Tomorrow

"I'll eat tomorrow."

"I won't purge tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, I'll stop over-exercising."

"Maybe tomorrow I'll consider going into treatment."

"Tomorrow, I'll try listening to the treatment team."

"Tomorrow,..."

Tomorrows very quickly add up.  One tomorrow became 7,200 tomorrows for me--that's twenty years of tomorrows, give or take.

In that time, I made many sacrifices to my health, well-being, and happiness.  I closed doors on opportunities, friendships, and life experiences.  I spent those 7,200 days putting off until tomorrow what I could have done that day.  Call me the ultimate procrastinator.

I realize now that I took my tomorrows for granted, always expecting them to be there, but what I never considered is that with each passing tomorrow, I was limiting my present and my future.  When we are sick in the eating disorder, we comprehend only the immediate moment and act to soothe the pain within that moment.  We cannot see past the immediate restriction, binge, or purge.  We live to lose weight and harm ourselves, never realizing that the person we are hurting is not just our present selves but our future selves.  None of that matters while fighting the disease: we seek to win our daily battles, but not the war.

As I have grown stronger in recovery, I now feel moments of sadness and regret, having had my future impacted by my destructive past.  When my friends discuss memories of high school friendships, homecoming parties, and sexual exploration, I recall anorexia, starving me of all that they had.  When others reminisce about wild fun and sisterhoods formed in college, I remain silent, mourning an experience stolen from me by bulimia, for my college years were spent  in a car gorging in secret and in a gym or bathroom purging, alone.   Anorexia haunted me in my twenties and early thirties, stripping from me career advancement opportunities and rites of passage that women my age relish with joy in remembering.  And now, I watch helplessly as my friends cuddle their babies, while I struggle with infertility, no doubt related to the years of self-abuse.

I cannot get those years back, and this saddens me.  I could easily wallow in this self-pity or use it to refuel the eating disorder, but I don't.  Years of professing "tomorrow" have taught me something---it's time to stop saying "tomorrow," it's time to proclaim "today."  I cannot change the past, but I can change the future.  I choose to live today, not tomorrow, so my yesterdays can bring smiles, not tears upon remembrance.

For those of us who have struggled with eating disorders, we must believe in a better tomorrow to get through today.  But to make tomorrow a better day, we must stop procrastinating and do what is not easy; we must choose, today, to recover.  Not tomorrow, but today.  There are only so many tomorrows.

Cheers!

The Thousand Piece Puzzle

Who am I without my eating disorder?

This is a question that plagued me throughout treatment as I began to loosen my grip on the eating disorder.  After spending years trapped within body image hell, I had slowly allowed the size of my body to define who I was.  I perceived who I was with what I looked like.  I was convinced that by changing my size, I was changing me--that growing larger would ostracize me from my friends and that they couldn't possibly accept a me that took up more space.  I was the "small" one.  I was the "picky-eater," the "finicky-eater," the one who "ate like a bird."  My size and eating behaviors defined my status within the world.  Without that, I was nobody.

Except, I wasn't nobody; I was me.  As I gained health and pounds, people started commenting--not on my size, but on my personality.  I began hearing things like, "you look happier," "it's nice having you back again," and "you seem to glow."  But, how could that possibly be?  Who was this me people seemed to know so well?  None of this made sense because the person I thought I knew was slowly disappearing and this new, awkward, bigger being was taking its place.

For those of us who have struggled with eating disorders since adolescence, making peace with our true identity is challenging.  Our teen years should have been the time to explore who we are, to delve into our identities, so we could emerge into adulthood, transformed.  For us, the eating-disordered, we lost this precious opportunity for self-exploration.  We mistakenly allowed the eating disorder to usurp our identity.

But, an eating disorder is not an identity--it is a cloak, one that shields us from seeing and seeking the truth.  We cling to the eating disorder thinking that it defines us, not realizing that it prevents us from expressing our true identity. At some point, we have to be willing to let it go and take the risks we may not have taken in our adolescence.  We must learn who we are and what it is we enjoy.  If we cling to the eating disorder identity as a reason not to recover, what we are really conveying is that we fear what is lurking beneath the eating disorder; we fear ourselves and who we really are or may become.  The eating disorder saves us from failing, from having to make choices that ultimately could lead to error or pain.  When we ask ourselves who am I without the eating disorder, we are really asking ourselves am I willing to expose the real me to the world and to myself?

