My house is being invaded!  It’s a good thing.  Today, Jess arrives . . . and I can’t wait to see her. I met her on the now-defunct MayasMom.com site a long time ago, back when we still actually had kids we called babies instead of brats.  We’ve gone through potty-training, preschool, and kindergarten together.  We had a great time in Vegas - and have kept up our friendship by calling each other frequently and griping about going to the Y, while on the way to the Y (although really what we gripe about is how much we work out and how little immediate effect it seems to have on our respective derrieres). 

Jess and I have a lot in common outside of the kid-factor as well.  Without telling too many of her secrets we share some of the same, um, issues.  She’s married to an engineer, which is almost the same as being married to an attorney (anal-retention, anyone?).  We both love our anal husbands - that goes without saying. But we sure have fun giggling about their idiosyncracies.  She’s stuck in suburban life outside of St. Louis and still pines for California.  I don’t pine for California, but wish I was cool enough to say I was from California.  Eh.  She’s become a really good friend over the past two years, despite the fact that she lives 865 miles away. 

Originally Jess was coming out here to celebrate her birthday and hopefully see Cathy as she passed through on her way to Obama’s inauguration, but unfortunately Cathy ended up moving to a new place in Hong Kong and couldn’t come.  Around the same time, others in our little internet forum decided to come out anyway, and now I have five total people coming in for the weekend.  With many of them living in nice, warm, exotic places, or just outside of NYC, I’m not sure WHY anyone would want to come to Virginia in January but I’m grateful.  Annita, Sara, Alicia (the same Alicia I visited in Connecticut over the summer), and Helena arrive tomorrow. 

The only sadness is that a couple of my really close friends couldn’t make it (Amanda and Kristin, I’m looking at you).  One of them (Kristin, again, you) is suffering through -18 degree days in Minneapolis, and Richmond would be downright balmy at 28 degrees to her.  Amanda deserves to freeze because, like all those annoying California people, she’s always blah blah blahing about how she can hear the freakin’ OCEAN from her doorstep and how it’s 74 degrees and sunny when we’re all shivering in our boots.  Pooh on her. 

Other than stressing about them being bored, I’m ridiculously excited to have a girl’s weekend. Mike is heading for the hills Pinehurst with Lily and Arden, and although he’s probably glad to get away from the “hens”, as he calls us, I am very thankful he is doing it too. Now I don’t have to worry about being loud and obnoxious at all hours of the night, waking up the children, or having the children wake us up. 

It’s funny to me in a not funny way that every time I met new people, or people I haven’t seen in a while, I stress out about my appearance and my body and it sends me into a psycho spiral no amount of Zoloft cures.  I wonder if I’ll always be like this.  It’s so TEDIOUS.  I may not still be in the throes of my old disease, but emotionally I’m still right there, really.  And that, my friends, is depressing.  It should be enough that I am healthy, working out, watching what I eat, and not popping diet pills or doing other more unpleasant things.  And realistically will anyone not like me as much because I’m not 100 pounds anymore?  And if they don’t, should I care?  The fact that I am even writing about the conversation in my head makes me angry with myself.

So, I’m putting my physical anxiety aside for the weekend.  And focusing on the insane amount of estrogen, chocolate, and drinking that will commence.  Lots of embarassing photos to follow. 

It’s a little ironic for a recovering anorexic/bulimic to title a post “purging”, but that’s just how I roll.  If I can’t make fun of my ridiculous and bizarre mental problems, who can?  Certainly not my mother - that’s for sure! 

Anyway, this weekend I was putting clean laundry away - possibly number 1 on my top 10 list of “Things Over Which I Procrastinate”.  As I gazed around, I realized I was actually looking at a doll-sized suede jacket my parents bought for me when I went off to school in Ann Arbor.  Next to it was the Ann Taylor suit I wore to my interview at Chrysler. Size 2.  And then there were the 10 suits I wore right after I got married, during my fling as marketing director of Witt, Mares.  Yeah, they ranged from size 6 to size 10.  And the shoes, oh, the shoes.  So many work shoes - fun heels, funky sandals, shoes I couldn’t bear to part with.  I started piling stuff into a trash bag.  That became another. And another. Finally I gave up on the trash bags and moved to contractor bags.  When I was done, I had 2 HUGE bags I couldn’t lift full of shoes, diaper bags, purses, and suits my wide, post-pregnancy ass will never again fit into.

