Inside An Eating Disorder

It’s lunchtime, and my friends’ faces couldn’t be happier. They explain how excited they are and how long they’ve been waiting for lunch. My only thought is, “Oh, not again.”

Eating disorders are not uncommon in teens, especially girls. More than 90 percent of people with an eating disorder are women, according to the website Eating Disorders in Teens. One out of every seven females has or is dealing with an eating disorder.

I am currently dealing with one.

Eating disorders are a psychological phenomenon. They are a form of control because you are the one in control of what goes into your body, according to the website Eating Disorders in Teens.

For me, that’s what it has been. When your life is crazy, you look for things you can control, and eating is definitely one of them. I started struggling with food at around 14 years old. Eating became the only thing I could control in my life, and it took over really fast. Before I knew it, I was barely eating. I wanted to — I was hungry — but the thought of food literally made me sick.

It got to the point where if I did eat, I would just throw up after. I was not forcing myself to throw up, but the thought of food got me to that point. For a while, the only thing I would eat in a week was a granola bar, and I had to force myself to eat it. Eating for me became so rare that if someone didn’t mention food, it wouldn’t even cross my mind.

I knew what I was doing to myself was not healthy, but I refused to admit anything was wrong. It continued, and when the time to eat came around I would say, “I’m not hungry right now,” and disappear.

That worked for a while, until I dropped 30 pounds in less than a month. Family members started to become concerned and people started making comments. This only made things worse. I finally had something I could control, and there came everyone trying to control that too. This made me very angry.

It got worse, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. On a good day, I would throw up five or six times. On a bad day, it was around ten times or virtually all day. I couldn’t eat without forcing myself, and the end result was me hugging the toilet…again. I didn’t know how to explain this problem I had, but I knew I had to do something. I was fatigued all the time. I was fainting. I was sick.

I finally called out for help. I made doctor appointments, I saw a nutritionist, and I found a new counselor. They started doing blood tests as well as many other tests. This sucked, but they had to see how bad it had really gotten.

And it had gotten bad.

I was also depressed at the time, which didn’t help at all. On top of me starving myself, I had it in my head that I didn’t even deserve to eat. Because of this, the doctor, counselor and nutritionist really worked with me, and in the nicest way they could. They asked me to start with small, easy things to eat, because I had to eat, and there was no way around it. I tried, I really did. I just couldn’t eat.

Then they started me on antidepressants to help change my thinking. It didn’t change. I felt like a zombie, and my thoughts got worse. I stopped taking them after two weeks, and of course I had lost more weight. By this time I wasn’t eating at all. I felt awful, disgusted, and extremely embarrassed. I had lost all hope; I thought I was going to die. I thought this thing was going to kill me.

I didn’t want to die, and I couldn’t believe how much it had taken over my life. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I only came to find out from my doctor that if I didn’t start eating, I was two weeks away from being hospitalized to make me eat.

That was a huge reality check for me. The thought of being hospitalized scared me to death, and I was about to face that if things didn’t change. I had to eat, even if it was forced. So I did. I forced myself to eat, even as sick as it made me. I had to!

I started off with fruit juice smoothie drinks, which helped get my appetite back. The more of those I drank, the hungrier I got. I ate the things I could, like yogurt, fruit, and crackers — things that didn’t make me cringe the minute I looked at them.

After a month of eating small things and drinking my smoothies, the number of times I would throw up in a day decreased a lot. I began to feel healthy again. I started to work on my mental state and inner peace. I finally had an appetite, and I was ready to eat. I still have my bad days with food, but for the most part I’ve been doing a lot better and eating way more than I used to.

It’s lunchtime again, and this time I’m actually looking forward to it — to eating. I’m not saying it’s perfect, it’s a lifetime battle, but it’s my life battle, and now I’m in control.