~Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance~ King George V
Our favorite topics at The House, when we weren't talking about recovery and addiction, were sex and I ensured the other topic was pooping. "I love to poop!" I exclaimed as all the girls laughed. Liz had just informed me that Chef Lacey hides ground flaxseed in almost everything we eat. Staff wanted to aid in improving our overall health which included flushing out and regulating our digestive systems. I couldn't taste the flax, but I could sure feel it as one of the many benefits of flax is pooping. It was certainly a luxury for me as regularity has been elusive for so many years due to poor nutrition associated with eating disorders, alcohol and prescription drug side effects. At my worst, I could go a week or longer without a bowel movement and had to take laxatives in order to be regular. The low carb diet Atkins caused me to be the most constipated. I lost almost 20 lbs a few years ago, but always felt bloated. While at The House, I made a promise to myself that I'd eat 3 meals a day instead of my usual 0 when I was starving myself to 10 when I was binging. I was glad to see that if I ate regularly and pooped that my stomach could still be semi-flat as my metabolism was regulating as well.
My mother liked dressing me up like a doll as a girl and sometimes she treated me like one by acting like I didn't have feelings. When I was about 5 years old, she had me try on pale pink dress in the living room. My chubby little body squeezed into it. It felt tight, but I didn't know what feeling fat was at that point. She stared at the ill-fitted dress and I could tell that she was disappointed. She told me to "suck in." There was no laughter and I was confused by what she wanted me to do. I believe one of my aunts was in the room and I felt sad to disappoint my mom. Later on, I began to understand and experience feeling fat. My mother told me that I had to shop in the pretty plus section and I felt embarrassed because I learned it was for fatter kids. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit the skinny genes that her biological daughters had received. I would sometimes stand next to my mom without her knowing, stick out my stomach and compare my body to hers. I thought that I was just as big and was even afraid that I might be pregnant as I didn't know how that happened at that time. I just knew it involved a big belly. When I was about 11 years old, my mom told me that I was fat. She told me that I was a pig and ate too many potatoes. That was my favorite food at the time. I was shocked and devastated that my mother said this to me. My mom and dad told me that fat people weren't respected and that they were just looking out for me. I was exasperated and ashamed, but I felt that I deserved it. The next day in school I tried telling my friend about the incident, but when the teacher walked by, I shut up because I didn't want my parents to get in trouble.
With insecure mothers and girlfriends along with societal pressures to be thin, it's easy and almost accepted to have an eating disorder in this country. I struggle with body image to this day and am working hard in therapy to reverse years of self-hatred. People have been kind over the years and complimented my looks or body, but I have a hard time believing them sometimes. I constantly hold in my stomach or suck in. One of my counselors said this behavior is common for people with eating disorders. I came from a line of women who were almost always on a diet and discussing openly how they disliked or hated their bodies. It made an impression on me as a young girl and I began hating my body, too. I didn't know any different and it felt uncomfortable to like my body or myself because it felt egotistical. My mother was always on a diet and buying exercise equipment that would later collect dust. She would workout to Richard Simmons or other health nuts and swallow diet pills that sometimes made her urinate blood. She weighed herself constantly. I became equally obsessed with weight as well and not surprisingly, developed an eating disorder as a teenager.
I had my first high school boyfriend at 15 years old and while making out on his couch one afternoon, I felt fat. I once overheard a boy at school talk about how he didn't like feeling a girl's "fat" stomach while they made out. I felt that I had a fat stomach, too, and didn't want my boyfriend to be disgusted, so I stopped eating. I had a friend with an eating disorder who only ate apples, so that's what I ate. I was on multiple tennis teams and would play a 2 to 3 hour match and then sometimes go home and exercise to ensure I worked off all the food. I got down to about 110 lbs which for my medium frame was thin and I stopped menstruating. Some of my friends were concerned about my weight and some were complimentary. I liked the attention and was competitive with weight as I was in sports. My immune system crashed and I was sick a lot, but I was skinny and felt more comfortable making out with my boyfriend. This line of thinking carried through to adulthood and I thought about my fat roles while making out or having sex with guys. I realize it's silly because they probably couldn't have cared less and I didn't care that most of them didn't have the perfect body either. I've discussed weight issues with some of my guy friends and all of them prefer normal sized women and not the anorexic ones featured in the entertainment industry.
