AtypicallyRecovering

Photo: mine; me, age 5 1/2 (summer before diet bribes started)

I’ve been a problem eater since birth. I was put up for adoption, and before I could be placed in my parents’ home, I spent 9 days in the hospital in 2 cities because I didn’t like the hospital formula. They got that sorted out, and my folks picked me up when I was 10 days old in the 3rd city I’d been in by that age. My folks were not horrible people. They were fallible humans, like most of us, and for the most part, they did the best they could. I found my biological family decades ago, and have a great relationship with my biological mother, as well as extended family. My birth mom is probably my best friend. When I found her, I found the rest of me.

I didn’t have weight issues as a kid. Photos show a very normal weight child, who was active and healthy. Then, my mom decided to start bribing me (with cash and candy, which was stupid) to lose weight. I’m not sure where she wanted it gone from, but she never let up. A typical packed lunch was one slice of bread, a boiled egg, maybe fruit, and milk from school (I hated milk from a very young age as well, so got the gnarly orange drink instead). I had a key to the house when I was 6, and got myself home from 2nd grade to get lunch at home, often soup or a sandwich, and then locked up the house and walked 6 blocks back to school.

My mom and dad were always on diets or restricting food for the whole family. It was typical for 3 of us to share one 15 oz can of mini ravioli for dinner when I was in high school. If they had something I didn’t like, I either ate it, or went without. When we went to McDonald’s for report card day or when we travelled, I was expected to get the smallest/ cheapest things on the menu… the prices when the McD’s reward started, for the entire regular small hamburger, small fries, and small Coke, was 69 cents.

I was a figure skater as a very young kid (4-5 years old), and took it up again in 7th grade when a new rink opened up closer to our house. I LOVED skating. I felt free at the rink, and my coach was very kind to me. My mom would weigh me before lessons, and if she didn’t like my weight, she refused to pay for the lesson. I’d literally run around the neighborhood to sweat off some weight because I was desperate to get out of the house, to a place where I felt like I was enough just being me. My coach knew I was on weird diets, and never supported them. I found out years after I stopped skating, and had moved away from home, that I had been scouted as an ice dance partner. I knew random coaches approached me during public sessions and asked me to do various footwork sequences, and I did them without knowing they were Senior level test patterns. I just thought it was fun.

The diet mentality never stopped. My mom was never as interested in what I was doing as when I was on a diet. She’d buy whatever food the diet called for, no questions asked. And, I’d lose weight until the diet was over, then gain it back. Diets don’t work. They screw up metabolic rates by putting the body into a ‘famine’ mode, so it hangs on to whatever it gets. The summer before going off to the University of Illinois, I developed full-blown anorexia nervosa (more on that in another post).

I did diet competitions with some very thin twins I’d known since infancy at the church nursery. I always won because I had more to lose. When figuring out my average ‘non-dieting’ calories growing up, it came to about 700-900 per day. I was supposed to grow and be healthy on what I was given to eat, and that wasn’t enough, but I didn’t know any different. I knew my friends’ families didn’t eat like we did, but I also knew better than to complain. That wasn’t allowed. I was instructed always to say I was fine, no matter what.

I started babysitting regularly at age 11 (I was a responsible kid who knew how to handle newborns), and used that money to take my bike to the store to get fruit roll-ups (before they came in boxes, but were wrapped in cellophane), crackers, or anything to help fill me up when I got hungry. Snacks were not allowed, so if i made something at home it had to be from ingredients nobody would miss- like flour and water ‘crusts’ with ketchup with oregano, and microwave it. Gross, but got the job done. Food was something to be ashamed of wanting, or even needing.

I’ve been learning what are normal amounts for the first time in my life in my early 60s. It’s been physically miserable, and my dislike for food has grown because of the discomfort. I haven’t been asked to eat a lot- it’s all a ‘threat’. I was raised to have an eating disorder. It wasn’t the intent, but it was kind of a normal reaction to an abnormal frame of reference. There are things I like, but wanting them is “bad”. I know logically that food is just food, but because of zippo self-worth, I don’t think I deserve to enjoy what I eat… it’s simply a means to an end, and not very enticing because of that. I want that to change.