At first, I played a good husband and got excited when my wife lost weight.  It’s what she wanted.  In fact, there was a time where she would refer to her former self as “fat”.  I never liked to do that, because she wasn’t fat then and she wasn’t fat now.  Thinking back on this now makes me so incredibly sad.  However, she once convinced me that it made her feel better if I were to tell her that she used to be fat.  It’s not like we talked about it a lot, but I stopped arguing with her when she called herself fat when looking at old pictures.  It’s amazing how it just kind of wraps around your finger. 

There was something strange happening though and it was just one of the many clues that I had, but I never put all the pieces together.  Her goal weights were getting progressively lower.  When she first Weight Watchers, the goal weight was 130.  Then it became 125 and then 120.  I remember she would come home after weighing in upset.  Why?  Because the ladies at meetings were rude to her.  They told her she shouldn’t lose anymore weight because it was unhealthy.  Of course, she said she “wasn’t doing anything unhealthy”, so it was natural.  Eventually, she dropped out of Weight Watchers, because they wouldn’t let her lose anymore weight.

The goal weights were getting even lower.  It became 118.  When she finally went into treatment, her goal weight was 102. 

Here’s the deal about the goal weights.  They were the stopping points.  It was, “When I reach XXX pounds, I’ll be happy with my body and I’ll stop dieting.”  Of course, it never happened.  When she reached the goal weight, a new weight was almost within the grasp. 

I don’t want to sound dense here.  I knew there was a problem.  I would bring it up, but would get quickly shot down.  I was being ridiculous.  I don’t think it ever mattered what I thought.  If I had told her months before she started treatment that she needed it, it wouldn’t have worked.  She didn’t go to treatment until she was ready for it.  Of course, things had to get bad, before she was ever going to realize treatment was necessary.  Unfortunately, things did get bad for awhile…

Her Words:

Over the course of the previous few years, people had seen my weight loss and complimented me on how good I looked. At a certain point, people stopped mentioning it—this was just the new me…there was no point in them constantly asking me, “Have you lost weight?” I think maybe I missed the attention or I missed seeing the number on the scale go down every week…so I decided that I could stand to lose a few more pounds. I can honestly tell you that I have no idea how the spiral started; I don’t ever remember thinking, “I’m going to be tiny.” I think that I just wasn’t ready to see the number stay stagnant.

And so it began…I remember watching some effed up episode of Oprah where she had famous super models on talking about how they stayed in shape.  One of them said that she got on the scale every morning and if the number had gone up by even a pound, she wore her tightest jeans to remind herself all day to eat healthy. WTF??? Seriously! Who thought that was a good thing to air on television? It pisses me off so much right now just to remember it.  It clearly didn’t piss me off at the time though because after I saw that, I would wake up every morning and weigh myself. If that number had gone up at all, I knew I had to restrict my caloric intake. It started out with little things like a smaller portion at dinner. By the time I was really “in my eating disorder”, a higher number meant eating nothing coffee, a lean cuisine for lunch, and a chicken breast with carrots for dinner. But here’s the thing: I was still eating…so I couldn’t have an eating disorder, right? I was 100% convinced that what I was doing was nothing more than what skinny girls did—this was normal behavior for anyone who was thin. All women in the world did this.  It’s also important to note that that number on the scale dictated whether I was allowed to be happy or sad that day. If the number was the same as the day before, well that was pretty unremarkable. If it was higher, I restricted and was depressed all day—I was a failure. If it was lower, well…if it was lower I was a champion! And of course I wanted to restrict MORE so that I could feel this sense of accomplishment again tomorrow. You’re probably reading this thinking, “Molly, your weight fluctuates on a daily basis based on all sorts of things. It could have just been that you had more water weight that day.” Um, yeah. Logic wasn’t really winning out here. But again, Oprah’s little model told me that this was an okay thing to do.

Just for the record, John worked really weird hours so we rarely ate meals together and he truly had no idea none of this was going on. He knew that I was skinny and that I always talked about how fat I was…but he was more concerned that I had body dysmorphic disorder than that I had an eating disorder. He, too, figured that since I ate, there wasn’t any way I could be anorexic. Plus, I wasn’t puking so bulimia was out of the question. He wasn’t wrong, by the way. I think that all women and men that struggle with EDs have some sort of BDD—they have to: they are skinny skinny yet they continue this weight loss because we look in the mirror and TRULY see something different than what you see. One time I pointed to a girl in the mall and said, “I wish I was as thin as her.” He just grabbed my hand and said, “Are you serious? You’re like 2 full sizes smaller than her!” I just laughed—who did he think he was kidding?

So here’s the thing I was someone would have told me: just because you eat (even if you eat burgers and fries) does not mean that you don’t have an eating disorder. Every once in a while, John and I would go to Red Robin and I’d get a huge cheeseburger and eat like 2 baskets of fries. Every time I went out to dinner with friends, I could always convince myself to order regular food. Anytime I came home for holidays, I had no trouble (aside from the guilt) eating just like everyone else. CLEARLY, I didn’t have an eating disorder. Nobody with an eating disorder would eat like that.  What I chose to ignore was that for the next few days, I would restrict my food intake to make up for that “indiscretion.” It started with me skipping breakfast. Then it evolved into just eating really healthy. Finally, even at the core of my ED, I’d still eat a cheeseburger and fries but the next couple days would be 0-400 calorie intake days.  But it’s not like I wasn’t eating…I was just eating things with little to no calories: steamed veggies, salads with lemon juice for dressing…so it’s not like my friends and family were stupid and just ignored me not eating. I WAS eating—I just learned WHAT to eat that didn’t have any calories (or nutrition, for that matter). I also had learned how to make very similar meals without calories. Where John would have butter on his bread, I would have “I can’t believe it’s not butter.” Where John would have potatoes, I would have steamed broccoli. Where John would have cheese, I would say, “I don’t like it like that.” I was eating and I refuse to let anyone say that my family was stupid for missing it—I hid it well. I was a good anorexic. The main tipoff that, in retrospect, they should have noticed was the giant bags under my eyes, the constant tiredness, the depression…but they didn’t. I was in law school: all of those things come hand in hand with getting a JD. If John was worried about me falling asleep at 8 pm, it was because I’d been studying hard all day. I was depressed because I hated studying all the time…there were excuses galore—and very valid ones at that.