This next photos are of me at the apex of my eating disorder. At the time of this photo, I was about 104 pounds, and yet I still worked out two hours a day, six days a week, even when I was ill or had a fever. In the most ridiculous episode, i broke down in angry tears in the car during an ice storm when the university was closed and so was its rec center. I immediately drove back and, in my sorority house's chapter room, set up a crude step stool for step aerobics and worked out for an hour. I was rewarded for my crazy by winning 'The Queen of Bell' (named for the Bell Center, the rec center) at our sorority's fall formal. At that moment, I had a food journal and tried to stay under 900 calories a day. Don't ask me how I came about that number; it just sounded 'right'. The sorority's cook was exasperated with me, pushing me out of the kitchen because she couldn't take my anxiety over the amount of oil and/or butter she would utilize in a recipe. This would spill over into my summers at home, and the rows my mom and I would have over my 'hovering'. My lunches would consist of a salad or steamed vegetables with plain rice and soy sauce. Sometimes they'd be just soup and a bagel. Dinner was even more so, with my anger at our cook for making us such shite for us to eat. I felt trapped under people trying to get me to eat fat, and I would just hoard 'healthy' snacks in my room, most of it totally unhealthy---synthetic 'fat', sodium-laden 'healthy' instant soup. Nothing mattered unless it was low in calories. Chef Boyardee tiny microwaveable cups were a staple. Sure, high in sugar, but low in calories and fat. I just wanted to be FULL. But I was still hungry. I ate so much synthetic food---PowerBars, Slim-Fast shakes, fat free dressing/soup/butter analogs/chips/crackers/cheese, and all those hideous Snackwells products. I didn't even notice that they tasted like shit/wouldn't melt/tasted rubbery. I just wanted to lose the weight and be full at the same time.
This declines to mention the bingeing on food after my parents went to bed when I'd be over there: tortilla chips and salsa, popcorn, huge salads with shitloads of ranch dressing, eating nothing but loads of grape jelly rolled up in bread, pounds of cookies that my grandmother made, loads of Laughing Cow cheese rolled up in bread. I probably would have binged on flour if that was all they had, I was so fucking hungry. But then, I'd inevitably feel disgusting and disgustED, and would then 'punish' my avarice with awful, painful, and interminably long workouts the next day. I fucking hated my "piggish" self. I felt like a fucking fat, bloated pig with no ounce of discipline. I only felt absolution in my weak body and grey, pallid face after killing myself on the Stairmaster and then an added aerobics class after that. I felt penance and that everything had been 'reset'--erased. I could try again to eat normally. After I graduated college, my mother set me up with a personal trainer and a nutritionist at a local hospital to try to help me retrain my thinking. It worked for a time, but ultimately came back to square one after I moved back home in 1998 to change careers and go back to school. I didn't have time to exercise much, and I was upset and panicked terribly about this fact. The nervousness and anxiety over missed workouts would turn into irritable rage.
This is me today. Last week, as a matter-of-fact. And I'm still struggling.
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