Atypically Recovering

Photo: mine

I was so excited to be working at a summer camp associated with the church I grew up in for the second summer in a row. I’d been a camper there for 7 summers for week long sessions, and the idea of 3 whole months, working in the nature center was the best way I could spend a summer. It was the summer before starting at the University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign campus… and I was nervous. I was looking forward to going, but still felt insecure, and went to camp armed with a diet arsenal of a scale, cellulose tablets to fill me up, over the counter diet pills, and a calorie book. I wanted to look better. I’d been criticized about my weight since I was a young child by my mother, so no matter what I weighed, it never seemed good enough. She wanted a greyhound to somehow come from a cocker spaniel. And I wanted her approval for something.

What I hadn’t planned on was a cabin counselor in the village I was assigned to, who gave me many tips after she noticed what I was doing. (Villages were about 4-6 cabins around a main shower/bathroom building with staff rooms upstairs). She was likely under 90 pounds that summer, and a bulimic anorexic. We became inseparable on days off.
I lost 17 pounds the first week, and was ‘hooked’ to watching the numbers go down. Other staff were concerned, but nothing was reaching my adolescent ‘logical’ brain, and I just kept plowing through. I was down 40 pounds in 5 weeks, and another 5 by the end of the summer camping season. I’d been ‘seen’ doing what I was doing, but I’m not sure that anyone realized how much my buddy at camp was keeping me motivated to keep restricting more. But I arrived ‘primed’. She and I were more supportive of each other’s lousy disorders, but at the same time, we were friends, and kept in touch for years after camp. The folks at the camp did try to get me to stop what I was doing, but nothing got through my thick head.

For those fortunate people who have no idea what an eating disorder feels like, I’ll try to explain it. First, the scale dictates a lot. If there’s a gain in weight, no matter what the weight is, more restriction is ‘required’ by the eating disorder ‘voice’. It’s not an audible voice, but more like loud thoughts, and they are not to be disobeyed. If they are, then more exercise or less food for a longer period of time is mandated. The next thing is watching calories going down in the food logs (there are almost always food logs). It’s a ‘high’ to see ‘disappearing’ or ‘shrinking’ however it happens. If the ‘numbers’ aren’t OK in the food log, then there’s more tendency to compensate, by more exercise, laxatives (my preference back then), diuretics (altered a prescription for those to get many more refills and pills per refill), vomiting (not my thing), or for some diabetics, they can very dangerously manipulate their insulin (that’s a line I won’t cross). It’s having a terrorist in your head that will do more damage if it’s not pleased with ‘progress’ and compliance.

Gradually, more foods are eliminated and categorized as ‘bad’. ‘Bad foods’ are to be avoided at all costs, or the fear is that so much weight will come back that it’s paralyzing to be urged to eat ‘bad’ foods. It can be physically painful. When others, however well-meaning, try and force ‘bad’ food, it causes the ED to dig in even more. There is no weight low enough, no calories few enough, etc. It’s a never-ending cycle of eating less, not making weight goals, and being totally obsessed with all things about food. At the same time, there is hunger for a while, but after enough time under-eating/starving, hunger stops. Initially, I didn’t see why it was such a big deal. To be made to eat more than is deemed ‘safe’ is a legitimate panic trigger. My mind would go blank, and it seemed like I was being tormented by those who wanted me to eat more instead of realizing that it was the disorder reacting. And it’s exhausting.

As far as ‘control’, it’s lost fairly quickly. The drive to keep going is all-encompassing, and outside ‘voices’ do little but fan the flames of the ED. Control is also messed up when the body rebels and triggers ‘binges’ to recoup some lost energy, which can lead to full-on bulimia, or eating less for the next several days, only to set up another binge. A lot of info is coming out now about how binge eaters are likely to be doing a fair amount of restricting between binges- and are not that unlike other restrictive eating disorders. Someone can be overweight and still restricting. Metabolism slows during restriction, so when the body is fed, by whatever means (binge, more balanced eating), the calories are stored as fat for the next ‘famine’.

As time goes on, and more attempts at treatment are attempted, there is a changing awareness of how messed up things are, but still no power to change it without external, safe therapy. Most of us know how we look to other people, and that we’re not normal. And most of us want to be normal- we just can’t get there overnight. We know our food rules and behaviors aren’t healthy. We know our thinking- at least about food and weight is messed up, but many are hard working and high achievers in any other area.

The mental part is largely due to starvation. The Ancel Keys “Minnesota Starvation Study” is a blueprint for turning a mind into an eating disorder maze of chaos. Thinking about food constantly, shopping for food, making food for others, avoiding eating food, for some- planning binges, sleeplessness, headaches, lousy concentration, inability to retain info from reading materials, and many other mental and physical symptoms are because of starvation. Food reverses this- I’ve been there, and yet I can’t just snap out of this relapse. It’s wanting SO badly to be back in a more ‘stable’ disorder- when my head still categorizes food, but I’m not in the ‘retribution’ part of the ED when I do/did eat.

My parents were ‘OK’ with the rapid and extreme weight loss. They didn’t know at the time how messed up I was, or that it’d become a lifelong issue. My weight has fluctuated a lot from visible ribs to multiple chins but my thoughts about food stayed largely unchanged. My highest weights were from drinking calories in soda and juice after one outpatient program that forbade non-caloric liquids (like a death sentence when diet soda was its own food group). But my folks had no clue until the following February when I was sent to the psych hospital, and they were baffled about what the big deal was, even seeing me for a few weeks between camp and the U of I, and sending me suspenders to hold my jeans up. I was still ‘preemptively’ purging with laxatives, and while I tired to eat ‘enough’ if I had to eat around them or others, my head was beating me up a lot.

That summer of 1981 changed my life for decades. It’s been 45 years, and I’m fighting the same ED voice. Each relapse strengthens the internal task master. If you have a child, or other friend or loved one who is showing signs of eating disorders, get them help sooner rather than later, or they will be eaten by the disorder.