My Eating Disorder is Not About My Weight

I have an eating disorder.  Note I say 'have' not 'had'.  I often relate it to alcoholism.  There really is no cure, there are simply times in my life when I have it under control and times when I don't have it under control, but it is something I am going to struggle with my entire life. 

For anyone who knows me this is not a surprise.  I do not keep this part of my life locked up in some secret closet.  Explaining that I have an eating disorder is not as easy as explaining the complexity of mine though.  Most people seem to assume that it means I think I am fat.  This is very far from the truth.  I am not obsessed with weight, I do not even own a scale.  If I were to decide to do something to improve my body it would be working out and putting ON perhaps 10 - 20 pounds, in muscle.  I have always been skinny and I have always known it.  Most of the time I actually wish I was larger. 

No for me eating, or not eating, is much more complicated.  For me the issue is related to control instead of body image.  I do best when my life is organized, orderly, and predictable.  Unfortunately this is a luxury none of us can maintain very long.  Life's inherent chaos makes me anxious and one of the nasty manifestations of this anxiety is an eating disorder. 

The experience, for me at least, is highly physical.  When I get overly anxious it is like I am experiencing morning sickness, or a nasty case of food poisoning.  The smell of food often makes me reel, the greasier the worse it gets.  Sometimes the mere sight of food can turn my stomach upside down.  If I try to actually eat in this state I find that the mere process of chewing food can make me gag (calorie intake then gets regulated to soft foods and liquids, things like milk, yogurt and soup).  Simply forcing myself to eat is not enough either, because it has a nasty habit of coming back up.  I cannot tell you how many nights, or early mornings (times when the anxiety is often worst) I have spent hovering over a toilet, despite the fact that nothing was actually wrong with my physically. 

At one point in my life this anxiety driven eating disorder got completely out of control, my freshman year of college.  I lost the freshman fifteen instead of gaining it, which dropped me below 100 lbs.  At that point I did seek help, through the college mental health services.  In the end though I finally realized I was starving myself and that I had to snap out of it.  I learned relaxation techniques and I am working still at simply trying to accept the things which I cannot control, and focus my energies on controlling what I can (in a healthy way).  I have not gotten completely out of control since, although I still have days, or sometimes months to be honest, when I skip meals, wake up with dry heaves and force myself to nibble on some cottage cheese when I can. 

So when I tell you that I have an eating disorder do not automatically assume that it means I think I am fat.  It means that I am anxious and scared, just like you probably are.  It's just that for some reason in my body that anxiety makes food my enemy.  The medical community does not seem to recognize this, of all the listed types of eating disorders only binge eating does not seem to have obsession with being thin listed as a symptom, and I definitely do not suffer from binge eating. 

It would be great to hear from others who have an uncommon eating disorder out there.  Maybe one day the connection between control, anxiety and our eating habits will be better understood.