Telling ED No! - Reflections #1

I'm reading a self-help book called "Telling ED No!". It's basically a book that helps you work through your thoughts as to why you have disordered eating. I definitely do. At the end of each chapter, there are reflection questions which help you overcome your eating disorder. I am going to post those here.

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Looking back, what are some of your earliest memories of disordered thoughts and/or behaviors related to food and your body? How did Ed grab your attention? What age were you? Was it a gradual progression?

My earliest memory of disordered thoughts is probably when I was about ten. I was on the swim team at our local YMCA. I remember thinking how thin all of the other girls looked in their swimsuits and how I was so chunky. I also couldn't do all of the exercises required during practices. We had to do warm ups and then get out of the water and do sit ups, scissors going different directions with your legs, etc... I also remember hoarding food. When my mom would bake cookies, I'd take a handful of them and hide them in my room. When I got old enough to buy food on my own, I'd buy fattening stuff that my mom wouldn't let me have and hide that somewhere. I still hide food to this day. I've been known to buy a package of cookies and put them in my car so that my boyfriend won't eat them... or hide refrigerated stuff in the bottom drawer of the fridge where food usually isn't put... or one time, I had a box that used to have hamburger patties in it up in the freezer that I hid some ice cream in so I could eat it on my own in secret... I don't remember having any disordered body thoughts before the swim team though. Ed didn't officially grab my attention until the summer between my eighth grade year and freshman year of high school... It was gradual in the fact that I was tired of being the fat one. I wanted boys to like me. I wanted my mom to get off my back about the fact that they only made stylish clothes to a size 14 at that time and I was bigger than that. Eventually Ed talked me into not eating at all. I dropped 75 pounds in about five months. Since then it's been a battle of yo-yo dieting. Starving myself. Then binge eating until I'm sick. Then starving myself some more. I'm proud to say that the anorexic part of my eating disorder is gone, but I'm a horrible binge eater these days and my weight and health prove it.