R E C O V E R Y: A Journey of Kicking an Eating Disorder and Loving Myself

Introducing Bobo

I guess what you really want to here is about my eating disorder, and for the purpose of this diary I think we will give it a name, rather than consistently referring to it as "my eating disorder" or "the eating disorder", we will refer to is as "Bobo".

 Bobo has been with me much longer than I realised. It was actually when I started my degree in psychology and took their booklet of scale assesments to register you for honours research projects as a participatiant, that I was cued in that I have a problem. Bobo was laxative use, excessive fasting and excessive exercise.

Bobo, I originally thought (more on this later) had been around since I was 14 years old, which is when I started noticing weight gain after always been the super skinny child who could eat anything and everything she wanted (at literally the most unhealthy amounts). Suprise, surpise, this weight gain correlated when I started the cpontraceptive pill, 'Levlen' to assist with regulating my periods which at the time would be super heavy and go for at least 10 days at a time. 10 days of heavy bleeding was not at all doable, much less enjoyable and it impacted on every aspect of my life, I had to stop swimming competitively because I was missing so many sessions, I had cramps and was always worried about bleeding through or not knowing when Bobo would grace me with its prescence as there was no shedule, pattern or cycle.The pill was a godsend, it stopped all of that, however it came with weight gain, over 10kgs worth.

I would just like to put a note in here about the pill. Weight gain on the pill, just like ALL the other side effects are individual expeirence. What I mean by this is Levlen my have made me gain weight, but it might not make other females gain weight. Just like Yasmin hasn't caused me to have any mood swings but other females expressed having mood swings so bad, they had to switch pills. It is all individual experience and it is never the same for two people.

I wish I had educated myself more on the pill I was taking, and what to look for. I didn't know a side effect of the pill was weight gain, I didn't know the pill had any side effects at all and my doctor at the time was less than helpful on providing me with this information or any support at all, and so I didn't understand why I was gaining weight and this led to disordered thinking and thus very disordered and unhealthy habits. I started to excerise each night before sleep, in fact, I couldn't go to sleep unless I have performed my ritual of situps, crunches, squats, wallsits and pushups and I started to weigh myself each night. I saw the weight continuing to creep up.

Important side note. Scale weight doesn't mean much which is something I have learnt and am still coming to terms with but more on this later! By the time I was in year 10, I noticed the weight more significantly and it affected me greatly, which begs the question, why should our weight affect how we feel about ourselves? Why are we conditioned to feel this way?It was in year 10 that my disordered behaviour started to become more frequent. Excessive exercise on limited energy and I began to dable in the silly practice of fasting. It didn't help that my closest friends at the time were toxic people who encouraged me to base my self worth on how much I weighed or the shape of m body with my bet friend at the time telling me to put shorts on over my bikini bottoms at a pool party because, "You can see your stretch marks". 

I would like to also make it clear that stretch marks are normal and natural and I have plenty of them and they do not bother me because well they are just evidence that I just, well you know, grew at some point in my life and no I will not cover them up.

Year 11 things became more stressful becuase I started ATAR, which if you are unfamiliar with it, it is the advertised highschool pathway for direct university entry, it is unnecessarily hard and just a waste of time. During this time my eating habits were up and down. Most of the time I ate healthy but during some points, like exam period, I tended to eat home made oily wedges for lunch everyday. The weight got to a point where I was still in a healthy BMI but because I am short, it was noticeable. I didn't feel good about myself at all.

Year 12, final year of school and I was stressed out to the max, getting a max of 5 hours of sleep at night and studying every free hour I had. I started eating one meal a day with a lot of the time that one meal being an up and go full of sugar. I ran a min of 2km a day and did at least 10 minutes a day on the exercise bike, on top of netball and a poor attempt at weight training in the early mornings. I was exhausted, absilutely shattered and sickly but the weight stuck. It would only nudge the max of 1.5kg ! So I moved on to bigger things, laxatives to be exact, on top of all the exercise and fasting, but still it didn't budge. I felt like shit 99% of the time and because I was so hungry, I regualrly binged (although at the time I didn't see it as binging) and would have 3 helpings of dinner and so many cookies. I just felt exaspervated and I experienced immense sadness and anxiety. 

I will put here that a lot of people think of eating disorders has being underweight and purging but eating disorders come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Excessive fasting, excessive exercise and laxative abuse are all signs of Buliemia Nervosa. 

When I started uni, I decided that was it and I joined an all female gym as I had so much anxiety about going to the gym. I didn't like the gym but I went at least 3 times a week and noticed within days definition and toning (5 days to be exact). I ended up losing some weight and I felt so confident, but I still didn't have the eating thing down or really knew what I was doing when I was at the gym. I did the same programme day in and day out and I found it so boring, but I was starting to like the way I looked so I continued to go. I had no idea about progressive overload or increasing reps, so aside from losing some weight, I didn't make any progress. All throughout my first and second year of uni I went through phases of consistently going to the gym, and then weeks of not going at all. I had to stop going to the all female gym as it was too expensive so I joined the uni gym which was pact with male uni students trying to become body builders. Needless to say I really hated it. The equitpment was so old, I got a workout just trying to set it up and was too anxious to ask for help. During this time I occasionally purged but I didn't binge. This did nothing for the weightloss. 

So what did I do, I tried another cheap gym and I really liked it aside from the body builders who used like ALL the equitpment at once and when ever I asked for help from the staff they were quite hostile. I was doing the same workout day in and day out, going 5 days a week, 2 hours everyday. It was during this time I started experiencing problems with my pill and I put more weight on than I had ever done before. At the time, however I didn't associate it with the pill and changed up my diet and this was the reason I started exercising for 2 hours at a time. The purging became more often but it was still not consistent and I didn't connect it still with being mentally ill. 

You don't need to workout for 2 hours a day nor go even 5 days a week. I currently go 3 days for 30 - 50 minutes! 

The excessive exercise did nothing! I was so deflated so I just quit the gym all together. I went to the doctor and had tests run and nothing! I was tired of the issues I was having with the pill so I spoke to my doctor and we changed it. After two months or so I noticed improvements in how my clothes fit and it was then that I started workout with my partner at an outdoor body weight gym and some running. I felt a lot better and my clothes were fitting so much better but I didn't actually notice my body shape change in the mirror. I started to intermittently fast and this was the plane ticket back to builemia.