OR
If a Disease is Never Officially Diagnosed, Is The Person Still Considered Ill?
The goal of perfection has permeated almost every aspect of my life. I’ve had thirty plus years for it to infiltrate. As I mentioned before, I remember almost every mistake I have ever made and I still find myself inflicting punishment for my transgressions. There is a saying that one learns from one’s mistakes. I have dutifully tried to do that, tried to never make the same mistake twice, however, I find that, over and over, when the going gets tough, Jeanne wants to punish herself. The easiest, least conspicuous way to do this is to restrict what I eat. Ideally, this is in addition to increased movements (exercise, if you will.) Anything that will help burn more calories than I eat.
At one point in my life, I came very close to achieving this ideal. I consciously burned almost as many calories as I took in. It was my sophomore year in college. Nineteen years old and never been kissed. Amazing, huh? It’s not like my face was covered in acne or warts at any point in my life. It’s not like I was a nasty bitch either.
Anyway, I digress. The fall of my sophomore year saw me about fifteen pounds lighter than the year before. People often warn of the “freshman fifteen.” What they don’t tell you is that it can work the other way. You can lose weight – combination of hating the cafeteria food, walking to classes and to your room constantly, and needing something to keep busy. It also helps if you don’t drink alcohol.
My sophomore year dawned with a new resolution on my part. I was going to lose more weight. The month before I returned to school, I exercised as much as possible. I jogged at night, went for walks with my equally unemployed girlfriend and kept moving. I ate dinner because I had to keep up appearances, but away from home, at school, I had no such pretenses. I ate dinner each night with my friends, a group of ten that came together through fate. All intelligent, non-major partiers that wanted to succeed in college.
Everyone knew that I didn’t like the food – most of my freshman year dinners consisted of salads with my own low-fat dressing. So, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise when that’s all I would eat. Lunch was a turkey sandwich on white (this was before the whole-grain movement) and, of course, salad. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with skim milk. Each night, if I had my three hours of exercise in the morning, I allowed myself one Hershey's Kiss. Yeah, you read right, one Kiss. About 25 calories.
I pinned pictures of the thinnest Victoria’s Secret models in my wardrobe to keep me focused. I kept a food journal – a little memopad that I dutifully wrote down what I ate.
I would get up shortly after my roommate would leave for work (she was a waitress at Perkins and worked odd shifts,) usually around three in the morning, and put in my step aerobics tape. I pulled up a step that my grandfather had made for my mom, I think, when she was a kid and worked through all three levels of the tape (about 2 hours worth.) Mind you, the step is about a foot off the ground.
In the afternoon, I would try to get to the exercise room or better still, to aerobics class. Aerobics class was easier to get to when I was a freshman though. I had more demands on my time as a sophomore – I was a tour guide for Admissions and worked in the library a few hours a week. But I tried as best I could.
My hard work paid off, I got down to 105 pounds at one point. I have a picture of me around this time (there aren’t many – I hate getting my picture taken. Cameras add ten pounds, don’t you know.) When I’m in a healthy frame of mind (which is not often these days,) I see skin and bones. Even though I’m five foot two inches tall in sneakers and technically, 105 pounds is still in the healthy range for me, for some reason, I didn’t look healthy. Maybe it was just that I was malnourished – I obviously wasn’t eating enough of all the food groups, nor did I take a multivitamin to supplement. Of course, I’ve learned from these mistakes.
Anyway, I don’t remember much else from this semester at college. I vaguely remember Halloween – trick-or-treating with my friend Mikey for canned goods for Circle K (the college branch of the Kiwanis Club.) I went as an eighteenth century horsewoman and wore a thin polyester blouse with a wool blazer. Froze my tukus off as it snowed upon me. Mikey went as Charlie Brown (he shares a remarkable resemblance) and had to pee, if I recall, really bad.
