No Matter How Little, It’s Always Too Much…

CW: eating disorders, disordered thinking, fatphobia, suicide, self-harm, bingeing, restriction, self-loathing

I have an eating disorder. I’m desperately trying to recover right now, but I have an eating disorder. I know this and everyone who looks at me seems to know it too.

“I have an eating disorder!” I say, longing for connection -- for reassurance, for help. I’m drowning in my disorder, reaching out for someone to pull me up out of the roiling waves before the water fills my lungs.

“You have an eating disorder.” They agree.

And for a moment, I think I might have the support I need. I reach out for their hand, so happy that I will soon be free from the saltwater that stings my eyes and burns my lungs.

“You’re clearly suffering from binge-eating disorder.”

I look down at my body. I am fat. There’s no escaping from that fact. I am fat. My belly sticks out farther than my breasts, my thighs and my arms jiggle…my cheeks are round and my chin is in duplicate. I like my body, truth be told. I like the way it feels, I like the way it looks. I like the softness and the jiggle.

But I know how it looks to everyone else. I know what it represents to everyone else.

I look back on what I’ve eaten today or yesterday or the day before and I ask myself: did I binge recently?

This morning I ate two bowls or cereal. I’m at a stage in my recovery where I’m starting to get my hunger signals back -- over a month of actually eating meals and I can feel hunger again. And this morning, I’m still hungry after the first 8 oz. bowl. So I eat a second.

It makes me uncomfortably full, it makes my stomach ache, it makes me nauseous… I have heartburn after and milk keeps trying to come back up…

That must have been a binge. I felt so out of control, I felt like I just couldn’t stop. I ate past the point of comfort and I felt so guilty afterward. So, it must have been a binge. I must have eaten too much. I must be eating too much.

Why else would I still be so big? Why else would everyone assume I have BED? There’s no way that everyone could be wrong.

So I eat two bites of dinner and I put it in the microwave for “later” but later never comes. I used to let the dog steal it -- how could anyone be mad at me for not eating when the dog stole it?

Now I just say “I’m not that hungry right now.” Or “I feel kinda nauseous, I’ll eat later.”

Later never comes.

But what’s making me nauseous is the guilt. It’s the absolute certainty: I binged this morning. I did exactly what all those people who hate me, all those people who tell me I should kill myself because I’m a disgusting drain on society accuse me of. I binged. I stuffed my face, I gorged myself.

So, I skip dinner and I tell myself: tomorrow I’ll do better. I won’t binge. I won’t eat more than I need to. I won’t stuff my fat fucking face.

And the next day, I eat a single pastry with a cup of tea for breakfast and I tell myself that I’m being good.That’s enough to tide me over the 9 hours until dinner.

I do not eat lunch.

If I keep myself distracted, I don’t notice that I’m hungry. And when I do notice I remind myself: you already ate. You have no reason to be hungry. You don’t need to eat again until dinner.

I take two bites of dinner and I put it aside for later. Later never comes. Later will never come.

I know I need to stop eating so much, I need to stop bingeing.

The longer it goes on, the faster I feel like I’m out of control. Three bites of dinner and I feel full. Six bites of dinner and I feel like I’m going to throw up.

My stomach is bloated, my stomach hurts. How can that be too much food? I ask myself the question but I know that it is.

If it makes me bloated, if it makes my stomach hurt, if it makes me so very full that I feel like my stomach is going to burst? That must be a binge.

I have binge eating disorder and I have to stop bingeing.

It’s not that I want to be smaller. I like my body, like I said. I just want the abuse to stop. I want my doctor to stop glaring at me and telling me to lose weight. My joints wouldn’t hurt if I was smaller, she tells me. I wouldn’t be so tired and dizzy all the time if I was smaller… and if I want to be smaller, I have to eat less, she tells me.

“How is your appetite?” My psychiatrist asks at our last appointment.

“It’s been really bad lately, most days I can hardly eat because I’m so dizzy and nauseous.”

“Well,you’re up twelve pounds since the last time I saw you, so let’s not worry about that.”

I’m so tired. I just want people to like me. I just want to be accepted. I just want to exist.

But this body isn’t allowed to just exist. Whether I like it or not, my body is a statement.

Unless I make it smaller. I’m too tired to exercise. I’m dizzy and exhausted when I walk 5 minutes to the pharmacy. This wouldn’t happen if I was smaller, people tell me.

So I have to get smaller. It doesn’t matter if my blood sugar is low and my blood pressure is low. When I got an echocardiogram last year, the tech told me my heart was in “perfect health".

But if I don’t get smaller, if I don’t become less, I’m going to get diabetes. I’m going to get heart disease and I am going to die painfully. Miserably.

It doesn’t matter if my mother and my brother and my sister all gained weight at 22 like I did. It doesn’t matter if diabetes is mostly genetic. It doesn’t matter if heart disease risks go up in people who diet again and again…

I know I’m not actually at higher risk because of my weight. I know that those studies were biased and fatphobic.

I need to stop eating so much or I’m going to die.

I need to be smaller or I’m going to die.

I feel so guilty every time I eat. I feel out of control with every bite that passes my lips…

No matter how little I eat, it always feels like too much.

So the solution, obviously, is not to eat.

I’m having a relapse in my recovery from atypical anorexia right now… since August, I’ve been managing to eat regular meals -- only two a day and still eating really, really small portions but doing better. I left the fat acceptance/activism community to give myself some space away from the abuse that comes from being in fat activism so that I could recover.

But it hasn’t stopped the harassment. The last couple days/week I’ve had a lot of people showing up to tell me I need to stop stuffing my face. To call me disgusting and delusional and call me a drain on society because of my size and disability.

I just wanted to get the thoughts out of my head.