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Recovery Stories

Eva
May 23, 2000

I am a recovering compulsive eater and have been getting help for 10 months now.

I ate compulsively from a very early age but didn't really realise it until my first diet "failure" in my early twenties. Being BIG was how I was, and needed to be simply to exist. As a child, rewards and consolations were administered in the form of food, and I was no more than eight years old when a nun at my boarding-school pointed out to my parents that I was well on the way to obesity. This was the start of a battle of wills with my mother, who considered anything vaguely fat as ill-disciplined at best, disgusting at worst. Although I was a bright child and got good marks at school, somehow my excessive weight would, in her eyes, overshadow everything else. Being at boarding-school made it easier to indulge in excessive food intake, and I remember the numerous escapades over the wall to the village shop with much amusement; however, I dreaded coming home to face the scales... The weigh-in ordeals made me feel worthless and humiliated, and my mother would not hide her disgust at having to buy larger clothes for me every couple of months.

When I turned sixteen, I started going to day school and found myself stealing food from shops, money from my parents, their friends, my friends and fellow students just to buy food. The scale episodes continued weekly, as did the disgust. My school work deteriorated and I barely did enough to pass my exams. I found a job and left home at eighteen: funnily enough, the compulsion died down for a few months and I got the weight under control, but when I moved from an active job to a more sedentary one, all control went out of the window. At this time I met my husband and started my first real diet with WW. I lost almost all the weight I had to lose, then one day I "saw" myself in the mirror and didn't recognise myself. Needless to say, I stuffed myself until everything was back on again. I felt a total failure, but started to become aware of my compulsive eating habits. I did not admit it to anyone (the shame of it) and simply over-indulged in private well beyond the point of physical discomfort. My weight gradually climbed to scary heights and, after eleven years of marriage, I left my husband because I couldn't cope with him being happy while I was miserable. I could not believe that he loved me, since I hated myself so much. My second WW diet followed, but by this time I had so much to lose that I couldn't hang on, and of course I was not facing up to the root of the problem. The following year I became very ill: my bowel packed up, I developed stomach ulcers, my thyroid self-destructed and my gall-bladder decided it was time to bail out. I was so depressed that, by that time, I was over-eating more than ever, piling on the weight (but of course with all the health problems, I had such a good excuse...) and finally feeling totally and utterly suicidal.

I had stayed on very good terms with my husband and when I hit rock-bottom in nineteen ninety eight, I shared my shameful secret with him for the very first time. The relief was indescribable, his reaction neutral (careful man my husband - always trying not to say the wrong thing), and I finally started thinking about getting help.

At this stage, I was way beyond comfortable physically, but found little understanding from doctors (Europe is not really up to speed on EDs in general, even less so on CED). My younger sister had started a weight loss and control program at that time so I went to my own GP and said "this is what I want to do, give me the prescriptions, but also give me a referral to a therapist because I know that, at some stage, I'm going to hit a bad CED period again". My GP prescribed the weight loss and control program and referred me to a therapist who works with hypnotherapy. Going for therapy was a novel and very uncomfortable experience: it can be extremely difficult to share all those feelings of rejection, shame, disgust, etc. with anyone, let alone a complete stranger...

I started the weight control program ten months ago and have shed half my body weight. I have been in therapy for seven months now, and even if the compulsion to eat is still there, I'm learning to live with it: as the therapist points out, I may not be responsible for feeling the compulsion, but I am responsible for what I put in my mouth.

I have changed.

I was considered easy-going, since I was friendly and amenable in public, almost apologetic for existing at all and fearful of even vaguely offending anyone. I was totally unable to say no to any requests for help, however unreasonable, and the general assumption was "Oh no problem, Eva will take care of it". I invariably put myself down when others paid me compliments (I didn't deserve compliments), made fun of myself and my weight (so that others would not make fun of me), and beat myself up every hour of every day with the mantra "not good enough... not good enough...". Out of the public eye, I ate anything and everything without hunger, pleasure, awareness even. I was unhappy, depressed, scared, felt unworthy, refused my body, lived by the mantra "when I'm slim I will be happy and I will do everything I want". I locked myself in and vegetated in front of the TV, hated going anywhere because of the weight and people's reaction to it, did nothing and went nowhere. The bigger I got, the smaller I felt inside. I let people treat me like a doormat and treated myself like a garbage can.

I am learning to stand up for myself, realising that I have the RIGHT to exist, to my own space, my own time, to say no, to say what I think and feel. Most of all, that it's OK to feel and express anger, hurt, frustration. I'm learning to live with my body too - imagine the challenge of getting up every morning to face a full-length mirror when I have avoided mirrors like the plague all my life... but that reflection is me. It's OK to be happy with it - it's not because my body is smaller that I exist less.

I won't deny it's hard work. Sometimes apparently simple situations bring on the compulsion and most days I learn to decipher yet another situation in which I am vulnerable. But I am AWARE, and every day it gets a little easier. The occasional slip-up no longer makes me beat myself up - after all, tomorrow IS another day!

In time I hope to overcome the compulsion enough not to have to be on my guard every hour of every day - as I said, it's hard work. I have never felt better about myself than I do now; all the effort has been worth it and I AM GOOD ENOUGH. My health has improved, my husband and I have found each other again - and I thank him for his humour, support, understanding and love. When things get bad, as they occasionally do, it's such a relief to be truthful with someone else, to admit that things are just bad at the moment... I am now thirty seven years old and I finally exist!

Here are a few smart-ass comments I have had along the way: