Some
weeks ago, after completing a 10-mile run with an ultra-marathoner from
California, I settled down under the awning in front of the Up and Running
storefront (where my training group meets) to relax, rehydrate, and stretch out
my wobbly legs. I was all giggles and
school-girly excitement during my stretches.
I felt like the coolest person ever—I had kept up with a man far fitter
than myself for a total of ten miles in weather like a nasty, wet, wool blanket
and lived to tell the tale! I think my
big, stupid grin could be seen from outer space. This was a big accomplishment for me.
Not
bad for a very busy mom from Dayton, Ohio.
I happily eased into a figure-four stretch alongside a young gentleman
who appeared to be about my age and figured I’d introduce myself once the
opportunity arose. It was only my second
time running with the group, and I was determined to make friends with
everyone.
His
training partner leaned down to touch her toes.
I remembered her from earlier, when we’d shared a wave as she and the
young man now stretching to my right ran by, heading in the opposite
direction. She was definitely a
head-turner, lean and fit with an impressive pair of shapely, well-muscled
legs. Even her running attire was cute—a
little light blue running skort, a matching fitness tank, and a bright pair of
pink and blue shoes. She was such a
picture, in fact, that I fretted about looking a little silly in my Voltron t-shirt, running shorts that
were in service even when Clinton was in office, and my severely abused shoes. Oh, well.
Fashionably dressed or no, I figured I would still have smelled like a
raw, chopped onion either way. I
scratched at an itch caused by my wet, sweaty sleeve against my arm and gave
the girl what I hoped was a friendly smile.
Although
she smiled in return, her underlying demeanor seemed agitated as she leaned
from one foot to the other, stretching her calves. She looked at the pedometer she wore on her
wrist, and then compared it to her partner’s.
“Wait,”
she said, frowning at the pedometer, “you burned over 2,000 calories and I only
burned 1,070?”
“So
what? We ran the same distance at the
same pace,” he pointed out.
“I
can’t believe that!” she mourned with a rueful grin at him. “Such crap!”
“Well,
hey, you looked like you were hauling to me!” I interjected helpfully. “I’m sure you’re fine!”
“I
don’t know, that pedometer suggests otherwise,” she laughed.
“Pfft,”
I said, waving a hand around, “there’s more to running than getting wrapped up
in calories and whatnot. You had a great
workout. I really wouldn’t worry too
much about it.”
“Oh,
I don’t,” she said dismissively. “I
mean, I eat a lot and everything.”
I
immediately worried that I’d come off as self-righteous. Well, this
was a touchy subject for me, after all, given my history. I decided to drop it rather than risk
dropping potential pals. “Well, that’s good,”
I said, feeling a little awkward.
The
conversation fizzled out at that point, and I wound up chatting with a guy
about my shirt, instead.
This
exchange with the pretty girl in the cute running shoes, short and trivial as
it might seem, deeply disturbed me.
While I can’t say that this girl from my group has issues with food and
exercise because I honestly barely know her (for all I know, she’s just competitive),
it got me thinking, anyway. I began wondering
how many girls were here to try losing weight, get into better shape, or
achieve what they perceived to be a better figure. I dwelled on my own relationship with
running, and how it had changed and progressed throughout the years. I certainly don’t run to lose or maintain
weight anymore. I do have my own
personal goals regarding my sport, but I won’t get into those here. I keep a
separate blog for those.
As I
ruminated and stretched, a lady from T. Willy’s Frozen Yogurt came by to hand
out samples. (For Daytoners—good stuff!) She had an array of little cups of their Berry
Tart frozen yogurt laid out like a miniature oasis on a tray. I might or might not be lying when I say I
busted a full-on cartwheel at the sight.
As I
reached for a sample cup, a waspishly thin gentleman from the running group
immediately queried after the caloric content of the yogurt before accepting
his. I paused in slurping mine down, a
little surprised. Most of these members
were training for half-marathons, marathons, or 50ks. Serious races. The majority of them had started running a
full hour before I’d even arrived to start my workout, and here I was,
shamelessly reaching for a second sample when no one stepped up to claim the
little dollop of yogurt. I myself was
astounded that such a tasty treat was only 90 calories per 8 oz. serving, but
it occurred to me, too, that in my current state of mind, I wouldn’t have cared
if it was 90 grams of fat per 8 oz. serving.
I decided that it was time to go home before I, uninvited, ran off at
the mouth about not worrying about calories again. I was getting the hypoglycemic shakes,
anyway, despite the yogurt samples, and it was time to *gasp* eat.
While
I can’t sit back and cast judgments on my fellow runners regarding their eating
patterns and diet concerns (for many, calorie-counting is just a lifestyle, and
their relationship with food is perfectly healthy, or they count calories to be
sure that they’re getting enough rather than too many, and you get the idea), their
calorie concerns, regardless, still brought up a lot of unsavory
memories—memories of obsessing and fretting over the amount of calories in a
given food item, meticulously calculating and tallying my intake every single
day like an overzealous bookkeeper gunning for a promotion, panicking and
sucking down laxatives like they were M&Ms or chocolate milk if I strayed
over my self-prescribed daily calorie allotment even by a measly ten or
fifteen, crying and slamming things Hulk-style against walls if I, for whatever
reason, was unable to go for a run and burn calories I only imagined I had
consumed. Refusing to chew gum. And worst of all, the memory of the numb,
tingly, gnawing, strength-sapping, continual hunger. Hunger that was self-induced, and made me
feel like my limbs had gone zero gravity and were floating out to space.
This
had gone on for months after I’d had my baby.
