My Story

(Trigger Warning)

Most people can't tell you the exact day that their dieting became an eating disorder. I can. It was the day after my 19th birthday. Growing up my mom was always on a diet. There was the military diet. Jenny Craig. Slim fast. Sugar busters. Then there was the fad where all she would eat was an apple, an egg, and an orange for days at a time. She wasn't officially diagnosed with an eating disorder until I was 16 but looking back she never had a normal, healthy diet. My mom has never been happy with her body and I've always hated mine.

On my 19th birthday, my best friend/arch nemesis gave me a box of clothes. She had recently lost 25 lbs and had gotten pretty thin. That night I tried on some of the cute pants that she gave me but I couldn't get them past my thighs. They were US size 6. I remember crying my eyes out because her "fat" clothes were too small for me to even try squeezing into. Nevermind that I'm 4 inches taller than she is. Being a size 12 was completely unacceptable anymore. I took a vow that day to start drastically restricting until I could fit into those clothes.

The very first day of my diet I remember eating 735 calories. (This is why 730 calories is considered safe to me.) I started blogging to get support from other girls struggling to lose weight. I started eating healthier things and jogging. I lost about 30 lbs in 4 months. I went from a size 12 to a size 6. I got loads of compliments and people asking how I did it. I was honest... I said by counting calories and exercising. I didn't have to lie but no one knew about my secret blog.

I went to university and things started to unravel. I moved in with said best friend/arch nemesis. She would often comment on how little I took for lunch and how much I exercised. I started making excuses for skipping meals or would exercise in between classes when she didn't know I was at the gym.

One day while I was in the shower, she used my laptop and snooped around in my history. But she didn't tell me about it. For a few weeks I had been blogging and she was secretly reading my diet blog. One day she accidentally slipped and said something about my blog. I didn't want to believe it what I had just heard. I installed a tracker on my blog so it would tell me who was reading. Her screen name popped up that night. I confronted her about it the next day which she promptly called her mom and told her what had been going on. I moved out shortly after and didn't speak to her anymore.
I continued to restrict and the rage I felt from this betrayal pushed me to exercise harder. I lost more weight.

A few weeks later I had a friend who was dumped by her boyfriend so I took her out for ice cream. I had a 100-calorie popcorn for dinner that night and planned on just getting a small ice cream cone. I ended up getting a huge banana split. When I got back to my dorm an idea came into my head. You could just get rid of it. Erase what just happened instead of beating yourself up about it. So I went to the bathroom and did just that. I purged all the ice cream and popcorn. Nothing was left except bile. I was hooked. I could eat anything I wanted but not gain weight, right? Wrong. Very very wrong. Bingeing became my new favorite pastime. I started to gain weight as the b/p got worse. In fact, I eventually gained all the weight back.

I started another blog which was eventually found by my mom and dad from you guessed it... my laptop's browser history. My parents called a family meeting to tell everyone that I've been shoving my fingers down my throat. That was probably the most humiliating night of my life. My mom and grandmother have scrutinized everything that I eat since then. Even to this day!

My weight has been going up and down for the last 8 years. My skinniest was about 125 lbs my second year in vet school. I lived with another student and I couldn't b/p so I had to restrict. Once I moved into my own flat, the b/p began again and I gained weight.

Today I go back and forth. One extreme to the other every few days. I'll restrict and exercise and do really well for days... then I b/p for days because something upset me. My bf and i live together. He has known about my ed from the very beginning of our relationship over 5 years ago. I'm sure he doesn't truly understand though. His mom is a nurse and comments on what and how much I eat but luckily we have been living out of state for the past year. We will be moving back home in August so I'm really worried about dinner times at their house.

The funny thing is that I see myself being happy and healthy in the future. I want a family. I want kids. I don't want my daughters to go through this. I pray they will never have eating issues or bad body images. I don't want them to see my eating issues the way I did with my mom. I want to be thin but I want to be healthy and strong. I know I can't have it both ways so for now... thin wins.



Well there it is. The abridged version, as you can imagine. A lot of really fucked up things have happened in these past 8 years. There have been many highs and lows (pun intended). I'm always looking forward to the next chapter though. Here's to this next chapter being a happy one.