Call Me Crazy, Part 4

[continued from previous post]

And yet, I couldn’t.

Listen, here it is: I’m obese because I have an eating disorder. I have since I was seven.

It’s not anorexia, clearly. It’s not bulimia. Some people call it compulsive overeating, or binge-eating disorder. I’ve heard it called generalized eating disorder. I call it food addiction.

I started out (when I was a little kid, going through some difficult shit) overeating, eating mindlessly, eating to calm feelings, to prevent feelings.

When I spent that year in Italy at age 18, and everybody over there kept telling me how fat I was, it got way worse. (What a surprise.) I started sneaking food, hiding food, just like an alcoholic might hide her alcohol, a heroin addict might conceal his stash. I began to binge-eat. Ate until I was sick. Never threw up, never used laxatives.

Just let myself hurt. Yelled at myself. Called myself names. Isolated myself.

For years.

And for years, I’ve been working on it. I don’t binge anymore. I didn’t even eat to discomfort at Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago. Occasionally, I’ll let myself get too full. Probably about as often as the next guy.

But I still eat when I’m not hungry. I still eat to calm feelings, to prevent feelings. Even positive ones. They all scare me.

My nervous system has developed an automatic response to emotions. I don’t even have to feel them yet and my disordered brain sends up a flare and directs me toward food.

Quick, it says.

Danger, it says.

You’re about to be uncomfortable.

Fix it.

And this whole eating disorder business has made me terribly uncomfortable with my body. I’ll be in bed with a boyfriend, and my robe will slip open, and I’ll think, “Ick!” at the very same moment he’s saying, “Hey….” I’ll turn around and face the dressing room door when trying on clothes, just so I don’t have to look at this vessel I carry all my organs around in.

Anyway. (Jesus, this has gone on for a while, hasn’t it?) I felt the need to respond to TL’s last comment. It’s pretty clear in hindsight that his original status update touched a very tender nerve, one that gets touched all the time. Whenever I find myself pulling cabinets open, knowing my body is not asking for food. Whenever I see women’s magazines effusing about how to drop 10 pounds in two weeks!…how to make your body bikini-ready by summer!…how to get rid of cellulite! When I see totally average-looking women modeling for Lane Bryant. When a dude’s online dating profile says “No fatties”.

But I couldn’t see that then. I was just angry and raw.

Me: Ever heard of a compulsive eating disorder? It’s real. It’s not affected by willpower. It’s not solved by tough love. It’s an addiction, a psychological condition, that needs treatment. So, no, it’s not very simple.

And I’ll reiterate that calling people lazy is just a way to make yourself right and other people wrong. It doesn’t actually help solve the problem.

OK, I’m done.

[continued]