WHAT NOT TO SAY TO A STARVING PERSON:

When I began this journey, I made the decision to have a public Facebook page hoping that it might help another sufferer. However, I find that it also keeps me accountable to the goal of Eating Freely.

This is the short list of my original names for the page:
Fat and Starving
Desiring the Small Footprint
Stickperson
Invisible

All very negative and restricting!

Then came the RULES:

Measuring/weighing/counting food
Restricting portion size
Bad food or good food
Weighing or measuring myself
Exercising except for pleasure
Reducing/stopping medications

The Vow:
Just once in my life, I want to be a stick person.

Beware of making a vow even or especially to oneself. My descent into end stage anorexic behavior began with this vow. Already living in a body riddled by auto-immune disease, I became obsessed with the desire to be stick thin. I was willing to trade my health and, as it turned out, almost my life to realize this ambition.

Eating Disorders are spread out over a continuum; from the person who eats nothing in order to exercise control over her body to the person who eats everything in order to feed an unquenchable hunger.

Thoughts and feelings feed the behaviors behind the eating or lack of eating. Fostering love and self-acceptance of ourselves and our bodies as we are in the moment is the only path bath back from the abyss we face when living with disordered eating.

I love myself when I....
Eat a variety of foods often
Choose foods I feel like eating
Replace "I should eat" w "I am hungry"
Accept my body in the moment
Express love and gratitude to my body
Pamper myself w massage, nails, etc.

DISTENDED:

At my maximum girth, I have been 60" in diameter or 5' around which means that I am nearly as round as I am tall. Not a happy thought.

I hate the feeling of fullness that comes when I put food in my stomach. The rumbling and grumbling of my bowels disturbs my peace. The occasional outbursts of diarrhea that accompany eating too much or eating the wrong kinds of food leave me wasted physically and in pain.

My belly is often so distended that I appear to be nine months pregnant, the skin stretched as tight as in late pregnancy. I have sometimes been so bloated that I couldn't breathe properly or bend to put on socks and shoes.

Hand and hand with the severe bloating is the ongoing lack of bowel movements. For up to a week, my body produces no stool, only responding when I eat a normal-sized meal. Yet, I often feel "so full" that I literally cannot eat; the food will only go so far down my throat and stop there.

I have come to relish the calm, serene feeling in my body that is associated with not eating. No pain, no sounds, no fullness. Just peace and quiet.

When I was diagnosed with celiac disease at age forty-five, and began to eat a gluten-free diet, I realized that the "creepy tummy" I had tried to quell with eating all my life, was indeed a reaction to enzymes in the foods I was eating. Though I began restrictive eating at age eight, and avoided breakfast and lunch completely until age twenty-five, this was my first experience of not eating whole groups of food.

I lost sixty pounds that year. People told me I looked great. I thought I felt great, but the arthritis in my hands and hips became so bad I had to drive with my wrists and walk with a cane. I developed idiopathic urticaria; my body covered in looney-sized hives, so sore and itchy that I couldn't wear clothes. I slept most of the day, being active only four hours. My doctor said I was too thin.

I began to eat again maxing my calorie intake at 1000 calories, and slowly I regained the weight I'd lost plus another thirty pounds. Desperate to stop this, I restricted my caloric intake intake to 800 calories. My health declined further and I developed systemic lupus erythmatosis. I became so weak that I could no longer take my 3-5km daily walks for my legs would hardly hold me up. I started to have falls. My doctor said I was not eating enough real food. My friends started to bring food when they came to visit, encouraging me to eat. I lied to them and said I'd already eaten or wasn't feeling well. Anything to avoid putting food in my stomach.

It was at this point that I became aware that there was something seriously wrong with me. I slept only one hour at the beginning of the night and two hours at the end, spending the intervening hours dealing with restless leg syndrome. My head, face, arms, hands, legs and feet were plagued with the sensations of peripheral neuropathy. I was always cold and so tired that I could barely move. My brain was fogged in, often unable to complete a sentence.

My doctor referred me to an eating disorder program, and here I discovered fellow sufferers. What we suffer from is a life-threatening illness, and though we are not all at the same place on the eating disorder spectrum, the reasons we do what we do are similar.

It is such a relief to know what is wrong with me and understand that I am not alone. I had become paralyzed with dread and thoughts of suicide were my constant companions. I now face the future with a degree of curiosity about how I came to be in this place, and a commitment to love myself by resting often and eating freely. When I offer to feed someone else, I will feed myself first.

JUST PERFECT

DYSMORPHIA:
Noun
-malformation; an abnormality in the shape or size of a body part; also called
dysmorphism
Examples
People with body dysmorphia also feel great anxiety.
Dictionary.com

I have no idea what I look like. The eating disorder has robbed me of the ability to think rationally and to see myself as I truly am. When in public, I obsessively scan the people around me, searching for myself. I ask my companions (behind my hand) if such and such a person looks like me; is my height, weight and shape.

If I determine that a person is fatter than me, I call them names in my head - "fatty, lazy old cow, slob." I'm not proud of my behavior, and I am no kinder to myself. Judging others adds to the abysmal opinion I have of myself and holds in bondage my fellow sufferers.

WE ARE NOT DEFINED BY HOW WE LOOK.

I was born with a birthmark - port wine stain haemangioma - covering the left side of my face eyebrow to upper lip. From the time I was two months old until I was eighteen years old, my mother sought treatment for my facial disfigurement. I underwent dermabrasion every second year from age five to thirteen to correct my birthmark, and went to elementary school every day wearing Max Factor's erase concealer makeup which the company was testing on me. The net result of these years was to leave me feeling like a broken toy, repeatedly being sent away to be fixed.

I always knew what my father thought when he saw me at birth because he wrote my mother an ecstatic letter after he visited us in the hospital. But I always wondered what my mother's reaction was when she first saw me. Was it "What is wrong with her face?" Or did she see her baby first and not just the disfigurment?

My mother remained throughout my childhood and adult life too busy and superficial to engage in a relationship in which I could ask her this question. However, when she was eighty-four years old, my mother already suffering from Alzheimer's disease, had a massive stroke that left her right side materially damaged. I stayed with her in the hospital, and when she went to rehab, I came each morning and evening to help her bathe and dress. For the first time in my life, I was able to have loving, physical interaction with my mother.

One evening after an outing, as I was helping her out of the truck, my mother paused and laying the palm of her hand on my birthmark, she gazed lovingly into my eyes. In the voice of a young mother looking at her newborn child, she spoke. "You are perfect. You are absolutely perfect."

This knowledge that at birth my mother thought me perfect and whole has brought me healing of a very deep wound. Now as I come to terms with the eating disorder that seeks to destroy me, from body dysmorphia that doesn't allow me to know myself, I draw strength from my mother's words.

I am perfect. I am absolutely perfect!

HEAD LIVING:

I have lived so long drawn up inside my head that I no longer feel hunger or thirst or pain. It is no wonder that neuropathies run rampant throughout my body. No wonder my muscles are wasting and my skin is netted with wrinkles. No wonder I have angina and heart muscle damage.

I have no sense of connection to my body. I regard it as a machine, given to me to do my bidding. I have treated it this way my whole life.

I am a physical person. I define myself by my ability to get things done with the strength of my body. I feel safe because I can handle what life throws at me physically. I am proud of my physical strength and endurance.

But now I have come to the end of my physical resources. Therefore, it makes sense that medical conditions beyond my control which threaten my ability to deal with life physically, will upset my balance.

Somehow, I must find an interface, a marriage if you will, between my mind and my body by which through communication between them, I may become whole.

USING YOUR TALENTS

"Where will I find a skilled dietitian?" I asked earnestly of my counselor.

Her answer surprised me when she replied that she believed I already have the skills to correct my eating disorder.

And, of course, I do!

I spent my entire life, sixty years, preparing satisfying and nutritious meals. From age six, I worked under the direction of my grandmother to prepare infant formula, toddler meals, homemade bread and entrees for the evening meal. By age twelve, my sister and I had full charge of the cooking and housekeeping for a family of eight. And at fifteen, I left home to make my way in the world relying on the skill I knew best - preparing healthily meals.

I worked first on a tourist farm in Prince Edward Island and then for a fly-in fishing camp in northern Ontario. After that, I took a position as first cook for the James Bay General Hospital in the Attawapiskat village where I developed menus utilizing wild game provided by the families of the First Nations patients, and more tame fare for the hospital cafeteria which served not only the nursing staff, but also any visitors to the community.

