Someone asked me the other day how I adapted to a new and healthier body. On one hand they, like most of us in recovery, know that the changes in their body signify a better life. They also, on the other hand, like most of us in recovery, struggle greatly with the emotional discomfort, or outright physical pain, we feel in our new changing bodies. This took me years to deal with and I am still not completely there yet. I do not love my body. I am getting there. It is a process, a long, long, long, shitty, process, and even though I have made it to acceptance and appreciation of my body, I can’t tell you how to adapt to your new body. All I can offer is how I muddled through adapting to mine.
The first thing that happens in recovery is, no surprise here, weight gain. It sucks. You are never ready for it, but it comes quicker than you anticipate. Also, we are so fixated on weight and body shape that we notice the slightest changes, because, after all, our body growing bigger means we are not migrating to the best of our ability, and that could mean our extinction. So the first thing I had to get used to was that first bit of weight gain. Someone else without an eating disorder may not even know their weight had gone up some, but I knew when I first gained, and I am sure you knew when you first gained too. I know there are a lot of people out there touting all-in as the recovery quick fix, but that was not for me and the few times I did try all-in I ended back up in a restrict cycle. So as long as I did not move backwards toward anorexia I let my body take the lead. After I gained a few pounds, yes, I freaked out, of course. I froze. I did not want to proceed. But this time I allowed myself to stop adding to my meals and snacks and just maintained. But for me, that was the secret. I maintained. I did not run back to restriction and get rid of the few pounds. I kept reminding myself it was only a few pounds, surely just a few pounds was safe. What would I tell a friend if they gained a few pounds? Would I even notice? Probably not. I gave myself permission to not gain any more yet. I could just maintain right where I was. I could rest and be proud of the few pounds I stole back from anorexia. And then something funny happened. I started feeling ok and safe with those few pounds on. After a few weeks I just felt like me again, I had rode the wave of anxiety and panic and came down the other side. It wasn’t a fun ride, but it was doable. In eating disorder recovery we are not shooting for fun, or love, even like, we are looking for doable. Can we do it and move forward…..that is all we need….doable.
After I came down the wave and was feeling ok in my body I added some more food and gained again. As soon as I started to feel really bad about my self and felt myself wanting to run back to restriction I stopped. I just maintained. Did it feel good? No, it felt like shit. I felt gross and horrible and no clothes fit. Eventually though, I would make a trip to Good Will, size up, and get used to my new body. Did I ever look at myself and love what I saw? Nope. My feelings would cycle through being disgusted and barely able to look at myself while riding the wave of panic upwards, to feeling mildly accepting of my body and OK about it as the wave went down the other side. Moving from disgust to accepting was no easy task, always painful. This is how I gained the weight, pound by pound, stopping when I felt panic, moving forward when I felt safe. I wanted to recover, we all want to recover, but our panic gets absolutely unmanageable and stops us. We have to figure out what works to manage the panic and fear so that we can keep moving, keep gaining, keep accepting our bodies.
I had a therapist tell me years ago to hide all of my mirrors, and I did just that, but it never helped. When I was near a mirror outside my home, or reflective surface for that matter, I would be drawn to it, I couldn’t help myself, and I would look at my body to see if I were ‘still thin enough’, if anything had changed, or if I was in a decently suitable body to be seen by the world. Not using my mirrors at home just made things worse because I was avoiding the thing I was afraid of….myself. When I would happen to look in a mirror somewhere my brain would immediately chime in, ‘you are fat’, look at your arms, look at those rolls on your belly, you must have gained so much,’ and on and on it would go. I had to come up with a way to combat those thoughts, but they were so immediate, so unconscious. So one day I uncovered all my mirrors. The first thing I did was make a rule about the mirrors, anorexia loves rules, I obviously loved following rules, so I made a rule. When I looked in a mirror, every negative thought that my brain threw out at me, I pledged I would make a non-negative statement back. I could not start with positive statements, I couldn’t even think of any positive statements pertaining to my body, so I started with non-negative, or neutral, ones. For example if I walked into the bathroom, saw myself, and my brain said, ‘look at your fat arms, you should not eat lunch, and your stomach is huge today’, I would force myself to stop and respond. Just stopping and catching my brain saying those negative statements was huge because for so many years those negative eating disorder thoughts were just, I thought, part of me and my truth. After stopping myself I would have to counter both thoughts. “There is a possibility that my arm size does not matter to others. My arm size doesn’t matter to my family, my arms cook us dinner or hug my kids. My stomach being bigger means my kids are less afraid for my health.”
