LifeAsISeeIt

There is something about myself that I’ve kept private for a long time. A few things have taken place in my life recently that have brought back old scars. Scars that I thought I had dealt with. Because of this I feel compelled to share my story. Since I can remember my weight has always been an issue. More so for those around me than for myself, that was the case when I was younger anyway. My diet was just like everyone else’s, my activity level was the same, but I was never ‘skinny’. As I reached my preteens the remarks made by my family started to take a toll on me. This is when I started restricting. Mind you, I already did not overeat. We didn’t do seconds in our house, there just wasn’t enough food to do so. My first ‘diet’ was at eleven years old. I remember trying to eat as little as possible and running until I puked. This behavior went on for many years. I would restrict, lose a little weight, then go back to eating normal portions and gain weight back. Imagine doing this for years and imagine what it does to your body. There wasn’t a diet or a diet pill that I didn’t try. Even when I would lose weight it was never good enough. If they had only known what I was doing just to be a ‘normal’ weight. Decades of my life were spent trying to be acceptable to those around me. Nevermind what I was doing to my body. What I didn’t realize was that I had developed an eating disorder. See, when you don’t look the part, nobody believes you have a problem. Nobody believes that you aren’t overeating or eating unhealthy. They assume that your issue with food is that you’re eating too much, not that you have been trying to starve yourself. My eating disorder was discovered when I went to therapy for something I thought was completely unrelated. I always thought that what I was doing was normal, That, that is what fat people were supposed to do. Diet, always restrict and if you were fat and weren’t dieting, you had no self-control.  Restriction gave me control. When you are fat and have an eating disorder they tell you, you have ED-NOS ( Eating Disorder not Otherwise Specified.)  After my diagnoses, I started seeing my therapist on a regular basis. My first goal was to stop dieting, stop restricting. This didn’t last long because as soon as I stopped I started gaining weight. I ended up ditching therapy and proceeded to go back to yo-yo dieting, not having a clue as to what it was doing to my body. In the midst of all of this, I was also fighting an illness that was just progressively getting worse. I still believe that the restricting contributed to how bad the disease got over the years. I also believe that the restricting also caused all the other illnesses I ended up with years later. You can’t put your body through that without doing damage. A few years ago I just got mentally tired of fighting my body. Fighting my mind. I needed to get better. So, I took the steps to do so. Even after I healed my mind, I had to heal my body. I had to try to fix all the damage that I had done. When I went for my pre-op psych evaluation I felt confident that I was in a place mentally where I was healthy enough to have gastric bypass. After a couple of visits, the psychologist confirmed that I was mentally healthy enough to have the procedure. I have felt completely confident with my decision up until this point. A couple of things happened recently that have brought those negative feelings back up to the surface. My compulsion to restrict is starting to come back. Which in reality is completely ridiculous, because I know 100% that what I’m doing now for my body is in no way wrong. I’m scared now that everything I consume is going to cause weight gain. This is the eating disorder talking, I know that. I will make it through this, it’s just overwhelming at the moment. Thankfully, I have a therapist and a support team that can help me deal with what I’m feeling right now. I just wish my mind could for once be at peace with my body. I wish that I didn’t have to worry about ‘triggers’. All I want and all I’ve ever wanted it to be a happy, healthy, normal person. That’s it.