The Withering Body
By: Nancy Proudian
Tags: Help, Food, True Story, Diet, Anorexia

Anorexia is a disease that never really goes away. Someone who is going through this disease needs to be comforted and told many times they are loved.

It was the winter of 1983, I was 13 years old and in the eighth grade. We had gym class within the first four periods of the day, I had to undress in front of all the girls in the class. I hated to undress and then dress again. As I looked around at the girls in my class, they seemed very thin, very pretty and in my mind had it all together. I hated to look at myself, I felt I was fat and very unattractive. I started to hate myself as a person in whole. I knew there was only one way to solve my problem and that was to go on a diet. A diet would allow me to control what I could eat and what I couldn’t eat.

That night I went home and told my mother what I was planning to do. She helped me figure out a good weight loss program. For breakfast I would have a bowl of cereal with some fruit. Then for lunch I would have a half sandwich which just had cheese on it, no dressings at all. Then for dinner I would have about a 400 calorie dinner.

It was hard for me at first to stick to my diet, because when everyone else was having a piece of cake, a cookie, or just something sweet, I would have to tell myself I could not have any. Sometimes I just craved, craved for some ice-cream or piece of apple pie. I told myself if I lost my designated weight, then I would reward myself to a nice piece of cheesecake. At the time I started, my designated weight was unknown to either me or my family. I was going to lose weight until I felt good about myself.

Within the first week, I lost seven pounds, mostly consisting of water. I was already starting to feel good about myself but not good enough to quit. I had so many compliments on how I was looking that encouraged me to continue with my weight loss. Even some of my teachers at school said that I look much better and I should go and get some new clothes.

Photo credit Pixabay

I started to read material on what to do to make your body look better. One article I read really stressed the importance in exercising. So I started to incorporate exercising with my diet. Directly after I would eat I would go running. I would walk to the stores, I would walk down the street, I would do miscellaneous exercising in my bedroom. Anything else to make me look better and more appealing to people.

My weight seemed to be at a stand still so I dropped my scheduled calories from 1200 to 800. By now I wasn’t eating any lunch. My stomach would be growling from noon till I got home and had a little snack before dinner. Sometimes I couldn’t even think of finishing my dinner so I would say I was full. My leftovers would be saved for the following day. I would eat my leftovers sometimes for breakfast and sometimes I’d save them for dinner. My weight again dropped another seven pounds. I weighed 99 pounds and I was feeling a lot better.

Many times I became very irritable and didn’t want to be around anyone or anything. I would yell at anything that didn’t go my way or if I couldn’t take it at all. It was brought up that I was irritable because of dieting. I never believed that one bit. I had set in my mind that could never happen to me. I was never the most cheerful person in the whole world, so I never thought anything different or strange was going on in my body. I would go to bed early if I was too hungry or I was craving some food items.

Again my body took another stand still with my weight. I read another article in teen magazine that pointed out that when you diet your body gets used to the amount of food the body is consuming. In other words my body was used to eating 800 calories a day and the only way to lose more weight was to lower my calorie intake. That is what I did, it was lowered down to 400 calories a day. This was hard to get used to at first because I would not eat anything until dinner time. It was easy for me to skip breakfast because nobody was up as early as I had to be. By the time I was heading for my bus, my dad, my brother and sister were getting up.

At lunch time you never had to be checked to see whether or not you ate all your lunch. I normally would pack my lunch but during lunch time I would get rid of it, keep the fruit or give the whole lunch to someone who didn’t have one that day. I never told my mother what I did until many years later. She was not happy that I wasted food. As an adult now, I can understand this.

My weight had reached an all time low of 93 pounds. By now I had stopped menstruating and it lasted for the whole year. No one knew I weighed so little, because I wore baggy clothing to counteract it. I felt so good, my body kept telling me to go lower and lower. This would entail eating nothing all day long. To tell you the truth, this actually scared me to death. I started reading articles of people who had anorexia and died from it. So I told myself I could stay at 400 calories a day. Not thinking that 400 could do as much damage as 0 calories a day. I was realizing at this time my body had more control over me than I had over it.

I was finally entering into the ninth grade and we had a pamphlet that came out about Anorexia and Bulimia. It showed ten steps on how you can identify someone who has this disease. By reading over the material I realized I had 8 of the 10 symptoms. The ninth and tenth symptoms were finding out you have this problem and getting help for it. I showed the article to my dad and we realized that I needed to start eating a little better again.

It was hard at first for me because my body had adjusted to the 400 calories a day. I would get so full at times that I couldn’t eat anymore until later.

Even today it’s still a struggle for me. My weight fluctuates. For my height my weight looks the best between 105–110 pounds. This is when I feel the best and I have been told that this is the right weight for myself. There are many times when I think to myself, ‘why did I eat that piece of pie’ or ‘I should never have had that fatty of foods.’ I always look for anything I buy to be healthy, a protein rich food, natural or organic, I’ve worked with a health coach Traci D. Mitchell who helped me balance food and exercise. I exercise every day to keep myself in shape.

Anorexia is a disease that never really goes away. Someone who is going through this disease needs to be comforted and told many times they are loved.

Many people who go through the disease feel that they have no control over their life anymore, they feel by losing this weight they have control over something, but in the end the disease controls them.

If you or a friend is going though such a disease please call for help.