Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This postcard from PostSecret was posted a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me of my past.

It reads:

I pray to get anorexia.

I, too, wished I could “catch” anorexia nervosa. I remember in my final meltdown, when I talked to Mike about my bingeing.

• Starling Fitness: Refeeding: A Treatment for Obesity?

“I’m hungry all the time. I think about food all the time.” I was lamenting to Mike, my husband, about why it’s so hard for me to follow my program for more than an hour or so.

“That’s because there is something the matter with your brain. For whatever reason, it tells you that you’re hungry all the time.” He was trying to help me, but his words were anything but consoling. “You’re like an anorexic, except backwards.”

How many times had I wished I could be anorexic? How many times had I wished I could be free of this desire to eat all the time?

Mike continued talking, “What would you do if you WERE anorexic?” I cried and laughed at the same time. “I’d be so damn happy and not eat for a year. I’d finally be skinny.”

He nodded and asked, “And then after you were skinny, what would you do? If you didn’t eat, you’d die, so what would you do?”

I knew EXACTLY what the treatment for anorexics was: refeeding. Food is introduced in small quantities at regular intervals. They have to eat when the timer goes off, even though it’s the last thing they want to do. I explained it to Mike and he nodded knowingly, “That’s EXACTLY what you need to do. You have the SAME problem as an anorexic. You need to eat a small meal every couple of hours whether you feel hungry or not. You need to NOT eat in between times. Your hunger mechanism is just as broken. You can’t trust it. You just need to set a schedule and eat when the schedule tells you to.”

That is EXACTLY what I have been doing for the last year and a half and I have LOST 65 pounds. By FORCING myself to eat about 200-300 calories 5-6 times a day (every two and a half hours), I have LOST weight. I eat those tiny meals whether I feel hungry or not. My hunger is just as broken as an anorexic and I can’t trust it.

I find it so ironic that I wished for so many times to be anorexic and the cure that they use for anorexics happened to be the cure I needed for my obesity and bingeing.

PostSecret‘s beneficiary is the National Hopeline Network. It is a 24-hour hotline (1 (800) SUICIDE) for anyone who is thinking about suicide or knows someone who is considering it.