I am an adult living with an eating disorder. And there are a lot of us out there. Some of us might not call it an eating disorder…I did not for a LONG time. We might just think that we emotionally eat or need a diet or have weird food “stuff” or LOVE to exercise or any other number of things that keep us from facing the truth. We are not in control of our lives. The shadow lurking in the corner that I call ED is instead.
I first remember being on a diet when I was in middle school. Actually, I would say it was more like I was “on a diet.” My mom was always on a diet, it seemed, and there was a definite focus on weight in my family. However, I say that I was “on a diet” because I have memories at this point in my life of some very definite binge eating behaviors. I remember coming home from school and making big plates of nachos and scarfing them down, eating chips by the bagful, sharing cookie dough with my mom as we watched soap operas, and inhaling food in the cafeteria (especially on days when we had something called “potato bar,” which was really an opportunity to make an entire lunch out of potato skins, French fries, and tater tots). However, I also remember having for dinner meals that came from a Weight Watchers cookbook as my family set out once again on this road to weight loss. I didn’t recognize until just recently how this can lay the foundation for an unhealthy relationship with food.
I have also always been an internalizer. When I was angry with someone, I waited for the feelings to go away. When I was sad, I kept it to myself. When I was happy, I tried not to be too happy because I didn’t want to invite something bad to happen. However, all this was information I was aware of on the periphery. Day to day, I thought things were “okay.” It took a major life change to see that there might be some room for improvement.
I have always been someone who lost herself in relationships. You like football? I like football too. Baseball? Okay. You want to watch that show? I love it too. You want to have dinner with your family every Sunday? Okay…my family can wait. And eventually, this led me right down the aisle on my wedding day. What was once a good relationship probably could not be considered one anymore, but I married him anyway. And then, about six years later, when one of my “nonnegotiables” happened, I dragged my feet for a few months, started seeing a therapist (this was key to my story), and eventually got divorced. I moved back to the town I grew up in with my dog and with very little self-respect and no sense of self-worth. I just didn’t really understand that yet.
Soon after I met my therapist, she mentioned to me that she was an eating disorders specialist. My first thought was, “So?” I had no concept that my weird relationship with food was an eating disorder. After all, I wasn’t skinny. I didn’t throw up everything. I definitely didn’t starve myself. I just ate too much because I didn’t have enough willpower to stick to a diet. If I found a diet I could stick to, I could lose weight, and it would no longer be an issue. In the last two or three years of my marriage, I was being really “good” with my diet and had successfully lost a lot of weight. Sure, I was eating a lot again, but I was stressed. Once my divorce was over, I would just go back on the diet.
Spoiler alert: That’s not really how things unfolded.