As a teenager, both of my parents noticed that I was losing weight which I kind of liked. Even if it was negative attention, it was still attention. "You want to be like your anorexic friend," my mother would occasionally say to me. At one point, I was sitting on the floor watching TV in the living room and my dad walked in and sat on the floor about a foot behind me. He asked to feel my stomach. He seemed somewhat concerned, but expressed it awkwardly. He told me that I had no stomach. After feeling violated by him in the past, I said no. He asked a few more times to touch my stomach and I said no and then he finally left. No help for my eating disorder. Just more humiliation. I struggled with a lot of things growing up, but I didn't know how to ask them or others for help and neither did they. They never asked for help because they were arrogant and blameless and I felt that my mother was also selfish. I learned to be the same way and instead of seeking help from others, we battled each other. At one point my mom said that I made her not love me anymore and I hated her for saying that.
Many woman who are alcoholics also struggle with eating disorders. It's sometimes due to that all or nothing mentality. I'm keeping my eating disorder and other addictions in remission at the moment with the help of managing my stress levels and caring for my mind, body and spirit. Unlike alcohol, I obviously need food in order to survive, so despite the fact that it's one of my addictions, I cannot quit eating. I would say that I experienced anorexia in high school, but once I left my parents' house and was a little happier moving on to college, I ate junk food like everyone else and gained the Freshmen 15 or more. I still experienced bouts with anorexia throughout adulthood. However, drinking made eating more difficult to control. In recent years, my preference was to drink instead of eat or binge and not eat for a few days. As my drinking increased, my inhibitions decreased with food. I began to give in to hunger. I ate more on a daily basis and binged more often. If I hadn't kept active by exercising and being involved in multiple sports up until my car accident in September, I would've easily become obese. I always binged in private. In the past, I had no qualms about starving in public as it was more accepted.
My weight has fluctuated over the years depending on how I'm feeling and what's happening in my life. As I mentioned earlier, I had lost almost 20 lbs by starving my body of carbs on the Atkins Diet a few years ago. I was strict about it, so even my drinks were low carb. I got down to about 130 lbs and it felt fabulous to buy a whole new size 4 wardrobe. The joy was only temporary though as the voices told me that I needed to be skinnier. Nothing was ever good enough. It used to be the perfect size 6 for so many years, now it seems to be the perfect size 2 or even 0. I maintained a size 4 for a year, but I was not emotionally nor physically healthy. As I began ingesting more carbs the following year, I gained all the weight back and eventually, became overweight for the first time in my life due to multiple factors including poor diet. My lowest weight was in high school at around 110 lbs and my highest was about a year ago when I hit 160 lbs. I was officially overweight according to the government weight charts and I felt extremely miserable. My already low self-esteem plummeted at that point. My BMI was 27.5 and fell in the overweight range of 25 to 29.9. A normal weight range for a woman at my height of 5'4' is between 108 to 145 lbs with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.
In the final stages of my addiction, there were days when I stepped on the scale and it would determine my mood or if I even called in sick to work. It doesn't take a genius to tell me how I gained the weight. My weight gain formula was simple. I ate too much, drank too much, created high stress and drama, lacked sleep, etc. It's not rocket science. The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar machine because most of us fail multiple times to control our eating. Ultimately, I think we fail because we don't take the time to figure out what is triggering us to overeat in the first place. Obviously, internal matters are usually harder to handle and take longer to fix, so working towards permanent fixes of our spirit don't compete well with the quick-fix messages from the diet industry. The secret that they don't want us to know though is that there is no secret to weight loss. For most people, the weight loss formula is basically, just eating right and exercising. Good calories in; good calories out. Obviously, easier said than done for most of us as it takes a lot of self-awareness and self-discipline. It's definitely been a lifestyle change for me and not a diet. I'm currently around 130 with a BMI of 22.3. I'd like to be around 120 lbs and I think I can get there in a healthy way by eating whole grains, fruits and veggies and exercising. The great part is that I don't need to pay any diet company to attain this goal.
