And I need you now, somehow
I recently joined the world of Netflix, and today began watching Skins, an interesting British drama. The second episode is about a pretty anorexic girl that no one seems to pay much attention to. I love her immediately.
I’ve been fascinated by anorexic people since I was 13 and watched that movie about the girl from Growing Pains in health class. Truth be told, jealous of them really. I know it’s bad, they’re killing themselves, la la la. But still, I’ve always been sickly envious of their abilities to control their intake of food like that.
Several years ago, I had a favorite website. It was called Fat Like Me, run by a girl named Jaoi. Often referred to as a “Pro-Ana” site, but I didn’t really see it that way. This girl was smart. Screwed up, but extremely intelligent and well-informed. Her site basically dealt with accepting her eating disorder and learning to live with it. Tips on living with it is where people tend to coin it pro-ana, I suppose. But it sure wasn’t encouraging people to be anorexic at all.
Anyway, she kept a journal of sorts, and I miss it. She took her site offline a few years ago. I search for her every now and then, and watching that episode of Skins reminded me of her and I decided to check again to see if anyone found where she went. Didn’t find anything. Did stumble across the archives of her site though, and I’ve enjoyed the past hour or so re-reading some of it.
I’ve been increasingly annoyed with food lately. Increasingly binging and unable to put a good lid on it. Sometimes I find food that can distract my cravings. But it’s never perfect. Everything good has one of the three bads. First bad for me is carbs, for obvious diabetes reasons. The more carbs I eat, the more insulin I need; the more insulin I need, the fatter I get. So I find lower carb food. Low carb food that satisfies binging urges, however, has more fat. This summer I was obsessed with almonds. Boot camp Cliff encouraged eating almonds. They have the good kind of fat. Of course, I know he wouldn’t encourage the way I eat almonds, which is probably 5 times the amount (at least) he would recommend. But they were so great because they had hardly any carbs!
Anyway, soon I decided all this extra fat from almonds wasn’t doing me any favors, so I’ve sworn them off. Now I try to avoid fat along with carbs. So what’s left in foods that don’t have tons and tons of carbs and fat AND satisfy my compulsive need to binge? Why food with lots of sodium of course.
Obviously I have issues with balance and moderation. I shouldn’t focus on one thing at a time, and should focus on moderately balancing nutrition. Ha, my brain knows this, but try getting my urges to comply.
There is no good binge food. I think that anything healthy for me is not capable of satisfying my binging urge. That would be against the rules. My whole binging desire stems from the need for forbidden fruit after all. Forbidden fruit not being literal fruit of course, as actual fruit is healthy and therefore utterly disgusting.
So long rambling aside, this is where my fascination with anorexia comes from. I am forever in awe of people who seemingly have such control over their hunger, screwed up as it may be.
On Friday, Cliff’s boot camp email contained a sentence that read, “There is an old saying in the fitness world that goes: Fitness is 10% physical, 10% mental and 80% nutrition.” UGH.
I couldn’t help but responding that it was the most depressing thing I’ve ever read in one of his emails (end: happy face, so I don’t come across completely batty!). I shouldn’t have replied, and I don’t really know why I did. I normally say very little at boot camp. Excuses may be that it’s too early in the morning, it’s too dark to see much of anything, and I’m just the quiet type. But truly I think it’s that I find I can’t relate a whole lot to such mentally sound and up-beat, positive people. I’m more the sarcastic roll-your-eyes type. Not that I’m not a happy person, I generally am. I don’t know. I just feel these people have a much more positive life outlook than I do, and that they have it all put together in regards to their health.
Where as I’m the stupid type 1 diabetic with weird ED issues. Who the crap can relate to that? It’s mostly my own BS ego, really. I feel like any difficulty they may have in regard to food and losing weight is not on the same level as me. My issues cannot be compared to someone who struggles with a mere 20-30 pounds that has a perfectly normal insulin-producing and thyroid-producing body. If I’m completely honest, all I really want to do is punch those people in the face, even if they are nice and well-intentioned.
Don’t get me wrong, I love boot camp and those perfect people, and will never stop going so long as I’m able. It’s helped me tremendously over the past year and I’d be far worse off without it, that’s for bloody sure. That said, it can’t cure me of my constant food struggles I’ve had since as long as I can remember. I don’t think anything ever will. Perhaps the issues will hide themselves for a while, but they always resurface.
I was bingy today. Which isn’t so out of the ordinary for a Sunday. Now I feel guilty and gross for eating, plus my blood sure is on a hideous spike. Double guilt, double patheticness. I think it’s dinner time though.