Slowly, I am learning to embrace my true identity.  I am a teacher, friend, wife, daughter, and crazy cat lady.  I am a good friend, but sometimes I say the wrong things.  I'm a good listener, but sometimes, I don't know how to assert my own needs.  I can be overly sarcastic and  a bit of a know-it-all.  I have a great smile. I'm definitely a reader, and I'm working on a being a writer.  I am me--a little of this, and a little of that.  I can't define myself with one word, just as no one can be so limitedly defined.  Certainly, I am not my eating disorder.  I am more than a number on the scale and more than a clothing size.

A puzzle is made up of hundreds or thousands of pieces; one piece cannot make up the whole.  Anorexia is only one piece of my puzzle; there remains thousands of other pieces that define me, that create who I am.  I refuse to allow one piece to represent all of me.  You should do the same.  Embrace all of the pieces that make you uniquely and beautifully you.  Putting together this puzzle is the joy in the journey.

Cheers!

Don't Accept Less

In my teens, I dated a boy who was violent, alcoholic, and abusive.  He terrorized, screamed, and raged at me.  Breaking free was terrifying, and I doubted that I would ever meet a man who would not harm me as he did.

Then, I met my first husband.  He was not the menacing individual that my boyfriend had been.  He loved me, and he didn't yell at or hit me.  He was, however, extremely controlling, and he treated me like a child, criticizing me and smothering me, but I tolerated this behavior.  I didn't know any other way.  He wasn't physically hurting me, nor was he swearing at me.  For a long time--almost fours years--I wouldn't acknowledge that abuse could take many forms and that this relationship, like my last, was also unhealthy.

Finally, I met my current husband, and now I understand.  His kind words, loving gestures, and compassionate actions show me every day that this, this is what a true relationship is.  We are partners, lovers, friends, and confidantes.  It is a joy that I never dreamt could exist.

My journey to recovery has taken much the same path.  At times, my eating disorder brought me to crisis: it had battered my body, assaulted my mind with cruel words, and threatened to kill me.  Other times, I lived in relative peace, relative being the key word.  I may not have been subsisting on three-hundred calories a day or eating laxatives like candy, but I was living in a less-than-desirable way.  I accepted that this was all there was to recovery.  At the time, hating my body felt okay because, well, it was better than it was when I was deathly ill.  Restricting a little was better than restricting a lot.  Sticking to a strict regimen of prescribed foods and exercise was great because, well, I couldn't do this before.  I accepted this because I could not see that recovery was greater than a healthy number on the scale.

How did I break myself free from abusive relationships?  Resolve.  I promised myself that I would never allow a man to lay a hand on me again.  I swore that a man would never control me or put me down again.  I desired more for myself, and more importantly, deep inside, I believed that I deserved better for myself.  And then, I allowed myself to seek that which I desired.

Translate this to recovery from an eating disorder, which for some reason, always seems harder than most things.  I read book after book on true recovery--Life Without Ed, Gaining, Good Enough and more--and I saw glimpses of what true recovery looked like.  I began to want for myself more than what I had had in the past.  I wanted what Jenni Schaefer has.  Though the guilt of giving this gift to myself seemed unbearable at times, I resolved not to fail.  I could no longer allow myself to accept less. I couldn't have less than a full recovery because anything less would be like balancing an elephant on a single thread; eventually the weight of it all with snap the line, and BAM, I would be back into eating disorder hell.

Granting ourselves permission to recover fully is never easy, for we have disciplined ourselves to subsist on nothing.  But, if we are to experience the fullness of life, we must resolve not to accept the minimum.  We must strive for the most and tolerate the space and fullness this brings.  There's something symbolically anorexic about accepting less for ourselves; it helps us to maintain an illusion of the eating disorder without the physical pain.  Holding on to remnants of the eating disorder may give us a feeling of safety, but it is not real.  We delude ourselves if we think accepting less and being recovered can coexist.  A quintessential aspect of recovery is learning to have more, take more, be more.  It's not only okay to do this, it is courageous.  Make no mistake, none of us are cowardly lions.  Roar and fight for all the more recovery can offer.

Cheers!

The Art of Tolerating Distress

Throughout treatment, I sat in group after group learning the fine art of tolerating distress.  Distraction (through reading or knitting), sensory appeal (such as taking a hot shower), making comparisons (by looking at how worse others experience life), etc... were ways to help me manage through the hard times.  The goal was to experience suffering and not allow that pain to affect my eating, not to allow negative emotions to interfere with my health.  In theory this distress tolerance thing seemed brilliant, but it reality it was an idea to which I was struggling to relate.

Though my doctor explained numerous times in myriads of ways that distress need not be a crisis, I could not comprehend exactly what was distressing to me.  I felt guilty for being sick because my life at the time was something of which many people dreamt: a home, a loving husband, wonderful parents, and a rewarding job.  Distress, to me, were those times in my not-too-distant memory, those times fraught with pain, despair, and isolation.

And so each weekend, when left to my own devices, I would relapse into anorexic tendencies, never connecting that distress encapsulated more than the horrific.  I would think to myself my life is so good; why can't I simply get better?  I knew what to do, yet each time the situation presented itself, I could not  bring myself to do what was most challenging: eat.

Two years later, I am making sense of this mystery.  Distress is not what I had envisioned it to be; it is so much more subtle.  Eating disorders have a way of escalating and then snowballing, making smaller issues into greater conflicts.  A little diet leads to a thirty-pound weight loss.  One extra bite leads to a 10,000 calorie binge.  An unbearable pain releases itself with a razor blade through the skin.  Eating disorders are diseases of extreme addiction---in which one meal skipped no longer brings the high and so two meals must be skipped.  The high we crave?  Numbness, loss of feeling.  An end to the distress.   And the more we attempt to avoid the distress, the larger the pain becomes, and the more extreme our methods of avoidance become.

For me, I lost the ability to perceive ordinary stressors as distress until, that is, when the feeling became so great that I could no longer repress it.  That niggling feeling that I wasn't doing a good enough job at work, the butterflies fluttering in my stomach when I worried that I had upset a friend, the hamster wheel that spun around and around, repeating that stupid remark I said---these are the things that fed distress and allowed distress to consume me.

It is only by confronting the negativity and feeling the discomfort each situation brings that I can maintain my recovery.  Otherwise, I may be tempted by the devil to restrict or over-exercise in a fruitless effort to self-soothe.  Recovery requires learning to tolerate the discomfort of shame, anger, guilt, sadness, and fear so that we may experience joy and love.  It means tackling problems before they escalate out of our control.  It means actually using distress tolerance skills, like I am now by blogging, to get through those moments when we feel life has slowed to a stop.  Distress is not a crisis; it is life, the good, the bad, and all the ugly.

That same doctor who taught me distress tolerance skills also shared the following scenario with me:
  A person who fears flying could ride on a plane, sitting in the aisle, wearing headphones and an eye mask, with a blanket on her lap, but she would never overcome her fear of flying because she wouldn't truly experiencing what it was like to fly on a plane.  She would be trying to avoid the fear by masking it.  Though it may it appear that she is conquering her fear, she isn't.  To face her fear of flying, she would need to sit by the open window, take off all blankets, eye masks, and headphones and then feel and see the world around her.  Only then could she learn to tolerate flying on a plane.

So ask yourself, are you attempting to mask the pain or are you truly tolerating the pain?  Learning the fine art of distress tolerance will bring you closer to the freedom of recovery.

Cheers!

On Being a Role Model: Part 2

Back in 2009, I was very ambiguous about this whole "recovery thing."  Anorexia had a death grip on me and refused to acquiesce.  At family group one night, the mother of a teenage patient informed me that I was a terrible role model for my students (I am a junior high teacher).  She elaborated in grave detail while I listened, seething with rage, guilt, and self-hate.

