I'm not on a diet. I know this, but I have to confess that my lack of hunger has concerned me a little. You see, I had an eating disorder in high school. I was a purge girl. I never did the binge - far from it. However, I would purge anything and everything I ate. This went on throughout my entire junior year. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind a few years.
My mother was a chronic yo-yo dieter. I can't remember a time when she wasn't on some sort of fad diet. She tried everything from eating nothing but grapefruits to some nasty cabbage soup thing. I vaguely recall her downing gallons of grapefruit juice with cayenne pepper or something. She did it all. I honestly can't recall if she ever lost weight, but I know she never kept it off.
One of my clearest memories of my mother's food obsession comes from an afternoon after she'd picked me up from swim practice. I was a freshman in high school and swam on our school's team. Anyone who has swum competitively knows that you'd eat your arm after practice - you're THAT hungry. Well, we had to stop for groceries after practice. My mother was on an anti-sugar kick at the time and wouldn't let us eat anything sweet. I was starving, and luck would have it, I had a little cash on me. While my mom roamed the aisles of Eisner in search of food, I high-tailed it to the bakery and grabbed a donut. I paid for the donut and sneakily avoided my mother while I wolfed down this delectable pastry. No sooner had I stuffed the last bite in my mouth than I felt a hand grab my arm. It was store security. I was being taken to the front office and accused of shoplifting. The Eisner employee paged my mother to come to the office. Thankfully, I had kept the receipt for the donut. Unfortunately though, my mother discovered that I had consumed a donut. That was an offense that a receipt couldn't rescue me from.
My mother started on the Atkins Diet during the summer prior to my junior year. I was never overweight throughout high school. I was a size 7 and weighed less than 120 pounds. However, my mother thought it would be a good idea for me to go on the Atkins Diet with her. I kind of enjoyed it at first. I mean, I got to eat a ton of meat, got special snacks like pork rinds, and I was getting thinner and thinner. And then something happened. I started purging. It was almost as if I'd given up a desire to eat. I couldn't stand it, and when I was forced to do so, I purged. It became so routine that I couldn't consume a meal without having to excuse myself. I had been chosen as a Rotary Exchange Student alternate for the following year, so I had loads of events over the weekends. I dreaded these because I couldn't keep food down. What had once been the one thing in my life I could control was no longer controllable. I had convinced myself that I couldn't eat. This disease had overtaken me.
It was just a month or two before I was to leave for England when my life improved. In thinking back on the whole thing, I have to confess that I can't remember what happened. I did it myself, but I'm not sure what the turning point was. I know that my junior year was probably one of the most difficult for me. I had some tough decisions to make that year, and I was awaiting word on whether or not I would get to spend the year abroad. In retrospect, I recognize that my eating disorder stemmed from the unknown and lack of control I had in my life. However, I'm not quite sure how I overcame it. I just remember being scared to travel one minute, and once I was in England, I could control my eating habits.
So here I am thirty years later with a lack of hunger. I know that I'll never go back to that junior year, but I can't help keeping it in the back of my mind. I think having an eating disorder is like any other disease. You can hold at bay, but you're always susceptible to its return. I remind myself of this every meal that I'm not hungry. This is also another reason I don't like to think of what we're doing as a "diet." I never want my daughter to inherit this disease.
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