Overheard

I was standing in line at the DMV and the lady next to me was renewing her license. She was asked to look over her information.

“It’s correct except I don’t weigh 50kgs anymore.”

My ears started flapping, but I prevented myself from turning to stare at her. No one wants to be gawked at like a freak on a Tuesday afternoon.

“Ok how much do you weigh now?”

“I think, maybe 60kgs?”

She doesn’t look self conscious. She doesn’t giggle shyly or hang her head ashamed. No one can say for sure, but to an onlooker it seems like she gained 10kgs and that is just fine. Normal. Unremarkable. Not noteworthy.

I have never put my correct weight on my driver’s license. I always lowball – within REASON.

At ballet school we were taught to subtract 10lbs from our actual weight when asked for an audition. As a rule of thumb I have continued to do this because it seems REASONABLE. Reasonable to lie about my weight because no number is ever really acceptable.

Today I went to get a cup of coffee in the mall and a shop employee was hob nobbing with the barista. No one can say for sure, but she looked like she was afflicted with the rex. I had admired her skeletal like arms as she handed me my coffee with trembling hands and a smile that lit up her pale, hollowed out face.

The shop employee was showing the barista his lunch. She looked at it like a maniac. Like she was fascinated and revolted at the same time.

“I’m not going to eat all of it now,” he informed her and her co-coffee worker. “I guess I’m telling you so that you don’t laugh at my fat ass.”

The other barista comments on how she likes to tell herself she will save food for later and then eats it all in one sitting instead. I’m stirring my coffee slowly, deliberately eavesdropping.

The rexy barista hasn’t moved. She is in the same spot still transfixed by this lunch that has wandered in to high jack her shift.

He gets his coffee from skinny and skinnier behind the espresso machine and looks at his lunch with unbridled delight.

“I’m only 15lbs away from my goal weight anyway.”

I pick up my coffee and stroll out into the banal abyss of mall. I take my extra 15 pounds of “baby” weight with me. My extra 15 pounds of sleepless nights, more calories for breastfeeding, anxiety, bad day with the babies, hormonal, postpartum, non exercising excuses, sneaky glasses of wine and a few too many chocolate binges of baby weight.

Undefined

I am triggered by everything:

A photo of dancers I used to idolize when I was 16 and starving, desperate to be even half as skinny as they were and still are. I scroll past them. My brain does a double take. I back track. I scrutinize their emaciated arms, their collar bones, their sunken cheek bones. They are all smiles, superior in their anorexia, mocking me. Twenty years have gone by and they are still thinner than thin.

I see my reflection in an unsafe mirror…so that’s what thighs and hips and stomachs look like after two babies in quick succession – well mine anyway. A vast, mass of undefined lard, rolling and oozing and overflowing, fleshy like raw dumplings, doughy like unbaked bread, ever expanding…never ending. Never ceasing to amaze me in horror to fascinate me as I stare. “Is that really me?” I don’t recognize myself, this untamed, unmanageable, out of control lump. I don’t fit into my clothes or my brains neatly, compartmentalized boxes: bulimic ballerina has been replaced with fat stay-at-home-mum. Fat, frumpy, fleshy, unfit to be a mother or an anorexic.

I read an ED memoir a friend lends me. I stop. I put it away on a shelf where I cannot see it. I pick it back up a week later. It makes me remember that I used to purge just as easily as I breathed. After this long, would I even notice if it crept back in? If I slipped a couple of times that were more intentional than unintentional? After all, there are days where I seamlessly substitute my calories as I go. Latte? No, americano. Vegan mayo? No, mustard. Salad dressing? Not necessary. More pasta? No, more veggies. Two slices of toast? No, three quarters of one slice is more than enough for breastfeeding two babies. I shake so much, so often from hunger. I don’t get any thinner.

I don’t want to think of the other bad days where I unintentionally eat two muffins instead of one. When I eat half a bag of chocolate chips and then wonder why I’m carrying this “baby weight” 7 Months later. I’m surprised when these things happen. Half a packet of digestive biscuits later I am unsure where I went wrong. But I’ve never pretended to know so why start now?

hey fatty…

This is how I wake myself up: 

 

Fitness Obsession

http://www.elonpendulum.com/2014/11/fitness-obsession-just-dangerous-eating-disorders/

Emergency

I got rushed to hospital last night about 36 hours after surgery. I had an allergic reaction to the pain killers I was given as they were contraindicated with thyroid drugs and the surgeon didn’t pick up on it.

By the time I got to triage, I was shaking uncontrollably and felt like I was having a heart attack. I was nauseous and dizzy and having trouble breathing. The nurse got me a bed right away because my heart rate had spiked. She asked me if I had been eating when I took my pills. I had been in so much pain because I couldn’t metabolize the medication and it made me so sick that I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours. “You have to eat,” she admonished me as I lay on a bed. It is hard to explain to a nurse that I just hadn’t felt like it. I have actually lost my appetite since the surgery. I don’t even think it was my eating disorder despite wanting to restrict because I am incapacitated.

