Dear Binge Voice,
I know that you feel like being especially vocal today. I might have listened to you in the past, but you've been in charge for the last 4 years; it's my turn now. I recognize that when I first got out of treatment my way of dealing with you was by simply ignoring you. I realize now that you took care of me in the only way you knew how at the time. It wasn't healthy and I have much better ways of coping now. I know that these new strategies may be hard for you to accept at first; they were for me too. I trusted you to handle my emotions for years, it's time for you to trust me. In return I promise to listen when you speak. I accept that you are a part of me. The part that lets me know when I am stressed, when I have too much going on, when I'm not expressing myself enough. You mean well, but your "fixes" are not helpful anymore. You don't have to believe me right now; I know eventually you will come around and see that our new way of dealing with issues is better for both of us.
Love Always,
Melly
Here's a link to an old article in SHAPE magazine discussing how you can tell if your diet is healthy: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_1_22/ai_90528566/?tag=content;col1 I am not a fan of this particular magazine, but think that this article is very helpful in determining if your eating is nutritionally sound. I don't believe in diets. I think that they promote unhealthy eating and elevated food to a status that it really has no business being in (it's just fuel, nothing more, nothing less). None the less, I do believe that even a person who is eating "intuitively" needs to evaluate their food intake from time to time to make sure that all of their needs are being met. This checklist is very useful for evaluating symptoms that one might not normally associate with not eating the right amount or the right kinds of foods. Enjoy!
The latest accessory in extreme dieting: a steel mesh implant for your tongue? A surgeon will implant the device in the tongue making it physically painful for a person to eat solid food. Um, gross. It begs the question; when does dieting turn into an eating disorder? I've done some pretty self-destructive things in my life, but even on my worst day would not have considered this procedure. The fact that medical doctors are performing this operation that basically amounts to forced anorexia quite frankly pisses me off. Check out the article: http://www.allure.com/beauty/blogs/reporter/2009/09/the-new-extreme-diet-1.html
I purged. AGAIN. I'm so tired of being in this in between state of kinda-recovered, kinda-still-fucked-up. After I got out of treatment, I went over a year without purging. I was rocking the intuitive eating thing and thought I was "recovered". Then the binging started happening. I was expecting that frankly. I've been overeating/binging my whole life, so I wasn't expecting 2 weeks of treatment to cure a lifetime's worth of food issues. But then the binging started happening more and more often. And then, about 6 months ago, I purged. I was really shaken up. I hate bulimia and the idea of relapse scared the crap out of me. I didn't purge for about three months. Now I've been binging and purging about once a week.
I really don't want to be bulimic again. I nearly lost everything; my job, my school, my wonderful BF. I cannot go back there; I know that. What I don't know is how I'm going to get myself out of this rut. Tomorrow I sit and I read and I recover and I reflect. I'm going to be healthy, I owe myself that much.
Jennifer Hudson's Weight Watchers commercials make me want to throw up... literally. I used to be just like her, a true Weight Watchers' success story. I did weigh less than when I was in high school. The pounds just seemed to fall off, much to the chagrin of the women in my meetings who had been on program on and off for decades.
That should have been a clue right there. Weight Watchers constantly proclaims that it is the only program that works, it's not a diet, it's a "lifestyle". But if that were really the case, why are so many meetings filled with women who have been attending for years; some since before I was even born? In the first meeting I ever attended, the woman sitting next to me (in an almost proud way) told me that she had made it to Lifetime™ status five times in the past 15 years. I should have run screaming from the building when I heard that, but I didn't. I was so vulnerable and desperate at the time; I saw Weight Watchers as my only chance for losing weight and gaining back my self confidence.
For the first three months, I religiously followed program, and I lost weight. I was the poster child of Weight Watchers compliance. I could look at any food and tell the points™ value from memory. I had more bookmarks, stickers, and keychains than any person could want. Everything was great and then I hit, as a fellow Weight Watcher aptly put it, The Wall. The Wall is when you realize that you can't keep counting points for the rest of your life, that this supposedly simple formula to solve all of your weight problems isn't so simple after all, that your food problem maybe doesn't have all that much to do with food. I've never known anybody who hasn't hit The Wall at some point in their Weight Watchers career. We all handle it in different ways: some sit grumpily at meetings, pissed because they feel that are not losing weight; others fall off the bandwagon, then back on, and off again for decades; and some, the healthy ones, leave and don't let the door hit their ass on the way out. As for me I stayed, I purged, I lost.
