My Eating Disorder Story:The Beginning

(trigger warning: I talk about eating disorders in this post)


This is a post I began in the hopes of publishing for NEDA (National Eating Disorder Awareness) Week, and it went on a bit, and wasn't quite done, etc. It's already quite long so I think I am going to break it up into two if not three posts, we'll see. I try to write a concise version of my eating disorder story every now and then and it's just impossible for me.

I am sure a part of my reluctance to finish and publish it is no doubt rooted in my own shame, and also in not wanting to upset anyone. But it is my story, and since I discovered Body Positivity three years ago I have been on a mission to deal with my food and body image issues in an honest way, and it all begins here.

Also I do believe that stories like mine are SO common, even though mine is unique to me/my life, I feel like most eating disorder stories are told/portrayed by people who look a certain way/are the most severe cases, when in reality so many women (and men/anyone with an e.d.) who look "normal" or are in larger bodies also deal with eating disorders, sometimes hidden and for much longer than anyone would guess.

As I mentioned in this post Invisible Eating Disorders and Medical Fatphobia, I do feel that the need to be aware that people in all body sizes can have eating disorders is something that the whole scene (Medical, Eating Disorder professionals/treatment centers) could do with being better about. Like a LOT better about. It has been over 30 years since I first had eating disorder behaviors/symptoms, but I don't see much change in the public perception we have of what an eating disorder "looks like".

The fact is many girls I knew in high school had various phases of unhealthy/eating disordered behaviors that simply went ignored, because we weren't in the "deathly skinny" category - which we also had at my school, but they mostly got away with it because they were athletes.

We skipped meals, we binged, we purged, some of us silently, some of us it would get out of hand and you know, maybe an adult would have a word - but we weren't the girls being sent away for eating disorder treatment or scrutinized as unhealthy. Because as long as we were on the "right" side of thin we were considered ok. I also knew people in bigger bodies than me who also had food issues that went even more ignored.

I remember in sophomore year I think we had "Health Class" which consisted of basic sex ed, and I don't even know what else. It was taught by our male gym teacher. One day of the class involved checking our BMI's with a fat pincher, publicly, and him telling the (boys and) girls which ones were over their BMI. I think he even made jokes about which of us needed to lose weight. WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUU*K.

I just...I can't even. Do they still do this?! I remember several girls being traumatized and upset the rest of the day. BMI IS BULLSH*T! Utter, soul destroying bullsh*t. Quite a few of the still growing teen bodies in this class were deemed overweight or on the verge of somehow, no consideration was paid to the fact that girls simply have more fat and less muscle than boys unless they are athletes.

So while most of the boys were deemed acceptable, a lot of the girls were on the "wrong" side of the middle of the BMI. This was in like 1991. By this point I had already lost around 20 lbs after being fat shamed by a doctor after weight gained during my freshman year.

So I was one of the girls who was "ok", even though I had a secret binge starve occasional purge cycle firmly in play. I would never have self identified as such, but I had an eating disorder. But the fat pincher grabbing my skin held by my middle aged male gym teacher said I was a good girl doing the right thing, obviously.

The reasons I gained weight my freshman year were complex. I had begun binge eating in late middle school not from anything to do with caring about my body's appearance, because I had never restricted when I first started bingeing. I was always an average/slim shaped child.

I binge ate out of stress and fear, I now realize, to do with my Dad's increasingly volatile alcoholism. I still remember the first time I binge ate. I was waiting for my Dad to come home, and the later it got the worse I knew it would be. My Mom was working nights and yeah; this is a Gen X growing up story, there were no babysitters by the time I was thirteen I think.

So this one night I do remember making myself a piece of toast...and it felt so soothing. Without thinking about it, I just kept making pieces of toast and eating them, until I was finally not thinking about my Dad so much. I had not one thought of guilt or sneaking food feelings, it was literally just a coping mechanism I discovered by chance.

When we left my Dad, not long after the start of my freshman year of high school, we moved into my Grandmother's house for a while. We had moved to a new state - Massachusetts, which unlike Virginia was cool and autumnal, and while in many ways I felt much safer, the truth is there were other stressors in that house. Because my grandma was an alcoholic too. A much quieter, more secretive alcoholic, who drank surreptitiously and went to bed early.

The first month or so we lived with her it was ok, she was cooking these amazing dinners every night and there was always dessert and I legit thought I was living in a dream. It was all so wholesome, so what I imagined life should be like, like an afterschool special before things go bad. But unfortunately she fell off the wagon and for a time there was this weird unspoken "Things are not good but they are not good in a quiet/weird way" thing that I was not used to.

On the surface things were peachy - nice house, tree lined street, suburban middle class levels of grocery shopping that I was not used to - there was branded ice cream and cookies and honestly, a lot of fancy "junk food" that I did not grow up with in my house. It made everything ok.

My grandma would basically go to bed (again, my Mom was working nights, she worked two jobs the entire time I was in high school and did everything on her own financially to support us) early, and me, being a freshman without much of a social life at a new school, would have the tv and the snacks to myself. I told myself this was all going to be ok; while of course there were cracks and unpleasant things that did happen, and eventually she did go to rehab and we moved out and things got better.

