On the Days When I Miss My Eating Disorder

Like any lost relationship – the ones that have any sort of undeniable impact on our lives – there are days when I miss my eating disorder. Days when I want to count my calories, or binge and purge, or give myself a gold star for not giving up on my arbitrary food rules.

There are days when all I want is the guarantee the disorder brings. People applauding my pant size or overemphasizing how they could never be as disciplined as me. The high of saying “no” to a Birthday cake. The ability to see my six-pack in the shower.

Newsflash. The guarantee is a façade.

Sad truth. The façade worked for a really, really long time.

And right now, I could use a façade.

As an Enneagram Eight, I cringe at the loss of control (read: I do not like surprises). When exterior circumstances play tricks on my expectations, I resort to interior controlling behaviors to satiate my sanity.

My 20’s were filled with exterior disarray and disruption. I graduated college and lost competitive basketball. I started a career in public education. I moved. Every single year. I married an alcoholic. I experienced chronic health issues. I left teaching. I got divorced.

STOP WITH THE SURPRISES ALREADY, my psyche screamed.

I learned that I couldn’t control the world. But, my body. I could control my body. So, my eating disorder became my safe space. It became the thing – sometimes the seemingly only thing – that understood how I was actually feeling.

And I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t sometimes miss my trusted companion. I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t want to welcome her back with open arms in these last few months.

Because these last few months have felt like a sickening spiral of chaos. Inconsistent freelance work. A sea of denial emails from Corporate America. New city. New apartment. Figuring out what to do with my Airstream. And, oh yeah, a global pandemic that has now left me unemployed and utterly confused.

The only thing my psyche is now screaming is for me to come back to the dark side. Actually, it’s more of a whisper than a scream. Because my psyche knows better than to try and control me.

And every single day I’m having to tell it no.

If you’re new here, it might interest you to read my initial blog on my battle with body dysmorphia.

Cliff Notes. In March of 2019, I decided to wage my war against diet culture. By eating. Everything that I actually wanted to eat. A commitment to rid my mind of all those useless food rules. A desire to find a sustainable life where my worth wasn’t attached to my appearance.

I got out of my head. And I gained weight. And I bought new clothes. And I told myself that I was going to be okay.

Update. I am, in fact, okay.

I struggle to write that sentence because I’m not sure of what “okay” even means. I’m breathing. I’ve made so many amazing friends. I can’t recall many times in my life where I’d been more supported to pursue my personal passions. And Nugget and I are currently staring at Denver’s city skyline from our apartment balcony.

I’m also very cognizant of my heaviness. Yes, physically. How I no longer fit into some of my favorite outfits. How I’m scared to step on a scale. How much fuller my face looks in photos. But also, emotionally. How I’m still in constant conversation with myself around how I’m supposed to look in order to be justified in accepting self-love.

Public Service Announcement. We don’t need to look any certain way in order to love ourselves. 

The idea that self-discipline in regard to food consumption warrants a standing ovation is a 21st century construct. Believe it or not, people just used to eat for the sake of staying alive. Also, pleasure. Eating food is pleasurable. Somewhere in my story I’d lost sight of such a profound statement.

Speaking of self-love, I looked in the mirror a couple months ago and actually liked it. Then I got mad at myself for thinking such an asinine thought.

You have gained far too much weight to appreciate anything about this reflection, Stephanie. Seriously, you just out-grew your favorite pair of pants.

And, what?! Like, my brain is actually trying to fight me here.

Clothes, they can be a real bitch.

Well, clothes and pictures. Because any article that used to fit and any photo that spirals me back into my skinniness are a trigger for me to abuse body control.

And as easy as it would be to return to this hell hole, I’m not interested. I’ve worked too hard just to get to the outer edge. And as much as I’d love to shed the “excess” weight in the name of vanity, I’m healthy. My body is comfortable (even when my mind is not).

This comfort has shown itself in my current state of survival.

Stephanie 1.0 would have quite literally lost her sanity at the mention of a “stay at home” order. She would have been flooded with anxiety at the thought of every gym closing and she would have not even been able to conceptualize having two week’s worth of snacks and meals in her house without eating it immediately. She would have bought zero “bad” foods in an effort to “save” herself.

It would have been an actual version of hell (an even bigger version than the one that we’re all currently experiencing).

Fortunately, I had laid 12 months of groundwork that allowed me to show up for myself here in a really powerful way. A way that I didn’t even know existed in 2019. When I started this personal mission, I chose to believe the words of the women before me who swore that they could eventually leave candy in their cupboards without thinking twice about it.

Candy?! In a cupboard?! Bull. Fucking. Shit. Susan.

I had convinced myself I was an addict.

According to my research, from many of the women – like Stephanie Buttermore – who had pioneered going “all in” before I had the sufficient dose of bravery on my side, clinical food addiction is a very rare thing.

We’ve subconsciously normalized the “I can’t have that in my house” mentality because we’ve grossly glamorized the “I restrict my calories and don’t eat ‘bad’ foods” ideology.

Newsflash. There is no such thing as “bad” food. Food is just food. Period.

Dieting is the catalyst for the obsession, which then leads to the bingeing, which then calls on the dieting for salvation. It’s a sick cycle (one that the Fuck It Diet outlines really well).

When I made the choice to simply eat, I’d never been more happy to get off a hamster wheel in my entire life. I’d also never been more terrified.

But, wow, how thankful I am to have faced that fear. How proud I am to stand a little further down the line and respect the fact that I chose myself over the story that I’d created about skinniness. How relieved I’ve felt in the last few months that I could eat and it would be good. How amazing it’s been to sit outside of all the diet bullshit that’s tried to tell us that we needed our workout regimens to define our time in isolation (this mongering is really just gross, by the way).

So, yes, there are most certainly days when I miss my eating disorder. But I’ve done the work to know that what I miss is not anorexia or bulimia or orthorexia. 

No. I do not miss running ten miles on a 24-hour fast. I don’t miss saying no to my friends to eat out because calories aren’t posted publicly on the menu. I do not miss spending Saturday night with my finger jammed down my throat after eating three cartons of ice cream (and knowing that ice cream is the easiest food to throw up). I don’t miss spending an entire week fixated on pizza, saying no to pizza every single night, and then eating an entire large pie by myself until I feel like I might actually explode. I do not miss tracking every damn morsel of food in an app. And then also committing to burning off double to justify my day. I don’t miss paleo and keto and intermittent fasting and “clean” and vegan.

In fact, I write those words with tears in my eyes, empathy for every woman who is struggling to embrace body acceptance (and for every little girl who will learn that not embracing body acceptance is okay).

I repeat. I do not miss my eating disorder.

What I miss is the control. What I miss is the routine. What I miss is the ability to create something consistent when everything else feels uncertain.

But on those days, I pay homage to how far I’ve come, and I ignore the mantra that tells me I still have so far to go. Because, today, how far I’ve come is more than enough.

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You can read my initial blog “What Skinny Never Got Me” here.