Wednesday 15 June 2011

My background

So, I decided to start a blog (..as you can see).

Ok, so I may start by saying a little bit about myself. I am 19 year old psychiatric nursing student, and I am a twin. I also have been suffering from eating problems since I was about 14. I have never been diagnosed, but I am going to guess that i am EDNOS as I am within a health weight range but I always restrict - 500kcals per day - , I fast quite a bit, 7 days being my longest, and i sometimes purge.

My twin sister also has issues, only she is under control at the minute. Myn started first. I was obese as a child, and my older sister was always very petite, despite eating huge amounts she never gained. Because of this and because she was a kid herself, she used to taunt me a lot and I would take it very much to heart. This taunting along with low self esteem that was slowly morphing into self-hatred, I believe, was the trigger of my eating problems, although looking back the signs were always there. I was skipping lunch in primary school to loose weight, I would go running etc, and I once remember talking with my best friend and deciding with her that we would just stop eating. 
Anyways. I can remember one particular day after school (i was 13), we were sitting having dinner and I was telling my mum about a fire drill we did in school and explained that the reason the windows were so big, was so we could lift any kids in wheelchairs out if there was a fire, to which my older (petite) sister commented "Good thing you are not in a wheelchair, because there would be no lifting you out of a window". That evening, I vowed to change my weight. I spent the evening on diet websites trying to learn how people successfully lost weight and went to bed euphoric. That summer I started my first job for my best friends mother, where I worked 10-5 seven days a week. I quickly adjusted my routine to get up in the morning, go for a run, come back get ready for work (no breakfast), go to work (no lunch) come back have half of a cereal bar - which soon became a third of a cereal bar - relax for half an hour, go for a 3km cycle, go to my room and begin floor exercises for an hour while watching big brother, shower and go see my friends. That was my pattern for the summer.

When Sept came, I couldn't go running or cycling because of school and the dark/wet evenings and I couldn't get out of not eating as easily, but I was managing it. A lot of fights started between myself and my parents over my eating habits, but I refused to stop, because they didn't understand. They tried everything. I remember they bought a particular breakfast cereal I loved at the time, and they left it on the counter to make sure I knew it was there. I refused it at first, hiding in my room to avoid temptation. I then needed a drink as I was too hungry to sleep, so I went into the kitchen, trying to avoid the box but was unsucessful. I poured 1 bowl of cereal, brought it into my room, ate it then broke my heart crying in bed. I don't know why, but that night always stuck with me, probably because I scared myself. It was a realization that I couldn't go back to eating "normally" when I was happy with my loss, and of how quick I became trapped.
I never ate dinner. I either had 1 boiled egg white, or 50kcal soup. That Christmas day I fasted. My sister and brother-in-law and brother were over for Christmas dinner, and while they all questioned why I wasn't eating, or tried to encourage me to eat, I simply couldn't. I sat in the sitting room on my own watching finding nemo while i would hear the laughs and chatting coming from my family, but I couldn't join them. At one stage, I ended up on an ED chatroom I used to go on, looking for support because I felt utterly stuck.

I slowly learned to get control over my eating again, forcing myself to eat and to try forget about calories. And although that was never easy, I did it. For a year or so. In that year, i ballooned. I went from an obese bmi to a low-normal bmi to an overweight bmi. Everything kicked off again this year. From Sept '10, I was getting excluded from my group of friends in my course, and had been in a job for two years where I was being bullied, and I just hit rock bottom again from Sept-Dec '10 and my eating problems came back. So here I am!

Sorr for the rambles. Feel free to comment! =) x

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