Debra Rilea

Happy Birthday to Me: It’s a New Life Today May 27, 2012

By Debra Rilea

 There is something deeply mocking about having an eating disorder. With an eating disorder you desperately want to hide but have absolutely no hope of doing so. And the pointlessness of trying to hide is ever present in our weight-obsessed culture. We all watch each other; there is no escape from the eyes, the judgments and the rude comments. If others aren’t watching, well we watch ourselves with a deeper disdain than anyone else possibly could.

 Yet as the years drag on and on, there is also a genuine and deeper desire to be normal. To somehow escape the food obsession, the highs and lows, the yo-yo of dieting, the defeat of failing, the constant feeling of imprisonment in your own body.

How Did I Become A Prisoner in My Own Body?

It started when I was twelve and I began to worry about my weight. Soon the worry became a focused attention. For several years I lived with a family whose mother was completely fixated on her weight and the weight of her young children to the point of putting her six year old on one crazy diet after another. As the children’s nanny I had to participate in the madness as well as endure her constant critique of my weight.

Then there was the boyfriend, he mentioned that I was a bit heavy. I felt enormous pressure to lose weight. I began to steeply curtail my eating and increase my exercise. Slowly the weight began to drop. I didn’t know it at the time but that was the beginning of the self-imposed prison term that would last for nearly forty years. During those years I passed through several phases of eating disorders. The first phase was anorexia.

How Did I Know That I Was Anorexic?

I didn’t, at the time. It was an uncommon diagnosis in the 1970s. In fact, when my weight loss began to alarm my own family, my mother took me to a medical doctor. She explained my loss and the fact that “I forgot to eat.” to the doctor. He sighed and said, “I wish I could forget to eat.” Pronounced me healthy and sent us out the door. My mother was furious.

I was relieved and felt free to continue on my path of weight loss. With my job as the nanny I was receiving a lot of positive feedback that thin is better including new clothes and verbal praise. Additionally my boyfriend bought me more clothes and added more praise of my increasing thinner frame. Classmates at school complimented me on my weight loss.

To enhance the weight loss I added bulimia to my extreme lack of eating and excessive exercise regime. I felt empowered, my weight was the only thing in my life that I had control over. The rest of it was chaos. Those rewards of gifts, praise and a feeling of control were stimulating.

With the Rewards So High, What Changed?

I graduated from high school and left my job as a nanny but still had the same boyfriend. The summer after high school we were at his family’s summer place and I looked down at my legs. Suddenly I saw them as they really were for the first time in a long time. Moments before I was the girl who couldn’t be thin enough. When I looked in the mirror I didn’t see the real me, I saw someone who was still heavy.

Now looking at my legs I was shocked. They were thin, too thin. People have asked me since, “How did you know you were too thin?” To this day, I have no idea what created that new awareness. It was as if I had awakened from a long, bad dream. That was the frightening part. If I didn’t know how I awoke it seemed possible to relapse.

I Awakened From A Bad Dream to A Worse Reality

When I realized that I was too thin, I actually got up, went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. Thus began the next phase of my eating disorder. At this point I had been anorexic and/or bulimic for over six years. I had no idea how to eat right or even what to eat. But I eat and I eat. I gained eight pounds, then another five pounds.

Worried about the weight gain, I lost five but then I panicked about becoming anorexic again and quickly gained ten. That was a pattern that would continue for close to four decades.

My Life For The Next Forty Years Was Weight Obsessed

Being afraid of anorexia meant that I was in a new prison. Eat, gain weight, panic at being fat. Lose weight, panic at being anorexic, eat and gain weight. My body suffered, my mental health suffered, my first marriage suffered. My husband left me because in his words, “You’re as fat as a blimp.”

Still I didn’t know what to do, how to turn my problem around. I couldn’t seem to lose weight and keep it off. Underneath the increasing heavy person I was becoming was the very real fear of being anorexic again.

How Could I Be Overweight and Afraid of Being Anorexic?

It was a contradiction for sure. I wasn’t afraid of being thin, I was afraid of not recognizing that I was thin. All these years later I remembered the not knowing I was thin when clearly I was. That self-delusion of body image was imprinted on my brain.

And now there was a lot of research to read about anorexia. It was classified as a mental illness. I didn’t want to lose myself in that illness again. Frankly, I decided that I’d rather be fat.