In the beginning I wrote a bunch of non-negative thoughts on post-its and stuck them to my mirrors. Here are some examples; being bigger makes my family feel safe. I do not want to scare my family. My legs carry my body and work hard every day. I want my kids to remember me as a fun mom that can eat a cookie. This tummy means I can share food with my kids. This fat roll means I shared coffee with my daughter. This butt makes my husband less afraid of me dying. There is a possibility that my world will not end if I am bigger.
Many of my reasons and non-negatives have to do with my family. I tried to take the focus off of the size of my body and put it onto what was really important…my relationships. Anorexia is selfish, it doesn’t think of others, it didn’t think of my husband or my kids who were living in fear that their mother could die and be gone forever. I needed a constant reminder of why I was gaining and why this new body that was morphing out of me was so worth the almost unbearable emotional pain that comes with it. We all have non-negatives and they are a great place to start when you can’t find any positives….and lets be real….if we had a bunch of positives we wouldn’t be in this place to begin with.
So, for each bit of weight gained it was like a cycle for me. Gain some weight, panic, freeze and maintain, get used to this new body, size up if needed, talk back to the negative voices in the mirror with my own non-negatives. Then, when I felt safe in my body and size I would increase my food (which would actually happen quite naturally as I got more comfortable at each weight I would naturally want to add a bit of food here and there also), panic, freeze and maintain, and go through the cycle again. This cycle was hard enough as it was but still there were a few more things that definitely got in the way here and there, that being bloat and digestive pain.
The pain and discomfort of recovery is so real and so uncomfortable it can send you right back to anorexia! At least it did for me on more than one occasion. There was the sharp pain of gas that would stop me in it’s tracks. I lived with hot water bottles on my belly. When this would happen my kids loved to remind me that they liked my painful gas of recovery better than the smelly gas of anorexia. Anorexia is known for the worst smelly vegetable gas on earth….my kids can attest to that. There were times in recovery when I thought I would end up in the ER due to stomach pain, curled in the fetal position. Use this pain as inspiration to keep eating. If you stop eating you will have to endure this all again when you eat again. I would remind myself of this all the time….how many times do you want to go through this shit….make this the last time!
There was also the bloating that stayed with me for over a year and a half straight….going from deflated in the morning to stiff and sometimes outright unbearable throughout the day. I think one of the reasons the bloat stayed so long for me was because I had such a hard time eating through it. It is so hard to eat when you are hugely bloated from the meal before, so I would skip some meals, therefore my body never settled, and the bloat would return. Also it is just terribly hard for someone with an active eating disorder to see ourselves in such a bloated state, yet like an evil bit of karma, most of us have to endure loads of bloat before we straighten out our systems. Our bodies aren’t used to processing so much food and in recovery, especially at first, it feels like loads of food. After realizing I had to embrace the bloat and eat through it to get rid of it all I could do was try to have a sense of humor. I used my non-negatives and lots of humor. I would walk around with my shirt up….exposing my belly and all it’s bloated fullness. I would laugh at it as much in horror as anything else, but then I would remind myself that my family is so much more comforted by this bloated belly than they ever were by my concave one. And then always bringing it back to priorities….my family or anorexia….I choose family. I choose bloated belly over concave. I choose life with the ones I love over death with anorexia. And make no mistake, that is the choice we are making.
So really, for me, there was no waking up one day to body love. There was just long days with choice after choice after choice. I could choose restriction but instead I choose to have food memories with my family. I could choose a concave belly but instead I choose a belly that puts my children’s fears to rest. I could choose a selfish life with anorexia and her behaviors but instead I choose my family and a life that gives them a mother and a wife that is present for them and has the space for their needs too. What will you choose?
The Rope
I slip my feet out of the heated flannel and place my toes to the cold wood as my exhausted body tries to lift itself from the mattress. I sit in the darkness on the edge of the bed squeezing my eyes tightly shut trying to talk myself out of moving any further.
