Loosing weight .. after struggling with ED..my story
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samantha1373
Posts: 23
It has taken me YEARS to write this down, and in fact I have Never said the words "Eating Disorder" out loud. I guess because I figured it wasn't a disorder up until about 2 years ago. Even where there were thoughts that would creep into my head saying it was, and even after I had recovered I never fully accepted that yes, I from the years of age 15-23 had an active problem with my diet, dieting and eating.
I'm 5 foot 1 and for most of my teen years and early twenties I weighed 100 lbs and at one point a bit less. I know this is typical of the skinny girls in Hollywood so I never questioned it too much. I thought it was normal to drink a tea for breakfast go to work and have MAYBE a granola bar and then more tea later and maybe something for dinner. I never saw that as a problem because I wasn't throwing my food up or starving my self. at one point when I went off to school, I started experiencing "attacks" my heart would speed up and I'd become anxious, and light headed a bit sick feeling like I may pass out.... it was so common for me I would just tap my foot anxiously take some deep breaths and maybe a sip of juice and wait for it to pass, as I knew it always would. Still even with this going on I never thought I had a problem of any sort. I had a friend who was bulimic and I had watched her struggle and I had even accompanied her to the hospital so they could hook her up to an IV and give her potassium and other vitamins her body was lacking.My mum will tell me I was too skinny, and I loved it! When I saw photos of my size 0 -2 body I would look at my legs and think "man my legs are fat" Now when I look at those same photos I have mixed emotions. The part of me that is recovered thinks "how was I ever that skinny, I looked frail." The part of me that will always suffer from an ED thinks, "I miss the way I looked then.......I could do that again....."
Its east to not eat and to restrict your food intake.....I was always so good at it, clearly ....I had no idea what I was evening doing to my self!.
Before I talk about How or why I decided to fix my problem , when i started above I didn't realize I had a problem until after I had already bettered my self , I want to talk about how this problem came about in the first place. There is so much in my life I've never talked about, or written down, I'm very good at burying my feelings , because i'm a firm believer that there are people out there with bigger troubles than mine.
Without going into too much detail because it is still a very private situation and one I like to keep close to my heart, I was bullied. People talk about how its so much different in schools now kids are meaner than they were before. No. It is the EXACT same......The bigger difference is now these things are spoken about more freely.There were these two boys growing up, we'd played together since we were 5.. and at one point they decided they had ownership over us. They were both bad seeds. Not in a drugs and alcohol kind of way, but in a mentally abusive and some times physically. The one was a gawky geek, I'm sure just struggling to fit in and not be the one being bullied him self. He was more of a follower the other was abused at home (to what extent i'm not sure but it existed for sure in at least a verbal manner, I've heard physical but I cant comment for sure on that). These boys thought it was acceptable to dictate what my friends and I did and who we dated. The leader of the two would call us skanks , sluts, *****es, fat, ugly....he would grab you by the back pack in the halls of the schools and slam you into a locker, spread lies and rumors ....one time we were trying to leave his house and he chased us and eventually cornered my friend and held her down on the pool table not allowing her to leave... another time we were out roller bladeing and I tried to get away from him and he grabbed my arm so hard he left bruises.....No one said or did anything... I'm sure you'd say why hang out with him... believe it or not it was easier being on their side than not. The reason they did this.. I'm assuming bc they were bullied themselves , that's often the reason....rejection.... they were so horrible to us and yet couldn't understand why we wouldn't consider dating them. Any ways I think after hearing I had thunder thighs ( at 110 lbs they said this to me) and that I was fat, and in the midst of all this bullying (I listed the tame stuff by the way it was much worse) a switch was hit in me and I never thought to my self, I need to loose weight, But the stress and the critique added up and it developed into a restrictive diet, and spiraled from there. I could go months with a restrictive diet, and then out of no where something would hit and I would binge and eat a bag of chips. I never made my self throw up, my ED wasn't like that .
Years later I met my now husband , and he made me feel safe. and protected like I had never felt before. We got pregnant and I spent the first 5 -6 months VERY ILL. Not knowing I had a problem with my diet I tried to carry about not changing anything , which was I think what was making me sick, I soon learnt that if I ate normal I'd feel better. My poor baby was crying out for food. At 7 months I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.That was the point in my life when I turned my eating habbits around, and had an idea that what I was doing previously wasn't normal, even though I thought it was....yet at that point I still never thought of it as an ED.The dietitian was asking me my eating habbits and I either had to lie and make up food I was eating for meals or the food I did eat I was SO proud to tell her I ate it, even though it wasn't "healthy food". I think about it now and how she reacted to it in a way that was like ok that is so not healthy and in my brain I was thinking " I'm eating, that's amazing isn't it!'.
