Anorexia — This is My Story

Starvation is cruel.
At first it hurts. That empty feeling in your stomach. That burning feeling that never goes away. But once you pass the few day mark, something happens. You stop feeling those pains. Once you reach that point, you’re in trouble. Starvation has a firm grasp on you.
The body is an amazing machine. After two days without food, your brain decreases the amount of glucose it requires to stay alive; your brain would die in about three days if it didn’t. Because food isn’t fueling your brain, your brain starts to steal nutrients from other parts of your body. But after this, the third or fourth day, your body starts to break down the protein in your body in order to get its energy which means that your muscles will deteriorate.
As a teenager I suffered from Anorexia Nervosa. When I got better, I promised myself that I would put that time of my life behind me, and never look back. Even thinking about it now makes me cringe. But over the years, I’ve seen and heard of other young people going through the same thing. I had wished that I could do something to help, but I thought there was nothing I could do.
But what if I wrote about it. I think it’s about time I told my story.
I still remember the first time I became obsessive about my weight and looks. I had just finished eating a huge Saturday dinner. I could barely breathe because I was so full. I thought to myself, “Oh man, this is gross. Did I actually eat that much? I am such a pig.” Because I felt very uncomfortable with all that I ate, I went to measure my weight in hopes that I hadn’t become obese in one hour. On this day, I had planted a seed in my mind that would grow to become the biggest and most destructive weed of my life.
I’ve always had social anxiety. It’s not that people didn’t like me, or that I didn’t like them, it’s that I was too shy to start talking with other people. I kept thinking of how ugly and fat I looked. I just couldn’t look at people in the face when I spoke. I would try to avoid speaking as much as possible. I would even try to avoid people altogether. I would rather die than have to encounter another human being — is what was constantly on my mind.
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It was summer 2006. I remember I had already started obsessing a bit about what I was eating, my weight, and my need to do 100 pushups and situps. I was 120 pounds and 17 years old. If I can’t control the way my body was made, if I can’t control the way my mind works, the one thing I can control is the foods I eat. So I tried to make a habit for myself. To be able to control what I ate. Eat when I said, and not when my body said. Eat when I wanted and not when my parents told me to eat.
I didn’t cut out all foods at once. It was very difficult at first. I started by trying not to eat anything sweet. But then my body started getting cravings, so I would indulge in three chocolate bars. I would then feel sick and guilty, and do excessive amounts of pushups thinking that it’d burn all the calories that I just ate. After that indulgence I would eat very, very little for dinner. This kept going on for a few weeks, but then, somehow, I was able to control myself over sweets. Sweets had no control over me. I would be able to have a chocolate pass under my nose and I wouldn’t even care. Awesome, I thought. By avoiding sugary foods, I was able to lose a bit more weight. Seeing that triggered an addictive behaviour in me.
I loved seeing my myself lose weight. What else could I do to lose more weight? I continued to increase the amount of exercises I would do. I would make sure that I was constantly moving, doing more pushups, doing more sit ups, walking up and down the stairs.
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It was time for camp. It would mean limited food, more exercises (swimming, sports, and running around outside). We finally got to camp. It was probably around 4:00pm; the time that I would usually do my pushups and situps. But I couldn’t do them. Back home, I would do them secretly. I would hide in the bathroom, put some towels on the ground, and spend 15 or so minutes doing pushups and situps. But at camp, the bathroom in the cottage was tiny. I couldn’t do anything in there. I was freaking out. I got moody. Nothing was going my way.
When everyone left the cottage to go to the community center, I ran back to the cottage and got on the bed to do my sit ups, then I got on the floor and did my pushups. Now I was happy again. The week passed, and we got home. I quickly ran up the steps to my parents’ bedroom and weighed myself. “Yes! 105 lbs. Wow!” I thought. Before I left for camp, I was at 110lbs.
Seeing how easy it was to lose 5 pounds was a nasty problem. It motivated me to eat even less. So I continued to eat the same amounts of food that I had at camp — very little.
As soon as I came back from camp, I started my first job. It was at a grocery store. I worked in the produce department. Perfect! Being on my feet all day meant that I would burn lots of calories. At the same time, I couldn’t even be tempted to eat anything until lunch. My sister started working there a a few months before me, and when I started, some of her friends said how cute I was. That made me feel good about myself for the first time in a long time. But that only encouraged me to lose more weight. I said if I lost 15 pounds and girls started calling me cute, then imagine what they would think if I lost more weight. At this point I wasn’t thinking straight anymore. In actuality, if I lost anymore weight I wouldn’t be “cute” at all. I’d look like I came out of a tomb. In addition to that, I would be at risk of dying. Anyway, as time went on I continued to lose weight steadily.