After 5 hours they had stabilized my vitals, given me a different narcotic pain-killer and re-bandaged my incision after checking for infection. Today I felt weak and exhausted. I slept for hours and didn’t eat until dinner time. I think I am feeling depressed now about being unable to do anything or go anywhere. I am still worried about how unfit and out of shape I will be after 6 weeks of no physical activity. Tomorrow I will weigh myself, standing on one foot of course.

Post Op

 

I had foot surgery yesterday. It was very traumatic.

The surgery was done with a local anesthetic and no sedation. I am the kind of person that needs to be sedated heavily because I have such high anxiety. On the way to the hospital my heart rate started climbing and as I sat in the waiting room, I started shaking uncontrollably.

As soon as the surgeon came near me I started crying; ugly crying. He did my last foot surgery and I trust him implicitly, but for reasons I can’t explain, I just lost it. They same thing happened last time and it is embarrassing. For almost an hour I sobbed and shook and hyperventilated while the surgery took place. My dear friend who had driven me to hospital was allowed to stay in the room during the surgery and held my hand and tried to calm me down. I am so grateful to him for being with me. I apologized over and over to the surgeon and the nurses and my friend for my behaviour. The nurses tried very hard to get me to relax. My blood pressure sky rocketed and my heart rate hit 276bpms. I could not control myself.

When it was finally over, I was allowed to go home with a cast and crutches. Now the reality of having had foot surgery again has hit me: six weeks of no activity. No ballet or yoga or gym. I am terrified of how fat I will get so yesterday I ate as little as possible. I didn’t even have much appetite. It is hard to get around and do even the simplest tasks including going to the kitchen and making something to eat. I am hoping I will enjoy a restricting phase now.  I am lying on the couch feeling a bit depressed and in a lot of pain. Luckily I have been blessed with good friends who are taking care of me.

 

Foot Surgery

 

I am supposed to have a second foot surgery this Saturday and am obviously anxious about it. Not least of all, I will not be able to do ballet, gym or yoga for 6 weeks afterwards. Naturally I am most upset about how much fatter I will get. I have managed to drop 7lbs since the infamous weigh in at my doctor’s. I still have a long way to go and being on crutches is not going to help. Also, my feet are the only thing about me worth looking at. They are the only thing that makes me look remotely ballerina-like. I hope they don’t botch it.

SICK (in the head, the heart and the body)

I am sick. Again. There was just a week in between one throat and chest infection before the next one started. Once again I am coughing, my tonsils are swollen and covered in white spots and I wake up every morning with my eyes crusted shut. On top of that I have a migraine from purging. I am too tired and weak to exercise. On the bright side, I have lost 5.5lbs since my doctor weighed me 12 days ago. I jump on the scale every morning and hold my breath. Or, more accurately, I creep onto it tentatively (one toe at a time) while repeating a mantra under my breath: “Please, please, please, please….please. Let today be the day.”

Fat B**ch

My doctor accidentally told me how much I weighed at my physical today.

I immediately burst into tears and started sobbing uncontrollably. I sat there in a hospital gown, my gargantuan thighs peeking out, unable to stop the tears. I think she was shocked by my sudden outburst, but I have never told her the depths of my eating disorder struggles so she doesn’t have much context.

Why was I so shocked by the actual number? I knew I had packed on the pounds since this time last year when she lowered my thyroid medication and I attempted recovery. I had guessed it was 15lbs and I was right.: 15.4lbs exactly. I have refused to weigh myself in a year and a half in order to stop the spiral of restriction from starting again. Now that I know the horrible, hideous, heavy number, I plan to weigh myself every day and restrict more and purge more and exercise more. This is unacceptable. I refuse to be this weight.

She agrees that this amount of weight in one year is not normal although she refuses to credit it to my hypothyroidism because I am medicated. I disagree with her, but she is the “expert”. My LDL cholesterol has gone from being abnormally low to being high enough for me to be at risk from it.
“It must be your diet and lifestyle,” she assures me. “Maybe you should be on a medically supervised weight loss plan?”
I think of my vegetarian diet and of all the days that I eat rice cakes, cottage cheese, hummus and celery and count calories. I think of the hours I spend in the gym and teaching ballet. I think of the only bad food that I eat when I’m on a binge and which I purge immediately after.
“Perhaps you should exercise more to make sure you are burning fat,” she keeps her lecture going and I want to punch her. I have been so sick for three weeks and the guilt at not working out has consumed me. Today I arrive in her office in my exercise clothes and runners, straight from the gym still sweating from my workout.

“Your weight is not bad,” she tells me in an attempt to stop the crying that goes on for an uncomfortably long time. “You are not overweight, you have a healthy BMI so it just depends on how happy you are with your weight.”
“I’m not happy at all. I can’t be this heavy. It distresses me. I am sure I will have a full-blown relapse,” I sob as mascara and snot run down my fat, red face.

She finishes my physical which is now awkward, gives me a vitamin B12 shot and smiles sympathetically at me. “Have a nice day…and take care of yourself.”
Of course I won’t.

Guilt And The Lazy Saturday

I woke up today and didn’t want to go the gym. The guilt ate me for breakfast. On days that I don’t go to gym, I do the T25 or Insanity workouts at home. I prefer Insanity because I am insane.