Self-improvement has taken a lot of effort and hard work. Prior to inpatient treatment, I would have even preferred to die than deal with all of my stuff. To improve my life, I had to first own all of my self-destructive behaviors and self-induced high stress lifestyle. My daily goal is no longer to strive for perfection, but to be present. This change in mind-set has positively impacted all areas of my life including my relationship with food. I'm definitely more conscious about all the foods I eat. I even care about how the animals were treated and how the crops were maintained. I prefer to buy grass-fed beef, free-range organic chickens and eggs and almost all other foods labeled organic. I learned from the nutritionist who visited us weekly at The House that the USDA and FDA regulate foods labeled "organic," but they do not regulate foods labeled "natural" or "all-natural." I no longer want to eat foods that were genetically enhanced, modified or chemically treated. I look at the ingredients of almost all my foods now and if I cannot pronounce it, then I don't usually want to allow it inside my body. I spend more on my grocery bill, but save money on prescriptions and other future medical expenses by simply eating nutritious foods.
Of course, I'll splurge and have pop and candy sometimes, but it's not out of control as when my life was unmanageable. When I feel satisfied from food, I simply stop eating. Now that I've eliminated alcohol, a lot of sugar and some processed foods from my diet, it's easier to regulate my eating as my blood sugar levels aren't as sporadic. I try to eat 3 meals and 3 healthy snacks a day. By eating every 2-3 hours, I maintain my metabolism. I haven't been to any of the major fast food chains since leaving treatment. I don't have an appetite for those places anymore. Most of us can create food quickly that tastes infinitely better than any of those fast food chains and it's so much healthier for ourselves and our families. I enjoy preparing food at home, so I can control each ingredient. I also love eating at restaurants that care about the food that they prepare and serve people.
Later that night at The House, I shared with the girls that Dr Oz said that healthy poop should be S-shaped and golden brown. None of the girls believed me, so one of the counselors confirmed the info by looking it up on the Internet since none of us had access. I've only attained the golden S-shape a handful of times in the last couple years since being educated on the science of poop. I had everyone on the lookout for S-shapes. In the meantime, Liz was fluent in sign language and taught me the signs for constipation, diarrhea and pooping. Happy Eating!
**Names have been changed**
Our favorite topics at The House, when we weren't talking about recovery and addiction, were sex and I ensured the other topic was pooping. "I love to poop!" I exclaimed as all the girls laughed. Liz had just informed me that Chef Lacey hides ground flaxseed in almost everything we eat. Staff wanted to aid in improving our overall health which included flushing out and regulating our digestive systems. I couldn't taste the flax, but I could sure feel it as one of the many benefits of flax is pooping. It was certainly a luxury for me as regularity has been elusive for so many years due to poor nutrition associated with eating disorders, alcohol and prescription drug side effects. At my worst, I could go a week or longer without a bowel movement and had to take laxatives in order to be regular. The low carb diet Atkins caused me to be the most constipated. I lost almost 20 lbs a few years ago, but always felt bloated. While at The House, I made a promise to myself that I'd eat 3 meals a day instead of my usual 0 when I was starving myself to 10 when I was binging. I was glad to see that if I ate regularly and pooped that my stomach could still be semi-flat as my metabolism was regulating as well.
My mother liked dressing me up like a doll as a girl and sometimes she treated me like one by acting like I didn't have feelings. When I was about 5 years old, she had me try on pale pink dress in the living room. My chubby little body squeezed into it. It felt tight, but I didn't know what feeling fat was at that point. She stared at the ill-fitted dress and I could tell that she was disappointed. She told me to "suck in." There was no laughter and I was confused by what she wanted me to do. I believe one of my aunts was in the room and I felt sad to disappoint my mom. Later on, I began to understand and experience feeling fat. My mother told me that I had to shop in the pretty plus section and I felt embarrassed because I learned it was for fatter kids. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit the skinny genes that her biological daughters had received. I would sometimes stand next to my mom without her knowing, stick out my stomach and compare my body to hers. I thought that I was just as big and was even afraid that I might be pregnant as I didn't know how that happened at that time. I just knew it involved a big belly. When I was about 11 years old, my mom told me that I was fat. She told me that I was a pig and ate too many potatoes. That was my favorite food at the time. I was shocked and devastated that my mother said this to me. My mom and dad told me that fat people weren't respected and that they were just looking out for me. I was exasperated and ashamed, but I felt that I deserved it. The next day in school I tried telling my friend about the incident, but when the teacher walked by, I shut up because I didn't want my parents to get in trouble.