The Ann Taylor suit was the hardest.  It was purchased at my tiniest, after 2 years of starvation.  I weighed 98 pounds for a couple of years in college.  If you look closely, you can probably see the hair that regularly fell out of my head entwined in the fabric.  I remember wearing it when I went to meet Keith at his office, after my interview at Chrysler, and feeling super-powerful and wickedly smart.  It’s one of those few times I know I looked good.  I was never beautiful - cute was about as good as it got - but damn, I looked good in that suit.  Put on enough foundation, and the yellow pallor of my skin wasn’t all that noticeable. 

I remember that moment so clearly - standing in his office, and thinking, “He’s proud that he’s with me.”  It was a feeling that only lasted about 10 minutes, but it was momentous for me.  I wasn’t insecure around the hot receptionist and I wasn’t insecure knowing that his ex was probably lurking somewhere nearby, ready to show up unannounced with a boiled rabbit in a pot. 

Yeah, the suit was that good. 

And now, as I continue to punish myself with the SuperModel Y WorkOut, I knew I had to let go of that suit.  It often taunted me in my closet.  I kept hanging onto it.  “Who knows?” thought I. “I could end up accidentally ingesting a tapeworm and fit back into it someday.”  As I sat in TNT class today, thinking about the suit wadded up in a trashbag in the trunk of my car, I stared around me.  Blond Barbie in super-tight exclusive workout wear to my right.  In front, a Marissa Tomei lookalike in a cropped top settling nicely around her six pack.  Did I mention she had twins 2 years ago?  Behind me, some tall, stork-like figurine with poufy hair and full make up.  At 7.45 AM.  And me - smack in the middle of the class, cursing Elke for making us lift weights while standing on ONE LEG on a Bosu Ball.  At least I had a new workout shirt on instead of a ratty t-shirt stolen from Mike’s drawer (like his Grateful Dead 1994 Tour T-Shirt - did I mention I am not a fan of the GD???).

It’s almost become normal now for me to feel like a bumbling dork in my neighborhood and at the gym.  I live in the land of money, plastic surgery, and very thin women.  I used to console myself by saying, “Yeah, but they are wacky out here.  I’m really not THAT bad.”

Until I got the Wii Fit.

And this tiny, chipmunky voice screamed out at me:  “Your BMI is ____.  You’re OBESE!!!” 

I think I shouted the F word at it.  I KNOW I flipped it off.  It even changed my Mii to a big fat version of the regular one.  There’s nothing like starting up the Wii Fit, and seeing Mike, Arden and Lily in normal cartoon form, while my big fat avatar waddles out from the side of the screen.  Lily even shouted, “Mommy, why are you fat on the tv???”  I loved her for not saying, “Mommy, why are you fat in real life?”

There are times, like now, when I think all the damage I’ve done to my body over the years is insurmountable.  I will NEVER lose this weight without the help of amphetamines, a tapeworm, or an addiction to Ex-Lax (which, by the way, I could never bring myself to do - but it sounds cool).  It might even take a lethal combination of all three.  Or that I will forever be this person I barely recognize in the mirror. 

Yet I continue to go to the gym.  I’m trying to watch what I eat more closely without going overboard and getting freaky with calorie counting and starving.  I continue to let the Wii Fit chipmunk weigh and tell me how obese I am.  Sometimes it even says, “You seem really shaky today.  Do you find yourself tripping a lot?”  At which I generally curse at it and considering throwing the balance board out the window. 

So this weekend, I faced reality.  I am never going to be a size 2 again.  I shouldn’t have been in the first place, and I certainly won’t be that way again.  In order to get back into the suit, I need to be sick again.  And I think I’d rather be fat than sick.  I’m seriously almost to the point in my recovery where I can almost believe that.  Hopefully somewhere out in Richmond, a very tiny woman can march around in a well-preserved tweed suit and feel ultra powerful in it.  My closet sure wasn’t getting any wear out of it. 

The fun girls over at BlogHer suggested that we write a letter to our bodies.  My body and I have quite a history, so here goes. 

Dear Body,

I guess I should start off by apologizing profusely for all the abuse I’ve put you through, and all the loathing and hatred I’ve sent your way.  So body, I’m sorry.  I wish I could change things, but I cannot.  From an early age, I’ve had a little war going on with you.  Remember those days back in 2nd and 3rd grade when I’d curse you for being so short?  I’d lay in bed at night, stretching my arms and legs out as far as they could go, hoping I’d magically wake up an inch or two taller.  It never happened.  Instead I got some leg cramps and a stiff neck from all that stretching. 