“You don’t have to do it. You don’t have to do it.” I hope that repeating this will block the thoughts of what I have to do. I hope that repeating this will make me forget that I have to get up, have to check, have to know. I hope that repeating this will finally make it ring true, “you don’t have to do it.”
But, somewhere deep inside I know, it does not ring true, it never rings true, and, I do have to do it. I sit a few more moments on the side of the bed, in the darkness, berating myself silently. I scold myself for lying awake for 15 minutes now, 15 minutes have gone by in which I could have already gotten up, done what I needed to do, and gone back to bed, to warmth, to safety, to sleep. I also chastise myself for needing to get up in the first place, for needing to know, for needing at all. Mostly, though, I am so angry at myself, so angry at myself for being this fat. If I wasn’t this fat I wouldn’t need to know, to check, to make sure. In fact, if I wasn’t this fat I wouldn’t need anything at all, because I would already have everything.
I lift my weak body off of the bed and begin the familiar trek to the bathroom. I slowly creep across the floor of the bedroom to the door trying not to creak the wood surface below. I am sure my husband heard me slip across the floor an hour ago and I am desperate not to wake him again. Sadly, my need to know and my need to check outweigh my need to not wake him, so I keep softly tiptoeing out the bedroom door. My body temperature is lowering with every step and I am shuddering with the chill in the air. I can feel my stomach muscles clench in retaliation. The house is 70 degrees but my body does not process it that way, to my body this house is frigid, and that frigidness is trying to constantly infiltrate me, so much so that I must have all my muscles tight to ward off the cold. So I keep sneaking my way down the hallway, muscles tight, until I reach the bathroom door.
The door is closed and I put my hand on the bronze knob. I pause for a moment, as I know what is to come, and it is worth the cold. I open the door to a rush of warm wind. I stand in it, I bask in it, I feel it flush my face as I enter. Once inside I quickly and methodically close the door behind me, turning the knob as it shuts to lessen some of the inevitable noise. Then I turn around to face it. To face the object that has woken me from my sleep again. The object that has total control of my life. The object that tells me how I feel, what I do, and who I am. The scale. I am the scale. The scale is me.
It sits on the floor between the toilet and the cabinet, just centered, and the bottom edge runs perfectly along the crack that lies between the large Spanish tiles. It is of course clean and spotless, as dust adds weight. I walk up so that my toes are two inches away and look down. It looks up at me with it’s hardened silver face and blank gray eyes. I have to weigh less than last time. Well, let me rephrase that, I have to weigh at least the same as last time, but my goal is to weigh less than last time. I had met my goal of being medically underweight months ago, but now there is a new goal, and the new goal is to weigh less than the last goal. This way I never have to make a new goal, the new goal makes itself.
I step on, right foot and then left, trying to get a perfect centering of each foot so that none of my weight feels unevenly distributed. I stand there attempting to keep my body as light in the air as possible, using what little core strength I have to lift my body off of the scale, in an attempt to hover over it and not actually stand on it at all. I look down. It reads precisely half a pound less than an hour ago. I have no feeling yet about this information. Half a pound less. I step backwards off of the scale and bend down to grab it by its front edge. I slide it out so slowly that it makes no noise as it slips gently across the floor and I stop when it is centered perfectly within one of the large floor tiles. Again, I stand with my toes two inches away and look down, and again, it stares up at me with it’s stoic face. I try to step on with the same graceful dance as last time, but this time it does not feel soft, graceful, and light when I step up so I have to step back down and try again. On the fifth try, and after feeling my body get very much weaker, it finally feels right and I get to stay on. I pause for a moment and peer down. More than a half pound less. This time the scale is .6 pounds less. Having the scale inform me twice now that I have truly lightened I am starting to relax enough to shed the numbness that had taken over my body and I begin to feel the rush that has been released upon seeing the lower number flash in the eyes of the scale. I back off and bend down to move the scale into its third and final spot. I slide it so that the crack in the tile goes perfectly straight under the center of the scale. I repeat the process of getting on, only trying twice before staying on this time. Half a pound less again.
