Feeding Knowledge

I will continue with speaking about my struggle with an eating disorder, and I use ‘struggle’ because that is what an eating disorder is. A struggle with the persons mind, mouth, and image. It is very easy to look at a skinny girl and say, "come on man. EAT A BURGER!" and it is annoying and frustrating to those who do not understand what happens in the mind of a person with an eating disorder. People think it is a pathetic excuse to loose weight, but it goes way beyond that unfortunately.

This blog is of research I have done; I want to fill everyone in on what an eating disorder is, why it occurs and some of the false truths about the disease.

I have got this information from a book my mother had brought on finding out about my disorder. Help for eating disorders: a parent’s guide to symptoms, causes and treatments. By Dr Debra K. Katzman & Dr Leora Pinhas (2005)

Eating disorders affect every part of a persons life, and the disorders include; anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating all of which include extreme feelings, behaviours and attitudes about weight and issues with food. All of the above eating disorders are serious problems that have emotional and physical problems associated with them.

Here are some facts about the disorders:

Eating disorders are common between the ages of 12 and 25 years old. Children as young as 7 years old have been diagnosed with an eating disorder.

The greatest risk group is girls between the ages of 14 and 18 years old.

1 in 8 adolescent girls have eating disorders.

At least 1 in 10 people who develop eating disorders are boys.

Most children get help for an eating disorder from parental intervention…not because they want to GET help.

Up to 20% of patients with eating disorders will eventually die from the illness.

Although adolescents do not have more than one eating disorder at a time, it is not unusual for them to have different eating disorders at different times.

On average 30% of teenagers with anorexia nervosa will develop bulimia nervosa.

The impact of the illness on the individual is more important than the type of disorder the person has.

Eating disorders were thought to only affect white girls from wealthy families. This fact is false. It may affect any racial, ethnic or economic back round and a person may be of any age and any sexual orientation.

These disorders are not a phase of growing up, or of dieting. It is a real medical disorder that most often requires professional help.

Nearly 80% of teen girls and 10% of teen boys have been on a diet since they were 13.

Approximately 1 in 3 young people who diet will progress to serious dieting and 25% of these serious dieters will develop unhealthy eating attitudes and behaviours towards food or an eating disorder.

Children who’s mothers have suffered from an eating disorder, may be at a higher risk of becoming ill.

Eating disorders may slow down or stop puberty. May result in loss of hair, discolouration of the skin to a yellowish tone and mental alertness is lowered.

As mentioned above, there were three types of eating disorders that I will go into now. These too taken from the book mentioned above.

Anorexia Nervosa

Anorexia is a serious and sometimes life threatening disorder, and it is known for self-starvation and extreme weight loss. children with this disorder have a great fear of weight gain and becoming over weight. Along with an extreme, obsessive drive to be thin. People with this disorder have a very strict control over what they eat and become obsessed with food and dieting thereof. No matter how much weight they lose or how thing they get, it just is not enough, they still think they are too fat or are terrified of becoming overwight.

Some people may undergo excessive exercise to burn calories, count calories and grams of fat they put into their body, starve themselves or limit themselves to certain foods. They may try and get rid of the food they have eaten by means of purging such as vomiting or taking laxatives. Diet pills may also be used in order to suppress their appetite. One may notice the person denying hunger, making excuses to avoid eating, not eating in front of people and often hiding food that they have claimed to have already eaten.

Bulimia Nervosa:

This disorder begins much like how anorexia
nervosa begins, by trying to eat less to lose unwanted weight. However instead of starving themselves they will binge and then purge.
Binging is when a person eats an unusually large amount of food in a short period of time. People with this disorder feel a lack of control over eating behaviours while they are binging. After they binge they purge. Purging is caused by fear of weight gain, a feeling of discomfort, and loss of control and may either be done by vomiting or by use of laxatives, diuretics, and diet pills. Binging and purging are usually done in secret. This illness is known for its cyclical binging and purging nature.

This illness is difficult to pick up as a person’s weight may vary. What may be noticeable is that the person may eat a large amount of food which will be followed by guilt and possibly depression, they will get involved in strict exercise regimes and diets. There is a misuse of laxatives, diuretics and diet pills. The person may make excuses to go to the bathroom straight after eating. Their weight may fluctuate slightly and they are able to eat a large amount without the expected weight gain. They may be caught vomiting in the bathroom or traces of vomit may be found.

