Thursday, August 24, 2017

Surviving an Eating Disorder Relapse

I've had an eating disorder for thirteen years, give or take. Sometimes I feel like it really began when I was 6 and had a workout routine and became ecstatic when a tummy virus made me lose weight. Either way, this is a long-haul issue for me and for many others. I've bounced between bulimia and anorexia my entire life, with weights ranging from clinically underweight all the way to "technically obese"right after giving birth. 
I lost 90 pounds. I've been accused of gastric bypass because of the stretchmarks on my arms. The look on their faces when I tell them all it took was a little self control is priceless. If you're an adult and still battling an ED, many professionals won't take you seriously. ED's are like addictions - once you've got the addiction, that substance is forever a danger to you. The difference is, with eating disorders, we can't just avoid food, toilets, nausea, mirrors, and every corner of life that could possibly make us yearn for control. 
Because that's what it's about. Control. Here is a realistic list of tips for surviving an Eating Disorder relapse. 

1. You probably drink coffee. A lot of it. Add some soy milk or almond milk. Not for the calories, since they're actually fairly low in calories, but for the protein. You need your muscles.

2. If you like to fast, don't limit yourself to water only. Get some tea, make homemade juice or buy some you feel comfortable drinking. Get a blender and make fruit smoothies. You won't have to feel food digesting, your caloric intake will stay low, and you'll still get nutrients. 

3. If you're prone to binging and purging, drink a lot of water while you eat. Chew. Don't make the process more damaging than it has to be.

4. Keep sports drinks and Pedialite in your house whether you're bulimic or not, but ESPECIALLY if you're bulimic. Drink some after a purge, and drink it if you take laxatives, which brings me to...

5. Choose laxatives wisely if you must take them. I know having food moving around in your body can be extremely uncomfortable during a relapse. Magnesium Citrate is a soda-like laxative beverage you can get at any pharmacy and it works within about 3 hours. It gets the job done, and it's not painful. I used to drink these in college like a normal person would drink a Dr. Pepper. 

6. Chocolax and baby laxatives are good choices if you bounce between fasting/restricting and binging/purging. Your digestive system slows down and you're sitting there feeling putrid because the food isn't moving. Take a gentle laxative and get hydrated. 

7. Drunkorexia- you know what I'm talking about - keep sports drinks with you at all times. When you're not getting drunk, you better be drinking fluids. Electrolytes. Water. 

8. Be aware that lack of food will alter your mood and ability to make decisions. Take your time with big choices and avoid high-strung conversations that will make you snappy. You can come out of your relapse and be healthy again, but people will remember the things you said to them when you were starving. 

9. Do your best to avoid weighing. Weighing inspires one to compete with themselves. If you have to do it, only do it once a week. 

10. Try to let go of the need to control, and figure out what exactly in your life triggered the relapse and address it. The Eating Disorder may be active while you're putting the pieces together, but it will be easier to recover when you understand what caused it to come back to life. 

Recovery is the goal, but relapse is always possible. Better to survive it than to pretend it doesn't happen. 

Dizzy.

Monday, June 26, 2017

Pro-Ana and Fat Acceptance. The Difference is in the Jeans Size.

In the last decade or more, the “pro-ana” and “pro-mia” communities of online forums came under fire for promoting a disorder. Anorexia and Bulimia are eating disorders, but many in the pro-ana community viewed it as an acceptance of their disorder and harnessing their manipulative behaviors in order to feel thin, to feel beautiful, and most of all, to feel in control. Rarely did I see anyone encouraging others to vomit or fast – although we did indeed have group fasts. Our goal was never for men to "learn to love" our bodies, unlike the cry of "sexism" when a man prefers not to sleep with overweight women. We know what we're doing.  We did not shame each other for not being skinny, especially seeing as many of us with bulimia were NEVER skinny. 


We traded tips on the safest way to manage a fast, on the safest way to purge a la water (by the way, rinse with baking soda and wait half an hour before brushing. It protects the enamel.)
We posted photos of our collarbones, and we posted “thinspo.” Thinspiration. Pictures for us to gaze upon of girls who were often either photshopped or, preferably, naturally skinny teens. Sometimes we would hit gold and find a collection of very underweight girls. They looked sick. We ached for that.
Thinspiration is like the unhealthy version of “Fitspo.” Thinspo is like the underweight version of “Body Positive Fat Acceptance.”
The difference is in the jeans size. The psychology is semantics; pro-ana becomes addicted to their control, and Pro-Fat Acceptance becomes addicted to food. We are empty and you are full.
 Pro-Ana promotes water, exercise, and by all means, achieving the body we feel we were meant to have. A body we would be proud of, even if our eyes are sallow.


Fat-Acceptance promotes “indulge in that cake, ignore your doctor about that knee pain, be proud of your body as it jiggles each and every way." Fat-Acceptance hijacked the term “curvy” and applied it only to fat women. When I say fat, I am applying it to women (and men) who prefer to take back the term. I don’t mean it as a slur. So let me bring you into the world, if you will, of Fatspo.
Tess Holiday. She had made a career of being a lovely, but obese, pinup model. And at every turn she makes an effort to glorify being fat. She claims to be in top-notch health. I beg to differ.

