NEDA Week, 2010: It's Time To Talk About It

**reposted from our private blog, originally published Feb 2010

My posts this week are not really the typical “Considering Public” post…but it’s very important to our family and I sometimes think that maybe I would have avoided the struggle I went through (at least to the extent I went through it/will always go through it) if I had realized that my behaviors were not normal.

I debated a long time about whether or not I was actually going to blog about this. NEDA week is important to me for obvious reasons. I hate that when some celebrity comes out and says they have/had an Eating Disorder that it’s all over the news and tabloids for weeks. People are either so proud of her for telling her story or grossed out by her selfishness. Either way, it’s a focus. Listen, 1 in 3 women have or have had an eating disorder…this should be something that we are more aware of and more committed to shifting focus away from self-worth associated with body image (thanks Hollywood!) and onto self-worth based on personality, kindness, happiness. Every body is different. Some women could starve themselves to death and still never be a size 2, so why is that the “ideal” right now? Yet our society has just kind of accepted that this is the way it is—that we have to look at these women and these ad campaigns and accept those standards of beauty. I think NEDA week is important because it exposes the flaws in this and admits that it DOES have an effect on the people who are exposed to it. But I still didn’t think that I was ready to talk about it for myself.

It’s embarrassing, first of all. It’s completely embarrassing to me that I let myself get so wrapped up in something as trivial as my appearance that I let it hurt me and my husband so very much. It’s embarrassing that I hold myself out to be this strong, independent woman and that I let a stupid number on a scale dictate my life for so long. There are people out there with REAL problems—cancer, infertility, financial troubles, AIDS—and I am worried about being skinny? I focused my days on whether I was the skinniest person in the room and if I wasn’t, I was a failure (and by the way, I could NEVER always be the skinniest person in the room. So that was a good yardstick for success. Way to set yourself up for disappointment.) It’s truly embarrassing. But if I have learned one thing in recovery, it is that I am far from alone in this. I am a statistic. So many people struggle with this issue and I thought that maybe if I made my story known, other people would realize that they (or someone they know) have a problem and can fix it before it gets unfixable.

For the record, I know that to someone who has never struggled with this, eating disorders seem extremely selfish. I’m not disagreeing with you. Prior to developing one myself, I always thought that people with eating disorders were selfish and that all they would have to do is start eating. Yes, at their core, eating disorders are selfish—they are about control and being the best and worrying about yourself and your looks more than anything else. But they are NOT as easy as “just eat.” You would never think that treating alcoholism is as easy as “just stop drinking” so I’m not sure why people think that it is that easy with eating disorders. So forgive me for being so slow in my recovery—but it was hard.

The Beginning 

So I guess I’ll start from the beginning? I was a nice chunkster in High School. Not a big old fatty but I had some girth to me. It was my own fault: I ate french fries and cheese sticks for lunch every.single.day. I had breakfast tacos multiple times a week and ate a ton at one sitting for dinner. I was just unhealthy. When I went away to college, I remained unhealthy…college food sucked and the only thing I liked in the cafeteria was grilled cheese and french fries…for every meal.

Then, for some reason, I decided I wanted to lose weight. My mom and I started Weight Watchers. For the record, I think Weight Watchers is a FANTASTIC program that really focuses on healthy weight loss. I did, in fact, lose a healthy amount of weight and at the point where I reached a healthy weight, they told me to stop losing weight. I just didn’t listen. So anyway, over the course of 1-2 years (junior & senior year of college), I lost about 40 pounds and was really feeling good about myself:

Then that sweet, baby-face boy proposed to me. And I decided that I wanted to lose just a couple more pounds before the wedding. I remember counting calories very closely but I never went without eating—I just ate as healthy as I could. For the most part, I was just in shape that day:

I had spent the summer working out with a trainer so that I’d be nice and toned on my wedding day. I look at that picture now and I remember how proud I was of how I looked: I had worked hard and I finally felt really, really pretty. If only I could have frozen that moment in time and left it at that.