Addicted to Lunch
In the few times I’ve overindulged in alcohol, it didn’t take many drinks or outbursts at Pancho’s for me to learn that mine is a personality which does not flourish under the influence of wine coolers. No, I’m a blast for about 1 ¾ of a drink then I quickly become sad-drunk crying in the corner, inquiring of everyone why they don’t like me at which point they should just hold up a mirror. It’s not pretty. Luckily, since turning twenty-one some twelve years ago, I’ve had no interest in “boozing it up.” It was just another mirage of adulthood I couldn’t wait to reach that turned out to be nothing once I got there. With alcohol it’s easy, simply put, either you drink or you don’t. You’re not born needing a Daiquiri for survival, though I’m sure many would beg to differ. Everyone gets the choice of whether or not to take that first drink. If at any point you develop a problem, you can get help and never have to touch alcohol again. Not the same can be said for another consumable, food…my compulsion from necessity. There will never be a point in my life where I can say, “I’m done with the eating”, because that impossibility would just lead to an additional eating disorder. Food is my abyss from which there is no escape, so throughout the last twelve years, I’ve begun the arduous task of learning what it is to eat without regret and regret without eating.
Now here’s the point where someone will have to say, “But you don’t have an eating disorder”. And I suppose this is true if you’re thinking only in the bulimia / anorexia sense, but I do have an unhealthy relationship with food that in recent years I have finally acknowledged as an eating disorder. Growing up in a household consumed by the entertainment industry status quo, weight was never a non-issue, it was the issue. Before I’d entered kindergarten, the differential in my value as a thin person versus a chunky one had already been made clear to me, even if I didn’t quite grasp how it was applicable. Like most five year olds, I ate with reckless abandon without a thought to squeezing in my skinny jeans. I just knew I’d stay thin. But by twelve, at 4’10 94 lbs., I became keenly aware of the number adolescence was beginning to play on my now very apple-shaped body. Thus, I wound up rinsing down meals with my mom’s Slimfast thinking it would do just that. No such luck. Over the next couple years, as boys entered the equation, dieting became the answer for all mysteries of the opposite sex. In my mind, thin equaled attractive and attractive equaled boyfriend, therefore all I need be is thin. My “achieve boyfriend” regimen consisted of refusing to eat until after school then gorging myself on fat free pretzels (fat free…they must be healthy, right?) followed by an hour jog.
This fool-proof weight loss scheme always derailed the moment I fell out of love with (name here) so, I’d mend my fickle heart with honey roasted peanuts, cheese puffs, Little Debbie snacks…anything technically vegetarian, non-perishable and self-contained for easy hiding from the parents. As a textbook emotional eater, the only thing keeping me from Guinness proportions was the knowledge Dad would be the first to alert the media. But that threat disappeared the summer of 1998 when he and Mom split and I got my first taste of true grocery freedom. The combination of poverty and loneliness is never good for someone who eats her emotions and loves Ramen noodles. In the first year after their divorce, I abandoned vegetarianism, and used my only credit card for daily trips to Whataburger, Sonic, and Taco Bell gaining expansive debt and fifty pounds. I’d like to appear noble and say that I finally turned my life around for the good of my health, but that’s not the case…at twenty-one, Michael proposed and I, out of vanity, went on a diet. Whatever the initial motivation, the change stuck. I lost some residual high school weight as well as my post-divorce pounds all through the one method I’d never tried: healthy meals coupled with exercise. Ta-da! If I felt the need to splurge, I tried to opt for fruit, veggies, and popcorn over pasta, chips, snack cakes, the menu at Olive Garden…you get the idea.
Clinically speaking, eating disorders are characterized by “abnormal eating habits that may involve insufficient or excessive food intake to the detriment of an individual’s physical and emotional health.” Notice there’s no expiration date. Twelve years since my buffet zenith and it’s still not easy. Each day I carefully tally meals to keep myself in check because, frankly, I can’t trust I’ll eat only when hungry. In the past, my capricious disposition has many a time duped me into believing I’m hungry when really I’m…stressed. Eat some chips. Sad. Have some ice cream. Lonely. Want spaghetti? Angry. Time for French fries? It’s startling to think how many times I’ve eaten without tasting anything or starved for attention. At the moment, most people know me as the vegan who loves grapes, tofu and green tea, who scoffs at fresh donuts, declines ordering out and, if you’re my family, is impossible to feed during the holidays. It’s an expected side effect of the parameters I have set for myself in regards to eating and I’m completely ok with that. Only I know what it was like to live obsessively on food; to eat instead of feel and refuse to eat in hopes of love. No diet is more constricting than that of sustenance as psychiatry.