My mind wandered to the months leading up to my medical leave.  I attempted to put myself into the minds of my barely thirteen-year-old girls, who watched me shrink smaller and smaller, layer on more and more clothes, lose more and more hair while growing lanugo over my face, becoming frail, unable to stand and teach, look wan and gray, smiling less and less each day.  I must have appeared to be dying, and in fact, I probably was.  How scary and terrible for them, not knowing why.  This mother clearly was right, and because of that, because I misunderstood, I almost dropped out of treatment, feeling that I needed to return to work to prove myself.

What I didn't understand, and what I comprehend now, is that this mother was projecting her anger onto me.  Her daughter, also ill, desperately needed positive role models to support the journey to recovery.  This mother only viewed me as another adult contributing to the problem.  I see now that I am, in fact, part of the solution.

The act of seeking help and recovering transforms former anorexics and bulimics into role models. We need not tell our stories to kids to make that important difference in their lives; we only need to demonstrate self-care and body confidence.

I eat with my students.  I don't lament the food in front of me; I relish it.  I comment on the savory taste, the nutrition and energy it provides.  I eat a variety of foods with my students: candy, bagels, cupcakes, etc...  I chastise them for skipping meals and explain the need for three meals a day.  I provide snacks for hungry kids.  Teens need to see adult females who aren't afraid of food, who enjoy food, and who feel confident in consumption.  I never had such role models; no adult ever told me what was okay.  Because of that, I took my lessons from the self-deprecation of the women in my life and from TV and magazines.  I learned that one could "never" be too thin and that beauty encompassed the sole of one's worth.

Last year, one of my girls announced to me that she was "fat."  She said, "Look, when I put my thigh on my chair it gets bigger!"  Her comment resonated with me; I had been this girl, terrified that something was completely wrong with my body.  No one explained to me the truth, and thus, I spent the majority of my life loathing my thighs.  I responded to her, "Your thighs are supposed to do that.  They're not fat; that's just how they're made," and I showed her that, yes, mine did that too, "and if your thighs didn't do that then you wouldn't have the energy to run and do the things you like."  Maybe she believed me, and maybe she didn't, but throughout the year, I was careful to project a body confidence that would model self-love.

If we want to change the environment in which our girls grow up, we need to change the conversation.  We need talk positively about ourselves, we need demonstrate healthy eating, eating that includes all foods.  We need to talk openly about the media and its effects.  We need to stop judging others and gossiping about their sizes, end body snarking, and eliminate this focus on the outer shell of a person.  I like to focus my conversations with girls on them---their interests, their hobbies, their intellectual pursuits.

I would like that mother in the family group to see me know, to see how I have transformed.  I would like her to realize that the impact I now have on my students is positive.  But most likely, she will never know and that's okay.  I am no longer ashamed of my anorexia; I am proud to have survived and to have the opportunity to impact my students' lives positively. 

Cheers!

On Being a Role Model: Part 1

This news story made my blood boil.  Bully Calls New Anchor Fat (Click on link to be directed to the video)  Kenneth Krause, who has admitted to struggling with his own weight issues, wrote this letter to Jennifer Livingston, news anchor for WKBT News in Wisconsin:

     It's unusual that I see your morning show, but I did so for a very short time today. I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn't improved for many years. Surely you don't consider yourself a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular.  Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you'll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

I could write for hours about how ignorant and judgmental this man is.  Nobody, clearly, makes a choice to be obese--and looking at a person gives no indication as to his or her actual health.  Many larger individuals eat healthier foods and maintain more physically active lifestyles than thinner individuals.  Only a doctor is qualified to determine just how "dangerous" Jennifer's "choice" may be for her.

The larger issue is that this man felt it was somehow his civic duty to comment on Jennifer's weight--as if it is within his right to do so.  Moreover, he felt justified in doing so because she is a "poor" role model.  This entitlement mentality regarding weight does exponentially more harm than viewing any "overweight" person on television.  Weight is the last acceptable discrimination.  People feel emboldened and empowered to comment on any person's weight: "She's so skinny!  Look how huge he is; does he ever stop eating?  That woman better stop eating for two; it's going to be hard to lose that once the baby's born."  

We have become programmed as a society to hone in on a person's exterior, examining every nuance for flaws, and when we detect any flaws, we see no problem in drawing attention to all that we see is wrong.