Binge Eating Disorder:

This is a fairly newly found disorder. It is characterized by eating large amounts of food, eating until the person is uncomfortable, eating very quickly and often in secret. They usually feel guilty, ashamed and/or depressed after a binge. The person may eat even when not hungry.

People with this disorder use food to try and alter uncomfortable emotions. They may be sad, bored, angry or worried. They will often eat in secret or hide food to eat later while they are alone. Many of these people are either of an above average weight or obese. Some young people who suffer from this disorder may struggle with depression.

I don’t know if you are picking up any connections between the three mentioned disorders. Obviously in the bulimia nervosa disorder but also in the binge eating disorder. This is just a brief overview of an eating disorder(s).

TO BE CONTINUED…

Funny Girl

Before I start this next blog I am giving a warning. This blog will probably be the most disgusting, maybe even a little disturbing if your that kind of person. The thing is, this is not a book, I am not a character and its not intended for you to use your imagination so I am going to tell every detail. This will probably come back to haunt me but I think it is relevant.

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So after all the blood tests and brain scans everything came back negative. Obviously. But my mom still didn’t understand. If I can I will try post pictures of my school diary from grade 11, besides me saying "yay he, he," next to everything I wrote, nearly every second day I have written ‘sick today’ or ‘doctor x2’ sometimes both and when I have referred to myself I have drawn a stick figure, with a continuously scribbled circle (only way I can describe it) where the stomach is, bear in mind I was weighing 48kgs which was far too small for my frame. My sleeping patterns got really strange, I would come home from school, go to gym, come home, eat, go to sleep at 8 wake up at 11 and try work. Laxatives made me super exhausted. I would often wake up in the morning and need to vomit, or wake up in the middle of the night to vomit, what I was vomiting up I don’t know, it was strange, bitter, what seemed like bile but a lot and it burned like hell, but again I couldn’t be bothered. My throat became like steal, and people were surprised that I could drink a boiling hot cup of tea or coffee so quickly, I had literally burnt off the feeling in my throat from all the acid.

Laxatives if taken after a meal and then food is eaten over them, puts so much pressure on your body, its trying to digest, but cant, it has been told, so to speak, to get rid of the food so its doing that while your liver is trying to detoxify the body from the poison, and I say poison because laxatives are basically poison. So your body brings it up. This happened often, at school, at home, and most embarrassingly, well it only happened once, I was in a shopping centre, and when ever I went shopping with my mom I got excited cause I felt thin and beautiful in my eyes but looked like a skinny, white girl desperately trying to pull off an oriental look. Way too much self-tan and pitch black hair. A nik nak with one of the tips dipped in black ink. RIDICULOUS. So we went into the shopping centre and I could feel it, it was bubbling in my throat, and as we walked past a restaurant I started to run for the bin, kind of making it, but also trying to hold it in my shirt. I was wearing all white and the vomit was orangey. (So white shoes, orange legs white skirt, white shirt, orange vomit, orange face, possibly looking like a dodgy Dr Seuss character), needless to say no one helped my mom and me, probably thinking I was hung-over and thought I should learn my lesson about underage drinking or whatever.

It was great when I went out I could drink a lot, because it passed through my system. But what I found weird is that I would get tipsy and confident despite the laxatives but not smashed. I’m still curious as to how that worked. I was getting attention from boys, which I liked but again always questioning if it may be a cruel joke or if they actually liked me. When I was drunk-ish I was told I was fun and funny, but I was only 16/17, so I started doing it more and more often to be the funny fun girl. If I did drink too much over the laxatives I would vomit it up anyway and be able to drink more. (This pattern of drinking a lot to be funny and get attention did get worse and is coming up in the next few blogs)

Now with this whole vomiting thing, now this is quite gross so brace yourselves. Going to the toilet was difficult because once I reached a point where I would either vomit or the laxatives would have done their job both became a norm for me, but it was difficult because sometimes I would run to the bathroom and have to ask myself on arrival which end to hold over the toilet seat. Sometimes I ended up either having to change my pants or again vomiting into a towel or my shirt. Cleaning these was not fun but was a job that had to be done (rhyme not intentional). What I eventually had to start doing was wearing a pad, basically everyday, as a make shift nappy. But let me just explain what comes out is not what you may be thinking and when you take them as often as I did, it becomes liquid, and when I went to the woman from Tara, she told me that is was pretty much the body’s plasma, because the body has gone into an over drive and I had taken far to many laxatives for what I had eaten, its like, I’m going to be blunt… peeing out your bum (laugh, laugh, giggle giggle. I’m serious.) Again another thing I became accustomed to.

