Anorexia, an Eating Disorder (part 2)

A Dangerous Mix of Emotions:

I was 13 years old when my anorexia first started; my Mother had just died of cancer and I was desperately unhappy. My world had collapsed around me; I felt isolated and to make things worse – I was fat.

I put myself of a calorie controlled diet, determined to lose weight and be like all the other girls around me, my sister, my female cousins and my peers at school.

I was full of enthusiasm and eagerness. It was an exciting time – I was going to be slim and beautiful! Looking back on it now, I had only been overweight for about a year or two… but at that age it seemed like forever. I was very determined and had the gusto and nonchalance of a young teenager. I set my targets and met my targets – well the food targets that is, it wasn’t necessarily the weight loss targets that I had imagined…

Weight loss is very subjective, it depends of a whole host of factors, and we unfortunately cannot always make it happen smoothly. I usually happens in stages, plateaus are reached periodically where no weight loss occurs and then it starts to drop off again. And it should happen slowly – rapid weight-loss can be very dangerous and we can put ourselves at risk of permanent physical damage. Well that of course is what I know now as an adult. As a desperate teenager – I didn’t care about such possibilities in the least bit.

I was too impatient to do things slowly, and as each plateau was reached my desperation grew. I cut out more and more items out of list of allowed foods. I cut out carbohydrates; I cut out fats; I cut out sugars – natural or otherwise; I cut out everything that had more calories than the average apple… I started starving myself to thinness…

Impatience and Desperation:

All I could think about was trying not to eat, counting calories, weighing myself, measuring my waist, exercising and nothing else. Health considerations did not matter to me. I lived on apples and citrus fruit, drank countless cups of tea and black coffee to avoid hunger, and ate one small meal a day consisting of boiled vegetables…

But then my weight reached a plateau, which is how weight loss usually occurs, in stages… Only I didn’t know that, and I was too impatient anyway. Looking back on it now, I was actually no longer overweight! But I couldn’t see it… I ate even less… I remember my vision becoming blurry, I remember my hands shaking from weakness… I remember feeling faint and exhausted… When it got too much I went to sleep; I slept frequently during the day, sometimes to avoid the hunger, but most of the time because I just couldn’t stay awake… But none of that mattered… I had to stick to my weight loss plan at all costs.

Ignoring all the Signs:

I remember looking at the food on my plate – I remember the sinking feeling as the hunger burned in my stomach… It was such a small amount of food – and I was so hungry… But I had willpower of steel – and I made use of it. Nothing was going to stop me from reaching my goals, no matter how hungry I felt. It became a war… A war I fought against myself, against the hunger, against the weakness and the pain, against my body – and I had to win come what may. ‘It’, the hunger, soon became ‘it’ , my body, some kind of external entity – I would not let ‘it‘ make me fail. I remember the determination… It was maddening… And soon it became a madness… I was going to achieve my ‘perfect figure’ no matter what happened along the way! And a whole lot did happen along the way – except the ‘perfect figure’… That never did.

The fact is I was causing great harm to my body – my gut lining was getting permanently depleted, my muscles and tendons were becoming weaker, my joints were getting damaged, my skin was undergoing irreversible harm… Even my brain and nervous tissue was suffering. And, as a doctor’s daughter, all the while at the back of my mind, I was aware of all these possibilities – but they didn’t seem relevant to me. I was hopelessly trapped by my obsessive needs… The madness, that demon, the anorexia – had taken over my whole life.

Desperation, Despair and Stubbornness:

My Dad, who was also my GP, tried very hard to reason with me, telling me how essential fats were to the brain and spinal tissue. He tried to buy me foods that I might be willing to eat. He tried tempting me with foods I might find irresistible… And finally, in the end, out of despair – he tried threatening me with hospitalisation if I didn’t eat more. But none of it worked. I just became more desperate, I started suffering from depression, and instead of being a happy anorexic – I became a sullen, moody and ‘crazy’ anorexic instead.

I started suffering from paranoia, imagining my Dad was trying to prevent me from reaching my goals. I became erratic and melancholy, suffering huge mood swings, and horrible episodes of depression. My brain was starting to suffer the consequences of starvation… I was heading for a breakdown…

My Dad arranged for me to see a dietician and child psychologist in the hope they might be able to help… It made me even more paranoid… Every time I heard him on the phone I imagined he was talking about me with some other ‘medic and shrink’… I imagined everyone was trying to control my life, jeopardise my diet and stop me from being the way I wanted to be.

The Downhill Slide to Disaster:

I went through terrible lows, depression like I had never experienced before. I liked my dietician, but the weekly visits to the psychologist became a nightmare – I didn’t get on with her, and she talked of things that deeply disturbed me, things that affected me so badly that all I wanted to do upon my return was hide under my bed and never emerge.

I felt I was losing my grip on life. I walked out of school, and soon after that left home to go and live with an Aunt. The only control I experienced was during my daily exercise sessions. So I started exercising more and more… I exercised, two hours a day, then three hours a day, then four hours a day, then five hours a day… I became addicted to my own adrenaline… I had become an ‘adrenaline junkie’.

If I didn’t exercise I got severe cramps, cramps that felt like they would rip my tendons off the bone. I became terrified of not exercising…. I took handfuls of diet pills, and lived on caffeine and my daily ‘fix’ of adrenaline… I was in a truly pitiful state…

Weighing up the Costs:

A couple of years later I had a complete breakdown. I weighed 4½ stones and soon after that, everything that I had caused so much damage to my body over came crashing down on me. I no longer had any willpower and I started binge eating. My immune system had suffered so much I got sick easily. My body had become so damaged that I ripped my tendons every second, third day and couldn’t exercise properly any longer… And I had no longer the will to exercise anyway. I had no longer had the will to do anything anymore… I couldn’t keep a coherent thought in my head for more that a few minutes. All my thought and reasoning capabilities had broken down… I no longer even knew what kind of a person I was.

It took me 6 years of my life trying to figure out my ‘new’ broken down personality after that. Six long years of dire, black depression over which I ended up putting on pretty much all the weight I had initially lost anyway, but the damage I had caused my body to suffer was irreparable. And I felt terrible unhappiness again over my weight; I started smoking so I might be able to control my hunger. I did lose weight and become slim again, but I no longer had anything remotely resembling a beautiful body – my skin was covered in wrinkles and stretch marks from severe lack of oils and too much exercise.

Things Can Change for the Better in the End:

I manage to recover from that terrible depression over time, and a few years ago gave up smoking as well. But I still have a deep rooted unhealthy attitude towards food – deep down the anorexia has never really left me; but I manage to keep it in check. And though I still feel I should only eat a small amount, I try to maintain a balanced diet, with oils, proteins, some carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, and once in a while even enjoy a desert or two… At the back of my mind though, there is always that thought – I have to watch my weight…

There is perhaps no simple solution to eating disorders. Some of us never get cured. And eating disorders can cause permanent harm to our bodies and our minds. All I can say is if you feel you have an eating disorder, or you have a loved one with an eating disorder – You are not alone – there are lots of people who understand how you feel, and there is support available if you want to reach out…

So – please, please seek help, you don’t have to suffer on your own.