my eating disorder – part III

If you’ve missed the last two Wednesdays, go here for Part I and here for Part II.

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I have received an OUTPOURING of emails, as a result of this series. Women and girls who are struggling, who need to talk, and who need help.

I’ve done my best to respond back with words of wisdom and encouragement, but I do think that it should be said: If you think you might have an eating disorder, seek out professional help! Tell your parents or your husband or your pastor and go have them get you to someone who has been trained to help with EDs!

Life is just too short to live with this s*it!!

I don’t say this to discourage you from writing me! Please feel free – lindsaymwright at yahoo dot com.

And, as always, thank you SO much for reading!

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Where I left off…after one of my first purges.

After I was finished, I washed my face and hands. I scrubbed my teeth. Careful not to look at my reflection in the mirror. That girl was evil. Crazy. I hated her.

But I needed her to help me reach my goals.

I slinked back downstairs. Drifted in and out of conversations about when everyone would be putting up their Christmas trees. I talked and I actively listened. Anything to take my mind off of the sin that I’d just committed upstairs.

This pattern of eating, purging, then regretting, would continue for another year.

Getting worse before it got better.

What started out as a innocent diet the year before, had now evolved into a full-blown eating disorder.  Even though I was caught up in it, I still knew that what I was doing was wrong.  That it wasn’t normal.  And that it couldn’t last.

My body knew too.

After a year of restrictions and living off of 300 calories a day, my metabolism plummeted.  At my lowest weight (which was a good THIRTY POUNDS LESS than what I weigh now!), my body started rebelling against my “little plan”.  Slowly, the weight started to creep upward.  This freaked me out!

That’s when I turned to bulimia.  It only made sense.  Obviously, I was eating too many calories, right?  (this is sarcasm.)

So for a good 6 months (the Thanksgiving purge was during that time), I started throwing up my dinner.  Since I wasn’t eating breakfast, there was nothing to purge then.  There was no way that I was going to risk getting caught throwing up at school, so lunch wasn’t an option.

Dinner was really the only place to cut calories.  Cross country season had ended and I was now playing basketball.  We’d practice hard after school, then I’d come home and my family would all sit down to a meal together.  Mom would usually cook a piece of meat with a couple of sides or lasagna or spaghetti.  Normal food.

I didn’t eat what they ate.  Ever.  I always made myself something completely different – typically a baked potato and some steamed vegetable mix out of a bag.  Water to drink.

This is a well known “rule” among ED people – you don’t eat what other people cook.  They will have used butter and full-fat cheese or oil.  And “they” want you to eat these things so that you’ll get fat.  “They’ll” secretly hide sugar or lard in your food.  As a person with an ED, I didn’t see a mother that was doing her best, cooking for her family of 4 every night after she’d worked all day.  I wasn’t thankful for that.  All I saw was a person who was trying to feed me foods that would make me fat.  And I wanted no part in it.

So I’d prepare my own dinner and sit with my family and catch up on the day.  I’d wash my plate off, stick it in the dishwasher and excuse myself upstairs to “do homework”.

Obviously, I didn’t do homework (first).  I went to the bathroom and quietly made myself throw up.  Until there was nothing left.  I’d turn the water on to help mask the sound.  I got quite good at the whole ordeal.

My mom had no clue.

Or so I thought.

I can’t remember the exact day, but it was around the transition from Basketball to Track, so March?  I’d started to let myself go a little.  By that, I mean, I’d begun to eat “off limit” foods.  I was going to purge them anyway – why not eat something naughty?  This was a slow process – I started by tasting a roll or a piece of granola bar, nothing too “bad”.  After I saw that I could purge those items, I branched out.

To ice cream.

Full of fat and calories, ice cream was something I’d never have DREAMED about eating the year prior.  Purging gave me back options that anorexia had stolen. 

During my childhood, I remember eating huge bowls of ice cream or drinking my dad’s homemade Chocolate Milkshakes.  We were an ice cream family.  You could always find a Breyer’s “Take Two” or Rocky Road in our freezer (this still holds true).

This particular day, we had cookies and cream.  It was really late at night.  I’d already purged dinner.  Mom and Dad were watching TV in their bed, Katy was already asleep.  I snuck down and dished myself out a mug of ice cream and snuck it back upstairs to the bathroom.  Cold and creamy – I inhaled it.

Then I stood over the toilet and started to throw it back up.  Midway through the purge, I heard a knock at the locked bathroom door.

Part IIII will “air” next Wednesday.  A little“What I Ate (and then threw back up) Wednesday”.  I think humor is needed here.

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Do you happen to know what you’ll find if you perform a Google search for “bulimia”??

Look at that second one. Bulimia TIPS. What the heck?!?! Travis says that Google suggests these search fields, based off of what the most POPULAR searches are. So after searching for “bulimia”, “bulimia tips” has the next highest number of searches!!

This is QUITE disturbing.  Seems more people are looking for help getting in to bulimia than getting out. Something is SO wrong with that picture.

The thing is: I was that girl who went searching for those tips! I vividly remember searching for and finding anorexia and bulimia message boards, where girls would describe exactly what they would do to make themselves throw up or what the best mouthwash was for hiding “vomit breath”.

These websites and message boards NEED TO BE TAKEN DOWN and done away with!! They are helping no one and fueling an evil that is robbing lives!

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts below!

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P.S.  As I was typing this out last night at 10:30, I had myself a mug of Extreme Cookies and Cream ice cream, complete with a brownie and Sunflower butter.  I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so satisfying.

splendid…lindsay