I step off and stand silent, just me and my scale, here in the middle of the bathroom, here in the middle of the night. I take a moment to give thanks for my lighter body. Three readings in those exact spots on the tile mean that my body has purged more weight. If even one reading is high all the low readings become false and I have gained. I ponder for a moment that I do not know who to thank for this weight loss? God? The scale? My past self for following all of the rules today as told and only eating 325 calories? Before I can figure out who to give thanks to, all of the good feelings of relief and calm are replaced with the sinking dread of how far I have left to go, of how much more I have left to lose. It is as if I am drowning and seeing the number gives me one fresh breath of air to gulp down, but as soon as I gulp it I realize I am still sinking, drowning, dying. And just like if I were alone sinking in the middle of the ocean, there is no fight to be had, there is only an acceptance of my fate, a slow descent to the oceans floor. An agreement between myself and the scale that I will not fight, because while I know I am descending into death, the descent itself feels so right, so calm, it is like a slow motion underwater ballet, but I am just an audience member, watching from the dark balcony, unable to jump in and save the damsel, to save myself.
I lift the scale up off the floor and carefully return it to its original position, making sure to line the front edge perfectly again with the tile crack. I step back and position myself in front of the mirror. I look at myself, though never at my face. I start at my collar bones, I feel them with my fingertips starting by the shoulder. I use my fingertips and thumb to push against the bone itself and run my thumb and fingers slowly from one end down to the other. I press my fingers around the top of the collar bone and my thumb around the bottom to grab the bone itself. I check to see how far my fingers can make it around the bone and one day I hope that my fingertips and thumb touch around the backside of the collarbone. Then, I make sure my pinkie finger and thumb can encircle my wrists. I check one side and then the other all the while watching myself in the mirror. Next is always my pelvis. I turn my body sideways to make sure the bones protrude farther out than my stomach. I feel every inch of them, imagining what they look like, always seeing them in my mind as crisp, white, and bleached. I touch the tops of the crests and feel how far they stick out. I close my eyes and think about how good it feels when I am driving down the road in my car and I slip my right elbow into the inside curve of my pelvis. My elbow just rests there like a broken arm in a sling. They just fit, the elbow and crest, like they were meant to hold each other. Sitting with my elbow within my pelvis is as comforting to me as being swaddled, held safe, and loved. I open my eyes and see that I am still fingering my pelvic bones, pinching my way around the edges. Finally, I reach around to my tailbone. My coccyx is the newest bone that has shown itself through my skin. I start at my lower spine and follow it down until I feel it, I am always shocked by its protrusion. It is so pronounced and I can hold the entire end of it within my fingertips. I touch around all of the bony bumps and cringe at the thought of taking a bath again. Baths were a love of mine, a daily way to combat the constant cold. Since my coccyx has made its appearance I can no longer sit in a bath without intense pain from my bone and the tub’s porcelain making direct contact with each other.
I step away from the mirror and turn to look at the door. Before my brain catches up with where my body is taking me I am in the kitchen. I open the refrigerator and stare inside. I feel defeat as I close it again. I do the same with each cupboard door, open it, look inside, close it again. Finally, I lean with my backside against the counter and stare at the cupboard across from me. I feel my stomach aching for food. I feel a hollowness within me that yearns to be filled, yet oddly, at the same time this hollowness also brings me such a feeling of calm. The emptiness in my body is always equally paired with an emptiness in my mind, and an emptiness in my mind means there is no stress, no worry, no panic, and all feelings are numbed such that I can simply feel just the edges of them. This is the battle in my body, one empty hole begging to be filled while another empty hole is trying desperately to not let anything in.