Work became so much more difficult. I was always tired now. Horribly tired. Before starting a work session, I needed to make sure that I was well rested. This meant sitting completely still. Absolutely still. I couldn’t move an arm or a leg or I thought that I would drain all of the energy that I had. By this point I was about 95lbs to 100lbs.
Every passing day, I was fighting so hard to eat less, and less. Sundays were my eat less, and lose more day. Normally, every day I ate three meals, but on Sunday’s it was natural for my family to only eat twice, and to me that was my favourite day. Instead of eating a normal portion meal, I ate a tiny portion to make sure that I never weighed more than I did the Saturday before.
While all of that was happening, I also took up a few very bad habits. Sometimes my hunger would peak its head, but I had a great solution to fulfill my food desires. I would go to a grocery store and squeeze any squeezable foods: chocolate, caramel, fruits, cookies. All the things that I craved. And amazingly it got rid of my cravings! I would buy those items that I demolished, and as soon as I walked out of the store, I would trash them. But, I learned how I could eat without eating! Pretty impressive, I thought.
My parents were desperate. They didn’t know what to do anymore. They saw me deteriorating very quickly. They kept telling me to eat, and I would get mad. They kept doing their best to be on my good side but wanting to help they only got me angry. At this point, my mom wanted to weigh me. I was terrified. I knew I lost weight but didn’t know that I had a problem. I thought that my weight loss was a good thing, but deep down I was terrified. Looking back now this whole situation didn’t make any sense. I thought I was healthy, but I knew that I had been doing something wrong. I don’t know why it never clicked in my brain. Anyway…
I had a great idea. My dad used to lift weights, and he had many weights in the garage. I picked up three 5-pound weights and brought them to my room — I always wore baggy clothes to hide my skinniness. I knew I was skinny. I thought I was healthy-skinny and I thought that people had exaggerated. So to keep them quiet I wore huge sweaters and very loose pants — The next time my mom wanted to weigh me, I was confident and ready. I said “sure,” I quickly stuffed the 15lbs weights in my huge pockets. My mom never noticed because my clothes were so baggy.
“See, nothing to worry about. I’m 103 lbs, ma!” What that meant was I actually weighed more like 88 lbs. I was proud. I schemed my mom. I needed to lose more weight. Water.
I remember drinking less, and less water. I made sure that I only drank a half a cup of water per meal. When I got thirsty and I already had my quota of water for the day I stuck my head in the ice cold freezer and sucked the air between my clenched teeth. That cold air felt like it quenched my thirst. See I don’t even need water! I found out how to eat without eating, and drink without drinking! After days of not drinking water, I remember when I brushed my teeth and accidentally swallowed a few drops of water, I would gag and spit, thinking that I just gained more weight.
I was so weak now. I could barely stand. But I continued to move around constantly. I made sure not to sit for more than 30 minutes at a time, but moving was painful. I was always tired. I always felt like I ran 1,000 miles. I was always out of breath.
I was about 80lbs now. An active 17 year-old who should be eating lots, I weighed less than a 10 year old boy.
The damage that was happening inside me could have become deadly. My kidneys could have shut down. My heart could have stopped. My bones could have become so frail that it would’ve broken like glass with a slight fall. My hair started falling out, and I was always in pain. I couldn’t sit on anything that wasn’t cushioned. I couldn’t lean my legs or arms on anything. I felt like I needed to suspend in mid air to feel relief. Standing all day at work was torture for my feet. The edges of my feet always had sharp pains. And they were always red and swollen.
Sometimes I felt like my brain stopped working. Like I couldn’t think, or see anything. I would have sudden moments where my mind wasn’t there. Sort of like blackouts, but I was never completely blacked out. They usually lasted for less than a second. But it was bad.
By this time, my parents had seen specialists and doctors and they all said the same thing. If he doesn’t see that what he’s doing is wrong, he will never change. My parents were horrified. They couldn’t believe that the doctors and specialists wouldn’t help. But the truth was that there wasn’t anything that a doctor could do to influence how I felt. It required a mind change.
And that is exactly what happened.
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One day I was at school. I was eating lunch. It was 10 am. I finished eating my sandwich, and I pulled out my apple. 10:40 was approaching which meant that I had to be in calculus class. Every day, around 10:25, I would start eating my apple and begin walking to class. I was so weak and hungry, but I just ate, so why was I still hungry (I thought). I was trying to think of different foods and recipes to help remove my desires to eat. I even washed my mouth with cold water, while making sure not to swallow the water.