And my relationship with exercise was just as bad as my relationship
with food. My daughter was maybe six
months old, and still waking up every two to four hours each night. Despite the frazzled feeling of
sleep-deprivation and the inherent spaciness that goes along with it, I would
undergo rigorous indoor exercises each day, normally consisting of three sets
of fifty bench dips, three sets of twenty-five push-ups, three sets of fifty
legs-up bench dips, 1,500 crunches, a series of core exercises, fifty squats,
and two sets of fifty calf-raises. This
was my daily routine, and I would also take my daughter for a long walk, or
when I could work a run into my schedule, I would do that, too.
A
well-timed visit to my father’s quickly put the kibosh on opting toward this
behavior. My stepmom came down on me
like a Looney Tunes anvil out of the sky about my diet and exercise
habits. She’s always been the type to
speak her mind and stand by what she’s said.
And in this situation, her words couldn’t have been more to the point,
or better-put.
“Don’t
do this to yourself,” she said, point-blank.
“Don’t do this to your baby.”
I
mulled that over the entire flight home.
When
I first saw a healthcare professional perhaps a week later about the
possibility that I had a pretty serious eating disorder, I wasn’t sure what to
expect. For the most part, eating
disorders, and anorexia in particular, are considered by the layman to be
diseases of vanity, cultural pressure, and conscious choices. I was still wondering why I was here seeking
help if my doings were, in fact, of my own volition, and because I was vain and
impressionable. I still hadn’t even really
accepted that I was anorexic, either. I
felt very self-conscious and shy when the doctor called me in, and also
wondered if I was even thin enough to look the part.
After
going over the basics of anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder, their
effects, and the fact that I could not help what I was experiencing any more
than a person with a chronic physical illness could, she produced a book from
her shelf, and said, “Kaitlyn. I want to
read this to you.”
I
tilted my head, my eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. It was none other than Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
“…Okay,”
I said. I shifted awkwardly and leaned
back in my seat. I was unsure what the
heck kind of place this book had in this session, but curious, too.
When
we got to the part of the book that was Saturday, we chuckled a little over the
binge that Carle’s caterpillar partook in—I had just told her that only the
night prior, I had caved in and scarfed down two chili dogs, a bowl of chili
spaghetti, four bowls of ice cream, three Snickers bars and half a box of
graham crackers with peanut butter. I
had had a stomachache, too—like the caterpillar.
At
the end of the book, she smiled a warm, gentle smile at me and said, “So listen
to me, Kaitlyn. At this point, in order
to become a beautiful butterfly, you should keep eating two chili dogs, a bowl
of chili spaghetti, four bowls of ice cream, three Snickers bars, and graham
crackers with peanut butter.”
A
feeling of warmth spread over me. For
the first time in a long, long time, I felt truly nurtured, understood and
accepted—eating disorder and all.
It
was a wonderful feeling.
I
smiled back. “Well, I’ll certainly try.”
Try
I did, but it was a long, long time before I was able to get back into healthy
eating patterns again. In the time it
took for me to find myself at a decent spot with food, weight and exercise, I
had moved from Missouri to Ohio into my mother’s house, gotten a divorce, been
through four different jobs, had a huge fight with my father and stepmother
that resulted in a long estrangement, and reconnected with an old friend, who
is now my husband. While good things did
come of the time that I was locked in this struggle, and things that have
caused me not to have any regrets regarding my experiences, this was a seemingly
endless fight spent in blurry horror.
Given
that I could not afford help at the time, I was practically alone in that
battle. I certainly don’t want to
discredit those who stood by me and supported me while I struggled. But the simple fact is that even now, I am
still met with serious skepticism about the reality and severity of my eating
disorder, and the truth behind it. (The uncomfortable
truth that this is not a conscious choice brought on by vanity,
attention-seeking, culture, or even perfectionism alone. It is not a phase. It is not a ploy to become the center of
everyone’s world. No one with an eating
disorder asked for one or strove toward one.
No one with an eating disorder dabbled in one like a person might dabble
in a hobby for a while.)
I
tell only a very select, trusted few about my bad days—days that I digress, feel
down on myself or overly stressed, and want to slip back into bad habits. I guess it’s only natural some might not feel
it’s truly an issue for me if I don’t express myself. But, here’s the thing—if I did, I truly fear
what the reaction would be. I have been
called selfish, weak, an unfit mother, thoughtless, hysterical, and two-faced,
just to name a few. I have been told
recently that it was just a phase I went through and that it wasn’t really
anorexia. After all, I never wound up in
the hospital stuck full of tubes. I
could argue that that is simply because I was willing to do something about it relatively
early on, because I had taken note of the effects my behavior had had on my
loved ones. Being called selfish, thoughtless and two-faced hurt particularly
badly. I never meant to hurt a soul.
While
I’m not angry or resentful, this is a large part of why I always felt so alone,
and even now, don’t especially want to reach out when I have rough days. I know fully well that I am not the only one
who feels this way. So many men and
women struggle with this issue, and won’t reach out, either, for the same or
similar reasons.
I
don’t want anyone to struggle with bad body image, body dysmorphia, eating
disorders, low self-esteem, or etc. alone or afraid. Anyone who battles these demons should never have
to fight alone, or without any resources.
So if you are struggling and afraid to reach out—I want you to know that
you do not have to feel that you are on your own. ^_^
Note!
I will provide links to resources and relevant articles via this page, and will
also post entries supplying information on eating disorders and body dysmorphic
disorder.
Also
note! Every two weeks or so I will discuss topics regarding body image,
self-esteem, recovery, eating disorders, and other relevant issues as they pop
up. Please let me know if you would like
to see something discussed on this page, too!
And finally—thank
you for visiting, and I hope that this site will be of help to those who need
it. ^_^
~
Kate