I often wonder if my friends ever had a clue as to what I was doing to myself. At the end of my freshman year, as we were getting ready to go home for the summer, I talked to one of the gang members, Kelly, about my fear that I had a problem with food. (I didn’t want to seem melodramatic and say I was coming down with anorexia.) She’d said she’d keep an eye on me. Of course, that summer, as I was unemployed, I haunted the local library with my girlfriend from high school. We’d walked there almost every day. I read every single book about eating disorders that was on the shelf (not even a half dozen.)
In my diary from that time, I have only three entries. The first is dated September second, written after midnight. In it, I suspected that if I wasn’t anorexic, I was well on my way. I also wrote that I didn’t want to stop, even if I were. After revealing that I wanted to be thin and beautiful and that usually outweighed my desire for sweets, I asked, “who [sic] would I turn to who would understand?”
I answered,
“The clincher is – I really don’t want to change even though I know ultimately I may be hurting myself. Maybe this is my way to make my wish come true – to find out who truly cares about me without actually dying. It’s strange, I think I know the cause but it still doesn’t make me want to stop! I remember most of the comments people said/say, “You’re chubby” (my pediatrician) “Porky Pig” (my sixth grade teacher.) Even tonight, Mike thought I hurt my butt and said, “Don’t worry – you have a lot of padding there.” I don’t think he meant that I was fat but that’s how I feel. I feel like a lard ball. Today I was doing an aerobic tape and I could feel my butt jiggling (and my inner thighs.) It was revolting. People tell me that I look good but I still feel like I look fat.”
And I thought I
might have a problem?
A few things jump out at me as I read through this.
The first is the belief that I was (am) invincible. “may be hurting myself.” I was eating between 400 and 600 calories a day, exercising off around 300 calories and I thought may be I was hurting myself?
The second is how I read my friend Mikey’s comment – how I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I am fat. In hindsight (after being friends with Mikey for over ten years,) I realize that he meant to say that all humans are supposed to have padding in the butt and not that my butt in particular was enormously well-stocked.
The other thing that strikes me is how things haven’t really changed. When I exercise, I still am conscious of my jiggling butt, inner thighs, and now, belly (pregnancy is a many splendored thing.)
The other entry that is worth mentioning is the one dated November fifteenth, two days after a fellow sophomore was murdered. It reads,
“At 114 lbs, I still think I’m fat. I know I’m anorexic. I don’t know when I’m full or hungry. But I still want to be thin. I’ve been putting off telling anyone because I want to be thin. I binge every night it seems. I can’t stand that. I can’t control anything else. The only thing that isn’t out of my hands is food. Nothing else is predictable in my life. I get the feeling that no one truly cares about me. (Jodi [my roommate] would be she’s never around.) Jen worries about Lori. Lori eats twice as much as I do yet no one worries about me. Why? Is it because I’m too fat? Is it because I can do things on my own sometimes and not be dependent on whether someone is going along with me? To a certain extent, I am independent – I do like my own company at times. But it seems to me that if I go walking someplace alone (at dusk,) it’s OK but if someone else tries to, everyone is extremely worries and protests. Why is that?”
This era represents the thinnest I had ever gotten in my adult life. Technically, I was never underweight. Technically, I was not anorexic, even when I was eating less than 600 calories a day. [On a nerd note, an unconscious person would burn about 1440 calories each day. I was eating less than half that.] And I never saw myself as thin.
On an interesting aside, at 108ish pounds, I was only a size 8. Today, I have hovered around 125 and am a size 4 or 6. So, either the fashion industry has revised the standard sizes or there is some truth to the theory that muscle weighs more than fat.
Anyway, to this day, I wonder how true my interpretation of my sophomore year is. Did any of my friends have a clue? Todd tells me that Mikey mentioned, as he was encouraging Todd to ask me out, that I had issues with eating. Once before we started dating, Todd came up to me as I was walking to class and said something along the lines of, “I noticed you hardly ate anything.” I believe I told him to back off or get a life. Even now, my hackles are raised when he asks about what I’ve eaten. I fiercely try to defend my independence while desperately wanting to be cared for. A paradox. The story of my life, it seems.
