I have had an absolutely amazing day! It’s my birthday and it couldn’t have been better. I took the day off work and spent it with my mom and my nieces. We played all day! My nieces (who are 3 and 2) “helped” their Granna (my mom) make my birthday cake as well as my brother’s birthday cake. If you don’t know us, yes, my brother and I share a birthday but no, we are not twins – we’re 7 years apart. 😉 I usually have yoga on Tuesday nights but my yoga instructor is also a massage therapist, so this week I got a massage and it was fabulous. Walking has been amazing today. God answered my prayer that it wouldn’t rain or be gloomy out. My dad grilled out steaks for dinner and the whole family celebrated tonight. The being together, the playing, the laughing, the loving, the eating, the gifts: everything was absolutely wonderful.
Since it’s Tuesday though and I usually write a blog post on Tuesdays, I’m still writing one, but this will be a little different tonight. I’ve prayed about writing and posting about this and while I’m nervous, I also think I’m ready. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you know that I’m very black and white. I tend to be a perfectionist. I’ve been very transparent on my struggles with dystonia and wanting to walk normally, however, something very few people in my life know is that I’ve also been struggling with food issues for almost (in August officially) 8 years. Some call it an eating disorder. It’s been a very shameful and humbling thing for me to acknowledge. So, for the most part, I don’t acknowledge it publicly. But, in the past two weeks, I’ve felt like maybe it was time to reveal this “secret”.
I’m not writing this post to gain sympathy, empathy, affirmation, confirmation or for advice or for shock value or for any other reason except to get it off my chest. For the past 8 years, I’ve felt like I’ve been somewhat lying to people by omission, by not saying anything about my “secret” struggle. I’ve made mention in this blog before that I see a nutritionist. She’s a registered dietitian and nutritionist. I also see a therapist. For some reason, it’s much easier to talk about a dietitian/nutritionist then it is to also say that I see a therapist. At the eating disorder’s worst, I was seeing the therapist 3 times a week. Now, I see her every two weeks. I’ve come to a place where I’m removed enough, healthy enough to share about my experiences, but I’m still hesitant. There’s a shame that comes with being labeled as having an “eating disorder”. I haven’t wanted to share about this part of my life because I’ve been embarrassed by it. When something is physically wrong with you, you can blame it on a disease, but there’s a stigma with eating disorders that says, “just stop…you’re doing it to yourself…just stop and you’ll be OK.” Believe me, I’ve been on that side. I’ve even said those words to people (if not out loud, in my head!).
To just get it out there, I don’t have anorexia or bulimia. To look at me, I don’t look anorexic and I don’t throw up my food. I thought that those were the only two eating disorders out there. To my surprise, they are not. When I was first diagnosed, it was as a binge eater. That’s someone who will eat and eat and eat, but not purge. I’d feel so guilty for eating so much though that I would go for long stretches without eating. It ended up being this cycle of eating until I couldn’t eat anymore and then restricting until I couldn’t restrict anymore and I couldn’t get off the merry-go-round. I was extremely overweight and miserable. A few years into my diagnosis, the eating disorder flipped. I didn’t know it could do that, but it can and did. I had, with the help of the dietitian and the therapist, lost weight and was feeling wonderful. I was no longer binging, but my main “offense” was restricting. I was so sure that at any minute, I would start gaining weight back and I didn’t want that to happen at all. I was on a good eating program, but the thoughts inside my head were that if I was losing so much weight following that program, I could do so much better if I was eating even less. So, I ate less. Then my therapist and my dietitian came up with a novel idea. Some of you know that I eat ice cream every night (or close to every night). Only a select few know that I’m actually “ordered” to eat it so that I’m eating enough calories per day. While I love it now, I was TERRIFIED to do it at first. I had to trust that my dietitian and therapist knew what they were doing. In all actuality, neither of them had ever tried that approach with a patient before. A registered dietitian “prescribing” ice cream every night?! That wasn’t heard of. It was my therapist’s idea and she convinced the dietitian to go along – haha! Thankfully, at the time, I didn’t know that they had never tried this approach, so I just went along. While it might sound like the “perfect” remedy, let me tell you, it was (and at times still is!) hard. And yes, while I eat ice cream (almost) every night, that doesn’t mean I’ll eat it in front of people or out at an ice cream shop with people. I still must know how many calories are in the ice cream and I measure it out each night.
I want to help people that may be in the same space I’m in. I haven’t written this post to blame anyone or to seek attention in any way. In fact, I’ve almost backed out of posting this several times already. I don’t want my revelation to look bad on anyone in my family, for they are not the root or the cause of any of this. The eating issues that I deal with are my issues and are not caused by anyone. I’ll probably write more about this on the blog at some point, but for right now, for tonight, I think this is enough. I’ve found myself “slipping up” more recently and I was afraid that if I didn’t start acknowledging the eating issues in a more public way that I would get “caught” at some point and I’d rather reveal things on my own time frame rather than having to backtrack. I really do hope that this “reveal” will be able to help someone, or, if for nothing else, just free me to be more myself. I’ve known all along and continue to know that God’s got my back. Being a Christian doesn’t exempt me from struggling with the way I look or how much I weigh. I often think to myself that I’m not a good Christian because I do struggle with image issues, but then I’m reminded that God never said we would have perfect lives, that we wouldn’t struggle. I have faith that God works ALL things together for HIS good, even the issues we may bring on ourselves. He is a loving Father who forgives us and helps us.
I’ll end this post by saying that God has blessed me beyond measure and I still know and hold firm to the fact that God’s Got This!
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