I may still be on a roll and refraining from binging/purging and while this is an accomplishment, in the interests of full disclosure (also known as honesty and integrity to you ABBHH folks), I need to come clean about my other “wacky behaviors.”
(Note to readers: this post is going to contain “numbers.” If there is even the slightest chance that this may be triggering to you, please make the healthy choice to stop reading now.)
1. I the know the exact caloric content of every food I eat.
2. I keep a log of everything I eat, the time I eat it, and how many calories it has.
3. My goal is to eat 1,000 calories a day. I figure this should be enough to keep me from wanting to binge, but also low enough that I don’t feel too guilty. Some days I eat 900 calories, and other days I eat 1,150 calories. The important thing is that it all averages out by the end of the week.
4. I eat slooooooooooowly. Very sloooooooowly. It takes me an hour to eat my breakfast and drink a cup of coffee. Dinner is even worse.
5. I’m “liquid loading” with water, coffee, diet soda pop, and iced tea.
6. I’m abusing caffeine (see #5).
7. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day: no-fat cottage cheese (100 calories) and a small can of mandarin oranges (70 calories).
8. I eat the same thing for dinner every night: canned pumpkin, Cool Whip Free, and fat free/sugar free Jello brand cheesecake flavored pudding mix all mixed together in a bowl. (Weird, but good. Really. Try it sometime before you judge me.)
9. I will not look at myself naked in a mirror. It is too revolting for me to see that I’m as big as a house.
10. I change clothes a couple hundred times each morning trying to find the outfit that makes me look least fat.
11. I compare myself to every other female I see each and every day. I am always bigger than each of them.
12. I think it would be less traumatic for me to be water-boarded by the CIA than to go into a grocery store.
13. When I do muster up the courage to go the grocery store I buy food that I think I “should” eat, even though I know I never will eat it.
14. I have no brand loyalty and I do not buy food based on how good it tastes. I buy the variety of a certain food — be it bread, yogurt, popcorn — that has the fewest calories, even if it means buying a product that is more expensive and less appetizing.
15. I would rather suffer arsenic poisoning than have to drink anything with calories.
Ok, I could go on and on and on…. but the point that I’m trying to make is this: for me to claim victory over the nightmare that is my eating disorder, I will have to do much more than simply refrain from binging/purging. My whole relationship to food/weight/appearance will have to undergo a radical shift. Obviously it’s better to refrain from binging/purging than it is to engage in binging/purging, but refraining in and of itself is insufficient. There is so much more work that needs to be done.