Eventually my mom found a slipper of mine buried deep in my cupboard. It was a pink dinosaur foot with silver claws and glitter everywhere, (I’m embarrassed to admit I still have them), and inside I had hidden laxative wrappers that I couldn’t get rid of at home, because someone would find them in the bin and know. I thought the slipper was perfect no one would look there. My mom found them and I told her they were from long ago, and she was a little suspect, I don’t think she believed me but after that she watched me. And I started eating normal-ish again. Not for long though. When I passed out at school, which I wrote about in the last blog, my mom thought maybe I had had a seizure, because of how the girls and nurse had described it. Kind of eyes rolling back, incontinence and so on. And eventually I was caught out and my laxative dependence was put a stop to.

I had somehow got laxatives past my mom, and because I hadn’t taken them in a little while my body started to try function normally again, I think I took maybe 20 laxatives thinking I would be fine and my body would cope, but I was wrong. My mom woke me up for school and as I got up I collapsed and told her I couldn’t go, she told me I was going and when ever I tried to stand I collapsed, I was dizzy and couldn’t see, I don’t remember it very well, my mind was no where, but again it did look like a seizure. My mom told me this I don’t remember but she said I was holding onto her and begging for help, but the way she said I said it was desperate, so desperate to be helped.

I was given a banana, because of the potassium and I remember waking up with it half eaten in my hand, I was too scared to eat the whole thing, again fear of weight gain. I had admitted defeat basically and went to the doctor (GP) and told her what had happened, and was told to eat salty peanuts and take some rehydrate. She booked me off school for a few days. I caused a lot of pain. My stepfather’s wife passed away due to an eating disorder and he said to my mom that day, when it happened because he was there and saw the whole thing, he gave me the banana, he said it was way too close to home and if the eating disorder was because of him he would leave. I only found this out months later but I am so grateful that he didn’t.

I started seeing a psychologist and a food psychologist, the one from Tara, and although I wasn’t taking laxatives, my mind was still in body dimorphic mode. An eating disorder can really contaminate your mind, it takes over your life. If you can’t use the one way you will start using others, you will do whatever it takes to be thin and manipulate the people around you in order to lose weight…

*I will be writing about eating disorders as a whole in terms of research. the reasons behind the disorders etc

Skinny & Wobble Free

I had put on weight from boarding school, tried to die my hair blond, it turned ginger, and tried to face the embarrassment of returning to my old school after a mere 4months. I looked like a troll; you know those cool plastic ones with the rounded tummies and coloured hair? Except my hair was orange, and from chemical straightening and dying it so often it even got the texture of the troll’s, really fine and a ultra crisp on the ends, a real vision of beauty. I was back to square one fat and unhappy. Went back onto the protein diet for a bit. But it wasn’t coming off quick enough.

I began taking laxatives. Not because I knew about laxatives as a weight loss tool, but I always had heard of people getting ill from a bug and losing weight so I thought it would be a good option. I started out drinking the tea that actually started in boarding school; I would mix a bottle every so often and carry it around and telling people it was herbal iced tea I had made. Funny thing is people actually liked it. When I got home, after my time at boarding school, I had kind of forgotten about laxatives, then realized sugar-free sweets, if eaten in abundance had a laxative effect. So I would buy two packets of sweets and full-cream chocolate yoghurt, to make sure the yoghurt never sat on my hips.  Only problem was that those sweets cost about R40 a packet, so economically it was not so practical. I started taking the pills. It started with two. Problem with laxatives is you become immune to them; you have to keep upping the dose.  Because the sweets were so expensive I continued with the tea in secret back home. I used it often enough to make me feel ill. So I began eating healthily and only taking laxatives if I ate carbohydrates. In other words when I wanted a binge I would take laxatives, and eventually turned to the tablets. This did the trick. Scary thing is I did research to see how much weight I could lose, these were my findings, and I had them all written in my diary:

Excessive weight loss, heart palpitations, light headedness, big pop-out eyes due to dehydration, loss of hair, bad nail condition, could lead to death. The only thing that caught my eye was EXCESSIVE weight loss.

