Uncensored

Part 8

WHO AM I?

I stared at these words on the screen, clueless. Or maybe it was just that I didn't like who I had become. Everything I was now, the failure I felt I was, stood in sharp contrast to my bright past- one accomplishment of which I thought was my successful weight loss. The first problem with that – of course- is this conception in itself- that the first thing I chose to define me and my success was my weight. I know how wrong that is. I knew then, too, and yet I continued to do it. Because when I said "I don't like who I've become" what I really meant was  "I don't like the way I have become to look," including the traits associated with my never-ending weight gain spiral: lazy, undisciplined, impulsive, disgusting, fat.

Most people who lose weight end up gaining it back. I had been different. I kept losing beyond my initial goal, mostly due to my very strict diet, and then I spent years maintaining. If I'm honest, and as a graph of my weight would show, I was not really maintaining, but rather gaining and losing and gaining and losing the same 5 lbs over and over and over again. I was maintaining overall, but I had gotten myself an eating disorder. My compulsive and obsessive restriction had eventually led my body to fire back, which is when my bingeing started. At first my binges were few and far apart and could have been almost been classified as just episodes of "overeating". But over time, the frequency and size of the binges increased. In classical eating-disorder fashion, each binge was not only highly secretive, but it was followed by enormous shame and guilt, followed by even more restriction to "make up" for a binge Of course, this eventually led to just another binge, and so one becomes stuck in a cycle of under- and overeating, increasing self-hate and negative emotions. It didn't help that I had always been an emotional eater. I never really needed such an ordinary reason like hunger to eat- I would eat to reward myself, console myself, or distract and numb myself. Since the range of emotions addressed with food was so wide, eating was almost always the go-to response. But with my weight loss, fear of weight gain, and restriction, emotions became intensified, too and I didn't have any coping strategies other than- eating. I lived in that cycle for almost 5 years.

All the bingeing slowly led to weight gain. At first, I was told that the extra weight looked better on me, which was probably true, since I had started getting too thin for my frame. A couple of pounds later I told myself that I was ok with this "new" weight if it would not increase any further and that I was perfectly healthy and still looked good. Except that I did continue to gain weight, due to my disordered eating and my frequent bingeing. I was now more than 20lbs from my lowest weight and 10lbs from where I want to be to feel comfortable in my skin again.

Why was weight so important to me?
Couldn't I instead worry about school, a career, or my marriage? Well, for once, I truly was not happy with the way I felt anymore. And in addition, I cared– way too much- about what my husband thought. He liked me skinny. And I thought he wanted me skinny. He didn't have any idea about the mountains of food I could eat. My husband didn't understand (nor would he try to) eating disorders and the powerlessness, the guilt, and the shame I felt. He didn't understand why I just couldn't stop or not eat when I was not hungry. The concept of emotional eating was foreign to him and made no sense. And I was a pro at emotional eating. I ate to comfort myself, to soothe, to distract, to entertain, and to reward myself. The last one to two years of my bingeing had also become less emotional but a strong habit and automated behavior- I watched TV to procrastinate my life, and I ate while I did so to further stimulate or distract. So whenever I watched something, anything, I also wanted to binge. Furthermore, whenever it was night time, I'd have the urge to binge after dinner (a habit I had established even more recently). Clearly I couldn't' be hungry, but I didn't know –or didn't want to know- what I really needed or how to get it.

One might wonder why the hell I was not in treatment. Well, I went to therapy and saw a nutritionist, but after some time I had stopped making any progress. At some point, I started lying to my nutritionist about my restriction, and my therapist helped even less with my issues. After I had to relocate to a different state, I did not go back to therapy. Sometimes I thought maybe a different therapist would be better at working with me and use some other techniques that may help me. But I also thought I had all the tools I needed, I just needed to actually use them.

I was one gigantic, walking toolbox. I had read so many self-help books, dieting books, and eating disorder books. I have spent so much money on these books and workbooks and I have written and journaled so much that I know myself very well. For god's sake, I had studied Psychology, so I knew what and how it was wrong. That is why I didn't need therapy. I knew all my problem areas, I knew my distorted thinking, I knew my cognitive fallacies, I knew everything that was wrong with me. I was not in denial. But I felt paralyzed to change because the more I tried, the more I failed.

Who am I? "Today I want to lose 10lbs. That's who I am today," I wrote. Oh, and I wanted to work out again. I had recently been incapacitated by an injury that seemed to be fuel for the fire that was my eating disorder- I binged and binged and binged. And I couldn't even work out to burn at least some of those calories. So I gained 6 of those 10lbs that I wanted to lose in just two weeks.

"Today I'm desperate and hateful. That's who I am today.

Today I'm hungry because I always am never full. That's who I am today.

Today I'm tired, tired of failing. That's who I am today.

Today I'm good, all day, until I can't anymore. That's who I am today.

I forgot that I'm a wife, a student, a person, too.

I forgot that I'm loveable, pretty, and worthy, too.

I forgot who I was over who I wanted to be. "

What I needed wasn't therapy. What I needed was some trust in myself, I needed emotional independence, I needed distraction, I needed validation, I needed – myself.

But I had lost my way.