“One cookie, one cookie, one cookie can’t hurt, you are down, you are lighter, you deserve it, you’ve been good, one cookie, just one, just one, just one, just one, you deserve it, right?” My stomach is aching for something to quiet the spasms, and in this moment, before my mind can block the motion of my hands, I reach out, open the cupboard across from me and grab one of my husbands cookies from the wrapper that always sits half open. It is a Nutter Butter and I look at it in my hands. Two peanut butter cookies smushed together by a sweet peanut buttery filling inside. I feel it with my fingertips, I feel the sides and how the filling doesn’t come quite to the edge of the cookies, I feel the groves and bumps that the pattern forms on the top and bottom. I feel the sandy grit of the sugar as it slides off of the cookie as I rub it. I put it up to my lips and smell it with my eyes closed. I feel the sweet smell start to rouse the calculator in my brain. The calculator starts to count the calories in sugar plus flour plus peanut butter plus eggs plus butter plus hydrogenated oil because everything good has hydrogenated oil plus…
My stomach takes over and I bite half of it off. I immediately taste. I taste the food. I taste the sweetness of sugar. I taste the richness of peanut butter and thickness of the cookie as it attempts to melt into one congealed mass in my mouth. I love it, I relish it, for a moment. For a moment it is safe. For a moment I can eat. For a moment the food can sit in my mouth and tease my stomach. But it only lasts a moment as suddenly the cookie seems to dissolve into a thousand tiny maggots. The maggots are all over my mouth climbing inside my cheeks and under my tongue. It sends a revulsion right through my core and I panic to get the maggots, the food, out of my mouth. I grab a paper towel and start spitting the goo into it. I spit and spit trying not to let any saliva filled with maggots spill down my throat. I begin wiping my tongue off with a paper towel, and then run to the sink and begin flushing my mouth out with water. I rinse and gargle over and over until I feel the flush of panic start to leave my body. As the panic leaves my body so does any strength I have left and I sink to sit on the kitchen floor. I lean there and listen to my breath trying to catch itself. I listen for any sound that my husband has woken. Mostly though, I listen to my voice, my voice that is raging loud in my head, my voice that is very angry at me for daring to put something in my mouth in the first place.
“Fucking idiot, fool, I am so fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, I do not deserve food, I do not deserve to eat, I do not deserve a cookie, how dare I, how fucking dare I put that in my mouth, I am going to weigh 10 pounds more now, I am so fat, fat, fat, fat, fat, I am worthless, I can’t do anything right, I fuck everything up, I am too fat to eat anything, I will not eat tomorrow to make up for it, nothing, nothing, nothing, zero, I will not eat, I do not deserve to eat, I do not deserve to live at all, I am a fat fuck.”
I know I have to get up off this floor eventually, and I desperately want to run to my heated bed next to the warm body of my husband, but at the same time I know I can’t do that without first returning to the bathroom. I slowly reach up and grab for the sink’s edge. I pull myself up and am hit with a wave of dizziness that almost sends me back down to the floor as my vision begins to go dark. I lean over into the sink until it passes and then stand and turn for the hall. I walk back to the bathroom pausing just outside the door to listen for sounds of movement from my bedroom, instead I hear a faint snore so I slink back into the bathroom closing the door behind me. I walk over to the scale and look at it in utter defeat.
“I can’t wait until you throw that thing away,” I hear my therapist’s voice swirling in my head.
“The scale doesn’t measure health,” my dietitian’s voice chimes in.
My therapist returns with, “it’s time, get rid of it, you are strong Melissa.”
I look down at the scale, bend over, and pick it up with both hands. I stare at it’s blank face and suddenly I imagine I am somewhere else. I am Kate Winslet standing against the bow of the Titanic, only instead of Leonardo Dicaprio I have my scale. I have one arm swung out to my side just like Kate but the other is gripping my scale close to my body. The wind is whipping at my face and the stark taste of salt is on my lips. Half my body can feel the freedom of the air and all I have to do to feel it completely is drop my scale. Drop it into the ocean so that both my arms can swing wide and finally be free, free to feel, free to be open, free to be loved. A huge peaceful relief comes over my body and I slowly open my arm to release the scale. I watch as it floats light as a feather down to the ocean’s surface. It hits the waves without a splash and begins to sink. I can see it just under the surface of the water, but then I notice something, something is with it, something is sinking with it. I see a thick dark line hooked on the corner of the scale and I follow it to the surface of the water and that is when I notice the rope. The ship’s anchor rope is tied to the scale, and my eyes follow the rope up, up, up. I follow it up to the ship itself and over the rail behind me. I turn to see a thick spiral of rope on the ship’s deck behind me, getting smaller and smaller, as the scale sinks deeper and deeper. Coming out from under the spiral of rope is the other end and my eyes follow this end as it leads right to where I stand. I don’t need to look down now to know it is tied around my ankle and I accept my fate as I am tethered to this scale for eternity.