I was loosing weight really quickly and uncomfortably at that, but I couldn’t care I was going to take them if they would make me lose weight. I came back to school after June holidays, covered from head to toe in luminous self-tan, pitch black hair and having lost a lot of weight. To be honest I looked like I had jaundice.  People could not stop staring at me; a girl even said to me she thought I was a new girl. People started saying how skinny I was looking, asking me if I was eating and then after a few more weeks started to ask me if I had a problem because I had lost so much weight. Messed up thing is I liked that, when people asked if I had a problem, I knew the laxatives were working, I was thrilled but I denied having a problem. I would eat in front of people, a pie, a chocolate maybe some jellybeans just to show them I ate, then make sure I took some laxatives on the way back to class, sneakily so people wouldn’t question. In those days if I didn’t have laxatives on me I would have toast for breakfast, take watermelon for lunch, spend two hours at the gym and then eat supper. I would make a 2l jug of coffee after dinner when I did homework, which I usually couldn’t be bothered to because my concentration was shot, and drink about 5l litres of water a day.

I found it difficult to concentrate at school, I was always going to the toilet, I was always uncomfortable, and I was weak. I could not play sport really; I was so short of breath all the time, dizzy and so weak. I was never too weak for home economics though, I loved cooking but I hated sharing. I would run out of home ec, to my mom’s car, to get away from the boarders. And my mom who tried so hard with me asking how my day was, I was off and irritable and couldn’t wait to get home and wash the lead pencil and naartjie school smell off my hands. I never ate my home ec food, if I did I would make sure we stopped at the shop because I HAD to get a drink or whatever other thing I could ask for just so I could buy laxatives to get rid of the koeksusters or choux puffs.

Whenever I couldn’t get my hands on laxatives I got in a spin, it would be the end of the world. I would get angry and aggressive with my mom and she had done nothing wrong, there again she didn’t know that I was taking laxatives at the time. I got into a spin if she put any oil, sugar or carbs in the food we ate; bare in mind my step dad was living with us now, so you can imagine, what an absolute nightmare I was as every meal had to be up to my standards or the environment would be hell. I was so paranoid about food if I didn’t have my laxatives. We would go to a breakfast place where there were pancakes, it was about 9 in the morning, and my refusal to eat carbs and sugar resulted in me ordering a tuna salad, at 9am. I wouldn’t even have a bite of anything like that, because of my fear of gaining weight. When I took laxatives I felt free and powerful I felt so strong.

Often at night if I woke up from the laxative effects because I was so low on electrolyte balance (which I will go in depth with after this) I would get out of bed, faint and wake up later sprawled on the stairs from my bedroom onto the garden. I thought nothing of it. I loved how skinny, and wobble free I was wobble free due to sheer dehydration from the laxatives. Fainting became a natural occurrence with me, a norm if you will, no one saw though so I was lucky and just carried on.

And then one day, the day after I had worked my body up to taking 40 laxatives after one meal, we were in assembly I felt so hot, I knew if I stood up I was going fall, but I did it non the less. As I got up, I caught peoples attention, and I could see they knew something was not right. They moved out of the way and helped me outside as the piano played in the back round and the school sang along. My ears were ringing my eyesight went spotted and blurry until eventually complete darkness and I woke up on the other side of the building with my friend and 2 prefects lying in a huge puddle of clear liquid dotted with lettuce leaves which could have only come from one place… and no I did not wet myself. I was so low in sodium and so dehydrated the laxatives had taken huge effect and because there was hardly food in my stomach besides lettuce leaves, the body actually starts to get rid of the body’s plasma, which is a clear liquid, also making the body look smaller.

I was sent home and this incident was followed by; MRI’s, blood test, thyroid tests the works, because my mom didn’t know what was wrong, she saw I was losing weight but didn’t understand because I was eating… A LOT! I couldn’t tell her either because I would be discovered, and my magic weight loss would disappear as swiftly as it came and I couldn’t let that happen.

