I never did realize I had a problem. Even now, I'm always quick to brush off my extreme weight loss as nothing more than a phase. I've labeled it different ways--training for cross-country, makeover, lifestyle change. In reality it was none of those things. The real training I did for cross-country left me happy. I was able to treat myself after pumping up endorphins from an hour of running up and downhill in 103º heat, and I didn't feel the need to be secretive about my eating because I had friends who were participating with me. That's why I'm trying for a community aspect in my efforts this time, and sharing my former and current struggles. Not feeling alone was the key factor in snapping me out of my anorexia. When I could no longer be on the team, I lost an important part of myself.
What weight loss came down to in the past for me was control. I had a list of rules I followed without question, I restricted myself more and more with each passing day until I was barely reaching 300 calories, and I always felt I deserved a gold medal for being so in command of my own body. I had the control to deny it one of its basic needs. It gave me a sense of power in a time I was very lost. Limiting what went in and out of me, watching the calories I burnt climb while the number on the scale dropped (and sometimes up to a pound a day) absorbed my every thought. Being thin was my sole purpose in life, not because I thought I looked particularly good underweight, but because being skinny meant being disciplined. It meant the strength to rise above all other sources of internal noise.
I've never quite shaken my tendency to equate starvation with strength, though I've also never held any delusions about it meaning anything less than misery. When I was skinny, I was deeply depressed and ill. Skinny was shivering every night with an aching stomach because I hadn't eaten in hours. Skinny was compulsively snapping my wrist with a rubber band hard enough to raise welts every time I thought of food so I would learn to associate it with pain. Skinny was stunting my growth, physically and mentally. Skinny was waking up to count my ribs every morning, tally my progressively protruding collarbone, and make sure the space between my legs was still present and growing. Skinny was waking up shaking from painfully detailed nightmares about indulging in decadent foods, confused as to whether I’d eaten anything or not. It was pain, plain and simple. But the pain felt like power.
In reality, I couldn't have been less in control. My daily weigh-ins would determine my mood for the rest of the day or even week, and if the number on the scale went up even a tenth of a pound, I would spend the rest of the day on my bed unable to move from the perceived weight of my failure, only emerging to drag myself to the gym. I may have been in control of my body, but I was not in control of my happiness. I didn't think it mattered. I didn't want to be happy. I wanted to feel like I had strength.
Now that I’ve been recovered for years, I think I'm ready to try again, and for my own health and happiness. I want to attempt a gradual weight loss with how I feel taking priority. I've gotten better. I've marginalized my perception of the thin female body as an ideal. It was no easy feat, considering how deeply society roots constant dissatisfaction with ourselves, but I’ve managed to love myself now, even the physical parts that are messy and the mental ones that still cling to dysfunction on the bad days. I wouldn’t try to lose weight if I hadn’t learned to accept the imperfect parts. I've learned that above all else I deserve health and happiness—that they should be prioritized over any number or rule. And I've learned I should give myself second chances to realign my way of thinking, and hopefully come out a happier person as well as a stronger one.