Eating Disorder Talk

I had planned a different post than this, but I’ll put it on the shelf, for now.

Now the big three: anorexia, bulimia and overeating - they’re pretty cut and dried, right? Anorexics starve themselves and maybe overexercise. Bulimics eat and then throw up or use laxatives. Overeaters are pretty self-explanatory. But is it really that finite?

A month ago, I wrote about being technically, by-the-books, EDNOS. Times change swiftly and I now meet three out of four of the DSMIV criterion for diagnosis of anorexia (since I’m only a year post-partum, it’s truly difficult to judge menstrual irregularity). I was doing ok for about a five-day stretch. I was eating (one meal) daily but taking in a lot of calories overall, when you consider my coffee and (semi-occassional) alcohol habits. I went those five days without losing a pound more. I was maintaining.

Then some stuff happened in my personal life. Emotionally draining lifestyle mistakes caused such stress that my coffee consumption doubled, I drank four days in a row, my cigarette smoking went from a pack lasting almost three days to nearly one, I grew depressed and disillusioned, I was intensely lonely and looking for anything (safe and effortless) to entertain me from my loneliness. While this is going on, I forgot to eat. For most of two days.

I remembered today that I’d had only a half sandwich and some rice cake bits of my daughter’s since the weekend. What jogged this memory was the fact that I nearly lost my footing and consciousness while carrying my daughter down the stairs of our apartment building.

So that fits the stereotypical anorexic behaviour.

So I thought that I should do something about that. This was getting ridiculous and I was putting my daughter’s health in jeopardy, too (not to mention her emotional health - how is she going to develop healthy self-image with this going on as a model to her?). So I decided that, yes, I would eat today. At least a fairly comfortable amount.

I ate 95% of a happy meal by 11am. That was more than a day’s worth of food and calories, right there. But no, then came a brownie when I grabbed a coffee later in the afternoon. And then dinner time was leftovers from my daughter’s tray and half of a pizza. I just finished the other half. I’m planning on some ramen noodles next, because why not just go for broke?

So, the next time you’re painting a mental picture of an anorexic, picture me. I’m hovering around 95 pounds, nearly 5′7″, and gorging on pizza and fast-food without plan or habit of purging. My tummy will feel stuffed until I wake up tomorrow, sick. Because that’s one stereotype of restricting that you can take to the bank: If you rarely eat, you’ll pay for it in potty time, when you do.