And you should have known it would get worse.  I grew breasts. I had hips, and no waist.  The girl they ridiculed on St. Simons Island by chanting “Michigan Flats, Michigan Flats” became tormented back in Michigan as “Lumpy Sweater”.  Even before Erica introduced the miracle of syrup of ipecac, I dealt with stress by turning the contents of my stomach inside out.  Turns out I didn’t really need that ipecac, either.  Who needs to ingest vile swill when you could puke on your own accord, almost by thinking about it?  One chocolate cake and one bottle of ipecac later, I became, overnight, a full-blown bulimic who would spend years beating on hips, waist, and breasts by messing with your potassium levels, teeth and gums, and heart rate. 

When bulimia became passe, and my anorexic roommate subsisted off four wheat thins, coffee and a pack of cigarettes a day, I embraced anorexia for a short yet explosive blaze of glory. It is still with a bit of shame that I admit to you I couldn’t do it for much longer than two years.  I was just too damn hungry. I liked food that much.  You poor 98 pound body.  I ran you and ran you around U of M’s campus and the trail near my sister’s house in California.  That one bright shining moment when I finally felt beautiful, sitting on Keith’s carpet, drinking water and wearing the smallest clothes I’d ever worn.  Tiny blackness with pearls. Thinking:  I’m as skinny as the others now.  It will change things.  My eyes looked big because my head did.  It was nearly too heavy for you to hold.  I stupidly associated thinness with the ability to be loved.  I was horribly wrong.

We both knew the caloric amount of every bit of food and drink without even looking it up.  The hair on your skin began to fall out and your skin tone was an unhealthy yellow color, but 98 pounds made you have small breasts for the first time since pre-puberty.  Remember that mirror in the apartment across from the law quad?  I stood in front of it, as close to skin and bones as I’ve been, in a silk sheath dress.  I examined you with a critic’s eye.  Colleen’s voice said, “You look beautiful”.  All I could see were my hips.  I said, still not good enough.  Not thin enough. Not tall enough, not smart enough.  College was hard for many reasons.  I smoked.  I experimented.  I drank.  I had friends who liked to do all of the above, and more.  Through it all, you continued to get up in the mornings and learn. 

I still remember when I snapped.  Doug brought some delicious pasta with garlic sauce from a deli on State Street.  We sat on his hardwood floor and I ate. I ate and I ate and I ate.  I’d been eating black beans and rice for years.  Nothing ever tasted that good.  I didn’t stop eating until he broke up with you and me and we moved to North Carolina a year later.  Poor Doug - 40 pounds later, he wondered where his petite girlfriend had gone.

You’ve hung in there through a lot.  Abusive exercise routines with Julie (working out twice a day was “fun”), a lot of puking and a lot of starving.  You went through 2 years of no flour and no sugar with me.  I still hated you. I cannot remember a time with you where I have accepted you, or felt proud of you, except that one flash in Keith’s house.  No matter how good it was, no matter how much I accomplished, you, my body, were my Achilles Heel.  Preparing for a wedding brought out the worst in me, and I beat on you some more.  I fed you the bare minimums I could get away with. I took amphetamines as appetite suppresants and I repeated the mantra of “you will NOT be fat for your wedding photographs”.  And I wasn’t. 

Then, children.  All of my fears and issues and self-loathing came to a head when I was pregnant with Lily.  Within 8 weeks of being pregnant, I was on bed rest.  I couldn’t play tennis with Mike; I couldn’t run in Westover Hills anymore.  I had to sit, I had to rest, and I had to eat.  Lily made me healthy - although fat - for the first time in my life. I was afraid to binge, afraid to purge.  I came so close to nearly losing her - how could I abuse the body that was nourishing and caring for her? During those 9 months I stopped looking in the mirror. I ate when I was hungry and went on walks with the dogs.  I gained a lot of weight.  But having her inside of me, and being so FULL with a life - instead of food - was a new kind of high.  Controlling the food was taken from me.  I couldn’t do that to you anymore, or risk Lily, so I did nothing.

I look back at you now, 5 years ago, struggling with the changes.  Watching stretch marks appear on your breasts and thighs.  Watching your hips, already wide, become wider. Studying, reading obsessively, embracing the concept of a natural childbirth.  Closing my eyes and giving in.  Giving up, letting you take over.  Letting go of the fear of pain. Watching my baby emerge.  All those issues with nursing . . . I cared for my body. It was the second time I’d done so. I worked with you and the lactation consultant. I made my breasts do things they weren’t supposed to do.  We won - you and me - over formula.  It was a hard battle. 

When Arden came along, you were still carrying all that extra “baby” weight.  To this day, I fight you on it.  I run. I walk. I do yoga, exercises, attempt to control the food.  But I am 36 now.  I am tired of fighting with you.  A part of me wants to give up the war, embrace you, learn to love you.  It’s a slow journey to self-love for me. It’s also amazing to me that a body I have so terribly abused continues to serve me well, with some minor exceptions.  Is it you that feels so “apart”, so “different” from everyone else - or the stupid brain in my head that tells you so?  Walking through my Stepford neighborhood, I see a LOT of plastic surgery. I see beautiful coiffed women who probably spend half their day at the salon or spa, while I am working in jeans and a t-shirt.  That otherness I feel on the street - it’s been with me my whole life.  For me, becoming an adult means dismissing my otherness. It means taking the rational thoughts in my head and merging them into my actual body.  My internal war has left me exhausted and bored with the struggle.  It’s the longest civil war - with many casualties.  Those have included wasting huge amounts of time trying to control everything.  Relationships that went by the wayside because I was too self-focused on you that I couldn’t focus on the people who made up my life.

I’d like to say to you, Body, that I am in a much better place today than I was. I’d like to say that I have dismissed all those unhealthy behaviors formed at such an early age, but I cannot. The best I can promise you is that I will keep trying to be nice to you. To be gentle with you. To love you and thank you for giving me two fabulous gifts wrapped up in umbilical cord and amniotic fluid.  I can’t repay you for that any other way. 

I’ve quietly removed the devil’s granules from my diet (aka refined sugar).  Well, Jennifer and Sara would disagree about the “quiet” part, but I didn’t make some gradiose announcement to my family or anyone else. I just sort of decided over the past month that it was time, and I needed to take some action against my burgeoning ass and waistband. 

It’s more than weight gain. I’ve also had a love/hate relationship with sugar.  It gives me a lift in the afternoons, it’s a pleasant way to wake up in the morning, and I love saying hello to my little friend in front of the tv when the girls are in bed.  I LOVE DESSERT.  All kinds.  I’m not a snob.

Years ago, I lived flour- and sugar-free for close to two years before I decided that, screw it, I am a normal person and I can eat whatever I want in moderation.  I knew it was a lie but I was tired of always being the one to skip the cake.  My eating-disordered-but-in-recovery friends all believed that sugar was to a food addict what booze was to an alcoholic.  I still somewhat believe them.  I just got tired of always asking for ingredient lists on everything.  What’s unfortunate is that those two years were the healthiest of my life. Yes, I lost weight, but the most important thing? I stopped thinking about my weight and obsessing about my body. It just “was”.  I was there, but instead of feeling every inch of me and being repulsed or worried about it, I don’t even remember realizing I had a body.  It was like burning in the sun for years and all of a sudden being given shade and a hand-held sun, even if just for a few minutes. 

Over the past few months I’ve gotten really cranky about my eating habits and my starve/eat/starve cycles.  It’s a slippery slope back to where I came from, and just because I have children doesn’t guarentee me 100% normal eating and body image.  I wish it did, but it doesn’t. 

I recently revisited a favorite book from the past, Marya Hornbacher’s “Wasted.  She describes dipping her toe into bulimic waters for the first time:

“I look back on my life the way one watches a badly scripted action flick, sitting at the edge of the seat, bursting out, ‘No, no, don’t open that door! The bad guy is in there and he’ll grab you and put his hand over your mouth and tie you up and then you’ll miss the train and everything will fall apart!’ Except there is no bad guy in this tale.  The peson who jumped through the door and grabbed me and tied me up was, unfortunately, me.  My double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, ‘Don’t eat.  I’m not going to let you eat.  I’ll let you go as soon as you’re thin, I swear I will.  Everything will be okay when you’re thin.’ Liar.  She never let me go.  And I’ve never quite been able to wriggle my way free.”

She nailed it for me.  No one tells young girls (sexist!  or boys!) that dipping your toe in might mean always, always, always craving the water.  That once you start, most can’t stop.  It isn’t a phase, it isn’t a blip, it isn’t something you do because it’s “cool” in college.

I began thinking about my ED a while back when a close friend of mine shared her fears about her sister.  So much of what she shared with me - how her sister acted, the anger, the drastic weight loss, the denial, the lies, the hiding - rang something that would not be done justice by calling it a warning bell. It was more like a freakin’ gong going off, over and over again in my head.  I tried to be calm and explain my thoughts.  I loaned my friend the book.  She read it and was both fascinated and sickened by it.  She knows her sister has a big problem but she is powerless to stop her or help her. 

