Long journey, about to start another.

I want to keep this brief, but I figured there's no better time to share my story, and where I am in my journey. It's not a pretty story by any means, and it's not over, but I thought I'd share anyway.

In high school, I suffered from purging-type EDNOS and BED. In 2004, as a freshman, I was a healthy 5'2 and 115 pounds. As the eating disorder got worse, I slowly put on weight. By my senior prom in 2008, I was 160-170 pounds.



I wanted to lose weight very badly, but I just couldn't work up the willpower to stop the binge/purge cycle. I would fast for a day and quickly break down and eat everything in sight. My father even accused me of having a drug problem because I was extremely moody (Because I hated myself) and I could blow through my allowance, birthday money, Christmas money, you name it, in a day (Because I was spending it all on food).

After high school, it only got worse. I maxed out a credit card which I still can't afford to pay off, used excess student loans, work-study money, and any other money I could get my hands on. All to fuel my food addiction. I ran out of money, dropped out of college, and spent the last half of 2009 and the first half of 2010 mooching off of my boyfriend and his father. I don't have any pictures from this time, and I stopped weighing myself because I couldn't stand the numbers, but at my last recorded weigh-in from this time, I was 182 pounds and a size 12 in jeans. Very quickly, that went up to an 18, so I suspect I put on quite a bit more weight.

In the fall of 2010, I was sick of it. Sick of being addicted, sick of trying and failing to lose weight, sick of using those around me to fuel the addiction. I started small. I starting walking and doing yoga, and taking dance classes, which I had taken as a teen, but stopped by my senior year of high school. I dropped back to my high-school weight of 160, even still eating excessively, and decided that, if just working out could make that much of a difference, then cutting down to a more normal diet would help me lose even more. In the fall of 2011, I finally reached my goal weight of 130 pounds.

This is where things got bad again. I developed an intense fear of food. I cycled between restricting-EDNOS and Bulimia. I rarely ate, rarely kept food down. I abused diet pills, laxatives, and diuretics. I drank black coffee like my life depended on it. I didn't sleep. I lost half an inch in height. I dropped 26 pounds in two months, and while I was not under-weight, I was very, very ill, and it showed.

I don't have a full-body shot from this time, but you can tell from the arms, chest and face that I am not well. This is me in November of 2011, at 104 pounds.



Fast forward through a lot of soul-searching, a lot of work, and more than a few melt-downs later. This is me a month ago. I am around 114 pounds, I am eating better. I am no longer abusing any medications. I rarely purge, and when I do, I try my best to process WHY it happened, and how to prevent it. I am learning health again. I am trying to find a balance between eating everything and eating nothing. I still entertain fantasies of weighing 88 pounds, although I have the sense to recognize that as an unhealthy, dangerous goal. I do not love my body, but I am learning to appreciate it as the thing that lets me be in this world, and learning that it needs to be taken care of. I am not cured. I am in remission, relatively symptom-free.



I am just starting the road back to a healthy life style. I want to rebuild the lean mass I destroyed with my former eating habits (which I am already making progress on). I want to rebuild my relationship with food and my body. I am by no means perfect, and I still struggle immensely. But I think I'm ready to beat this thing.