From there, looking for a less demanding role, I began working as a gang cook for Canadian National Railway. Accommodating to the challenges of procuring food while on the move from community to community, I cooked for 8-32 men while traveling the rails of northern Ontario and Manitoba.

Before leaving the workplace to marry and raise a family, I worked for a brief time as Chief Petty Officer on the icebreaker, Alexander Henry, keeping a crew of 32 fed as they picked up buoys at freeze-up on Lake Superior.

When my children were small, I ran my own catering business, specializing in fancy baked goods and diets tailored to client's medical conditions. Once I was diagnosed with celiac disease, I taught classes in my home to assist parents in cooking gluten-free meals for their children. As my own health declined, I adapted a 1000 calorie diet based on the diabetic guidelines and continued to eat by those rules for the next twenty years.

Having said all the above, is it any wonder my counselor considered me well equipped to know what to eat and when to eat it!

THE BURDEN OF EXPECTATIONS

As I walk away from the counselor's office, I feel free and unencumbered. It feels like I have put down a heavy burden; I feel lighter and moving is easier.

"What on earth had I been carrying?"

The burden consisted of years and years and years of expectation; both other's of me and mine of myself.

I am like Michealangelo's blocks of marble, the authentic me is hidden inside this body. By chipping and carving away what is not authentic, I will find myself.

Trust my instincts!

BLUE HERONS IN MY DREAM

The first, the most beautiful I've ever see, full slate blue plumage on an enormous erect-standing bird, it's long white neck feathers ruffled by the wind.

The second, a smaller insignificant bird of drab plumage, brown and buff colours, standing with its neck retracted and head tucked between the elbows of its wings.

1) The herons are me - the first who I really am, the second who I feel I am.

The first heron is alert and ready to fish; the second heron is sleeping

2) Herons live beside water and are dependant on water for life. I also need to live near and be in, water. Water is life to me.

3) I see the herons on my right side, and right is my dominant side.

"I have set before you today life and death, therefore choose life."
Deuteronomy 30:19

TELLING THE TRUTH

I have come-out to my doctor about my eating disorder; my habitual restricting not only of food, but also of medications, possessions, hair length and activity. I endeavour to make EVERY aspect of my life smaller. Although a new realization for me, this is not news to her. She has been gently encouraging me for years. Statements like:

"I think you aren't eating enough."

"I'm afraid you don't listen to your body."

"You are gaining weight because your body is starving."

However, admitting to my doctor that I am now facing the truth of what I have been doing to my body is terrifying in the physical sense. I come home with my mind whirling and my stomach churning. I eat some asparagus spears and half an avocado. The food sticks in my throat, and then heaves in my belly. Only the security of having an empty bowl nearby quells the urge to rid myself of the food I have eaten.

"What insanity has brought me to this place at sixty-three years of age?"

I am pathologically afraid of gaining weight. I am so tormented that the fear leaves a copper taste in my mouth. Being fat shames me so much that I torture my body in ways that I would not inflict on my worst enemy.

I have taken a vow.
"Just once in my life, I want to be a stick person."

I look in the mirror only to judge the face, hair, body and clothing of the person I see reflected there. I jeer at myself and call myself names.

I strive for a model of perfection that I can't even verbalize, but which is an unmercifal task master, driving me on to a goal which will snuff out my life.

This demon that possesses me is sneaky. Until just recently when my friends and husband began saying that I needed to eat something, I saw my constant restricting of food intake as healthy and pro-active. I look in the mirror and see an overweight woman, and the thought that I am under-eating doesn't seem reasonable. It goes against everything I have been taught about managing a healthy weight. Calories in must equal calories out in order to maintain your weight.

This is the reality: the body systems affected by my lifelong under-eating:

2016
Emotionally frozen in place

2014
Heart
- QT interval prolongation
- left upper quadrant chest pain
- elevated troponins
- blood bressure 117/82
- heartrate 40-60bpm resting,
60-80 bpm active
- basal body temperature 95.6 - 97.4F
- oxygen sats 88-92%

2014
Exteme fatigue
- post-prandial syncope
- shaking after brief exertion
- cold sweating within 15 minutes of standing up
- perpetually cold
- fever and chills

2013
Spinal stenosis
- falling when walking or standing from sitting
- severe debilitating back pain
- mechanical trochanteric bursitis

2012
Endocrine
- Hashimoto's thyroiditis

2011
Skeletal
- seven broken bones in four months
- osteopenia

2010
Cognitive decline w/o dementia
- br ain fog
- difficulty remember things
- loss of train of thought
- can't think or speak the right word

1998
Neuropathies
- peripheral nerves of legs
- pudendal nerve
- right trigeminal nerve

THINGS I CANNOT CHANGE

God
Grant me

The Serenity to accept
The things I cannot change,
Health and Life 101

The Courage to change
The things I can,
Eating and Exercise

The Wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

Amen

Read more at http://www.beliefnet.com/…/…/addiction/serenity-prayer.aspx…

BODY AWARENESS

I find that I have ignored my body so long, that I can no longer hear the signals it sends me. I don't feel hunger, thirst, the urgency of voiding, the grumble of an impending bowel movement.

I must be completely inactive, sitting or lying quietly, in order to begin to sense the subtle signals of my body's needs. In the silence of resting, if I listen very closely, I begin to sense what seems like gentle, slow-moving waves passing over my body. If I stay very still, the waves take form and become more concrete. I begin to distinguish not only hunger from thirst, but hunger for exactly what my body wants. Perhaps the light sweetness of grapes or the rich oiliness of an avocado, the salty softeness of cheese or the robust firmness of a piece of meat.

Once over the twin hurdles of "Am I hungry?" and "What do I want to eat?", I must decide how much is enough. When I eat mindfully, I seem to have a tipping point where I have had all I want. However, if I eat too quickly, I breeze by the finish flag and consequently, eat too much.

Thirst is just as difficult to identify, but I have given up drinking on a schedule in favour of learning to feel thirsty. I keep a crystal glass of fresh water on the table by my chair where I can see it at all times. Sometimes it just looks like a pretty glass, but when I am thirsty, it looks like an oasis in the desert. I now appreciate the expression 'sweetness of water', and often just hold it in my mouth to enjoy the refreshing feeling of it around my tongue.

For many years, I suffered from what doctor's called 'constipation' because I go many days between bowel movements. It now occurs to me that they were wrong. It is many years since I began consistently eating less than 1000 calories per day. As that energy deficit took its toll, my body became less and less willing to part with 'waste'. The only 'normal' bowel movement I routinely produce occurs after I have eaten a large meal at a party or restaurant. Occasionally, usually after eating raw vegetables, I will experience a bout of diarrhea, which leaves me feeling absolutely wrung out. Now that I am eating more and more often, I experience gut sounds and cramping both before and after meals. Usually the warmth and pressure of a heating pad is enough to give me ease, and I trust that in time as I contine to eat freely, these discomforts will disappear.

I feel sad that I have asked my body to do so much for me on so little fuel. In seeing food as a threat, I came to regard my body as the enemy, when in reality, it is my closest ally. By learning now to listen, I hope to rebuild the holistic communication that my childhood experiences destroyed.

NOT DEFINED BY OUR OCCUPATION

"What did you do?," asks the rhuematologist peering over her glasses. "This is impressive."

She is perusing my chart of how auto-immune disease has impacted me over the course of my life and the stresses that have added fuel to the disease process.

What did I do?

I hardly know. The years have whirled away, faster than I could grasp.

Truth to tell, I feel as though I lived in the moments while managing the chaos that has forever raged around me.

At sixteen, I thought I'd not live to see thirty, but the danger passed and at that auspicious milestone I became a mother; the only job I could never have again. I gloried in my children, their growth, their personalities, their joie de vivre. With them, I experienced the childhood I never had.

At forty, I was once again trying to right my world turned upside down by abuse and divorce and poverty. What did I do? I was a contract driver and drove the roads at night while my children slept so that I could be with them by day. During the days, I prepared meals for patients on restrictive diets and delivered them from my home. We survived.

