Weighty Issues

I was tooling around the internet this morning and I stumbled on this post by Jane, who wrote:

Wow, 8 lbs lost since the summer! My head was full of glee. I immediately thought, "Just 7 more pounds and I'll be at my goal weight of 115. If I stop eating for a while I could get there!". Wait, I'm going to go back and bold the key part of that sentance... Yes, I thought, "If I stop eating." Not, "If I eat healthier" or "If I go on a diet" or "If I start exercising". See CRAZY.

and this:

Not eating makes me feel powerful. And a little naughty. Like I have a secret strength that no one else has. Kind of like when I had my secret bottle of wine for strength and support? Hmmm, maybe. Looking back, I can see that my "pickyness" as a child/teen had a lot to do with control.

Yikes. I SO could have written this. Right down to the "intestinal problem" which she wisely declined to elaborate on, as will I.

When we brought Mimi home, by train (across Russia) and plane (across the Atlantic) and automobile (across Phoenix), I was overwrought, encountering more emotion in a few weeks than I'd probably felt in my whole life. Plus I always lose weight when I travel, choosing to subsist on bottled water and crackers. Jon, on the other hand, has a stomach of titanium, eating everything including the whole boiled fish we were served on the train. Seriously: the man can eat Russian train fish.

But this time the weight didn't come back once I was home. Sheer terror, I think, kept it going down for a while. But reading Jane's post up there helped me to realize how much of that weight loss was also about control. I'd never considered that becoming a mother would make me feel so out of control and powerless. I'd expected to feel powerful, now that I was responsible for keeping this little being alive, all by myself for hours at a time. I'd expected to rise to the occasion and flex my mommy muscles and lift up the world.

I didn't. I shrank.

By Christmas, I looked awful, but my sick brain told me I looked fine. My clothes were falling off. I was close to 100 lbs, which at 5' 6" is not good. I preferred photos taken from a distance, like this one:

(See those things there? Those are BONES. RIBS. 

Sticking through my SKIN.)

and ones that pretty much completely covered me up, like this one:

(Kindly ignore the skeleton hiding behind the VERY CUTE BABY.)

While purposefully ignoring pictures that showed what I really looked like, like this one:

and this one:

Dark circles under eyes? Check. Teeth dominating entire face? Check. 

Neck veins popping with the effort of SMILING? Check.

Soon after, though, I discovered that alcohol not only a) boosted the effect of the tranquilizers but also b) had a lot of calories, so drinking instead of eating carried all sorts of benefits. Through 2008 I experimented with this miserable equation, telling myself and the world that nothing is wrong this is the happiest time of my life I am on cloud 9 things couldn't be better.

We all know, of course, what was really going on. It was a happy time, but also a noisy time, a sleepless time, a terrifying time... By fall 2008, back at work full time, I was the perfect storm of a bloody mess. 

In rehab I immediately went the other way; I could not stop eating. Stefanie wrote about her struggles with sugar, and I could totally relate. After about a week in the hospital I began to eat. And eat. And eat. I gained 23 pounds in the FIRST MONTH. I ate cereals with names like Choco-Puffs,  pop tart sandwiches (two pop tarts held together with whipped cream in the middle), lasagna made with five cheeses. When I went to my parents' house for a weekend pass, my mom was stunned when lollipops and fudge fell out of my bag. I had been the kid who hid my Hallowe'en candy under the bed so I didn't have to eat it; my mom would find it months later.

So I get it. I get the loss of control and the power and the need to feel just "a little naughty" once again. Right this minute I am neither at the high nor the low end of the range I carved out for myself, and I am determined to regulate myself healthfully, for perhaps the first time ever. 

Which doesn't mean a diet of bread and water. Yesterday, I had terrible cravings -- the worst kind, the kind that whisper that it's all right, I can have one glass, go ahead, no one will notice. I squelched them only with a double-barreled shot of a meeting and a big bowl of ice cream. Chocolate French Silk.