I bought a cookie from the vending machine while I had the apple in my hand. Instead of eating the cookie, I squeezed the cookie so hard. Made sure that every inch of the cookie was pulverized between my fingers. It was satisfying, but it didn’t help with the hunger this time. I threw out the cookie, and continued walking to class, walking up the stairs, savouring every piece of the apple. It was a Granny Smith apple. Dense, crunchy, and delicious. It was a bigger apple than usual which, to me, meant I had ingested a few more calories than usual. I didn’t care. If it was any other day I would’ve thrown the rest of the apple away. But not today. Today I savoured it. I ate it slowly. I enjoyed every single bite.
Now, I was in class waiting for it to begin. I usually talked to my friend, Chris at this time. — Chris was an awesome friend. Chris loved to cook. We always talked about foods and recipes. This always satisfied my cravings and it helped me not think about my pain. He never judged me, he never nagged or avoided me. He really helped me through this tough time. He was a good friend and I looked up to him like a brother. He was probably the one person that wasn’t scared of me or made fun of the way I looked.
That day before class, he was probably talking about food or something but I wasn’t listening. My focus was only on the apple and the last bits I had left. I was sweating. I was getting nervous. I had no more food. I had to wait until tonight to eat. As I was pecking at the apple to eat everything off of it, a voice in my head said “Why?”. “Why am I doing this?”. “Doing what?” I was still blind to the fact that I had a problem. “Why are you still nibbling at that apple. There’s nothing left of it. Go buy something else.” I was trying to push that thought out of my head, but it kept going. All of a sudden, I realized something. “I feel like dying. I’m not alive right now. It felt like my body was trying its very best to stay alive for just a bit longer. This is not life, this is not living. This is death. At any moment, my heart could stop beating. Was it even beating right now?” I had to take a second to make sure my heart was still beating. I felt like I was standing in the middle of a big open field in the middle of a thunderstorm, and at any moment I would be struck by lightning. “I have a problem.” I finally admitted it. That was my turning point.
I finally realized I had a problem.
I finally knew that I would die if I continued. I quickly called my mom and told her that I had a problem.
“Yes, we know,” she said. I was shocked by her response. How did she know? I was so blind. I still didn’t admit that I was anorexic, only that I had a problem. When I got home from school that night. My mom opened a bag of chips. She told me to take a chip. I was looking at her. I didn’t know what to do. It’s been so long since I last ate something outside of my regular eating schedule. I was reluctant. But then I took my first bite and felt that guilt again. I didn’t want to chew it, but I did. I didn’t want to swallow that salty piece of fried potato. But I couldn’t help it.
It was so good.
After that day, I slowly started eating a bit more. Not too much more. My stomach couldn’t handle too much food. I went about 5 months of starving myself. But each day my mom made sure that I had a glass of milk before bed. As the days went by, I ate more and more.
By the time it was my birthday, my cheeks had filled in a bit. I gained back about 10 pounds. I continued to eat more, and started exercising less obsessively. About a year later I had a slight relapse. I had finally reached 120 pounds again but then when I had my relapse, I dropped down to 110 pounds. I started having the same mindset as when I became extremely anorexic. One day my dad was sent to hospital because he had too much water in his brain. While he was waiting to be checked in he just looked at me and it looked like he was studying me. He said, have you started losing weight again? I quickly became defensive and said “no.” That scared me, which led me to remember what happened before. If my dad hadn’t seen me the way he did, who knows if I would’ve started the same issue all over again. It’s scary to think how easy it was for me to get back into the same mindset.
In the 6 months of hell that I put my family through, I had lost a total of about 45 pounds. I started at 120 pounds, and at my lowest point, I was around 73.5.
At my turning point, I realized something. I stopped caring what people thought of me. When I was enjoying every last pulp in that Granny Smith apple, the last thing on my mind was how fat I looked, or how ugly I was. If you let other people’s opinions about you drive your life, you’ll never be happy. Instead, I realized that I wanted to love myself. That meant enjoying life, and not feeling like I had to please other people.
Looking back now, I learned a lot about myself in those 6 months. I learned that people want to feel accepted by others. But if being accepted means jeopardizing your life, then who needs those kinds of people.
I learned that the mind is so delicate. A simple word can completely destroy a person. It’s important to mind what we say to others. We should never put people down to feel superior, or better about ourselves.
I learned to trust family and friends. Sometimes we feel like we need to take on the world on our own, and at times feeling total helplessness. But we need to trust that we aren’t alone, and we have family and friends who want to help, and can help. All you need to do is to speak, and they’ll listen.
Life is short. Enjoy every moment, and don’t let other people dictate how you live your life. Love others, but more importantly, love yourself. Because in the end you only have one life. So make it count.
