My Struggle With An Eating Disorder

After reading a post on another blog I decided to open up about my eating disorder. Talking to them and feeling how good it felt to talk about it with someone other than my sister, I want to share my struggle with you.

When I moved back to Okeechobee in 2005, I was really thin. I was a waitress, I abused amphetamines, and I was really thin. I imagine I was right at 100lbs. 

After I moved back, I had trouble finding a job, so my boyfriend supported me. 

Not having a job and just taking care of kids caused me to gain weight. Not much, I was up to probably 120lbs.

In 2009 I fell into the dark world of EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified). I never purged, but I would essentially starve myself. I had just started going back to college, and doing that in my late 20's really had an impact seeing all of the girls fresh out of high school and thin as a board.

I have never been super thin, even as a child. I hate the term big boned, but I always had people tell me I've got "child bearing hips", and having bigger tits didn't help matters either. I was never considered overweight, but I wasn't quite thin either. 

This is me (the one being held) in high school, probably 2001 or 2002. I was smaller than most of my friends, so I never thought I had much of a weight problem at all. I was at about 120lbs, a healthy weight for my height of barely over five feet tall.

How it started was simple: I found blogs that were incredibly focused on "thinspiration" and crash diets. I was so desperate to be thin like the girls I went to school with that I was ready to do whatever it took. 

Even here in 2006 I wasn't all that big. I was smaller than I was whenever I was in high school, but I still thought I was fat. My brother was convinced I was too skinny, my mind said quite the opposite.

I started obsessively counting calories. I would eat as little as I possibly could, drink a lot of coffee to keep my energy high, and I exercised at an excessive rate. When I was not in class or taking care of my boyfriend's children, I was out on my bicycle or walking. I tried running and jogging, but that isn't too practical if you're a C cup or over without a really good sport's bra, which I did not have. 

After about two years, this is what I looked like. 

I think this is February 2012. Everyone thought I looked great, but I still saw myself as fat. I was too big, had too flabby arms, my stomach was too big, thighs were huge. I hated myself. 

This is two months later, at Easter. I only went to the family gathering to see my grandmother, and this is the image that my mother captured. Under that sweater was ribs and a little flabby tummy. I still wasn't happy, so I tried harder. I was still too big. 

Cut to a few months later, when I graduated from college. You can't really see it here since I was wearing a dress, but I can see the thinness in my face. I think the only part of my body I was pleased with here are my legs, only because I was wearing some kick ass heels that made my gams look fabulous. 

Not long after, I collapsed at work because my blood sugar dropped so low I passed out. 

I was later informed that it was so low it could have killed me. When your blood glucose levels get too low, your organs start to fail one by one. 

Luckily my organs were just fine, I hadn't done enough damage to myself that I couldn't reverse it.

That is when my family started to keep a very close eye on me. They would keep track if I ate or not, and how much. 

This is me and my daughter at McDonald's one afternoon after I started my recovery. The only thing I got was that shake, though I did eat some of my fries so she could see me eat. It was when I noticed her copying my eating habits that I knew I had to change. I couldn't have my baby going down the same path. 

This is about six or seven months after the hospitalization. You can see I was starting to gain some of the weight back, and make terrible hair decisions!

Then we have two years later, after I'd gained back a bunch of weight from breaking my ankle. I was still in my cast here, at work, pissed and in pain. I say I was probably at around 135lbs here.

Now I am at around 143lbs, considered obese by my doctor, but I don't hate myself anymore. I hate my other illness that has caused me to gain all of this weight (thank you screwed up balance problem that keeps me very sedentary), but I am starting to really fall in love with my body. 

I actually have boobs again. Big ones! These babies have gotten me free funnel cake at the county fair!

I have great thighs and a great ass for leggings and yoga pants. I'm not going to post a picture of my ass in yoga pants, haha. 

The only thing I have that I still don't like is my belly, but once I'm able to get active again, that will melt right off. 

I want to share what happened to me because I don't want to see other girls fall down that same dangerous hole. I was obsessed with my weight, with numbers. My grades started falling at school because I was so malnourished that I couldn't think straight. It almost cost me my financial aid and nearly got me kicked out of college. 

My bones were so weak that I ended up breaking my ankle by stepping into a hole. I shattered it into a million pieces and now I've got metal there. 

My hair started to fall out and my nails started peeling and turning blue from lack of nutrients. 

Wearing those size 0 jeans may sound so appealing, and so do these lose weight quick crash diets. 

Just ask yourself, is this really worth it?

I want to end this post with a documentary called Thin that really opened my eyes. This facility is not far from where I live, and it scares me to think that I could have ended up there had I kept on the path I was going down. 

 If you have made it this far, thank you for sticking with me and listening to my story. I still have problems putting that time into words, mainly because my mind was so muddled that I have a hard time remembering most of it. I just have pictures of what I looked like.