When I Learnt To Restrict

I have had an eating disorder since I was about 15, I reckon. It wasn't always what it is now - back then it was a lot of uncontrollable binging. Then starving for a week, binging for a week - I was never thin, I gradually increased in weight and ended up at my highest weight. When I was 17 I wanted to lose weight for my prom, so I started eating vegetables only. I gave up dairy, meat and sugar and the weight dropped pretty quickly. But again, I wasn't exactly thin. I think my lowest back then was about the same as I am right now. 70-ish. But that was when I first dipped my toe into long-term sustained restricting. 

Fast forward 7 years and I was in London, shagging a worthy Australian named Ben, who I wanted more than anything (although he was mean and annoying) - we had been shagging for about three months and I thought things were going somewhere with him, even though I knew that secretly he was in love with Monika - my bestie. In a way, though I have never admitted this, I only hooked up with him in the first place so she wouldn't have him. Whatever, I was young. Anyway, so I behaved like a stupid horrible possessive drunk one night at a houseparty and Ben broke things off the next day. I was embarrassed and upset with him and myself. And the thing that stung the most was that I KNEW that him and Monika would hook up - and that pissed me off more than anything. When you are the fat girl, you don't want the thin girl to win. She was quite skinny back then and I was jealous. 

Anyway, so after this happened, I just didn't feel like eating. I would have a can of Heinz soup for lunch and a small dinner. It would probably still 1000 - 1500 calories, but I just didn't want to eat and I reveled at my body for this. I dropped 10lbs very quickly. In like... two weeks. It was amazing and then after that even when I did feel like eating I would stop myself, because I knew that I could go with much less food. 

When I went back to Cape Town and met Roy, I ate normally for a while. I didn't gain any of the weight back but didn't lose. And then one day, when our relationship was starting to sour, I came on blogger and started reading and I KNEW that I could do this. So I set myself a goal initially of 1000 calories a day. I used to obsess about food, blogging, tracking my meals, exercising - all of it. I was obsessed. If you read back to some of my first posts, you can see how obsessed I was with this platform. Gradually I would decrease my calories, but I never went through a long period of time with very very low cals - like 100 a day kinda low. But the weight dropped off pretty quickly, over three months I'd say I lost about 20lbs. It was amazing. 

I loved everything about being skinny. I loved my collar bones and the way clothing used to hang off of me. I loved not having to second guess what I was wearing because I knew that I didn't have much fat to hang out of things. I loved the attention from men and that people always used to ask me if I was a model. I loved hooking up with men that I knew were completely out of my league or sitting around the table with girlfriends who would comment on how skinny I was as I chowed down on a hamburger (for show, because of course that meant that I wouldn't eat for a week). 

Anyway, I was thinking about this in the shower yesterday and just wanted to share. I am going back to that place, because no amount of food or therapy is ever going to make me as happy as I was when I looked that way. Maybe I am vain, but it is beyond me to care about that - I want to be skinny. Not too skinny, like 130lbs (I'm tall). I just want to feel like that again. Hopefully by Christmas, things will have improved. 

Love & Peace

Xo Xo