after giving birth I was fixed.....sort of as I said i still hadn't admitted to myself I had an ED in the first place.... and now i was faced with the opposite problem now that I was eating I LOVED food!!! and I was over eating! being skinny my whole life I never thought for a minute i could become over weight. But it happened! I never gained 100 lbs thankfully I recognized my problem and fixed it but I got up to 135 lbs. and on a 5 foot 1 person that is a lot. I would yo yo diet, I'd revert back to old habbits and restrict my food and then 2 days later binge worse than ever before. I Just couldn't figure it out and then I read the Portia de rossi book "unbearable lightness" and if you read it minus the throwing up part, a lot of her eating and restricting habits were 100% me. I gained so much insight and it aloud to me admit , what I had was an eating disorder.It wasn't as simple as anorexia and bulimia, so I had never labeled it before. But it was just that...an Eating Disorder.
its been 7 years since I changed my eating habbits but its not only been about a year and a half since I recognized my problem and for some one like me MFP is amazing. I need it. I need to count the calories...Not only to help my loose weight in a healthy way but to also help me make sure I'm eating enough of the right foods and don't slip back into unhealthy weight loss tricks that I used to do.I felt the need to post this bc its a struggle for me every day to pick the right foods and to stick to a proper diet plan.. its so tempting to just limit my food intake for a day, and I think about doing it almost every day... BUT I have 2 daughters (and a son) and I would NEVER want them to see me limiting my food, or starving my body of the things it needs.
I wanted to open up the forum for others who have suffered from an ED and are now trying to loose the weight they gained from babies or other reasons - I also wanted to let people know that bullying isn't a new thing and it isn't ok. I think about those boys all the time they are both married and one has kids, and it frightens me to no end to think a monster like that can have children no less a daughter, I can only hope when he sees his baby girl he remembers what he was like as a kid and does everything he can to ensure his son NOT be the boy he was so that girls like his daughter don't have to suffer at the hands of bullies. I felt with all these news broad cast about these girls getting cyber bullied and killing themselves I had to say something. Because this isn't new people. this happened 15 years ago and it happened to me!It shaped a lot of who I am, I'm lucky I survived it...but it definitely caused me struggle along the way .Any ways Thanks for listening. Like I said every day is a struggle to make the right choices, feel free to share your stories with me.Once you've experience an ED you wont ever be without it, it is with you forever, and for some reason the support you get ends when you "get better" and yet you're never really better!
xoxo!
I'm 5 foot 1 and for most of my teen years and early twenties I weighed 100 lbs and at one point a bit less. I know this is typical of the skinny girls in Hollywood so I never questioned it too much. I thought it was normal to drink a tea for breakfast go to work and have MAYBE a granola bar and then more tea later and maybe something for dinner. I never saw that as a problem because I wasn't throwing my food up or starving my self. at one point when I went off to school, I started experiencing "attacks" my heart would speed up and I'd become anxious, and light headed a bit sick feeling like I may pass out.... it was so common for me I would just tap my foot anxiously take some deep breaths and maybe a sip of juice and wait for it to pass, as I knew it always would. Still even with this going on I never thought I had a problem of any sort. I had a friend who was bulimic and I had watched her struggle and I had even accompanied her to the hospital so they could hook her up to an IV and give her potassium and other vitamins her body was lacking.My mum will tell me I was too skinny, and I loved it! When I saw photos of my size 0 -2 body I would look at my legs and think "man my legs are fat" Now when I look at those same photos I have mixed emotions. The part of me that is recovered thinks "how was I ever that skinny, I looked frail." The part of me that will always suffer from an ED thinks, "I miss the way I looked then.......I could do that again....."
Its east to not eat and to restrict your food intake.....I was always so good at it, clearly ....I had no idea what I was evening doing to my self!.
Before I talk about How or why I decided to fix my problem , when i started above I didn't realize I had a problem until after I had already bettered my self , I want to talk about how this problem came about in the first place. There is so much in my life I've never talked about, or written down, I'm very good at burying my feelings , because i'm a firm believer that there are people out there with bigger troubles than mine.
Without going into too much detail because it is still a very private situation and one I like to keep close to my heart, I was bullied. People talk about how its so much different in schools now kids are meaner than they were before. No. It is the EXACT same......The bigger difference is now these things are spoken about more freely.There were these two boys growing up, we'd played together since we were 5.. and at one point they decided they had ownership over us. They were both bad seeds. Not in a drugs and alcohol kind of way, but in a mentally abusive and some times physically. The one was a gawky geek, I'm sure just struggling to fit in and not be the one being bullied him self. He was more of a follower the other was abused at home (to what extent i'm not sure but it existed for sure in at least a verbal manner, I've heard physical but I cant comment for sure on that). These boys thought it was acceptable to dictate what my friends and I did and who we dated. The leader of the two would call us skanks , sluts, *****es, fat, ugly....he would grab you by the back pack in the halls of the schools and slam you into a locker, spread lies and rumors ....one time we were trying to leave his house and he chased us and eventually cornered my friend and held her down on the pool table not allowing her to leave... another time we were out roller bladeing and I tried to get away from him and he grabbed my arm so hard he left bruises.....No one said or did anything... I'm sure you'd say why hang out with him... believe it or not it was easier being on their side than not. The reason they did this.. I'm assuming bc they were bullied themselves , that's often the reason....rejection.... they were so horrible to us and yet couldn't understand why we wouldn't consider dating them. Any ways I think after hearing I had thunder thighs ( at 110 lbs they said this to me) and that I was fat, and in the midst of all this bullying (I listed the tame stuff by the way it was much worse) a switch was hit in me and I never thought to my self, I need to loose weight, But the stress and the critique added up and it developed into a restrictive diet, and spiraled from there. I could go months with a restrictive diet, and then out of no where something would hit and I would binge and eat a bag of chips. I never made my self throw up, my ED wasn't like that .
Years later I met my now husband , and he made me feel safe. and protected like I had never felt before. We got pregnant and I spent the first 5 -6 months VERY ILL. Not knowing I had a problem with my diet I tried to carry about not changing anything , which was I think what was making me sick, I soon learnt that if I ate normal I'd feel better. My poor baby was crying out for food. At 7 months I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.That was the point in my life when I turned my eating habbits around, and had an idea that what I was doing previously wasn't normal, even though I thought it was....yet at that point I still never thought of it as an ED.The dietitian was asking me my eating habbits and I either had to lie and make up food I was eating for meals or the food I did eat I was SO proud to tell her I ate it, even though it wasn't "healthy food". I think about it now and how she reacted to it in a way that was like ok that is so not healthy and in my brain I was thinking " I'm eating, that's amazing isn't it!'.
after giving birth I was fixed.....sort of as I said i still hadn't admitted to myself I had an ED in the first place.... and now i was faced with the opposite problem now that I was eating I LOVED food!!! and I was over eating! being skinny my whole life I never thought for a minute i could become over weight. But it happened! I never gained 100 lbs thankfully I recognized my problem and fixed it but I got up to 135 lbs. and on a 5 foot 1 person that is a lot. I would yo yo diet, I'd revert back to old habbits and restrict my food and then 2 days later binge worse than ever before. I Just couldn't figure it out and then I read the Portia de rossi book "unbearable lightness" and if you read it minus the throwing up part, a lot of her eating and restricting habits were 100% me. I gained so much insight and it aloud to me admit , what I had was an eating disorder.It wasn't as simple as anorexia and bulimia, so I had never labeled it before. But it was just that...an Eating Disorder.
its been 7 years since I changed my eating habbits but its not only been about a year and a half since I recognized my problem and for some one like me MFP is amazing. I need it. I need to count the calories...Not only to help my loose weight in a healthy way but to also help me make sure I'm eating enough of the right foods and don't slip back into unhealthy weight loss tricks that I used to do.I felt the need to post this bc its a struggle for me every day to pick the right foods and to stick to a proper diet plan.. its so tempting to just limit my food intake for a day, and I think about doing it almost every day... BUT I have 2 daughters (and a son) and I would NEVER want them to see me limiting my food, or starving my body of the things it needs.
I wanted to open up the forum for others who have suffered from an ED and are now trying to loose the weight they gained from babies or other reasons - I also wanted to let people know that bullying isn't a new thing and it isn't ok. I think about those boys all the time they are both married and one has kids, and it frightens me to no end to think a monster like that can have children no less a daughter, I can only hope when he sees his baby girl he remembers what he was like as a kid and does everything he can to ensure his son NOT be the boy he was so that girls like his daughter don't have to suffer at the hands of bullies. I felt with all these news broad cast about these girls getting cyber bullied and killing themselves I had to say something. Because this isn't new people. this happened 15 years ago and it happened to me!It shaped a lot of who I am, I'm lucky I survived it...but it definitely caused me struggle along the way .Any ways Thanks for listening. Like I said every day is a struggle to make the right choices, feel free to share your stories with me.Once you've experience an ED you wont ever be without it, it is with you forever, and for some reason the support you get ends when you "get better" and yet you're never really better!
xoxo!