The Dark Years

Before I launch into the stories about my diet and eating disorders, I think it is important to mention something to maybe get a chuckle out of some of you. Despite give or take 4 years of being in an alcohol dependent coma (which I will get into at a later stage) I think I should let you know  that I have broken two parts of my body and both have been food

related. I broke my collarbone falling off my high chair and I broke my toe… running for Mr Delivery.

Right, so I was 13 going on 14, still rather hefty and so deeply depressed. This was, for the most part, well hidden by my need to be the funny one in the class; always happy, always

joking around, sometimes a little too much maybe. 

I had joined the diving team in Standard 5 (Grade 7), quit and joined again the following year. One of my best friends and I were both of the larger category and decided to take on diving. I can only imagine what I must have looked like. You know when elephants or hippos in cartoons step onto a diving board and it goes so far down it nearly touches the water - they bounce on it, enter the water and empty the pool, and when they come out of the water because they have such a different perception of themselves, they look

quite surprised to find the pool empty and the spectators drenched in water? Well I think that was what I was like. I thought "if I am on the diving team I am the image of a diver; skinny, toned, long and lean", but... not so much! 

I wasn’t actually that bad, I bounced the hell out of that diving board, so to speak. However, after one particular competition where i saw girls diving, who were in my mind 'real divers' I saw my self as an an amateur ball. I was embarrassed, I was way out of my league. Whenever a girl looked at me it was almost as if to say, “shame you poor thing, do you really think you can dive in that body?”

So I asked the diving coach if I could train with the divers but not be

in competitions, I couldn’t face it. She said no and I quit the team, took up a

more challenging cardiac sport, chess. Just kidding.

I then started a diet my friend was on. I had to take a white pill with every meal. This

pill came in a bottle with no label, no ingredients, no writing on the bottle what so ever. All it read was your name. Regardless, the dietician person was selling it

very well. The pills contained Lamb Thyroxin. While I was taking them I was

always hot, even just walking to the toilet from the classroom a mere 10m away. I could

feel my heart beating as if it were trying to break through my rib cage. Even so,  it

made me lose an abnormal amount weight in an incredibly short amount of time.

I was on the pills for maybe a month but my mom wasn’t happy. She is a nurse see, and having no ingredients on the bottle  with plain white pills that could contain anything, and the responsibility of her child’s life, she refused to take me back to that dietician ever again. We heard a couple of years later that that woman and her Belgian colleague (who reminded me of Lurch from The Adams family and looked both dodgy and creepy) were shut down completely.

I then started a protein diet: no carbs for 6 months and then slowly introducing them again thereafter. I lost 14 kilos on this diet but it did take a while,  maybe one to two years of dropping and gaining a couple of kgs here and there, but it did work. People

started to notice me, noticing the weight I had lost. Boys began to ask for my

number. Sad thing is for the most part when this happened I thought it

was a big joke like: who ever gets Jubes' number and texts her as a joke wins the

bet. I never actually thought it was real and when it was I got so excited and clingy I think I scared most of them off. 

Anyways, I had a boyfriend or three for the usual length around 1-2 weeks long. Seeing them at a house party, giggling in your girl group, cuss words being shouted in the boy group and then a quick and sometimes awkward smooch. All of this before your folks fetched you after a couple of cigarettes which you pretended to smoke as if you were the very Marlboro man himself. I was making my way up. I was finding glimpses of happiness in a seemingly terribly morbid world.

After a while, my mom remarried and  I didn’t take it too well. I was impossible. I made our lives miserable; I was cold, selfish, unfriendly and grumpy everyday. All I could

think about was myself; how unhappy I was, how crap my life was, how hard I had

it. I gave no thought to others, my dad had died. I was awful. When people tried to

say, “I know how you feel,” as clichéd as it sounds, I knew that no one does and no one ever will until they experience it themselves. Even then its not the same  as everyone has different experiences. Sometimes people would say that  "it was all right" as long as I had my memories and as long as I was still here, and I would just want to tell them that they were wrong,  I would rather not be here... I would rather die than have to deal with this kind of pain. When you feel like that you actually stop caring about how you behaved or what you said to people because you had lost all adoration, all ambition, for everything including yourself.

