#gonna have a hell of a therapy session today wooooo boy

[happyhealthyanna]

Five Words

TW: lots of weight talk (no numbers)

Over the weekend, I made a doctor’s appointment in a panic over chest pain. I had the appointment yesterday and was very open about the fact that I was pretty sure this was due to anxiety, but I needed reassurance that my heart is okay. My doctor reassured me that the chances of having heart disease at 27 are slim to none as it progresses over time, but she offered to do an EKG to give me peace of mind. It came back normal.

Let’s rewind 20 years.

Exact ages are muddled after so many years, but I believe I was 8 years old when I put on a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time. My parents took me to our family’s physician. I don’t remember if it was at this point or a couple years later, but regardless, at some point during my childhood I was told by this physician that I was at risk for heart disease and diabetes due to my weight. 

To reiterate: I was a child. 

I recall not being allowed to have the snacks that my classmates had. Chips and candy and ice cream, while already in limited quantities, were no longer permitted. Meanwhile, my brother was on the football team and had to eat a lot to keep his weight up. I remember coming home from school one day and seeing him eating Pringles. I asked if I could have some - he & my mom exchanged a look, then she responded that those were for him and I should go get a healthy snack like carrots.

It hit me at that point that there must be something bad and wrong and gross about me, that I had to have these gross healthy foods because I was bad and wrong and gross. Again, I was a child, so I didn’t have the critical thinking skills to understand that my parents were more afraid than I was about my weight. How were they to know that I would get my period two years later, meaning that the weight gain was most likely due to puberty? They were afraid that they did something wrong, so they chose the method that most physicians seem to recommend: cut calories, increase exercise.

Again, timelines may be muddled, but this is what I remember: I think I was ten or eleven first year I had to do “Speed Camp” - a summer program that my future high school offered to athletes to keep them conditioned for sports - under the guise that it would help me train for the summer sports I was already enrolled in. I was twelve when my dad started taking me to the gym before middle school to see a personal trainer. The summer before high school, I was enrolled in a Children’s Hospital program called Shapedown - I had to do a few screenings to make sure I was overweight enough to qualify. Which, to my fourteen year-old brain, meant that I was bad and wrong and gross enough. 

I lost a lot of weight via the Shapedown program and for the first time in years, I felt like I was doing things right. I entered high school thin, braces off, and with freshly dyed red hair. I got attention from boys and people liked me and my parents seemed nicer to me.

But during all of this time, from the moment I realized I was no longer allowed to eat what I wanted, I developed B.E.D. It didn’t matter how many times my parents screamed at me for eating the last of the ice cream, or finishing my Halloween candy in two days. I internalized the shame and ate more. I gained all of the weight back, plus some. 

In New York while attending acting school, I did a crash diet that the rest of my family was participating in and once again lost a lot of weight. This was encouraged and praised. Again, over the years, I gained all of the weight back with interest. 

I moved back to Colorado in 2013 to seek treatment for B.E.D. My weight has been steadily increasing ever since and I am currently at my heaviest. All of this despite a moderately active lifestyle.

Which brings me back to yesterday’s appointment. After our discussion of my normal EKG results, my doctor said goodbye and she made the comment, “Don’t worry about your weight.”

I felt the world shift beneath my feet. I thanked her and as soon as I stepped outside, I burst into tears.

At no point in this 20 year history has any medical professional told me not to worry about my weight. Sure, my dietitian and E.D therapist harped on the fact that my weight was far less important than getting my mental health in check. But that’s part of their job and the context in which I was being treated by them. Here I was, with a general practitioner doctor, whose job it is to monitor my health, and she is telling me not to worry about being the heaviest I’ve ever been. It’s difficult to imagine a reality in which this can be true, but here I am.

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past 18 hours since that appointment, and what mainly comes to mind is that it’s very likely that the way that my weight was discussed and treated early on is a huge contributing factor for most of the other issues I have had. Of course I’m going to develop anxiety when I’m told as an elementary schooler that my weight is going to give me heart disease; when I am not allowed to eat what I want; when I am encouraged to go to the gym while my classmates are watching Sailor Moon; when every single day since that fateful day in the family physician’s office, my body and what I’m eating and how much I’m exercising has been at the forefront of my mind. There has been no peace with my body since that day.

I don’t hold ill will towards that family physician - she was treating what she saw as a serious illness in the way that she was told to treat it. There were far less conversations happening at that time about how the approach they used can be more damaging than helpful. I wish I had been treated differently, but I wasn’t, so it’s not a good use of my energy to wallow. 

I’ve been treated for anxiety since 2016 and still struggle every day. It’s natural to want a blanket answer for my problems. I think this is as close as I’m going to get. 

Here’s how I am seeing it now: as a child, I became anxious about my weight and health. I dealt with the anxiety by eating, which made me develop B.E.D and increased my weight. When I sought B.E.D treatment, that coping mechanism went away, so I was left with the anxiety and thought that I was, at my core, bad and wrong and gross. The anxiety skyrocketed and my body continued to hold onto weight to protect me. The amount of anxiety that I felt caused the digestive issues I’ve had since I stoped binging, which increased the anxiety even more, causing this vicious cycle that I’m still trying to climb out of. 

But if I don’t have to worry about my weight, what does that look like? Who am I without this struggle? 

I’d like to find out.