A sad reflection

Recently the thoughts have been loud, and every bite comes with a silent struggle in my mind. It's so tiring having a constant dialogue running through your head, and even more tiring when you're trying really hard to fight it.

Earlier, however, I came across something that shocked me. When I first started trying to lose weight, I posted online looking for help with my weight loss and exercise efforts. Finding these diaries again has quite honestly made me feel ill; now, with my years of nutritional knowledge and many many hours of psychological help, I can see how utterly distorted my relationship with food and exercise was from the very beginning.

Each day I wrote out what I ate. I won't post it here because it's extremely unhealthy, but I have no idea where I got the idea that starving myself was a good plan. How did I function? It continues to stagger me just how much food I can eat and maintain my weight - the body is an amazing thing, and yet I abused mine so horribly.

Reading through my posts, I came across some statements which just made want to scream

Included in these statements were:

"I'm in such a bad mood today, for no reason."

-Actually, Suz, maybe it's because you've barely eaten a thing….

"Today has been a bad day for me, I'm having a bit of a battle mentally with myself regarding food...really quite worried that I'm going to start doing something stupid soon."

-This breaks my heart, to be honest. I wrote this after only a few weeks of poor nutrition; I wasn't underweight at all, but over-exercising and drastically underrating had already caused my thoughts to become extremely worrying, so worrying that I even wrote about it despite having no clue about ED's. 

"I'm getting back into not eating enough again..."

- Yes, correct observation there…

"I've been tired and a bit out of breath all day, hence the lack of exercise, and tonight I realised that my heart rate is quite low. So I ate my own bodyweight in grapes...didn't help though"

- Only 1 month after starting the crazy diet/exercise regime, this happened. It didn't take long before my body started sending some serious warning signs, all of which I ignored. And no wonder those measly grapes didn't help!

"Had a really stupid night and, despite going to bed at 9pm, didn't get to sleep until 3am because I spent the whole night worrying about what to have for breakfast because I don't have time to exercise today - the idea of having 2 weetabix was giving me a panic attack. Stupid food fears....I did end up having 2 weetabix."

-What can I say? Again, at this point I wasn't underweight, just obviously malnourished and the anorexic thoughts had clearly started, loudly. This makes me want to weep.

"I'm dieting and teeter at the edge of taking it too far; I obsess, calorie count everything, have a panic attack if someone uses butter/semi-skimmed milk etc, and I sometimes go even further. However, up until last night I've been relatively good at making sure I hit a certain number of calories per day and NOT going below it...I just have these stupid moments where my entire life is consumed by 'What am I having for lunch tomorrow? What is the lowest calorie option? Maybe I shouldn't have anything at all...or maybe I should splurge, screw it.'"

-I just want to reach into the past, grab myself by the shoulders and shake myself. Hard. 

"I'm so ashamed...where is my self control?

Going to do 30mins on my exercise bike although the damage has been done. What a moron. Ok, so it's just a bad food day and that's FINE, but I'm mentally beating myself up like I've just commited a terrible crime. Urgh. The chips weren't even good! They were greasy and now I feel sick - and I was thinking that whilst shovelling them into my face, WHY?!"

- Terribly guilty feelings started to dictate my life…

My life was typed out as a numbers game - calories in vs. calories out, and the mis-match between the 2 was huge. I was at a healthy weight during all of these postings (although I thought myself fat, how tragic) which just proves that you can have a very disordered mind without being underweight. I thoroughly believe that poor nutrition flicked the switch in my brain and started anorexia very quickly after I began restricting; the restriction, coupled with the amount of exercise I was doing daily, meant that my body and brain weren't being nourished at all, and the effects were immediate. Each time I posted it reads like a cry for help, yet not one person recognised it and instead applauded my ability to eat so little and do so much.

Although it makes me so, so sad to read how grim my life was at this time (and this was before the effects of being underweight began, obviously…) it also acts as a stark reminder to me that I do not want to go back to that place, and that I must keep eating well. I don't have to be underweight for the guilty, panicky thoughts to be in place, but as long as I am undernourished they will be there.

Poor body. I will never starve you again. I promise.