But in that time period, I did binge eat, unquestionably, for comfort. I simply wasn't used to having access to that volume of treat food (while I totally grew up having treats, there were limits, and it was often, you know, the boring/healthier part of the cereal or cookie aisle - whereas my Dad was a skinny junk food addict, and yes I do also feel like there is a connection with me associating food with love, because my Dad and I did have little late night tv snack sessions together when he wasn't drinking - see I'm my own therapist, bada bing!).

Weirdly (I guess?) I don't recall that I ever worried about my weight or stuff like that during this time, it just didn't occur to me. I did feel like I was probably doing something wrong with my eating patterns, I did begin to feel like I was sneaking food in some way, but mostly it was just sort of soothing. I don't think I ever ate past the point of feeling ill as I would later do, but to be fair I can eat a lot sometimes without feeling full (especially when numbed out/binge eating I guess).

At any rate, I did begin to have more of a social life, I made some friends and I remember feeling happy to be going back to school in the Fall.

I remember going to the doctor for a pre-school check up I guess? I don't think I had been weighed/had a general check up for some time before that, because the last weight they had me at was very much my pre-teen body weight, something like 110ish lbs. If you had asked me that day if I had any idea what my weight had been I would have said no (This seems sort of amazing to me as by this point I was 15 years old I think?).

I had never felt any kind of way about my body, other than quietly smug in ballet at my flexibility (actually hyper-mobility, ack), or perhaps like a bit of a lame-oid because of my asthma when it came to running. I was a fairly active kid who spent a lot of time outdoors, in retrospect I was less active as a pre-teen and that possibly, naturally contributed to some weight gain too, along with puberty.

My newly curly hair and braces were probably the main bane of my existence in terms of caring about how I looked. I was just starting to care about fashion in a concentrated/teenager-ish way, after discovering The Cure and Winona Ryder and all of that good 90s alternative weirdo stuff.

I was beginning to feel like I had a place; my English teacher was a sort of substitute Dad and cast me in school plays and praised and believed in me in this very supportive, kind (honest to God not creepy) way. I remember my freshman year we didn't really have an official Drama Club teacher so he took over, and we did a night of scenes and one acts.

I got to do a scene from Picnic and the Juliet monologue from Romeo and Juliet. I remember my Mom made me dresses for each part, one a fifties swing style and a Grecian drape-y style for the Shakespeare, obviously ;-).

I feel like this is one of the last memories I have of being completely neutral/uncritical about how my body looked in something (and it's possible I am mis-remembering, but I don't recall feeling anything other than...special, to have these specially made clothes for my characters). I don't remember being aware of what size I was  - I think I definitely felt, as I had my whole life, "average", acceptable*, somewhere in the middle. It's hard to put into words or clearly remember, but I think I just felt...present, in my body, without thinking about it, like kids do.

Apologies for the self indulgent fashion memory trips, but again, my freshman year I remember for my first day in my new school my Mom got me a new outfit (which was totally indulgent; I had already gotten new clothes for my other school in Virginia I am sure). And I do remember buying this orange Aeropostale sweater (it was LIKE A BURNT ORANGE OK), and it wasn't a color I had ever really worn before, but it felt so appropriate for our new life in New England.

I was very aware of being from the south/being different, and I really wanted to fit in (this was before I became obsessed with being "unique";-0). I just remember that sweater made me feel like I was going to be ok, the way young/pre teens are SO insecure, especially as I was starting out as the new kid with the funny accent (and yes Massachusetts people have the nerve to make fun of Virginia accents!), a month or so into the school year, so I knew I was going to stick out, which I hate. But I do remember as scared as I was that first day, I was so comforted by my outfit/felt unusually (for me) confident and that somehow, miraculously, it was not a total disaster.

I miss that feeling of feeling good in clothes being the most important thing. Of having zero self criticism. I work on it every day but I would be lying if I said I have let go of all of my self critical thoughts.

Anyway, I digress. Fast forward to the following summer before my sophomore year.

It turned out, at the doctor's appointment, that I was in the middle...of the BMI chart for my height. I had gained weight since I was I don't know, thirteen or whatever, shocker. Something around 20-25lbs I guess. Something that might be considered normal in puberty, but in truth in my case it was probably mostly to do with the binge eating.

I don't remember if the reason for my weight gain was discussed: I do remember getting the impression somehow that it was interpreted as being on the edge of unhealthy (IT WASN'T, in real terms). I think it probably freaked my Mom out because I weighed more than her. I don't want to go into that stuff too much, but I will say that I was made to feel like I needed to lose weight to be more acceptable. That thinner, less numbered me was something that needed to be returned to. Not told to lose weight, per se but it was assumed I would just naturally lose it somehow when I went back to school. I was very much aware, suddenly, that gaining weight was bad, and to gain any more was really not acceptable.

Looking back I cannot help but wonder why the doctor didn't ask about me being a kid of a recent parental separation, living in a new state at a new school, or wonder if that might have had some stressful effect on me. But my only abiding memory is that I now knew exactly what my weight was, and I felt like it was not ok. I didn't know anything about diets.

