Fasting today with some fellow ana twitterbugs. It feels good. I'm such a food whore. Every time my mind wanders for 5 min it's to food. I'm not hungry though, not tired. I feel great actually! So what's with the foodlust? I hate that. I hate being a slave to habit. I agree with eating to live and being healthy, but I also think being a slave to habit takes away your control and is a mental illness. I really think that until I only eat because I am actually hungry, I don't deserve to eat. I am going to reprogram myself if it's the last thing I do. Fuck you Ed(nos), you prick!
One thing that has kept me very controlled today has been the purge on Sunday. I still really dislike that it came to that. Why didn't I have the control to not put that awful shit in my body in the first place? It wasn't a binge, it was just a bad choice. But I knew it too! And I let myself eat it, and let myself get sick, and now made me wonder if I'm justifying what might be a developing path to Mia. These fears make fasting much easier. My lack of discipline set me up with a really bad day, so I'm very determined to let it never happen again. I love Ana because she is pristine, she is clean, and her views on food balance habits. I am not anorexic. I don't like Mia. She disgusts me a bit as she represents everything dirty that Ana does not. Mia loses control, Mia binges, Mia has vomit on her breath and scars on her knuckles... she is both the crime and the punishment.
What's funny is, I think at this point my ed falls into the Mia category... officially.
Check out the definitions:
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight, and an obsessive fear of gaining weight due to a distorted self image which may be maintained by various cognitive biases that alter how the affected individual evaluates and thinks about their body, food and eating.
Anorexia (deriving from the Greek "α(ν)-" (a(n)-, a prefix that denotes absence) + "όρεξη" (orexe) = appetite) is the decreased sensation of appetite. While the term in non-scientific publications is often used interchangeably with anorexia nervosa, many possible causes exist for a decreased appetite, some of which may be harmless, while others indicate a serious clinical condition, or pose a significant risk.
VS
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by recurrent binge eating, followed by compensatory behaviors. The most common form is defensive vomiting, sometimes called purging; fasting, the use of laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and over exercising are also common.
The word bulimia derives from the Latin (būlīmia), which originally comes from the Greek βουλιμία (boulīmia; ravenous hunger), a compound of βους (bous), ox + λιμός (līmos), hunger.
Ok.... First, I'm not underweight. In fact, I have no intention of becoming under anything I consider underweight for my body. I think at 5'10" anything under 120 would be unhealthy for me. I have no plans to go under 120 ever. Second, as far as I know, I don't have any worse dysmorphic disorder or irrational body image than any other woman does. (Most women do think they look somewhat fatter than they actually do. Men tend to think they look thinner.)
What I DO is yes, I fast to lose weight, take diet pills, and diuretics... and I do this because in the past I binged on a regular basis. I've used the concept of Ana the Goddess of Purity and Control to curb my binging. And though I've only purged once, it would seem that I fall way farther into the Mia category than the Ana one. Apparently one does not have to purge regularly or at all to be bulimic.
Interesting. :P Not sure how I feel about all this. If I've fallen into Mia, according to those definitions, it isn't the first time. It's actually gone this way about 3 times in my life for a year or so at a time. This time I swear I will ride it to my goal. This time will be different because I will defeat the ugly side of Mia... the binges.
But where does this all leave me? I thought I was pro-ana. Am I? I'm not pro-mia, but I guess I've woken up in the arms of Mia and apparently I've been here for longer than I thought.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!
/sigh.
Well no matter what I am, I'm happy in this community. And even if I'm Mia and not Ana, I'm not changing my fucking name again because I've done it too goddamn much! hehehe :) Plus Mia Banana sounds like shit.
At the end of the day, I'm just Elle anyway. And hopefully by the end of this journey I'll be Elle skinny. Maybe then I'll change my name again. Maybe by then I'll have earned it.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I find myself getting very emotional while reading the past couple of entries as you process your purging event.
ReplyDeleteI debated with myself a lot about whether I should say anything or not. But I think I have to?
I feel very strongly that there is something really fucked up about the way people glamorize anorexia while demonizing bulimia as though they are not essentially two sides of the same coin.
Anorexia is not purer or in anyway healthier than bulimia...it is only a less complicated outward manifestation of the same impulse to deny oneself the basic, healthy relationship with food that one needs to survive/thrive.
Starving is starving. You can be 85lbs and facing orgain failure from anorexia OR bulimia nervosa and you can purge daily (I have done so) without having russell's sign, tooth decay or binging. While I refer to things as being *binges* in my blog, in clinical terms, they are called "subjective binges" as my binges never exceed the size of a normal meal.
