Weighty Thoughts

One thing that I've had to learn in recovery is to resist black-and-white thinking about weight.  For a long time (and sometimes still, on bad days), I thought that if I wasn't underweight, it meant I was fat.  No thin, no slender, no normal, no average, no in-between.  It took a while for it to sink in for me that you can fall along many points within a spectrum, some healthier than others but with "healthy and desirable" still being a range, not a singular cut-off point.

A related issue that is a bit of a struggle in the context of larger society is the common view of "thin" as opposed to the medical view of underweight vs normal.  I remember, during my very first stab at recovery when I'd gained some weight but was still verytooreally thin, one of my fellow 7th graders told me my weight was "perfect, I wish I could weigh as much as you for my whole life."  People, I was still very sick (I'm not often tempted to use numbers, wish I could this time to show you just how ridiculous this incident was, but it's not worth it). Even at the time, it really bothered me that she saw that scrawny, prepubertal form as the ideal.

So, for people learning to re-adjust their perceptions and become comfortable with their bodies while battling an ED, it's hard to figure out what's "right", and to learn that no two rights are the same.  Hard as hell. I was "thin" at my rock-bottom, although at that point "thin" was a really just kind euphemism for emaciated.  It took me a long time to realize that gaining dozens of pounds in recovery didn't make me fat.  It doesn't mean I never *felt* fat, of course.  I felt fat at weights that were, in retrospect, way thinner than I ever want to be again. I found that one of the keys in weight restoration is to give yourself time.

I wrote a post a while back on body image vs body schema, gives a much better treatment of this issue, if you have time.  Basically, it takes your brain a while to catch up with the changes happening in your body.  When I reached weight X, I felt awfulhorriblehuge.  I felt like my body was alien, like I was stuck in someone else's clothing.  But if I plateaued there for a while, after a short time I was amazed that I really became ok with my "new body" if I held out and was patient.  That scary weight X would be WAY lower than I'd allow myself to go at this point, because I know it would look/feel terrible and wouldn't be healthy.

 I reached my lifetime peak weight earlier this year. Still underweight, but the biggest underweight I'd ever been, really just a hair below normal (scary, right? Normal??? Like, optimal for health and function? Yikes.  lol..). Just sort of a cognitive milestone that takes some working through. I was/am un-underweight enough that the casual observer probably wouldn't guess I had an eating disorder, maybe just a good metabolism and an active lifestyle.  Even today, when I've slipped weight-wise over the past few months (and incidentally, Match confessed he thought I was more attractive at peak weight, who knew?), But the issue still kind of challenges the identity you've created for yourself over the years. I doubt I'd be pegged as an EDer.  Thin yes, sick no.  Underweight on the charts, but not abnormal looking when clothed.  I can't go into every store and always wear the smallest size.  I may not always have the smallest waist in the room.  At this point I can pretty much just observe that, deem it marginally noteworthy and move on, but at first it was a sort of existential crisis.

It's a stereotype that anorexics always see themselves as fat.  Not true. There were plenty of times when I was well aware of how gravely thin I was, I just didn't want to change it. I could/can even look at women that I know have at least 10-20 pounds on me right now and think, "Damn I wish I had a body like that."

 And not looking sick is ok with me, I know that emaciated is not sexy or even attractive, and I don't pursue that.  I never wanted to be that thin because I thought it looked nice, I just made an obsession about avoiding the opposite. After years and thousands of dollars in therapy, I realized that for a long time, I was hurting.  Being sickthin was they only way I knew to communicate that.   Now, I'm really not hurting in those ways anymore, and the ED patterns are more a hard-core habit than anything else, and instead of being the manifestation of me hurting, they're the biggest thing hurting me now, a different kind of challenge.  Not that I don't have esteem issues or an addictive personality anymore, but day to day challenges aside, I have a good life and I generally like who I am (with the exception of how much I allowed the ED to entwine itself in my life).  Realizing that made me finally stop feeling obligated to be sickthin, ok with not wearing the smallest jeans in the room.  Hard transition, but doable.  Blocking everything but the ED out of your life for years on end mean that sometimes coming out of it can be a bit of a splash with cold water.  It that ultimately proves to be life-giving and refreshing, but still somewhat of an initial shock.

 One thing people (myself definitely included) don't seem to be that good about is introspective objectivity: it's hard to see the actual you, easier to just compare yourself to what you used to be (often sicker, with an ED), or to all the photo-shopped images we're bombarded with every day.  I definitely struggle with this every day.  That's why it's nice to have a support team (professional and personal) to keep you grounded.  There are definitely days when I wish I could just be a fly on the wall observing myself objectively, or days when I wish I could actually follow all of the recommendations I'd give someone else as far as self-care.  Work in progress, right?

I feel like there is some wise and eloquent way I should tie all this together to wrap it up, as I've rambled around several issues related to weight.  In a nutshell, just emphasizing poundage is NOT the only issue with EDs, but it can be an amorphous and challenging issue, no doubt, when trying to deal with the deeper things as well, because too often it's tempting to judge surfaces and not give proper weight (pun only slightly intended) to substance.  I've always wished I could observe some alternate universe to see what my weight would be in a parallel life with no ED.  And how much would it matter?  I can bet that I'd be heavier, but I can also bet that I wouldn't be any less loved, accomplished, or enriched, and would probably much more of all of those things.

Ok hella long post, thanks to anyone who soldiered through this whole thing!!!