With insecure mothers and girlfriends along with societal pressures to be thin, it's easy and almost accepted to have an eating disorder in this country. I struggle with body image to this day and am working hard in therapy to reverse years of self-hatred. People have been kind over the years and complimented my looks or body, but I have a hard time believing them sometimes. I constantly hold in my stomach or suck in. One of my counselors said this behavior is common for people with eating disorders. I came from a line of women who were almost always on a diet and discussing openly how they disliked or hated their bodies. It made an impression on me as a young girl and I began hating my body, too. I didn't know any different and it felt uncomfortable to like my body or myself because it felt egotistical. My mother was always on a diet and buying exercise equipment that would later collect dust. She would workout to Richard Simmons or other health nuts and swallow diet pills that sometimes made her urinate blood. She weighed herself constantly. I became equally obsessed with weight as well and not surprisingly, developed an eating disorder as a teenager.
I had my first high school boyfriend at 15 years old and while making out on his couch one afternoon, I felt fat. I once overheard a boy at school talk about how he didn't like feeling a girl's "fat" stomach while they made out. I felt that I had a fat stomach, too, and didn't want my boyfriend to be disgusted, so I stopped eating. I had a friend with an eating disorder who only ate apples, so that's what I ate. I was on multiple tennis teams and would play a 2 to 3 hour match and then sometimes go home and exercise to ensure I worked off all the food. I got down to about 110 lbs which for my medium frame was thin and I stopped menstruating. Some of my friends were concerned about my weight and some were complimentary. I liked the attention and was competitive with weight as I was in sports. My immune system crashed and I was sick a lot, but I was skinny and felt more comfortable making out with my boyfriend. This line of thinking carried through to adulthood and I thought about my fat roles while making out or having sex with guys. I realize it's silly because they probably couldn't have cared less and I didn't care that most of them didn't have the perfect body either. I've discussed weight issues with some of my guy friends and all of them prefer normal sized women and not the anorexic ones featured in the entertainment industry.
As a teenager, both of my parents noticed that I was losing weight which I kind of liked. Even if it was negative attention, it was still attention. "You want to be like your anorexic friend," my mother would occasionally say to me. At one point, I was sitting on the floor watching TV in the living room and my dad walked in and sat on the floor about a foot behind me. He asked to feel my stomach. He seemed somewhat concerned, but expressed it awkwardly. He told me that I had no stomach. After feeling violated by him in the past, I said no. He asked a few more times to touch my stomach and I said no and then he finally left. No help for my eating disorder. Just more humiliation. I struggled with a lot of things growing up, but I didn't know how to ask them or others for help and neither did they. They never asked for help because they were arrogant and blameless and I felt that my mother was also selfish. I learned to be the same way and instead of seeking help from others, we battled each other. At one point my mom said that I made her not love me anymore and I hated her for saying that.
Many woman who are alcoholics also struggle with eating disorders. It's sometimes due to that all or nothing mentality. I'm keeping my eating disorder and other addictions in remission at the moment with the help of managing my stress levels and caring for my mind, body and spirit. Unlike alcohol, I obviously need food in order to survive, so despite the fact that it's one of my addictions, I cannot quit eating. I would say that I experienced anorexia in high school, but once I left my parents' house and was a little happier moving on to college, I ate junk food like everyone else and gained the Freshmen 15 or more. I still experienced bouts with anorexia throughout adulthood. However, drinking made eating more difficult to control. In recent years, my preference was to drink instead of eat or binge and not eat for a few days. As my drinking increased, my inhibitions decreased with food. I began to give in to hunger. I ate more on a daily basis and binged more often. If I hadn't kept active by exercising and being involved in multiple sports up until my car accident in September, I would've easily become obese. I always binged in private. In the past, I had no qualms about starving in public as it was more accepted.
