Goodbye Ed

For a long time, I have been suffering from something that I haven't talked a lot about. Not a lot of my friends know about it. None of my family knows. There is a select group of people that I have chosen to share this information with and now, I am about to share it with the entire blogging community.

For as long as I can remember, I have had a love/hate relationship with food. I can't ever remember a time when I had a healthy relationship with food. My weight has increased and declined and increased again. Okay, I'm just going to spit it out. I have an eating disorder. There, I said it. Or wrote it rather. And nothing terrible happened, right? I would consider myself a binge eater. I binge on huge amounts of food on a regular basis. I eat and I eat and I eat until I just want to throw up. No, I've never purged. But I've thought about it. And wished I had the willpower to do it. Isn't that sick?

Here's the problem. A few years ago I lost a lot of weight. But the way I was doing it was not healthy. I see that now. I restricted my calories to less than 1,000. I exercised anywhere from 2-3 hours a day, 5-7 days a week. I was at the gym so much the trainers knew me and my workouts made them tired. Then something happened. Yes, a boy. I went through a bad breakup and a severe depression. I don't think a lot of people realize how bad it was. This was my fault, of course. I ate and I ate and I ate some more. I know that some of you out there are probably thinking I'm just being a drama queen. Doesn't everyone eat junk food and go overboard every now and then? I'm sure they do. What I know is that the amount of food I eat can be huge sometimes. I have been known to go to Taco Bell and KFC and Wendy's, all in one meal. I'm not going to bore you with the details of exactly what I ate. Some of them are a blur anyway.

I am at a point where I realize I have a serious problem. My boyfriend, who I refer to as Boy Wonder, sometimes has to forcibly take food away from me so that I will stop eating it. Poor thing, I don't think he knows what to do with me. I have been eating healthy all week. I have a couple of problems though. When I'm averaging 1200 calories a day, I think that's too much. Today, I had a tiny piece of a grilled cheese sandwich. I literally thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest. I know I was close to a panic attack. Why, you ask? Because I started thinking how many calories were in that tiny piece of sandwich. I started thinking about al the butter and the bread and the fatty cheese (instead of the fat free I normally get) and I was in a panic. I didn't know whether to starve myself for the rest of the day or binge. What do you think I did? I binged, naturally. Trigger food, I guess. I only went to two places today: Arby's and Burger King. I'm feeling very sick and very fat today.

Here's where the title of my blog comes in. I read a book that is amazing. It's called "Life without Ed: How one woman declared independance from her eating disorder." In this book, the author (Jenni) is taught to view her eating disorder as a person instead of a condition. Ed stands for eating disorder, by the way. I think it's really hard to explain to other people how this works. But it is like I have this voice inside my head, constantly telling me I'm not good enough. Ed is always comparing how thin I am to other women (even when I was at my thinnest, it wasn't good enough for him). Ed wants me to eat the whole cake instead of just a piece because I'm always going to be fat anyway, so why not? Ed is controlling and manipulative and a liar. He is basically an abusive boyfriend that I need desperately to get away from. But I can't because Ed is all I've ever known. I don't even know if I'm making any sense, but I hope so.

Today, I realized I have a very low support system. A lot of that is my fault, I know. I'm not good at asking for help (just talk to my boyfriend about that). I'm even worse at telling people when there is something genuinely wrong with me. I am exactly like my mother. I put on a happy face and pretend everything is fine. But I realized today that I can't do that anymore. No, I won't do it anymore. Today I realized I don't have a lot of people to call if I need help. I needed someone to call to so that I wouldn't binge. But Boy Wonder was out of town. And I didn't want to bother any of my friends. I wanted to start this blog so that I have a place where I can share my thoughts and feelings regarding my recovery from binge eating. Hopefully, having a place where I can vent a little will help.