad days would come and food tasted good - it made you feel batter. I've been an emotional eater (binging) for most of my life. I'm convinced the only reason I didn't purge until I was 16 was because I had no idea I could.

My sister and I both struggled with body image, weight, and self-esteem. My mom and dad tried everything to help us: diets, pills, exercise, goals, shots. It's only now looking back on it that my entire family can acknowledge how completely skewed it all was.

I even remember being 14 and going to a bariatric doctor. She put both my sister and me on Phen-Phen, a well known diet drug combination that is now banned by the FDA. I was only 20lbs. overweight and still growing. It makes my mind reel today. This medication opened my eyes to the great results brought about by food restriction. I lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks. I was working out 3 hours a day. I could count what I ate on my fingers. I finally felt pretty. I stopped taking the meds, but the effects were lasting - mentally anyway.

I had some other stuff going on - like abnormal hair growth & periods. I went to an endocrinologist and found out I had PCOS and insulin resistance, both of which were the cause of my weight and inability to lose it (save starving) no matter how hard I exercised. He put me on a diet - no sugar, low salt, and low fat. All my weight problems had been solved, right?

PCOS is closely tied with my fertility. So, at the age of 15 I had to start thinking about babies. Every time I slipped up and ate a cookie - I killed a baby (in my mind). If I ate that piece of chocolate - God was not going to let me have children - because I lacked discipline the self- sacrificing constitution every parent needs. This is when I found my loop hole.

If the sweets made me dirty. I just need to get "clean" again. I just had to get it out of my body. Purging: vomiting, laxatives, enemas...you name it, I've tried it. Made a mess out of my body in the process. Still had some anorexic tendencies, but binging and purging was my main M.O.
Nobody caught on because my weight stayed pretty normal, plus the new diet allowed for some weight loss.

I've been "purge-free" for about 8 months, but I still binge - a lot. My big weakness is stress-eating. I still struggle with body image. And yes, I still feel like sweets are the enemy. But, I'm trying to get better. My therapist says at this point I exhibit more signs of "disordered eating" than anything else. I just think I mostly exhibit signs of being screwed up. But hey, I'm trying. I'm running and doing Pilates and yoga and I'm learning to respect what my body is capable of - I just wish it was capable of fitting into a size 6 pair of jeans.