Of course Weight Watchers does not condone purging. The problem is that they don't condone natural eating either. Every food and measure of success can be reduced to a number. Did you lose weight this week? Congratulations, you're a success! You ate more points than you were supposed to this week? Failure! For somebody like me, whose brain was already a little twisted when it came to food, Weight Watchers was a very nurturing place for disordered thoughts to grow. Now I had a secret solution for every time I ate a few too many points: just throw those dang points up. It was simple math really; points in, points out.
After two years I left Weight Watchers for good. I had lost almost 90 pounds. Success! Not really. I also left with a full blown eating disorder that to this day I still struggle with. I'm not trying to say that Weight Watchers causes eating disorders, not at all. I do however think that it does not promote healthy long-term eating, or positive body image by focusing solely on the "numbers game". I don't believe in dieting anymore. After I left treatment for bulimia in 2009, I vowed to normalize my food through intuitive eating. It's a hard thing to do though, when you still know the point value of practically every food that you eat. There a days when I still catch myself trying to guess how many points™ I've had, instead of listening to my body's hunger/fullness cues. I hope that someday Weight Watchers will change their program; teach people to eat based on internal signals, not point values; teach people to love their bodies as they are now, not how they will be. I can't make them change, and based on the amount of advertising they are doing lately, it doesn't seem like they are hurting for business. I do know though, that I would gladly pay my two years of membership fees all over again if I could only get their propaganda out of my head.
I'm a former fat bulimic. I know what you are probably thinking; yeah "fat", like how a 90-pound chick bitches about her "thunder thighs". No, I was genuine, Grade-A overweight. By the time I graduated high school I weighed over 270 pounds and had just begun purging daily. As I began purging more, sure I lost some weight, but at my lowest eating-disorder-low I still weighed 185 pounds. I was hardly the picture of skin and bones that most people associate with eating disorders. If you could take a picture of my insides, however, I would've mirrored any other bulimic. My heart would constantly race and skip beats; I had frequent headaches and nosebleeds as well as swollen glands. My hair was falling out, I was constipated, and had even had to be given IV fluids because a 4-day long purging incident had left me so dehydrated that I was passing out. The point that I want to make is that physical size has little to do with physical sickness - a message that even many people in the "eating disorder field" seem to miss.
I went to residential treatment in the spring of 2009. While residential treatment is never a comfortable situation, I was painfully aware of the fact that at 213 pounds I weighed more than the other three girls in group therapy combined. The general attitude of the staff was that my problem was simply with eating - not purging. I was put on an eating plan that resulted in me losing over 10 pounds in one week. The dietitian might have been happy, but I was not. The center director lauded my "progress" and I began to withdraw more and more from therapy.
The rapid change in my body and strict eating plan had left me feeling massively triggered. While I found the other girls (and two therapists) amazingly supportive, I left treatment two weeks early. The upside is that I found an amazing therapist who didn't raise her eyebrows, even a little, when I informed her that I had an eating disorder. I'm in recovery now, and I avoid scales like the plague. I have no idea if I'm "fat" anymore, and frankly I don't care. The problem I do have is with people who judge based on how a person looks, especially those who are here to help people with eating disorders. I was fat, I did have an eating disorder, and I did need help. If you suspect that someone you know has an eating disorder, don't let their weight be a determining factor in when you take action - there is much more to an eating disorder than meets the eye.
I'm intimately acquainted with ice cream. More than most people anyway. The way it slides down my throat, leaving its creamy residue on the back of my throat. Grainy texture coats the roof of my mouth as I frantically shovel more of the dessert down my throat. Most people view ice cream as sweet treat, a delicious end to any dinner. Not me. Ice cream is a tool, and sometimes a necessity. I don't even like the taste of ice cream anymore. And on the rare occasion that I keep it down it makes me bloat and fart uncontrollably. It's not exactly a pleasurable dining experience. So why eat it one might ask? Because the eating isn't how I 'enjoy' my ice cream. When ice cream hits my stomach it surrounds my previous food sins in a creamy, rich envelope of forgiveness. Each morsel slides back up my throat with ease. The normally acidic taste of a purge is replaced by the faintly sweet aftermath of ice cream-flavored puke. The normal scratching irritation of food that was only meant to be swallowed once is gone, traded for a slow, almost pleasant burn. But even ice cream can't stop the after effects. The guilt that starts to bubble up the second that my fingers leave my mouth. The wave of disgust that washes over me as I hit my knees for the umpteenth time to clean up after another binge episode. The frustration that my life is like a CD stuck on repeat and the only song that is on is "Bulimia". Ice cream can make the act easier, but I know now that it won't make my life easier. Ice cream can be my enabler but it will never be my cure.
