My Story - Beating Bulimia
As a young woman who has suffered within the eating disorder world, I have found many avenues to seek information, assistance, education and support. Though it wasn’t easy to get started on recovery. Why? Here’s my story.
I was an incredibly healthy teenager. Mum & Dad always made sure there was enough food on the table to feed both myself, and my two brothers who may as well be giant food disposals. First in best dressed in our household!
It’s an incredible thing to look back on now, appreciating the hard work and effort they both put into feeding us three kids. By no means was it easy nor cheap. Though it was their priority to provide us the world. That included the mountainous portion sizes that I would 100% consume, and probably devour it faster than the boys! What I thought then as a revolving door of magical deliciousness, quickly turned into the food fear nightmare once I entered the health and fitness world.
I was always quite confident in the girl I was, and never really looked at myself in a negative light. Ma always made sure that I knew that I was fearless, independent, incredible, and gorgeous inside and out as I was going through highschool. Though with the influence of the outside world, this was crushed quite fast.
It started with a 9 weeks challenge with the local gym. I partook in this challenge to lose as much weight as I could. I did well, but no winning prize. My family friend (trainer at the time) and I thought that It’d be a cool idea to then dive into the Body Building and Bikini competitors world. I was guided through exercise in this 22 weeks comp prep where I learnt so much about my body, the way it functioned physically, the thing I could do to push myself. There comes a time in this world where training a healthy amount isn’t enough. I pushed myself and trained 2 hours of weights and 1-2 hours of cardio every day. What I took on myself was the nutrition. No knowledge, no experience, nothing but YouTube video’s of my favourite YouTube stars showing me how many grams of protein was in their morning Protein Pancakes. It was easy to say that I loved seeing the progress of the fat that was dropped, alongside the compliments of nearly every single person in my life, telling me how great I looked at such a slim size.
Clothing sizes ran from a size 12-14 when I was 18 or 19yrs. Through the comp prep, I was then shopping for size 10, 8 or sometimes 6. THIS… was a confidence booster. Though for some reason I just didn’t see myself at that size. All I could see was the pinchable fat on my hips, the non-existent double chin, and the imaginary cellulite I had on the back of my legs.
I remember to this day, waking up the morning of competition day, feeling so tired, lethargic and sick. Looking in the mirror, I could see the sharpness of my hip bones poking through my skin. I would stand there in the mirror for hours admiring myself for how skinny I looked, and how I could feel the ‘fatless skin’ roll over my hip bones, waiting for them to cut through.
To cut the dramatics, it still wasn’t good enough. I wanted more. Though I was over it at the same time. I got up on stage, so lack luster, not wanting to be there. My brothers were there to support me, and I remember talking to them, watching them eat burger rings as I had to wait, and we devised a plan to get up there, get it done, and then bail with water, pizza and lollies in hand. That is exactly what we did.
At this stage, there was no real alarm bells to tell me that I was on my way to quite the serious eating disorder. The entirety of the post comp week consisted of ice cream for breakfast, pizza for lunch, chippies at every waking moment I could find, and then some.
It was safe to say, the enormity of food consumed was sickening. That’s where it really started. I saw my body changing, the fluid retention building and making me look ‘fat’. HOWEVER, for some reason, I felt better when I ate myself sick to the point of vomiting.
The thought was… hang on… I can actually eat this kind of stuff and not get fat if I just throw it all up. So it began. Boy I was wrong.
Every single meal, snack, drink, I purged. I didn’t shift any weight, I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t think for general day to day duties, and I was going down hill fast. What I ended up with was
- Gut health issues from the acidity of my purges
- Intolerances to foods like red meat, fish, cheese, variety of vegetables due to severe restriction
- Chronic Fatigue
- Constant brain fog – The scariest moment was driving on the highway, and I even have a recording of me talking to the camera, then the next thing you know, my brain has completely shut down, my hands fells off the steering wheel, and I nearly lost control of the car at 100km/hr
- Ruined relationships from being so hormonal and constantly snapping at those closest to me
- Complete secluded behaviours
- Thyroid & metabolism issues
- Beginnings of tooth decay (thank god its fixed now.. yuck)
- And the list goes on….
While this was unfolding, nobody knew. People could see that I was acting out, and that I wasn’t my normal happy self. Though it was put down to ‘oh… she is just a hormonal teen’. I became incredibly sneaky and clever at hiding it. So I suffered alone. Now this intense period was about 8-10 months post-competition, so this had been building for over a year. I remember the feeling of being so lost, and not in control of my own head, I honestly had no other idea’s on how I was meant to live.
It's a horrible disorder to suffer alone. Let me tell you, there is probably someone in your life suffering that is keeping it to themselves. We get sneaky. Going to the bathroom after every meal with a lining of toilet paper so they couldn’t hear the splash and a towel over my head to hide the noise… I would consume the foods that I really wanted, chew them up and spit them out so I wouldn’t gain the calories…yep… yuck. But this is what happens. These tactics are what run through your brain when you are just at your whits end, and you just don’t know how to be a functioning human anymore. This was normal!
Now going back to those big beautiful brothers of mine, this is where the recovery started. I swallowed my pride on doing everything alone, and I talked to one of them. I remember clear as day, we walked down the driveway, across to the cars across the park and I told him everything. I was confused, embarrassed, lost, and emotional, and you know what I was met with? Action. He said (and this will never exit my mind) “let’s get this sorted”. Something as simple as that made me feel like I didn’t have to do this alone, and that I was going to be OK!!
… To Be Continued