I started seeing a psychologist and this was to be the first of seven. I hated most of them and none of them kept our conversations confidential. They had trouble keeping

their mouths shut while another only had trouble keeping her mouth shut as she

tried to stop herself from yawning. Every session her lips grew longer as she

tried to disguise her yawns and I just thought 'stuff it'. Another psychologist had a room

which was painted beige, her chair was beige, the picture frames were beige. She was just beige, even her clothes, and this is not an exaggeration (I love  how people  now call beige ‘latte’. It still doesn’t change just how boring the colour actually is).

I lost trust in people. I thought if a psychologist is bored hearing about my

problems, a job she is supposedly interested in and making money off, how on

earth will anyone else be? So I kept a lot of my emotions and feelings inside,

I hardly spoke about any of them to anyone, and if people asked I would try

change the subject before I started crying. They boiled up and transformed into

something much worse than a bored psychologist. The only psychologist I liked

was my eating disorder psychologist. She worked at Tara an institution for

eating disorders and she was interested, she actually wanted to help me.

Before I started on my road to a serious eating disorder, and when I was still quite big,

I did try vomiting up a meal or two. I found it quite amazing how easy it was

but never did it religiously. To be honest the thought of hanging your head

over a toilet was quite sickening, on top of which it was bloody exhausting. To

be honest I must have done it twice before I started dieting properly. I

couldn’t do it, swollen jaw, sore throat, I just couldn’t face it.

After standard 7 or grade 9 I went to boarding school. It was a really stupid time

for me to go, my mom had just got remarried and I still had not come to terms

with the death of my dad. But I went, I had to go, it was all I wanted. And at

the time my mom just wanted me to be happy so she went out of her way to get me

into the school. Because again I made everything about ME. But the problems I

was running away from were waiting for me there. I was told by friends to get

involved in sport, extra mural, to distract myself from being homesick. I did,

I went back to diving, one afternoon and that was it, then got punished for

never going again. Tried hockey ended up in the recreational team where you

could basically have no hockey stick, pick the ball up with your hand and run

it into the goals. Jokes it wasn’t that ridiculous. Stopped going to that too.

I ended up sitting by the tea tray every afternoon while people were playing

sport. Some of them would ask if I had moved from when tea had arrived which

was like an hour earlier. Nope, I stayed by the cakes or what ever treat was

served that day and just ate. Sometimes I would wait in the place where tea was

usually brought, just so I could get first pick. SIFF. I grew more and more

depressed.

Weekends were tough all my friends went home and I was left in the boarding house. I was

so flat, and kind of spaced out. I felt like I was in a movie or a dream.

Before I went to boarding school my mom had sold our house, bought another one

which I said I hated, so for me she brought another one to make me happy and

put the first one back on sale, we then sold the second one and moved back into

the first one my mom had brought. I was a nightmare. Everything had to be my

way. Everyone was trying to make me happy while I was, being as cold and

selfish as anything.

I didn’t want help; I didn’t want anyone to help me. I, like most depressed people,

believed that I was alone, and the world was against me, that God had dealt me

a bad card. I left boarding school not long after I had started. I had made

friends and I was happy but something was just killing me inside and I got into

such a deep depression I started to make use of self-mutilation. I tried to cut

myself, but now before you think anything crazy, if someone is serious about

harming her/himself they will cut vertically down the arm, if not, if not it is

usually just a cry for help, it will be horizontal. And that’s what mine were

horizontal, and far up my arm not at the common wrist area. It was actually

quite pathetic, it looked like a graze, and I said it was when people asked, I

said I fell down the orange tree. Problem was I was so confused as to why it

was not making me happier, I thought it was suppose to relieve pain, but it

sucked me in deeper to think I could go to those lengths to feel better. I was

a little nuts back then, I was so lost and I was at that stage of moving from

young teenager to a proper one (only way I can explain it) I had no grounding.

Things for those 3 years were so blurry and dark, my feet were just dangling,

just touching the ground while my mind was pulling me forward, leaving my

senses behind.

Puppy Fat

As a child I was always fairly larger than all of my friends. My dad too was fat when he was young and at school he was dubbed the name ‘beach-ball. Due to this, he worried about my weight for my sake. My parents tried everything, even telling me to drink a glass of water after a meal and wait 10 minutes (Of course during those 10 minutes all I could think about was a second helping).

