My Eating Disorder

My last time at River Oaks in New Orleans (Feb and March), I was given an official diagnosis of Otherwise Specified Feeding and Eating Disorder. This basically means that I don't fit into the traditional presentations of other more common disorders like Anorexia or Bulimia. I struggle with a combination of restricting, bingeing and purging. One of my friends in River Oaks called it an "equal opportunist" since I take from multiple disorders and combine them. 

My eating disorder had its origins in my childhood. As an infant, I was given the nickname "Hungry Hippo". By the time I was in elementary school, I was considered overweight. I was bullied at school because of my weight. My parents made changes to my diet early on, trying to get my weight under control. Our milk was changed to skim to try to challenge my weight gain. My snacks were changed. My brother had his snacks, I had mine and they were vastly different. It didn't stop me from going on binges of sweets like ice cream and cookies. At one point, I remember eating half of a gallon of ice cream for breakfast, before my mom got up so I could hide it. 

As I grew older, the situation with my weight didn't change. I was repeatedly bullied by other children. At one point, other kids from different schools called me pregnant because of my weight. I was isolated and didn't have many friends. When it came to home life, things were not easy there either. I was made fun of because of my weight. I was repeatedly compared to my brother, who was as skinny as a toothpick. 

My parents repeatedly put me in different sports to try to do something to control my weight. I played soccer for multiple years, a year of softball, and a year of volleyball. I was constantly compared to my brother who was great at sports whereas I sucked. I was never good enough. 

When I was in middle school, I had a friend who's parent followed different diet plans and repeatedly shared them with my parents. My parents forced me to try multiple different diet plans including things like counting points and calories. I never really followed them much but I was still forced to try them.

My parents were always looking for ways to "control" my weight. When I was in high school, a new idea was found. My parents bought protein bars to replace meals, specifically breakfast. My snacks were switched to things like rice cakes. It was at this point that I started skipping meals. Many days, I would not eat breakfast simply because I didn't want to eat the disgusting protein bars. 

Clothing shopping was a miserable experience. Every time I went up in size, I was given hell about it. I remember one time when we were at Kohl's shopping for summer clothes, my parents had picked out some clothes for me to try on. All were the same size. When it came to the point that I could not fit in that size anymore, my mom had to go back and find clothes in the next size up. When my dad found that out, he yelled at me in the middle of the store. I was so embarrassed and upset that I bolted to another part of the store and hid. I remember my parents paging me over the intercom and I got yelled at again when I went back to my parents. My weight was always a problem for them and it could never be good enough because I didn't look like my brother who was their dream child. 

My weight never lived up to my parent's dreams and expectations. So my eating disorder has now taken it's place.

I've had good times and bad times with my eating disorder. Times when eating hasn't been a difficult for me and times where it has. I've struggled with bingeing most of my life. I've never really gotten to the point where I will eat three meals in a day. It's something I have also struggled with. My restricting has gotten to the severity of me not eating at all for days and eating very little if I do eat. 

Purging entered my life in 2017 where I would go through periods of time where I didn't eat and then would eat a lot at one time and turn around and purge it. (See my post about it here). I have struggled with purging off and one since it started in 2017. 

Currently my eating disorder looks like restricting, eating one meal a day if that or maybe 2 if it's a good day. I will binge on different sweets and turn around and purge. Purging can happen for multiple days in a row and then stop for a while and then return the next time I want to binge. It's a daily struggle with my eating. 

My eating disorder is heavily tied into my trauma which makes it even more difficult to tackle because all the trauma that goes along with it has to be addressed along with the eating. It's going to be an uphill battle to get to some normalcy, if that will happen again. It may not. Time will tell.