My weight has fluctuated over the years depending on how I'm feeling and what's happening in my life. As I mentioned earlier, I had lost almost 20 lbs by starving my body of carbs on the Atkins Diet a few years ago. I was strict about it, so even my drinks were low carb. I got down to about 130 lbs and it felt fabulous to buy a whole new size 4 wardrobe. The joy was only temporary though as the voices told me that I needed to be skinnier. Nothing was ever good enough. It used to be the perfect size 6 for so many years, now it seems to be the perfect size 2 or even 0. I maintained a size 4 for a year, but I was not emotionally nor physically healthy. As I began ingesting more carbs the following year, I gained all the weight back and eventually, became overweight for the first time in my life due to multiple factors including poor diet. My lowest weight was in high school at around 110 lbs and my highest was about a year ago when I hit 160 lbs. I was officially overweight according to the government weight charts and I felt extremely miserable. My already low self-esteem plummeted at that point. My BMI was 27.5 and fell in the overweight range of 25 to 29.9. A normal weight range for a woman at my height of 5'4' is between 108 to 145 lbs with a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9.
In the final stages of my addiction, there were days when I stepped on the scale and it would determine my mood or if I even called in sick to work. It doesn't take a genius to tell me how I gained the weight. My weight gain formula was simple. I ate too much, drank too much, created high stress and drama, lacked sleep, etc. It's not rocket science. The diet industry is a multi-billion dollar machine because most of us fail multiple times to control our eating. Ultimately, I think we fail because we don't take the time to figure out what is triggering us to overeat in the first place. Obviously, internal matters are usually harder to handle and take longer to fix, so working towards permanent fixes of our spirit don't compete well with the quick-fix messages from the diet industry. The secret that they don't want us to know though is that there is no secret to weight loss. For most people, the weight loss formula is basically, just eating right and exercising. Good calories in; good calories out. Obviously, easier said than done for most of us as it takes a lot of self-awareness and self-discipline. It's definitely been a lifestyle change for me and not a diet. I'm currently around 130 with a BMI of 22.3. I'd like to be around 120 lbs and I think I can get there in a healthy way by eating whole grains, fruits and veggies and exercising. The great part is that I don't need to pay any diet company to attain this goal.
Self-improvement has taken a lot of effort and hard work. Prior to inpatient treatment, I would have even preferred to die than deal with all of my stuff. To improve my life, I had to first own all of my self-destructive behaviors and self-induced high stress lifestyle. My daily goal is no longer to strive for perfection, but to be present. This change in mind-set has positively impacted all areas of my life including my relationship with food. I'm definitely more conscious about all the foods I eat. I even care about how the animals were treated and how the crops were maintained. I prefer to buy grass-fed beef, free-range organic chickens and eggs and almost all other foods labeled organic. I learned from the nutritionist who visited us weekly at The House that the USDA and FDA regulate foods labeled "organic," but they do not regulate foods labeled "natural" or "all-natural." I no longer want to eat foods that were genetically enhanced, modified or chemically treated. I look at the ingredients of almost all my foods now and if I cannot pronounce it, then I don't usually want to allow it inside my body. I spend more on my grocery bill, but save money on prescriptions and other future medical expenses by simply eating nutritious foods.
Of course, I'll splurge and have pop and candy sometimes, but it's not out of control as when my life was unmanageable. When I feel satisfied from food, I simply stop eating. Now that I've eliminated alcohol, a lot of sugar and some processed foods from my diet, it's easier to regulate my eating as my blood sugar levels aren't as sporadic. I try to eat 3 meals and 3 healthy snacks a day. By eating every 2-3 hours, I maintain my metabolism. I haven't been to any of the major fast food chains since leaving treatment. I don't have an appetite for those places anymore. Most of us can create food quickly that tastes infinitely better than any of those fast food chains and it's so much healthier for ourselves and our families. I enjoy preparing food at home, so I can control each ingredient. I also love eating at restaurants that care about the food that they prepare and serve people.
Later that night at The House, I shared with the girls that Dr Oz said that healthy poop should be S-shaped and golden brown. None of the girls believed me, so one of the counselors confirmed the info by looking it up on the Internet since none of us had access. I've only attained the golden S-shape a handful of times in the last couple years since being educated on the science of poop. I had everyone on the lookout for S-shapes. In the meantime, Liz was fluent in sign language and taught me the signs for constipation, diarrhea and pooping. Happy Eating!
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