Going out to dinner, I was a real treat, nothing enraged me more than the waiter handing me the kiddies menu; no way could that fill me up, I could eat more than the average grown woman! However the worst, the thing I hated most, was when we were out with family friends and parents would ask if I wanted to share a meal or desert with their child. Their little tyke couldn’t possibly eat an entire kiddies pizza along with ice-cream and chocolate sauce.

My folks really did try the lot. Since I was between the ages of 6 and 8, I have been and am still to this day on a diet. Every diet, every book, and every trick: I have tried and tested.

I was encouraged to do sport, which I enjoyed. Although sometimes I did pretend to have left my sports kit at home to rather receive a black mark instead of doing sport. I did this because we would have to run around the field to warm up. Being larger than most, I was usually last. This meant having the whole class wait for you to finish running around the field  before the sports actually began. Running in last, red-faced, wheezing chest and red, itchy thighs from blood circulation a little round body hadn’t been getting regularly. It was humiliating.

However, I carried on and when we were old enough to be allowed to play hockey, I did and I loved it. I played wing, which is actually quite funny as they are generally the ones that run up and down the field, being really fit and what not. My sporting efforts did not change my weight, not for lack of trying, but rather my sheer love for a quick snack. I never said no to any food, or rather I was always asking people for their food, swapping cool sharpeners or pencil tops, anything I could trade for their bar-one or whatever other treasure lay hidden in their lunch boxes. My lunchbow consisted of a fruit and a sandwich or what ever the weigh-less or weight watchers plan had on the menu that day. These diets were tricky and I made mistakes, for example one day when I came home from school my mom asked me how my salad was. I told her I had swapped it but before she could shout at me  I told her not to worry,  I swapped it for another salad… a potato salad!

Another hot favourite of mine was climbing to the top of the pantry where all my brother’s and sister’s lunchbox snacks were hidden, grabbing them and running deep into the bushes to eat the snacks in secret. It was on occasion that the snacks were finished. If this was the case I would look in the freezer where there were always treats; mini quiches and tarts or muffins left over from my mom’s book club, breadsticks and mini garlic breads from a dinner party. Now this got a little tricky, I had to warm them up. The problem with that was that the smell would fill the kitchen, or I would get caught standing in front of the microwave watching the carby surprise rotate and actually harden,  waiting with bated breath for the microwave to beep at zero. So, as to avoid the risk of getting caught I would just eat them  frozen. It did take longer to eat, but if you heard someone calling you or someone coming you could hide it in your pocket as there was no smell and no packaging to make a crinkle sound, and because it was frozen it stayed fresh(ish!).

Every dietician was the same too. Asking how my week went how was the eating this week etc. I would like to point out that not one of my dieticians were thin, they were all carrying a little pudge around the edges, they needn’t worry about a 7 year old when they have their own muffin tops to assist to! It was always the same though one week half a kilo off the next week one on and so on and so on. To tell the truth, I just got larger. Food just made me happy.

I was little so I didn’t really understand the full emotional pain of being fat. I ate and I was happy. That was until one year, I must have been about 8 or 9.  I was at a firework show with my friend and were having such a fun time. She suggested we ask to get an ice cream, I was thrilled, my eyes lit up. She asked her dad if we could get an ice cream. Now if you can picture this there were a lot of people around, people he knew, picnic blankets the lot. On hearing her question he looked at her then at me and said, "well you can have an ice-cream but she is too fat for ice-cream." and roars of laughter followed his comment. I wanted to die. 

I had such a sad feeling inside me. Other people had said, "ah your so healthy," or, "its just puppy fat." (Yes, but puppy fat starts going away almost as you start walking). All I wanted then was my mom; I had never felt such a feeling. This was not the only parent who would be so nasty to a little girl, another mother on a different occasion had the same idea with the ice cream, "why don’t you share one, Jubie's too fat for a whole one" said a friend's mom chuckling and pinching my tummy as she said it.

I began to realize I was ‘FAT’ in every sense of the word. Shopping became an issue. Every piece of clothing I tried on, I would cry, and then my mom would cry. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t fit into anything nice and how my friends all looked good in their white spaghetti string tops, while I looked like a cloud, with the strings practically lost in my shoulders. Now if that was bad, can you imagine swimming costumes and bikinis? You would have thought someone had died in the changing room with the amount of tears we cried.