But Fat Wasn’t Any Healthier Than Too Thin

Eating poorly, not exercising, overworking took its toll. My weight was well over 200 pounds in 2004 when someone introduced me to the South Beach Diet. It created an amazing opportunity for me to learn about food and my body. I learned how to cook and eat healthy. I brought these healthy habits to my family. It was liberating. We all lost weight and felt great. It was a family project, we all benefitted. It was great to share the success together and with their support I no longer feared anorexia. It was a thing of the past, I thought.  

Then there was an unsettling setback when my husband had a near fatal accident. The resulting stress of his accident and long recovery knocked our healthy habits off track.

Our New Health Habits Knocked off Track

It is always challenging to integrate new habits into a busy schedule but I had been determined to succeed. Additionally, I had the support of my husband and daughter. But then my husband was critically ill and I had the additionally stress of running two businesses alone, negotiating a new lease and moving one of the businesses. The hours were excruciating long, the stress and worries grew and I gave up trying to maintain our healthy eating habits.

The results of that was weight gain, slowly but steady as all pounds lost returned. Disappointment is a word that doesn’t begin to touch on the emotions I felt. But losing the weight again seemed an impossible feat to achieve. I just wasn’t motivated to try. Even after my husband made a full recovery neither of us could reach that place of motivation.

That Lack of Motivation Creates New Health Crisis

Because weight loss is not about the numbers on the scales, an ideal weight is about health. That health ideal includes eating right and regular exercise. Something I was to learn more about when my husband ended up in the hospital again in September 2010.

Although there were hereditary links to all the diseases he was experiencing, they also had a very distinct link to lifestyle choices. And we had made some very bad choices for a very long time. It was a wake-up call to me. I could easily be in his place if I didn’t change my ways. Death is a power motivator for change.

How Did I Decide to Make the Needed Changes?

Once again I would be handling two active businesses without my business partner. That meant long hours and six day work weeks. It was a perfect opportunity to say, “I don’t have time to eat right and exercise.” But I knew with those choices I would be looking at my own health disaster sooner or later.

My blood pressure was too high now and other indicators pointed to my slipping health. I decided, while holding vigil at his bedside, that I would start my new health regime of diet and exercise the day I got him home. And I did. What was the change?

So What Did I Do?

I went back to what worked for diet before, the South Beach Diet. Fast food was banished from our lives. Lunches were made and taken to work every day. No matter how late I returned from work, dinner was made from fresh foods. Sunday afternoons was the only time available for grocery shopping and it was never skipped.

And I started exercising. First at home with DVDs using light weights and a balance ball, then I added walking DVDs. Again, there was no time to exercise with the long work days and cooking at night, so I set my alarm an hour earlier each day and exercised in the mornings.  

This cartoon was rousing in its brutal honesty and I used it for inspiration:

What This Cartoon Did For Me

It put the reality in front of me. Spend time on my health, and consequently that of my husband, or die. Yes, it was that true for us. We could no longer put everything in our lives ahead of ourselves. It was a decision to live. And that ultimately was the defeat of the eating disorders that had ruled my life. I wanted to live.  

Now New Choices Continue to Influence My Life

While I felt comfortable exercising at home I knew that eventually visiting a gym would benefit my workouts. So when a new gym opened up close by, I signed up and more importantly I go three to five times a week.

Also when I stalled in my weight loss for five months, I was open to a new idea, the H.C.G. Diet proposed by one of my friends. I never would have tried anything so radical before but the fear was gone. I tried it. The diet was tough but I was successful and have gotten within five pounds of my goal. Even better, I am keeping all the weight off with dare-I-say-it “normal” eating.

I Have Achieved “Normal” and It’s A New Life

It is the life I thought I would never experience. Normal eating, regular exercise and no more worry, worry, worry about weight loss. Naturally, I pay attention to my weight and take action if it budges as much as three pounds. But now I feel like I have the tools to eat right, stay at this weight, exercise and maintain my health.

Today is my 52^nd birthday and I am celebrating by acknowledging that I am free from the eating disorders that have dominated my life for so long. I have escaped the prison created by my eating disorders and the struggle with them. It feels amazing to not be labeled as anorexic or morbidly obese. I am no longer on either end of an extremely swinging pendulum.

I’m celebrating my hard found “normal” weight. It feels great. Happy Birthday to me!