My Journey

By Michele Herenstein

When I was at the Eating Recovery Center in Denver, I ate the most delicious foods: french toast, brownies, chicken salad with curry, Thai quesadilla, pizza, lasagna, turkey Bolognese, and a lot more goodies that I hadn’t eaten for years, if ever. The reason for my bounty was that I was in a facility that stressed weight gain, not weight loss, as so many other clinics do. I got used to eating three meals a day plus two snacks, all “fattening” any way you looked at it.

The other significant thing I became accustomed to was eating at scheduled times. Breakfast was at 8 a.m., lunch at 12:15, and dinner at 6:00, and I was always hungry for the meals when the time to eat arrived.

When I first arrived at my parents’ house after Denver, I kept to this schedule rigorously. I ate at the right times, and the meal delivery I was using was presumably giving me the right portions of food, including carbohydrates and protein in every meal, as well as a vegetable for lunch and dinner.

Now that I’ve been living in Lawrence for several months, I see a definite change in both what I eat and when I eat it. I’ve started playing fast and loose with what and when I’m eating, specifically cutting carbs out of various meals and eating earlier than I used to. And truthfully, I’m not as hungry as I was when in Denver. I get full quickly and imagine that either my metabolism has changed, or there’s a psychological component involved.

Once in a while, I treat myself to pizza for dinner or a muffin for breakfast, but when I add in treats like those, I make sure my exercise increases accordingly. That’s the next biggest change from Denver. In the hospital, I did zero exercise, and even the patients who would walk the halls would be admonished and the staff would try to distract them. The theory there seemed to be “the less movement, the better.” In Florida over Pesach, I started taking walks on the boardwalk. At first, 45 minutes was enough, then an hour, but the eating-disordered voice tells one that enough is never enough.

It’s a vicious circle between denying oneself food, treating oneself to food, and using exercise as a way to lose the calories that you’ve taken in. Compulsive exercise, also defined as obligatory exercise or anorexia athletica, is “best defined by an exercise addict’s frame of mind: He or she no longer chooses to exercise but feels compelled to do so and struggles with guilt and anxiety if he or she doesn’t work out. Injury, illness, an outing with friends, bad weather–none of these will deter those who compulsively exercise. In a sense, exercising takes over a compulsive exerciser’s life because he or she plans life around it.”

As you can see, there are so many ways a recovering anorexic must watch oneself so as not to regress and relapse. There are many warning signs of a relapse. Some of these are skipping meals, embarking on a restrictive diet, withdrawal, depression, isolation from other people, excessive exercising or choosing exercise over social activities, daily weighing, wanting to be in control all the time, emergence or reemergence of rigid eating patterns, and so many more, varying from person to person.

Statistics on eating-disorders recovery show there is definitely some hope. “With treatment, 60% of eating-disorder sufferers make a full recovery.” The bad news is that “without treatment, 20% of people suffering from anorexia will prematurely die from eating-disorder-related health complications, including suicide and heart problems.”

It certainly doesn’t help that the media environment encourages thinness, and the assumption is that thinness equates to beauty and desirability.

I found something interesting, and scary to boot, while researching. Ads seldom portray people that look like us. The average female fashion model wears a size 2—4, while the average American woman wears a size 12—14. Photos of models in print ads are often ‘touched up’ in order to disguise minor flaws or make the model appear even skinnier.

The pundits even comment on the appearance of people in the news and political figures. How often have you seen articles discussing Hillary Clinton’s hairstyle or Michelle Obama’s dress? They are not fashion models and their appearance is not relevant to any of the work they do, yet it is a popular topic of discussion.

On WebMD, I read something quite upsetting: “A new study shows about one in three women treated for the eating disorder experience a relapse within two years after being discharged from the hospital. Although effective treatments have been developed, researchers say many people with anorexia experience relapse. At this point, they say it’s not clear whether problems are in the initial treatment or inadequate relapse-prevention strategies.”

Jacqueline Carter, psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto, said, “We’re pretty good at helping people to become weight-restored in the hospital, but really the challenge now is to figure out how to improve relapse-prevention treatments and improve long-term outcomes for people with anorexia nervosa.”

Obviously the first step with eating disorders is for people to get help. I hope those of you who are afflicted with this disease can take that first step. For those who have gotten help in a hospital or are trying to recover with the help of a team of doctors, it is important to remember that just because you may have gained some weight, this does not make you recovered. It is a long and slow journey, and it’s crucial to change the distorted thinking in the brain. But it can be done. I know it’s easy to say, but having patience with yourself and being insistent in not giving up are keys to getting better.

Lately, people have been telling me how great I look. It is nice to hear, but there is still so much distorted thinking going on in my brain that I am working to overcome. Hearing that I look good just tells me that I look good thin! This is what my brain hears. So if you suspect someone has an eating disorder or is recovering from one, you probably shouldn’t stress how amazing they look. There are other things to say, like telling them how proud you are of them and that you are rooting for them, but discussing body image is not the best idea.

I struggle, but I make better inroads in my recovery when I know I have support and people who understand me. This is probably true for everyone. So I would suggest trying to be there as a good listener for friends or family struggling with eating disorders, and take your cue from them. If they are focused on thinness and body image, you probably want to steer clear of that in conversation.

There is a reason that in Denver we weren’t allowed to get People (or any magazine with thin women inside) delivered or brought in by visitors. Looking at thin models certainly doesn’t help when you’re trying to weight-restore. Many of the pictures scream, “I’m thin and beautiful.” But being beautiful has nothing to do with being thin. Beauty encompasses people’s qualities, their large hearts, their warm demeanor, their goodness. That is beautiful. Thin and dying is absolutely not.

So compliment people on any of their positive character traits. Prettiness is not a bad thing, but it’s certainly not an important goal on the path to becoming the best you can be and being a truly good person.

Being told you’re pretty is very nice; being told you have a heart of gold is priceless! v

Note: I’m writing these articles because I hope my story will provide encouragement, hope, and information that will be helpful to others. Please understand, however, that I cannot offer medical advice or referrals to treatment.

Michele Herenstein, a freelance journalist, can be reached at michelesherenstein@hotmail.com.

 

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