"ME SO HEALTHY!"


One of the great appeals for me when I was heavily involved in pro-ana (and I am still working through my ana-mia mindset over a decade later) was that instead of a preachy recovery forum, we had a connection in knowing this disorder was hurting us. We felt at peace when someone else said “yeah, I threw up half a cookie today and then binged again anyway. And Purged.” Because some of us had done it as well. There was empathy when a girl wanted to fast for six days, made it to five and broke down and had a slice of pizza and got depressed. We didn’t say she failed. We wore red or purple bracelets to recognize each other in public. We were friends.


I imagine the Fat-Acceptance Movement - a bastardization of Body Positive – feels the same but they refuse to recognize than obesity is one of the leading causes of death in this country. They refuseto accept that Compulsive-Over-Eating-Disorder makes you just as ill as the anorectic. I want to protect my child from being one of the 60% and rising of obese individuals in this country. Loving your body at any moment is great but loving your body also means wanting to work towards what is best for it. Promoting “feeders” (guys who get off on over-feeding their fat women with tubes) is not body positive. Telling post-partum women not to lose the baby weight and to find a “fat positive doctor” is not body positive. Normalizing obesity is not body positive.
 IT. IS. SUICIDE.

At least in Pro-Ana communities, we admit it.

the bath of disordered denial.



DIZZY







Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Isolation Nation: Contagious Disconnect

Over the years I have written and talked about isolation quite a lot. Much of the basis for this very blog is my glorification of isolationism and my perceived "choice" to be socially isolated. I like being alone, I like to spend time alone, and I work best when I'm alone. There is nothing wrong with this... but realize that I have maintained my isolation since the beginning of this blog over five years ago. In that time, I have moved over a dozen times and moved to three different states. I went to college, dropped college, went back to college, joined a church, left a church, got work writing, got married, had a baby, ended a marriage, I've participated in art shows, I've gone to literary festivals, published a book, and even went to a few purely social events...and have come up at the end of this trip around the country with absolutely no in-person social network. There is a fine line between an active choice and a pathological behavior. I have more than crossed that line. 





There are studies that show social disconnectedness is actually a death hastening phenomena akin to obesity and some addictions although, like many mental health and mortality studies, it's inconclusive as to how exactly isolation affects health so seriously. But when it's taken into account that serotonin and dopamine are what causes happiness and that oxytocin is an anti-depressant, it seems abundantly clear that we have to treat our brain and our mind for what they are - physical. We wouldn't like leave an open wound to fester. The mental reward system for some of us - myself included - counters the very basic human factor of being a social animal. We get less happiness from our interactions and we may experience excess cortisol when attempting social contact. That essentially means that the effort and fight-or-flight-or-freeze response is stronger than the happiness we experience when we have friends. Friendships are formed during frequent social contact and that's a lot of work. It just isn't worth it.



At least, that's what we tell ourselves. There are many reasons a person may self-isolate, ranging from depression to certain personality disorders to being on the autistic spectrum. I'm on the spectrum. Many of my online friends are on the spectrum or personality disordered and we often pride ourselves in how well we do without much social contact. But I take note of my own behavior and sometimes I wonder if they're pacing holes into the floor as they sink into their fantasy lives that provide just a sliver of oxytocin - I wonder if they've tricked themselves through maladaptive daydreaming. I wonder how functional we really are that our sensory processing doesn't allow for regular social contact. I wonder how apathetic we are when we make a friend-attempt a few times a year and it blows up in our faces. I think about the kind of people our isolation and loneliness attracts. And it just isn't a pretty picture. 




The perks of being primarily fine and dandy without friends is that we are choosy about who we'll let into our lives. We may have high standards, be independent, introspective. We're likely very good at a few things that occupy our time. The downside of genuine desperate loneliness is that sometimes we may interact with people unworthy of our time just for relief. The downside is missed opportunities, of disabling inability to socialize even to work, and our deteriorating health. The downside - and it sounds like a contradiction - is that  perceived loneliness is contagious. All it takes is for one person in a social circle to feel lonely and misplaced for the entire structure to be shaken and then you don't just feel lonely, you become isolated, and your cues will make others perceive themselves as lonely around you. One persons perception of loneliness creates a reality of loneliness for each party involved, even if only briefly. 




I have no immediate plans to make friends. And in all honesty, I would not know how to begin. Is the isolation still a choice? Is this intentional, conscious, did I make myself the center of the universe? Or is this pathological self-defeating behavior that will, in the end, deteriorate my health and leave me with little more than a daydream on my death bed? Perhaps it is both. Perhaps it's not out of the question that we have fooled ourselves and we are not simply being introverts. I advocate alone-time as much as I advocate breathing. But maybe in this moment, if only once, I should encourage others like me to consider deeper connections in-person. It could save your life. 





Dizzy.