Dis-Ordered Eating

I was reading a magazine article the other day about people with eating disorders, and one sentence really struck me. The woman, a former bulimic, said that she knew she had a problem with food when she stopped thinking of it as something to be eaten and enjoyed and started only thinking of it in terms of how many calories each food item held.

Uh-oh.

Now, don't get me wrong. I know I don't have an eating disorder (despite what Mrs. Mansfield, my first-grade teacher, told my mom, I never did develop anorexia). But I have realized over the past few months that I have disordered eating. My relationship with food is uncomfortable, difficult, fraught with guilt and remorse and very rarely, successful. I love to prepare and eat food and I hate myself for doing that. Well, I love myself when I prepare food and I hate myself when I eat it.

Every bite I put in my mouth is calculated, as are all the bites I DON'T. I have done enough reading about nutrition to know approximately how many calories are in the foods I eat. What I don't know, I find out by reading nutrition labels. Obsessively.

I think all of this started my junior year of high school, when I had to keep a food journal for a week for chemistry class. The rush I felt when I could restrict my calories to 1200 a day (keep in mind, I was 16 at the time and 45 - count 'em 45 - pounds lighter than I am now) was incredible. Since then, I have always been interested in how many calories I'm consuming and burning and wasting, etc.

It all got much worse about a year ago, when I realized I'd gained a lot of weight in a short period of time - 20 pounds in about six months. That is horrifying for me, because although my weight has fluctuated over the years by five or 10 pounds, my clothes have always fit. Now I'm reduced to borrowing clothes from my mother (with the promise that in a few months, I'll be small enough that I can give them back to her because they are too big) or wearing the same two or three outfits constantly. It is demoralizing to walk into my closet only to see lots of beautiful things that won't fit over my ass. Add to that the great boot blowout of '09 and I'm mortified every time I think about my size.

So, I obsess about my food intake. Over the past year, I've tried all sorts of things - exercise, diet, extreme exercise, diets that made me cry, eating only whole foods, eating only processed foods, crying, you name it. None of it has worked. I weigh the same amount now that I did in January. Which is to say 25 more pounds than I want to weigh. The frustration, self-loathing and anger are incredible.

And this has brought me to the point where even though I'm so hungry I want to cry right now (although a great deal of the tears would be shame from admitting any of this) I'm afraid to eat anything because I'm trying so hard to lose weight before we try to get pregnant again. (Yes, a part of me thinks that if I were thinner, I wouldn't have had the miscarriage.)

I know I'm not alone in my frustration and anger about this. I know many, many people struggle with their weight. However, when you are standing in the pantry crying, it is a solo endeavor. And when you can't get your favorite boots to fit, there is no one who can help you (except if you get stuck, and then husbands can usually be recruited to cut them off.)

It doesn't help that, intellectually, I know that if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Try telling that to my face when I get so stressed out about paying the bills that I order Chinese food and then silently berate myself with every bite. (That would be yesterday.) Tell me that when I cook chicken and brown rice for the 42nd time in a month even though I find it soul-killing to cook and eat such boring food all the time. (Beyond that, I don't even like chicken and rice.)

I'm not sure what the solution is. I refuse to buy any more big clothes. I refuse to be happy in this body because I know it isn't good for me. And I find it impossible to feel attractive when all I see in the mirror are my imperfections. And knowing that everyone in my life likes me better when I'm thinner doesn't help much either.

So I think I'll go stand in the pantry and cry.