So why, after all these years of living *with* flour and sugar do I decide to cut out one?  Eh.  I attended too many OA meetings not to know better than to say “I’ve given up sugar forever”.  Just like AA, you take it one day at a time.  You commit to skipping the sugar “just for today”.  I’m not being quite as nazi-like about it, either.  I might still put syrup on my pancakes or eat a food that has sugar as the 5 or 6th ingredient on it.  I know whatever I’m doing is working, because after the horrible cravings gave way on Wednesday, I was left with splitting headaches and exhaustion.  Yesterday I felt like I was going to fall asleep at my desk.  I needed my drug, and Hershey is my pusher. 

Mike asked why I was doing it. Part of it is - I need to lose weight.  The bigger issue is that I need to feel healthy again.  My eating is scattered at best. I’m either trying to balance out the calories I ate at dinner by not eating breakfast or restricting lunch, or I’m just saying “screw it” and eating with abandon. Somewhere in the middle is healthful eating.  Those who know me know that I’m not so great at gray areas.  Removing sugar makes it easier for me in the long run.  This, and I still believe that I am addicted to sugar.  I don’t put the word addiction in quotes because I do actually believe some people can get a charge out of eating refined sugars. I am definitely one of them. 

Day 5 has pretty much sucked.  My head is killing me, despite two Advil this morning and another round of Tylenol this afternoon.  I’m cranky and I wish I could remember how long it took for me to lose the cravings and the headaches the last time I did this.

I wonder about the flour. I wonder if I’ll find that now that sugar is out of my diet, I’ll start abusing bread.  God, I hope not.  Life was a lot of vegetarian meals, chicken and barley when I had no flour in my diet.  I can only handle one substance at a time, so for now, I’m going to keep up the illusion that I don’t have to go cold turkey on the flour.  In the meantime, I’m trying to do this instead of dipping my toe in the water. I’ve gone down that path and it’s not one I care to revisit.

Tonight, I turned over my body and my last bit of pride to Tracy who has offered to use Jennifer and I as guinea pigs.  She just received her personal trainer certification and I fully expect the next 6-8 weeks to be full of Tracy’s voice screaming behind the treadmill, “Run, you bitches, run!!!”  Tracy reminded us that she was’t always Ms. Fitness Richmond 2007 and used to say the only reason you’d ever catch her running was if someone was behind her, trying to assault her.  This is the same person who recently completed the Ukrops 10K in less than 44 minutes or something insane like that. 

Still, I had to channel Dr. Phil all day just to make it through the evening’s measuring and analysis (I wonder if Mike knows that according to the BMI scale, he’s got an obese wife?).  I kept chanting in a fake Texas drawl, “Ya’ll cain’t change what ya’ll cain’t acknowledge.”  O-kay then.  I acknowledge myself, my reality, to the verge of barfing.  Well, 9 months of inactivity beginning in 2002 (forced by doctors for fear of miscarriage) plus no time between Lily and Arden to catch my breath equals a lot of weight gained and a lot of traction lost.  So today is the worst that it gets.  I faced those damned numbers, on the scale, on the measuring tape, and the dreaded body fat index thingy that has tormented me my whole life in the gym.  On Tuesday Tracy can begin her rant and her whip cracking, and we have the honor and priviledge of working out at one of the swankiest fitness centers in Richmond gratis.  I love Tracy, have I mentioned that? 

The big trick for me is balancing healthy eating with healthy exercising.  Did I mention my black and white, eating-disordered-for-centuries personality?  It’s a fine, slippery line I walk whenever I make attempts to reshape myself.  For the last few years, it’s been enough to simply be relatively healthy, in my barrel-shaped body, with my children and my business. Now it feels a bit like it did before I got married, where I wanted to reclaim those long-ago fleeting moments of actually liking - yes, liking - the space on earth I inhabit called my body. 

I don’t think for a moment I’ll ever be like I was in college - anorexia has a way of giving you QUITE a shape! - but I would settle for some healthy curves.  More than anything else, I need to feel like I have some control and power over what goes in and out of my body again.  Translated, that means caring enough about myself to give a shit about it.  This means making myself (my self) important enough to take time for and care for and love.  The fact that when I look back over the past 4 years and there are only a handful of pictures of me with my children or my husband is just sad.  Either I should accept the fact that I am what I am (fat) or take the reins and lose some weight. 

Today, I choose to feel empowered instead of allowing myself to wallow in self-pity and cram it down with some delicious chocolate.  Although Jennifer and I did devour half a leftover Easter Bunny with Troy after the measurements had commenced.  It was sort of a Farewell to Ears.