Today I went to a presentation by one of the head clinicians of The Renfrew Center.
The Renfrew Center is one of, if not the, best eating disorder in-patient and out-patient facility in the Philadelphia area with locations across the country. Anyway, she talked about signs of eating disorders and then went into what to say and how to approach someone you think might have an eating disorder—there were teachers and nurses and representatives from non-profits like me. And as she talked I couldn’t help but think about my own experience and so many of the people I know.
She spent some time discussing anorexia vs bulimia vs binge eating and I sat there and I realized I had never been anorexic, although I had starved myself, but that I had definitely been bulimic and struggled with binge eating (anorexia has a lot of criteria to be diagnosed—3 months missed period, 10% lower than ideal body weight etc.). And she listed the symptoms of them and a lot of them I knew—laxative usage, throwing up, blah blah blah but she also listed exercise as a form of purging. And that stopped me for a minute. She said, that purging exercise is something that feels necessary. You feel like you have to work out x minutes to burn x amount of calories you ingested and you HAVE to. And there’s guilt and shame in your behaviors—not just the exercise, but the way you eat, etc.
How many times have I worked out more because I ate more? And for a while on and off in college, I was exercising 3-4 times a day in order to burn off the extra cookie or whatever it may be and I have been glorifying that time in my head, lately. Those months my senior year where I worked out with an hour kickboxing class in the morning, an hour of zumba at night, and ran and strength trained all in one day, for a total of 3-4 hours of exercise and then felt guilty if I had more than 1300 calories. Yes, my body looked good, and I was undeniably in good shape, but the motivation for my exercise was not always to enjoy exercise—sometimes it was to get rid of calories. But then I also remember how great I felt and how at times I felt really happy and motivated and awesome after a good work out—and during one. And the times when, yes, I felt like I HAD to run because I was training for something but the feeling afterwards and during was great….
But now that I write it down it does seem like most of my working out is motivated by the idea that I must be healthier, skinnier, better. And that is disordered. I can’t imagine a life where food was just food and exercise was just exercise. Is that a world that’s even possible? My friends sometimes tell me that they don’t think about it but I hear it in our language, in our conversations, in the way we talk about other people. Food isn’t just “food.” It’s loaded. Exercise might be about feeling good but tied in with feeling good is having a smaller body. And then I wonder: what would it be like if I didn’t have these ties? If we didn’t live in a society where being a woman (and more and more, a man) meant constantly constantly dieting? Or, if you disagree with dieting, then at least fulfilling this ideal body shape and size. That puts so much extra emotion and meaning onto fod. That pushes and pulls us in so many directions so that you are never “Finished.” When does disordered eating begin and end?
I feel good about myself when I am exercising regularly and I feel the best about myself when I am eating well and well doesn’t mean eating things I like moderately, it means eating the right amount of calories, whatever that may be, and keeping the numbers in the “green.” And I rationalize that that’s ok because I AM healthier when I’m eating well and exercising than when I’m eating whatever crap I want and lounging but I don’t think that I feel better because of the health thing, I feel better because I’m doing the RIGHT thing. The right thing. But what’s underneath the right? I wonder if it’s possible to live in our society and maneuver around all of the media images and conversations about fatness and bodies and all of that without feeling, in some part, the way that I do.
The statistics about eating disorders are upsetting and huge. There’s an epidemic going around. Binge eating, bulimia, anorexia, disordered eating otherwise not specified. And yet I justify obsessing over my body, my activitiy level, keeping a public, regular journal about my endeavors to be more toned, fitter, etc. because I’m being “healthy.” Just like cleanses, right? It’s healthy to starve yourself if it’s in the right packaging and sold at whole foods, right?
Some months are better than others. Some months I feel balanced. And I can’t deny the movement I have made—I don’t count calories obsessively anymore. I don’t think about food constantly, literally constantly. I haven’t had an intense binge the way I did a year ago for about a year. I eat regularly, I exercise, I am aware of my thought patterns instead of just acting and changing habits. I’m not on a regular “DIET,” I am looking for a balanced way of living.
But I wish I could shut down the thoughts about the right body, the right thing, the negative self talk. I wish I could stop it in my friends and family and little girls on the street too. I wish food could just be food and I wouldn’t need to become obsessed with treating food and my body differently through a blog or through recipes or whatever—I wish it could just be what it is and I didn’t have to manage it. I wish I didn’t hear my friends saying they hate salad but they have to eat it. I wish I didn’t feel the same way. I wish I didn’t imagine, when I brainstorm ways to get over my disordered eating habits I currently have, that I think the way to find peace with food is through becoming a SUPER GOOD and VERY CAREFUL cook, through obsessive control. I hate that it’s about control. And I honestly don’t know if it will ever go away—these feelings.
And you know what? I feel like many people I know, blogs I read, things I see, these people have disordered eating but we validate it, we justify it, we REINFORCE IT because we’re “supposed” to be dieting and we’re supposed to be thin and we’re supposed to do all these unhealthy things. So how do you find healthy in a world that tells you that, through whatever means possible, smaller (and fitter) is better? Because I am a strong, independent woman, but there’s only so much fighting you can do in a day to keep your head above water.