I do not have insatiable hunger, and am usually free of any appetite at all (when I tell people "I'm starving", the sensation I have is one of lightheadedness, unease, shaking hands, not ravenous appetite) or preoccupation with food. I can, if I'm busy with lots of things, simply forget to eat and then find I have no desire to eat...only to eat dinner with friends and then purge it at home for no reason other than that I enjoy purging. The act of purging is personal and individual, and certainly not a demonstration of weakness when in reality it sometimes takes epic control to purge a meal in utter silence, hands free, and against the body's own wishes to retain the meal in order to sate it's needs.
Eating normally/normal quantities of food is not a sign of loss of control or a lack of will power. It is however, a sign that your body wants to eat normally even if you don't. Your body will exert its own efforts to stay alive even when you push it closer and closer to the edge of death by denying it the calories it burns as fuel. No matter what you weigh, when you deny your body of sufficient calories daily, it will rebel against you and you will eat food you had no intentions of eating. Eating food you don't like or normal desire/food lusting is a sign that you are starving.
The longer you starve, the more bizarre and intense your foodlust will become. Like waking up at 3 am to eat spoonfuls of pure butter or (in some people's cases) entire jars of mayonnaise. Anorexics who are placed in inpatient treatment facilities that are subpar regularly return with purging/compensatory behaviours because the root of many EDs is the same, even if the external manifestation is different.
I sympathize with being disappointed at eating food you feel was less than ideal for you, and not being happy with purging it. But please, don't judge or parse certain ED behaviors as positive or negative when any behavior that isn't healthy all falls into the negative pile. You know?
Being skinny matters, but so does being realistic about what it means to give up health in order to be thin.
Figured I'd reply here rather than in a long comment on another post. First, I want to say that I'm glad you did post it. I'm not made of glass, and I've read your blog long enough to regard you as in intelligent person who doesn't tend to talk out your ass. Basically, I appreciate your input.
ReplyDeleteI agree most with what you said about the act of purging being personal and individual. All of this is very personal and individual. No one I know in this community has an identical eating disorder as anyone else. There are similarities, but it's the drives, feelings, and stigma that binds us, not a carbon copy of habits. Which is also why none of us should judge the others, and why I don't. We're all broken and beautiful in different ways, and we're all lost in it to some degree.
If it sounds like I look down my nose at Mia, I don't mean it so much as the Mia that others know so much as I DO honestly look down my nose at the part Mia could play in MY life. Not yours. Further, my foodlust and binging has nothing to do with starving and never has. My ED is growingly multifaceted but it stems from a particular issue I've had since childhood. I can't feel full. I never do. Not until I've overeaten to the point of discomfort do I get the message that I've had enough. The only reason I'm not hundreds of lbs heavier is because WHAT I eat tends to be healthy. By the time I was 7 I ate more than my father at every meal by about twice. That is my sickness. In my mind "hunger" is any time I think of food, and "full" is when I need a nap or to lay down, distended and stuffed. My foodlust is the biggest part of my ED.
Believe me when I say, I'm not judging you or anyone else. I'm judging or parsing all this as it applies to me, struggling to figure out where the hell I am and what the hell is happening. I want to know. I need to stay ahead of it all if I can so that I can guide my changes more than be surprise attacked and destroyed by them. For me, anything that allows me to binge falls in the negative pile. I don't want that habit. Combined with my original problems, anything that helps me justify a binge is the worst thing that could happen to me. I don't feel full no matter what, but I've found I do feel hungry sometimes. Hunger is my guiding light. As long as I stay close to my hunger, I know I didn't overeat. I'm learning that after a couple bites, not hungry = full, and then don't eat again until the next time I'm hungry.
I appreciate you may be much more experienced and educated where Mia is concerned, and again, I really do appreciate your post. I have to tell you though, I'm new to all this and scared as hell. I'm living, doing, evolving, and self educating. I haven't been diagnosed, but I don't want to be. I'm not in denial, but I am in hiding. Anyone who knows me knows all about my eating. The starving though, I have to keep a secret. One of my friends made a joke about putting anything in front of me during dinner. He hasn't even noticed I don't eat like that anymore. My reputation is so solid... :( It actually made me upset. Anyway, I'm a bit freaked out in all this. Really freaked out actually. So please don't take my posts personally. It's my journal. I'm finding my way out loud. I'm glad you're part of it though. Thanks again.
Ooh my reply did post. It told me it wouldn't. Oh well.
ReplyDelete