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Replies
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I will never forget the first time I made myself throw up. I was standing in front of the mirror and my mother asked me if I was pregnant. i was 5'5", 16 years old, and very athletic. I played soccer year round and was on the basketball team. I weighed MAYBE 130 pounds.
I spent 7 years living in the binge cycle of hell. I got down to 108 pounds. My bones stuck out. I still wouldnt wear a bikini or anything that showed my "fat." I could consume 4000 calories in a single setting. But I worked out and ran so in my mind, I was "healthy." I had to have an IV and go on meds because I couldnt keep anything down. I hadnt had a period in 6 years but I still got pregnant. Finally I went in treatment. The irony of getting pregnant-I puked from inception to 2 weeks after delivery. BOTH times
Then ppd set in. And while I didnt purge, I binged. And binged. And I got up to 220 pounds. I hated myself. I once had a professor (who I hate to this day) tell me that "you live in a society that values thinness and you arent the ideal." I can still hear his voice in my head. I earned my Masters in Counseling and wrote my thesis on EDS and treatments for adolescent girls.
My husband deployed. And then he deployed again. And finally I started taking care of myself. I found a job I loved, I started C25k, and found that running was addicting and I could lose weight without the ED. I got down to 150 pounds and felt invincible, beautiful, capable.
Then my marriage fell apart. We moved to another base where healthy living is difficult. I had a job I hated and a mess at home. So I binged. And gained it again. I started back here at 185 pounds after 2 years of eating my way through a depression. I told the marriage counselor one day that while I couldnt control my husband or what happened, I could control myself and what I put in my mouth. I am trying to remember that every day.
But there are days I sit, hugging myself by the toilet, and trying to remind myself that I fought too hard to go down that road again. I say ED is like alcoholism, it never really goes away, we just learn to recognize and cope. Somedays are easier than others, and reading your story made me cry. The things we in our society do to one another and ourselves....0 -
Thanks for Sharing @RenewedRunner..... I feel like its important. More and more information is coming out about mental health, and now that i'm almost 31 I felt like I HAD to share my story, I'm in canada and there was ANOTHER teen from out east who killed her self due to bullying, and I have friends who have daughters struggling with body image..... Its not new and its not going away. My oldest daughter thinks she looks more beautiful with her glasses on bc they cover up her dark circles under her eyes...... and I feel like that's not ok I want to tell every young girl (and even boy) who struggles with any of these issues that there are SAFE places to talk about this stuff, i figured if I hadnt really talked about it in a flat out honest way , there have to be others......so once again thank you for sharing!depression, PPD, anxiety, bullying, ED's they are all real and they need to be spoken about!0
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I'm so glad you shared this Sam. You are an amazing mom and person and I am so glad to know you personally.
I was bullied through out school as well Sam. I remember so many times coming home and wanting to get out of this life. I had an operation when I was in grade 11 and was off for 3 months because I had an infection after the operation. I remember coming back there was so many people who talked behind my back, made rude comments, even 'friends' who I thought were my friends..even made some of those comments. I thought of telling someone..then I thought of the reprocusions..I thought if I did..It will only get worse..the comments will get even more rude, and someone will call me a 'rat'..
I look back now and think about the people who bullied me..and have no sympathy for them...they emotionally damaged me through the years..they ripped that part of me. It's funny because every now and then..I will get a 'friend' request from someone who bullied me on Facebook..everytime I decline..my reason for declining which I never let them know..that person does not deserve to be in my life. They may have changed, they may have learned from their mistakes..but it still does not excuse the fact that what they did when we were younger..
Bullying needs to stop.0 -
I look back now and think about the people who bullied me..and have no sympathy for them...they emotionally damaged me through the years..they ripped that part of me. It's funny because every now and then..I will get a 'friend' request from someone who bullied me on Facebook..everytime I decline..my reason for declining which I never let them know..that person does not deserve to be in my life. They may have changed, they may have learned from their mistakes..but it still does not excuse the fact that what they did when we were younger..
Bullying needs to stop.
I was bullied a lot in high school - and from the outside you would never have known it. I had friends, boyfriends, good grades, played sports, etc. And there were a group of girls that made my life completely miserable. I hated school and cried nearly every single day. I just wanted to die. One of the reasons I didn't end my life was that I knew those same girls would show up at my funeral and act like they were my best friends. How sad is that?
I occasionally get FB friend requests from some of them. No way in hell. I have recovered from how they treated me, but I have no need/desire to let any of them have any access to my life now. The pictures of my gorgeous children, and the information about my happy life are MINE, and I am not sharing with people who made me miserable.
Thank you all for sharing.0 -
Food is a struggle for me too, because I'm an overeater. I find MFP helps me as well so when I eat, I make better choices.0
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