Shut Up, Sit Down

Anyone can develop an eating disorder. 

That seems like such a simple statement, right? It should be a given, universally understood that eating disorders, like most illnesses, do not discriminate. They hit people of all races, backgrounds, sexualities, genders and abilities. But even though intellectually I knew this, and even though I have been mentally ill since adolescence and physically disabled for many years, I still had a certain contempt for people with eating disorders. Like many I thought them weak, obsessed with the superficial, sucked in by patriarchal beauty standards. 

Until I developed one myself. 

I’m a radical feminist. I consider myself fat positive and pro-HAES and in no way obsessed with my appearance. And I have an eating disorder. 

It all started back in December 2009 when I had weight loss surgery. I had a gastric band laparoscopically installed around my stomach, leaving me with just a satsuma-sized space for the food I ate to fill. You can draw your own conclusions as to why I had the surgery. You can believe I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered to diet and exercise. You can believe I hated being fat and did it because I thought I’d be more attractive as a thin person. You can believe I had a life threatening illness that meant I had to lose weight fast. I don’t much care what you believe; my reasons are not important here. Suffice it to say that I had the surgery, on the third of December 2009, privately because I wasn’t fat enough to get it on the NHS, and I thought I was doing the right thing for me at the time. 

So I had the surgery, and I started to lose weight. I was pleased, of course – after all, that was the result I (well, my ex-fiancé) had paid all that money for. But my relationship with food had changed forever. I don’t know what it’s like after other types of weight loss surgery, but with a gastric band eating is hard. If you eat too much, or too fast, or the wrong type of food, or you don’t chew each mouthful about a million times, you are in all sorts of trouble. The band clogs up and you physically hurt and your mouth starts watering in that oh-gods-I’m-going-to-be-sick way and if you don’t get to a toilet soon there’s going to be trouble. 

So it started out like that. I put it down to “learning the band” and figured I’d get used to the new restrictions and rules about my eating habits. But then I started to get scared of food. When you associate eating with discomfort, you stop wanting to do it. So I started restricting my food intake as much as I could. I was also throwing up after almost every meal I did eat, because inevitably I would break those new rules through hunger or forgetfulness. 

After a while I noticed two things. The first was that I was deliberately breaking the rules. When I did eat, I was eating too much or too quickly because I knew that then I’d be able to purge. The second was that my “fullness threshold” was getting lower. By this I mean that I no longer simply felt physically uncomfortable when I’d eaten more than the band would allow. I felt physically uncomfortable after a few mouthfuls. Normal fullness started feeling like over-fullness. Eventually, any amount of food in my stomach felt like too much. 

I had reached the point where I was eating as little as possible and anything I did eat I was purging straight away. It took a long time to admit to myself and my loved ones, but I had gone from a happy fat pro-FA feminist to a miserable average-sized woman with an eating disorder that had taken over my life. 

The thing that really distresses me is feeling like I am constantly battling myself. I don’t know now what is a good day and what is a bad day. The intellectual part of my brain tells me a good day is eating food and not purging. The disordered part of my brain tells me that’s a bad day, and that a good day is when I eat nothing at all. I just can’t win. No matter what I do, I’ve let myself down. If I eat ‘properly’ and don’t purge, I feel guilty. If I restrict and purge, I feel guilty. I want to get better but I don’t want to put on weight. It’s like there’s this massive food-oriented war occurring in my brain and I never know which side I’m on. 

And that’s where I am now. I wish there was a happy ending to this story. I wish I could say “And then I got better!” but I can’t. I’ve reached a BMI of 22 (from a starting BMI of 37) and it’s just not low enough. My fiancé left me, in part due to the effect my eating disorder was having on our relationship. My fibromyalgia symptoms are worsening, no doubt because my body is getting so little nutrition. My son, at the innocent age of not even six, notices Mummy’s tiny portions and wonders why I’m not eating. I hide it pretty well from him but one day he’s going to twig. 

But hopefully that day will never come. I saw my psychiatrist today, one Kevin Ostler here in Portsmouth who has been overseeing my care for my other mental illnesses for some time now, who I trust greatly and like immensely. I told him everything I’ve just said here. He listened quietly, not interrupting, saving his questions for when I had finished speaking. And he is referring me to the local eating disorders specialist team. 

I don’t know what they can do for me there. I fear they’ll look down on me because I’m not disciplined enough, because I don’t look like the stereotypical eating disorder sufferer, all underweight and jutting bones. I fear that if they help me, I might put weight on and I’m too addicted to seeing the numbers going down to be able to handle that. I want to get better but I’m scared of getting better. But I think I’m ready to try. If not for myself then for that darling son of mine, who deserves better than a mummy exhausted from lack of nutrients, who is young and impressionable and far more likely to develop his own eating disorder if I don’t get help before he notices. I want to do it for me because this internal battle is exhausting. And I want to do it for him because he deserves better. 

I don’t know how long the referral will take. But I waited months to see the psychiatrist. I can wait more weeks or months if it means there might be light at the end of the tunnel. 

Congratulations if you made it this far. I’ve typed the whole thing out on my iPhone – that’s dedication for you! I went into far more personal detail than I intended to, but I want people to understand. I want you all to realise that it’s not just teenage girls and models who develop eating disorders. It happened to me, a grown woman, mother, feminist. It can happen to anybody. If this post stops one person from feeling the way I used to about eating disorder sufferers, it will all have been worth it. Thanks for reading.