Every year during the last week of february there is eating disorder awareness week. Most of the time it is overshadowed by black history month and heart health. To me this is sad that a very fatal disease is pushed to the backburner because it is taboo to be a girl or woman or even a male and have an eating disorder.
So i thought i would share my story. My eating disorder started when i was really young. As i look back on my life i can see different signs and symtpoms starting back when i was 6. I remember sneaking food like whole bags of marshmallows, boxes of cake mixes, boxes of brownie mixes, cans of icing. My parents would clean my room every so often and find all of this. I would steal food out of the fridge and hide the evidence under my bed, i would steal cans of pepsi and hide tem under the bed also. I would also be the one kid to offer to clear the table and scrape the plates so i could eat what the others didnt. I remember going to the pediatrician and my mom would mention what i was doing. But they never said anything. You see i had gone through puberty already at the age of 6. And the eating was how i comforted myself. My eating disorder had already became my best friend. By the time I was 8 i was already overweight and mom and dad were getting really concerned about the weight gain. So began the dieting. During grade school i came to hate being weighed in p.e. I was already embarassed by how much i weighed. Mom would always know when i would be weighed and would start having me doing sit ups every night after supper. I came to absolutely hate exercise cause i knew exercising meant i was supposed to be losing weight and i never seemed to be able to lose the weight. I felt like i was never good enough. I couldn't ride a bike fast enough, i couldn't run, i couldn't walk fast enough. Which meant i was disappointing my parents even more. They didn't want a fat daughter. They wanted a healthy daughter. Fast forward to high school and came even more dieting and more exercise. Every morning i would get up early before school and did aerobics before school. I would drive to school early in the winter and walk and run the halls all in the name of losing weight. Fast forward to college. And i let my sisters talk me into joing weight watchers. BIG mistake. The eating disorders got even worst. Now there were even more bad foods that i wouldn't let myself eat. Skipping meals every single day. Granted i never ate breakfast when i was growing up. To me eating breakfast was for thin people who could afford those calories that wasn't me. But now i would go a couple of days without eating before the weigh in. The obscession become even more. I wouldn't let myself drink anything before the weigh in, i couldn't eat, i had to wear the lightest clothes possible. And then after the weigh in was a trip to the grocery store and i would spend the day eating anything and everything i wanted. And so started a horrible cycle of bulim ia. Pretty soon i would binge the entire next day also. Once again my family would see the signs of me hoarding food in my room. They would joke and say i had a grocery store in there. Not only was food hidden in my room it was in my car also. The a ha moment was when i was in mental health class and one of the assignments that i was given was to attend 25 hours of support groups. The one that i chose was eating disorders. I was interested in eating disorders and thought maybe i had one. At the end of the group. I was shock. I saw myself in so many of the girls in the group. The group leader got me to talk and at the she told me i needed to get help that if i didn't i would die. Eating disorders kill. Fast forward again to october 2006. I called a therapist who was known to helping people with eating disorders and started seeing michelle. I didn't know if i had an eating disorder or if there was something mentally wrong with me that i couldn't lose weight. After 6 months of seeing michelle i was diagnosed with bulimia. It was a shock. A year later i started seeing a dietician at OSF. i had no idea what i was supposed to eat or how much. Come to find out i was severly restricting my calories most days it was an average of 800 instead of the 1600-2000 my body needed. Especially being a nurse on a busy med-surg floor. and began the horrible and painful process of learning what a body needs. Who would have ever thought that you were supposed to eat every 3-4 hours ?! Fast forward again and there is a new job and insurance that won't cover me seeing michelle. And i started seeing Sabra at OSF. And attending a support group on Wednesday evenings led by jill then and now melinda Suddenly i had an entire team who specialized in eating disorders and saw through all my execuses and challenged and still challenge all my crazy irrational thinking. God help them with that one : ) After being in recovery for 3 hard years. Having relapse after relapse. There is still some hope that i can get rid of this forever. I still have a lot of work ahead of me. But one day i want to become an advocate. I don't want anyone to go though what i have been through. One day i hope the medical professionals will be able to spot eating disorders quicker and get patients into treatment sooner that what i did. I sometimes think how my life would be different if the signs had been recognized sooner.
