Tag Archives: eating disorder

My Love/Hate Relationship with the Scale (or Can I Drop Kick a Scale without Hurting Myself?)

Posted on August 31, 2012 | Comments Off on My Love/Hate Relationship with the Scale (or Can I Drop Kick a Scale without Hurting Myself?)

One thing that I’ve found in common with most people with eating disorders is the love/hate relationship people have with their scale.

I used to love my scale. I would weigh myself dozens of times a day. After I ate a meal, after taking a shower, after using the bathroom, before and after a workout. I was obsessed with the daily fluctuations of the numbers on my scale. I learned how to manipulate it to my advantage before I had weigh ins at my therapist. If I had a huge meal before I was going to see her, I knew exactly what to do to make the scale be either the same or only a little higher than what it was last time. As much as I’ve tried to forget some of these things, some of it is stuck in my head. I will always remember that the Chinese food binge that I enjoyed would add 5 pounds on the scale. The gain was a mix of the amount of food and the bloating from sodium.

The scale that I had back then broke. I was devastated. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a new scale. That old one was my friend and I trusted it. And that exact model wasn’t made anymore so I couldn’t find an exact replacement.

After a few months of not having a scale. My mom bought one for me without me knowing it. If I had known she was going to do that, I would have told her no. I didn’t want another scale. I didn’t know if I could trust another one.

I’ve had that new scale for several years now. I’m still obsessed with the number on it, so I make a big effort to only step on the scale once a day. That doesn’t happen all the time, but I’m trying.

But recently, my scale has been showing signs of it not working quite right. I’ll weigh myself and somehow I’m 8 pounds lower than yesterday. I step off and get back on, and I’m at 1 pound less than yesterday. If I step on it a few times in a row in the morning, it can be as big as a 10 pound difference.

This is a huge problem for me and keeping my mind in the right mindset. So with the long weekend ahead, I think I’m going to venture out to Bed, Bath, & Beyond (with a coupon), and look into getting a new scale. I might go for a less high-tech one because I feel that might help the lifespan of my scale. Right now, my scale does weight and body fat and has 3 profiles on it for different family members. I don’t need all of that.

All I need is a scale that I can use and hopefully love more than hate.

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Posted in Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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Going Back Instead of Forward (or Trying to Learn From the What Ifs)

Posted on August 1, 2012 | 1 comment

Last night, I watched the women’s gymnastics team win gold. That was an awesome moment. I’ve always felt a connection to gymnastics. I did gymnastics for a few years as a kid (I can still do a cartwheel, roundoff, somersaults, and the splits). But I think my gymnastics interest peaked in 1996.

That was the year that the magnificent seven won the team gold medal. And Amy Chow was one of those seven girls. Amy Chow trained at the same gym that I went to as a kid. We were there at the same time (but not at all at the same level). I remember my mom telling me during the ’96 Olympics that she remembered watching Amy at the gym and seeing how amazing she was as a kid.

Back then, I wondered what would have happened if I never quit gymnastics. I honestly don’t remember why I quit (I think it had something to do with being fearful of the back handspring, but I might be remembering it wrong). Could I have been an Olympic caliber gymnast too?

I look back at my life at various points and wonder what if. Sometimes, I drive myself crazy with what ifs. One that kills me is wondering what if I tried to lose the weight when I wasn’t as heavy. Or what if I had realized that I wasn’t horribly fat and just needed to lose a little weight.

The picture below is the day I moved into my freshman dorm at Loyola Marymount University. I’m standing next to my best friend Kate.

I remember feeling so unbelievably fat in that picture. Those shorts were bought at Lane Bryant, and they were the first item that I ever bought there. I was so embarrassed that I wasn’t shopping at BP in Nordstroms.

Now when I look at that picture, I wish I looked like that. Yes, I was bigger than my friend, but I looked pretty normal.

If only I knew then what I knew now. Along with my eating disorder, I was diagnosed with panic/anxiety disorder and body dysmorphia. I don’t see my body the same way that the world sees it.

When I lost weight in 2006, I had a trainer. And my trainer would compare my body to others working out in the gym so I could have a sense of what my smaller body looked like. But without her constantly in my ear, I stopped seeing the reality and started to see my fake body in my head.

This time, I’m focusing on my objective benchmarks. I have a love/hate relationship with my scale, so I will use that, but I can’t always trust it. I’m using a tape measure for waist/hip measurements as well as paying attention to my clothing size.

I know that I can’t go back and change what I’ve done, but I’m really trying hard to learn my lessons from the past.

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Sharing the Truth (or It’s Time To Rip Off the Band-Aid)

Posted on July 26, 2012 | 11 comments

There are some things that I just love to share with everyone (I mean, hello, I’m writing a blog!). But there are other things that I either keep to myself or share half truths about.

I’ve found that being secretive like this is dangerous. When something isn’t out in the open, it eats you up inside.

The two main things I’ve been secretive about in the past are my issues with food and my credit card debt.

I kept my credit card debt a secret because I didn’t know anybody else with debt. Maybe student loans, but not credit cards. Nobody in my family really has credit card debt. I was taught to always pay off the full balance each month. And I did do that for a while. But then I found myself without a job. And I still had bills to pay. So they went on my credit card. And now, I have debt.

But I’m working my way towards paying it off. It’s going to take some time, but I’ll do it. And once I started telling people I had debt, I started hearing from other people that are in the same situation as me. For some reason, people don’t like to talk about it, so it feels like something to be ashamed of. But it’s not. So here I am saying that I have credit card debt, it sucks, but I’m working on paying it off.

My issues with food is something harder for me to discuss. This is something that I’ve dealt with my entire life, and I’ve only been honest with myself for the last few years. For those of you who don’t know me that well (or I just haven’t told you this yet), I have an eating disorder. I’ve probably had it most of my life, but it was only properly diagnosed when I was in college. The thing that sucks the most for me is that I don’t have anorexia or bulimia, I am a binge eater. And that seems to be the eating disorder that isn’t as studied or as common to hear about. Most people are pretty secretive about having it. So as I’ve tried to get treatment, it’s very difficult to find someone who understands my disorder and doesn’t try to treat me as a bulimic.

So revealing this to you all is a big step. And I only had the courage to do it after something that happened yesterday. I was out at happy hour at Bodega with my best friend. She and I have been friends for 20 years, so she’s more than just my best friend, she’s my family. We were deciding on what food to order for dinner when I had mentioned that I hadn’t really had too much food that day. I was saving my calories for happy hour. I wanted to prove it, so I got out my phone and showed her my food diary I keep on My Fitness Pal (which is an awesome app). We were laughing about it and she mentioned that she uses the app too. For some crazy reason, in my head I only thought that people who use the app are people struggling to lose weight. But my friend doesn’t have a weight problem. She’s super in shape and has even done a marathon before!

And then it hit me. Keeping track of your food is something that normal people do. Just like how I’m not the only one with debt, I’m not the only one who tracks my food and workout calories. Somehow, this made me feel so much better. I don’t need to be ashamed of tracking my food and trying to live a healthy lifestyle. This is what I should be sharing with everyone.

So I am.

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Posted in Food, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

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