The goal of perfection has permeated almost every aspect of my life. I’ve had thirty plus years for it to infiltrate. As I mentioned before, I remember almost every mistake I have ever made and I still find myself inflicting punishment for my transgressions. There is a saying that one learns from one’s mistakes. I have dutifully tried to do that, tried to never make the same mistake twice, however, I find that, over and over, when the going gets tough, Jeanne wants to punish herself. The easiest, least conspicuous way to do this is to restrict what I eat. Ideally, this is in addition to increased movements (exercise, if you will.) Anything that will help burn more calories than I eat.
At one point in my life, I came very close to achieving this ideal. I consciously burned almost as many calories as I took in. It was my sophomore year in college. Nineteen years old and never been kissed. Amazing, huh? It’s not like my face was covered in acne or warts at any point in my life. It’s not like I was a nasty bitch either.
Anyway, I digress. The fall of my sophomore year saw me about fifteen pounds lighter than the year before. People often warn of the “freshman fifteen.” What they don’t tell you is that it can work the other way. You can lose weight – combination of hating the cafeteria food, walking to classes and to your room constantly, and needing something to keep busy. It also helps if you don’t drink alcohol.
My sophomore year dawned with a new resolution on my part. I was going to lose more weight. The month before I returned to school, I exercised as much as possible. I jogged at night, went for walks with my equally unemployed girlfriend and kept moving. I ate dinner because I had to keep up appearances, but away from home, at school, I had no such pretenses. I ate dinner each night with my friends, a group of ten that came together through fate. All intelligent, non-major partiers that wanted to succeed in college.
Everyone knew that I didn’t like the food – most of my freshman year dinners consisted of salads with my own low-fat dressing. So, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise when that’s all I would eat. Lunch was a turkey sandwich on white (this was before the whole-grain movement) and, of course, salad. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with skim milk. Each night, if I had my three hours of exercise in the morning, I allowed myself one Hershey's Kiss. Yeah, you read right, one Kiss. About 25 calories.
I pinned pictures of the thinnest Victoria’s Secret models in my wardrobe to keep me focused. I kept a food journal – a little memopad that I dutifully wrote down what I ate.
I would get up shortly after my roommate would leave for work (she was a waitress at Perkins and worked odd shifts,) usually around three in the morning, and put in my step aerobics tape. I pulled up a step that my grandfather had made for my mom, I think, when she was a kid and worked through all three levels of the tape (about 2 hours worth.) Mind you, the step is about a foot off the ground.
In the afternoon, I would try to get to the exercise room or better still, to aerobics class. Aerobics class was easier to get to when I was a freshman though. I had more demands on my time as a sophomore – I was a tour guide for Admissions and worked in the library a few hours a week. But I tried as best I could.
My hard work paid off, I got down to 105 pounds at one point. I have a picture of me around this time (there aren’t many – I hate getting my picture taken. Cameras add ten pounds, don’t you know.) When I’m in a healthy frame of mind (which is not often these days,) I see skin and bones. Even though I’m five foot two inches tall in sneakers and technically, 105 pounds is still in the healthy range for me, for some reason, I didn’t look healthy. Maybe it was just that I was malnourished – I obviously wasn’t eating enough of all the food groups, nor did I take a multivitamin to supplement. Of course, I’ve learned from these mistakes.
Anyway, I don’t remember much else from this semester at college. I vaguely remember Halloween – trick-or-treating with my friend Mikey for canned goods for Circle K (the college branch of the Kiwanis Club.) I went as an eighteenth century horsewoman and wore a thin polyester blouse with a wool blazer. Froze my tukus off as it snowed upon me. Mikey went as Charlie Brown (he shares a remarkable resemblance) and had to pee, if I recall, really bad.