Suddenly I am overboard, I am sinking by my ankle slowly and with a deep calm that I thought couldn’t exist. I think about numbers, I think about calculations, I am tallying weights and measures in my head as I slowly sink down, down, down, as it gets darker, darker, and darker. This is my underwater ballet, this is my slow descent. Then I look down at the scale below through glimpses of light from the ship above, and I see the rope tethering us together. I see the rope. I see the rope. Something sparks. Something moves. Something changes. I see the rope tethering us together. I am not the scale. The scale is not me. I am not an audience member in this deadly underwater ballet. For the first time I see the rope, I see Anorexia, I see her floating there in the ocean between the scale and I. She was always there, always twisted around my leg so gracefully, so stealthily, that I couldn’t even see her, couldn’t even feel her, I thought she was me. I am not the scale. I am not anorexia. I look down at my ankle and realize I can untie the rope. I can let Anorexia sink with the scale. Seeing the rope on my ankle and knowing it is not me but Anorexia I frantically dive downward and begin reaching and pulling at it. I am pulling and scratching but it is not budging. I keep sinking deeper and darker. Finally, snap, I feel one hair of the thick rope break, one little scratchy hair.
I am back in my bathroom, back with my scale, it is still in my hands, still looking up at me with it’s blank eyes.
“Anorexia is not me. I am not Anorexia.” I hear it in my head, but then She speaks louder, telling me to get on the scale, to stop wasting time.
“You need to check, you need to know, get on the scale, you have gained from the cookie, I am sure of it, you are too fat, you need to check, get on, get on, get on.”
I set the scale on the floor. I am not Anorexia. She is not me. I turn to walk away from the scale, from the rope, from Anorexia. As I walk toward the bathroom door I feel a rush of hot emotion that is so intolerable I slow myself. Walking away from Anorexia is like turning on a waterfall of pain. With every step I take toward the door I feel the crushing feeling of being wrong, of choosing wrong, and on top of all of the wrong, is an outpouring of emotional pain so crippling I cannot walk any further toward the door. I stand frozen, but then the pain becomes unbearable and I retreat back to the scale. I step on. I do my dance. I step off. I step on again. I do my dance again. I step off again. Then I turn toward the door, “just go, just go, just go, just go.”
“Twice is enough. Twice is enough. Twice is enough. Twice is enough.” I am whispering aloud as I make my way out the door and to my bed. I repeat this chant as I climb in and pull up the steaming covers. Anorexia starts screaming at me that I did it wrong, that I must weigh three times, that now it doesn’t count. I lie in bed for hours, afraid to move, afraid if I move I will give in, until finally sleep overtakes me.
The next morning comes and I wake up. I painfully and with great effort rise to sit on the edge of the bed. I slowly make my way to the bathroom and weigh myself three times. Even though I weigh myself three times this morning, something in my brain is different. Anorexia does not refer to me as “I” anymore, she calls me “you”, and I much prefer that. I have scratched off the first fiber of the noose that is Anorexia. I see her not just underwater as I sink to my death, I see her now in the light of day. I recognize her everywhere, and I am not Anorexia, and Anorexia is not me.
SICK ENOUGH
Picture this…You accompany your loved one to the doctor. Once there the doctor comes in to tell your loved one they have high blood sugar; in the diabetic range. The doctor goes over the diagnosis, offers the aid of a dietician and begins to write a prescription. You feel for your friend and are thinking of ways you can help them when you hear them say, “oh, don’t bother with the prescription, I don’t need it.”
The doctor looks up, confused, and tries to explain that it is imperative that they take the prescription but your loved one is adamant they don’t need it. They feel fine. The doctor begs them to at least see the dietician a few times to learn about glucose and blood sugar and diabetes. Your loved one turns him down again saying they couldn’t possibly take the place of someone who REALLY needs the help. Someone really sick. After all, they explain, they work, they take care of their home, they couldn’t possibly be THAT sick. The doctor leaves in defeat. You turn to them in confusion, “why are you not taking the medicine?”
“I just do not feel sick enough to get help when other people need it so much more than me. I am sure there are so many people whose blood sugar is so much worse than mine. Honestly, I feel fine.”
Sounds ridiculous, right?
Well, ALMOST ALL people with anorexia will feel this same way at some point. Many people will feel this way throughout their entire illness, and throughout recovery as well. In fact so many people feel this way, and it is such a prevalent problem, that the community has a name for it, it is simply known as “sick enough”.