I had read one book as a pre-teen about a girl who developed an eating disorder, but it was really sort of low key and told from the girl's perspective and it all worked out ok in the end I guess (I wish I could remember the name of the book...the main character was a young commercial actress and had a long braid, that's all I remember!).

This medical weight shaming happens to pubescent girls all the time still, and it's so, so toxic and sadly, cyclical. It is very normal for girls to gain what seems like a lot of weight sometimes in puberty. Unfortunately nowadays the pressure to be thin is even greater, and companies like Weight Watchers (rebranded as WW yeah we still see you) are trying to cash in on teenage insecurities by welcoming them into the fold of the lifelong diet hamster wheel.

While my weight gain was probably at least in part down to my new binge eating habit, the fact was I had yet to ascribe any shame about my body to it for getting bigger. It is hard not to wonder what if I had not been made to feel this way, maybe I would have figured out a way past it as it was just a comfort/loneliness thing, and I was soon to have a much more active social life.

Of course most of my friends had begun to feel some kind of way about food and their bodies too, I was far from alone. And as we traversed teenage life we participated in junk food binges and diet/body talk together as a matter of course.

Unfortunately it just started permeating the air around us and became ever more normalized as we got older. "I only ate a bowl of cereal yesterday" one friend might say, and we would tut at them in disapproval, probably even make jokes about anorexia like...that's how teenage girls do.

I remember shopping for back to school clothes before my sophomore year pretty vividly. I had to go up a size (or maybe it was two, I just remember for the first time I knew that bigger sizes were "bad"), and it was imprinted in my head that I would somehow go back down, because that size was somehow unacceptable for a girl my age.

I really liked some of the clothes, I was very into Heathers and Twin Peaks and beginning to grow a bit of drama geek girl fashion confidence. There were cardigans and pleated skirts, very schoolgirl-ish, which wasn't really a mainstream fashion trend yet. Nirvana's Nevermind was imminently to break and that would have a ripple effect on the counter/underground culture becoming more mainstream, but at that moment in time we definitely felt like little moonflowers (or I did anyway!) in how we expressed ourselves.

I remember on the first day of school we had to get our pictures taken. I was wearing this turtleneck and sort of floral sack/pinafore type dress over it. I liked the clothes but I was suddenly very aware of how my body felt and looked. I was paranoid that the dropped waist made my belly look fat. I remember sucking in my stomach, hoping no one would notice my suddenly gross body.

A body that a few weeks earlier had felt just fine. A body that a few months prior had twirled confidently on a stage in a pale blue dress with a flippy skirt in front of an entire school, dancing with a mop to Come and Go With Me by The Dell Vikings (the play Picnic is set in the 50s), with not a care in the world about how my stomach or other body parts looked. That carefree feeling was now completely gone.

To even sit and remember that loss now still hurts my soul. Because this was only the beginning of years upon years of self hate and body shame. I feel I should apologize for the length of this, it's obviously going to have to be continued later. This was the EASY part in some ways.

Because honestly, my binge eating, at the beginning anyway, is no longer a source of shame for me now that I acknowledge it. I release that. Here, now, forever. My binge eating comforted me through unbelievably dark times. I still have undealt with issues when it comes to all of that child of an alcoholic stuff, I am sure, but in retrospect I am weirdly grateful that I found some source of relief, albeit temporary.

Unfortunately ultimately it led to bad things because it wasn't dealt with in an appropriate psychological or compassionate manner. My exterior was judged without any consideration paid to the internal turmoil I was dealing with.

My binge eating was a place of safety and calm. Obviously, I am not condoning or saying binge eating is healthy, but it was, for me, an outlet to escape the fear and pain of my life.

For many people, binge eating is a physical response to starvation that is pretty much unavoidable - be it eating disorders or diets, the starve/binge cycle is one that happens because the body wants to survive, not be deprived. That is what my eating disorder morphed into after I was made to feel overweight - ever more unhealthy and extreme behaviors.

But I still weirdly feel like this initial part of my eating disorder, the beginning, was something that happened to try to protect me. All of the more stereotypical stuff that came after I was made to feel body shame is another story. And I think that's enough for today. I hope to continue this at a later date if anyone is interested. Thanks for reading.

This mopey faced baby is the only pic of this specific era (this was the summer after my freshman year) I could find on Facebook because I am older than the hills/all my pics are actual film in my Mom's house mostly!). I do have a few pics from h.s. with friends I might have to crop out for privacy reasons. Anyway this is me on a family road trip to Virginia, from Mass, to go camping, for some bizarre reason I have no idea why! Reasons for my teenage sulk face include but are not limited to

-I do not wish to be photographed, ever, but especially in my dorky glasses, which I am so averse to I wander around blind until I eventually get contacts my sophomore year

-I don't know why my hair is so short but I think I remember getting a really awful haircut around this time and crying at the hairdresser

-I am being torn away from the tennis court, where I spend every waking moment with my new b.f.f. Jodi in a very unsubtle stalking my skater boy crush who lives across the road summer of pining

-Unrelated to my face I give props to teen me for recognizing early on that a good striped shirt will see you through pretty much anything! ;-)