All my friends had cell phones except me, I had to work for it: get a good history mark and eat healthily. This was the deal I had made with my dad because he was buying me the cell phone. One Thursday morning before school, he asked me what I was going to do and I told him "get a good history mark and eat well". That was the last actual conversation I had with my dad. That night while I was sleeping, he was late back from work. He came to wake me up to say goodbye as he was leaving on a fishing weekend. He woke me up so that  I could see him before he left, made his hand in a ‘thumbs-up’ shape and said "you gonna be fine." That Sunday we got the news that my dad had had a heart attack and died at 48, I was 12 years old.

I felt numb for about two weeks, everything was racing around me. My mom was absolutely finished. It was the first time  I had seen and been able to conceptualise emotional pain infecting the human form. It was so alien to me; until then my life had been seemingly perfect, but this was something that hit me in a place I never knew existed, a pain that actually burned.

That year I gained more weight and clocked in at 72 kilos on the scale. While my friends were wearing size 6’s and 8’s I was wearing sized 14’s or 12’s if I was lucky. It was the year of Avril Lavigne.  And so it was the year of massive skater shoes, tank tops and cargo pants. Now yes, all the girls looked super hardcore, super cool. But, when a 72 kilo little girl has huge skater shoes on, beige cargo pants, a white tank top, and messy make shift pigtails, this is not attractive, does nothing  for the figure and the colour scheme only made me look relatively larger. It didn’t help that my hair was curly and had been cut short. My sister had short hair, was thin and beautiful and I thought I would do the same and it would look identical. I was wrong - it bounced up and mushroomed out, if I didn’t wear girlish clothing I looked like a little boy. 

Usually in a friendship group there is that one that kind of pokes out. Well that was me. Whenever there was a movie at a shopping centre I would go with all the girls to meet ‘our’ group of boys and it was always the same. No one watched the movie; everyone was busy texting each other when they were only a seat or row back. Saying how hot this chick is and how they should ask that one out, or my personal favourite, "will you go out with me? Y/N?" And I would go every weekend, every time, only to sit, watching and trying to smile as if I was also getting pleasure out of this whole texting, early adolescent, routine of socialization. I hated it. But when ever I went I had hope, I always thought, "yip, today will be it he will look at me and want my number," and of course at that age all I could think about was a boy sending me those lame bears holding hearts saying ‘sweet dreams’. My phone never beeped. It was always on silent so that when I did look at it after the day was up it would be a surprise to see a text. I don’t know how I thought some boy would magically get my number and start texting me. It didn’t happen. I wont even get into Valentines Day, because i simply hated it.

Boys never spoke to me. I don’t know if it was because they were embarrassed to talk to a fat girl. Maybe it was an ego thing,  I’m not sure, but I wasn’t even greeted. Sure, we were young and just learning about socializing with boys, but when you are the only girl, that’s trying to look happy and cant really say anything its pure hell. Some boys did speak to me and became my friends but it was clear that was it. Some boys thought I was cool,  I remember overhearing a conversation where the boy said, "oh Jubes, the fat chick? Ya she’s cool." I was that girl, the go to girl. The fat best friend.

I had had enough; I was tired, I was sad, I felt left behind and I wanted to experience all that my friends had and were experiencing. I wanted to be my own person and not someone’s sidekick, I was tired of being the safety friend. I went on a different diet the next year and stuck to it, and took it too far.

The Beginning

If you read this you may laugh or cry, find it interesting or boring, skim read it or even relate to it. On the other hand you may read it and think it is nonsense, nevertheless I want to tell my stories, a confession, if you will. This is me expressing myself, addressing three different but interrelated things: the death of my father, eating disorders and alcohol abuse/dependence. 

Ultimately, my story tracks how one thing lead to another resulting in a lost, depressed little person. If you have ever experienced 'losers'  (the unshakeable feeling of great embarrassment after a heavy night; thinking to yourself that no one could have ever done such things, this blog may just surprise you - both men and women!

Before I start I would like to say this: The following stories that I am about to tell are true, I have not falsified any information and no story has been modified for entertainment.