“Sick enough” is a term used in the eating disorder community that refers to a feeling the person with anorexia has that they are not worthy of care and treatment. The reasons the person gives for not being worthy of care and treatment are many. Maybe they say they are not at a low enough weight. Perhaps they feel as though they have not been suffering long enough. They might refer to the fact that they feel as though they are still functional at home and/or work. Perhaps the sufferer has had bloodwork come back normal. They may have loved ones in their lives telling them they are doing good or better. They may have a body size that falls into the ‘healthy’ weight range according to western medicine. They may be able to eat some days thus feeling like they must be normal (and not sick enough). There are as many reasons people give for feeling not “sick enough” as there are people sick with eating disorders. We have a myriad of reasons why we don’t need help but the mere fact that most all of us with an eating disorder feel not “sick enough” points to it being more than sheer coincidence.
We know that anorexia is caused because our body has an evolutionary adaptation to famine. When this genetic ‘switch’ is turned on due to energy deficit a cascade of changes happen within our bodies. Some of these changes make us feel like we need to keep our bodies moving. Other changes make us feel good when we restrict food. Not only do we feel good when we restrict food, we feel disgusting and bad if we do eat. When starving the hormonal shifts in our body make us feel more focused, in control, strong, and powerful. Still more changes in our brains cause us to hallucinate fat stores on our body. These changes are imperative for someone who is needing to migrate a long distance because of famine. But today, when there is no real famine, and we are actually dying, these changes also make us feel as though we are just not “sick enough” to deserve help or recovery.
People with anorexia do not feel “sick enough” because, put simply, we do not feel sick. We are fulfilling the mission of migration, and while we do, we have this background music in our heads telling us constantly that the restriction, the moving, the behaviors, are all the means to the end for survival. We see other people around us and we can view their emaciated bodies, yet we can’t see our own. We can point out when others do not eat enough calories, yet fail to realize we ourselves are starving to death. We notice that others are working out too often but for us; we are just ‘healthy’, or preparing for a marathon, or getting those steps in. Most of the time we simply do not feel sick enough for help. This is a normal pattern of thought for someone with anorexia. We CAN see sickness in others….we CAN’T see it in ourselves. Therefore it follows that if we see others as sicker than us, we cannot be “sick enough”. To simplify all of this is to say; THERE ARE ABSOLUTE REAL BIOLOGICAL REASONS WE FEEL NOT “SICK ENOUGH”.
Now let me say also, of course there are the times when we do start to see our sick selves here and there. We are shocked and start to wonder if we do need help, if we do deserve help, if perhaps we are sick after all. This happens because despite all the changes anorexia has made to our bodies our true selves are in there somewhere. Our true selves peek out now and then to remind us that anorexia is lying, there is no famine, the migration is all for naught and it is safe to seek help. Even when this happens though, anorexia’s biological changes are still there to remind us that we managed a normalish meal yesterday, or we were able to skip a run this morning, thus proving that we must be normal, that we must not have anorexia, and we are still not “sick enough”.
While our genetic ‘switch’ for anorexia is turned on we will always be looking at the world and ourselves through the lens of the anorexia. It is only by trudging through recovery will you begin to bring those anorexic imbalances in your body back into balance with your real self. There will be a time where you feel not “sick enough”, but somewhere deep inside you will hear a little voice, your true voice, telling you that you are sick enough. Fight for that little voice. She needs space to grow. There will be times when you are moving forward on blind faith alone, as anorexia will drown out your true self every chance she gets. After all, you’re not “sick enough”, anorexia will say. It will feel like she is right, but remember, anorexia is just a mixture of messed up brain chemistry and hormones…..much like a toddler screaming and crying because they want to run into a freezing ocean. You would not listen to a toddler and let them run into the ocean, why would you listen to anorexia?
As you disobey anorexia, and you gain weight, your hormones will begin to balance again. Your true voice will get louder. As you keep moving in recovery you WILL slowly watch as anorexia becomes the little voice. And as anorexia becomes a whisper so will the words not “sick enough”. Because your true self knows you are sick enough. No one recovers to still believe they were not “sick enough” because not being “sick enough” is just another of a long line of anorexia’s lies.
T
Recovery Mom 