This mentality is everywhere: from television, to advertisements for weight loss, to contradictory tabloids that will announce Jessica Simpson looks amazing one week and frumpy/fat the next week.  It is easier to blame the fat man eating a McDonald's quarter pounder than it is to blame the society that created the quarter pounder and the incendiary media.  We label obesity and eating disorders as choices, not products of a society that loads a gun and lies in wait for the pull of a trigger. We think we know, we think we understand, but in reality, we are misguided, and our ignorance only continues to feed the fire.  

I admire Jennifer.  I love that she dresses her shape well, stands tall and proud, and speaks with authority.  She illustrates that beauty doesn't fit a certain mold, and that being larger than society's vision of perfect doesn't mean having to hide in shame.  Jennifer is modeling to girls the importance of loving oneself regardless of one's size.  She is modeling self-respect.  She is more of a role model than the contestants and trainers on the Biggest Loser, Jennifer Hudson, or any other media personality who proudly unveils a smaller, "healthier" self.

Society needs to be a positive role model to our girls, and this man simply reinforced all of the stereotypes and judgments that work to load the gun for our youngest and most vulnerable.  Let's learn to appreciate people for who they are and who they are, alone.  Let's show our girls what beauty really looks like.

Cheers!

Letting It Go

I learned how to ride a bike later than most kids, maybe around seven.  I was so content with my plastic Big Wheels "bike" that I never really cared to make the switch.  Of course, I owned a "big girl" bike complete with training wheels, but nothing gave me more satisfaction than racing down the steep incline of our driveway and sharply turning at the last possible second, slowly shredding away the plastic wheel.

At some point, I must have been determined to learn to ride that "big girl bike."  It may have had tassels at the handlebars, maybe not, but it did have a way too cool banana seat (this was the 80s).   It was time for the training wheels to come off, literally, and all along the sidewalk, I remember my mother holding on as I wobbled with bold perseverance.  In my mind's eye I can see the lush summer grass, the verdant trees, and my mom happy as a lark when I allowed her to let go, and I simply did it--I rode that bike up and down that sidewalk all on my own.  Learning to ride without training wheels on a real bike opened possibilities for me of which I had never dreamed.  Larger wheels meant longer distances to travel from home.  Larger wheels meant meeting new friends at the end of the street.   Larger wheels meant less help from Mom. My seven-year-old world suddenly became a whole lot larger, and I became  more independent than ever.

Letting go of an eating disorder, like learning to ride a bike, takes a lot of time, some trial and error, and the guidance from and support of those we love.  There's fear in letting go, in doing it on our own.  There's reluctance to envision ourselves doing it on our own, without those strong hands guiding our way and literally propping us upright.  How can we do this without our therapists, our dietitians, our doctors, or our support groups?  How can we guide ourselves along the right path, upright, without toppling over and hurting ourselves?  How can we trust that we have this ability when so many times before we have fallen?

There's a sadness in letting our doctors, therapists, et al. go, those individuals with whom we have grown so close and who know so much about us.  Once the training wheels come off, we must learn to navigate our own lives and maintain a delicate balance.  We begin to travel farther and farther from those strong hands, glancing back to see those hands waving us on our way.

Letting go of the eating disorder feels so bittersweet.  There are losses, there are gains, but in the end, if we persevere through the wobbly learning curve, we emerge with lives much fuller and larger than we could have imagined when we were sick.  The fears of the unknown seem less scary.  There's suddenly so much to do and to see.  We inexplicably desire to explore new pursuits.   Our world becomes so large that the returning to the small, desolate ED world loses its allure.

Recovering requires a lot of faith in oneself and in the world that lies outside of our minds.  Following meal plans, attending groups, journaling, etc..., steady and direct us, help us to grow stronger, allow us to grow a larger, illustrious world in which we want to engage.  We must replace all that was isolating, destructive, and minimizing with connection, joy, and fulfillment.

We may not be the most steady when we let go, but we have to keep going, one foot in front of the other.  Because before we know it, recovery will be as automatic as riding a bike--and looking back just won't be the same.

Cheers!