I often wonder if my friends ever had a clue as to what I was doing to myself. At the end of my freshman year, as we were getting ready to go home for the summer, I talked to one of the gang members, Kelly, about my fear that I had a problem with food. (I didn’t want to seem melodramatic and say I was coming down with anorexia.) She’d said she’d keep an eye on me. Of course, that summer, as I was unemployed, I haunted the local library with my girlfriend from high school. We’d walked there almost every day. I read every single book about eating disorders that was on the shelf (not even a half dozen.)
In my diary from that time, I have only three entries. The first is dated September second, written after midnight. In it, I suspected that if I wasn’t anorexic, I was well on my way. I also wrote that I didn’t want to stop, even if I were. After revealing that I wanted to be thin and beautiful and that usually outweighed my desire for sweets, I asked, “who [sic] would I turn to who would understand?”
I answered,
“The clincher is – I really don’t want to change even though I know ultimately I may be hurting myself. Maybe this is my way to make my wish come true – to find out who truly cares about me without actually dying. It’s strange, I think I know the cause but it still doesn’t make me want to stop! I remember most of the comments people said/say, “You’re chubby” (my pediatrician) “Porky Pig” (my sixth grade teacher.) Even tonight, Mike thought I hurt my butt and said, “Don’t worry – you have a lot of padding there.” I don’t think he meant that I was fat but that’s how I feel. I feel like a lard ball. Today I was doing an aerobic tape and I could feel my butt jiggling (and my inner thighs.) It was revolting. People tell me that I look good but I still feel like I look fat.”
And I thought I might have a problem?
A few things jump out at me as I read through this.
The first is the belief that I was (am) invincible. “may be hurting myself.” I was eating between 400 and 600 calories a day, exercising off around 300 calories and I thought may be I was hurting myself?
The second is how I read my friend Mikey’s comment – how I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I am fat. In hindsight (after being friends with Mikey for over ten years,) I realize that he meant to say that all humans are supposed to have padding in the butt and not that my butt in particular was enormously well-stocked.
The other thing that strikes me is how things haven’t really changed. When I exercise, I still am conscious of my jiggling butt, inner thighs, and now, belly (pregnancy is a many splendored thing.)
The other entry that is worth mentioning is the one dated November fifteenth, two days after a fellow sophomore was murdered. It reads,
“At 114 lbs, I still think I’m fat. I know I’m anorexic. I don’t know when I’m full or hungry. But I still want to be thin. I’ve been putting off telling anyone because I want to be thin. I binge every night it seems. I can’t stand that. I can’t control anything else. The only thing that isn’t out of my hands is food. Nothing else is predictable in my life. I get the feeling that no one truly cares about me. (Jodi [my roommate] would be she’s never around.) Jen worries about Lori. Lori eats twice as much as I do yet no one worries about me. Why? Is it because I’m too fat? Is it because I can do things on my own sometimes and not be dependent on whether someone is going along with me? To a certain extent, I am independent – I do like my own company at times. But it seems to me that if I go walking someplace alone (at dusk,) it’s OK but if someone else tries to, everyone is extremely worries and protests. Why is that?”
This era represents the thinnest I had ever gotten in my adult life. Technically, I was never underweight. Technically, I was not anorexic, even when I was eating less than 600 calories a day. [On a nerd note, an unconscious person would burn about 1440 calories each day. I was eating less than half that.] And I never saw myself as thin.
On an interesting aside, at 108ish pounds, I was only a size 8. Today, I have hovered around 125 and am a size 4 or 6. So, either the fashion industry has revised the standard sizes or there is some truth to the theory that muscle weighs more than fat.
Anyway, to this day, I wonder how true my interpretation of my sophomore year is. Did any of my friends have a clue? Todd tells me that Mikey mentioned, as he was encouraging Todd to ask me out, that I had issues with eating. Once before we started dating, Todd came up to me as I was walking to class and said something along the lines of, “I noticed you hardly ate anything.” I believe I told him to back off or get a life. Even now, my hackles are raised when he asks about what I’ve eaten. I fiercely try to defend my independence while desperately wanting to be cared for. A paradox. The story of my life, it seems.