At fifty, my health had utterly collapsed and through the social benefits tribunal, the province declared me disabled. What did I do? The kindest and best of man offered me and my two children a roof over our heads and three square meals a day in return for supper at 5 o'clock and his shirts washed, starched and pressed. Then when he sold his home, we were given an apartment in a handicapped building. What did I do? I became the Flower Lady, building gardens for other residents to grown vegetables and keeping planters on the entrance patio filled with seasonal greenery.

Then the unexpected happened. I chanced upon a man I once knew. We found ourselves both lonely. We began as companions and then married, blending our two families into one covering every decade from 80 to under ten.

What did I do? Everything! The answer to every question was ask Cathie/Mom. I once again cleaned a 1500sg ft house, I cooked meals for anywhere from 6-14. I struggled to bring order to the chaos of his fifty years of hoarding. I gardened both for beauty and for bounty, introducing the grandchildren to horticulture. I finished raising my children. My husband and I traveled widely, attended the deathbed of several family members, took photographs and I wrote about our adventures.

PROBLEMATIC EATING

I am pathological afraid I'll gain weight
I have gained 70lbs since Sept 2013

I eat as quickly as possible.
I eat while doing something else.
I eat in the recliner.
I am very particular about what I eat.
I experience extreme cravings eg banana.
I overeat when someone feeds me.
I eat at night to ignore my restless legs.
I feel very bloated after I eat.

I don't like eating.
I starve myself.
I have lost the desire to cook, so I get take out and eat it for three days.
The smell of food cooking often nauseates me.
The act of chewing makes me feel like gagging or a queer pain in my jaw.
I often drink coffee or wine instead of eating food.

I suffer from gastric dumping.
I suffer from gastroparesis
I sometimes experience post-prandial syncope - extreme fatigue after eating to the point of losing consciousness.

Allergies and Intolerance:
Gluten - wheat, rye, barley, oats
Lactose - yogurt, milk
Eggs
 Meat - fresh pork
Seafood except shrimp
Ranched fish

Irritable Bowel Syndrome:
Fruits and vegetables - raw

Diverticulosis:
Popcorn
Nuts and seeds
Berries
Hamburger

Diabetes:
Avoidance of sweets

Cravings:
Salty meats or chips
Coffee - Tim Hortons dark roast 2 cream
Red wine - Bodacious Smooth Red

BECALMED

I drift through the doldrums of everyday day like a sailboat when the wind abandons her. My sails hang lifeless about me and no sparkling water laps my hull.

All that gave me heart and purpose has been stripped from me. 
I cry out to God, "Why, why, WHY?"
I beg to know what I did wrong.
Was I not grateful enough?
Did I not treasure each moment?

I grew up believing that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. That people who live an upright life are rewarded by receiving blessings. Therefore, I am ill equipped to handle bad things happening when I've been good.

The week I came to live here on Sleeping Giant Parkway, God blessed me with a beautiful new friend, a strong woman of faith. She greeted me with prayer, declared this a time of healing in my life, and today, as I wrestled through another bout of "What should I be doing?", she sent me this quote:

"God answers prayer in three ways;
He says yes, and gives you what you want.
He says no, and gives you something better.
He says wait, and gives you the best."

So, I wait.
And rest.
And receive healing.

May we all reach safe harbour!

OKAY ... SO LET'S TALK

The young woman beside me who shares my name, dips her head in shame and says, "I eat too much and then I .... Well, you know."

Through the lens of a group of wonderful younger women, I have been able to see myself and bring my distorted eating habits clearly into focus.

"My name is Cathie and I have an eating disorder."

Rooted in childhood pain is my deep-seated belief that I have no right to be here taking up space on this earth. I have spent my whole life trying to be smaller; to leave a smaller footprint.

I pride myself on living with less, on having a tight budget, on limiting my possessions.

I work hard at organizing myself into smaller spaces, at letting go of whatever excess I accumulate, at being concise in what I say and write.

I also have severe restrictive rules about food and eating. When I break my rules and overeat, I hate myself. In order to control my eating, I verbally, emotionally, mentally and physically bully myself.

I am a professional cook by trade working first in the bush, then on the railway gangs and then on the icebreaker, Alexander Henry. I raised three children and fed my family well with love. I have taught other people how to cook and eat for various medical conditions. When I entertain, I select food that is wholesome and appealing to the eye. However, I rarely make any effort to feed myself.

Now, depressed over the life changes forced on me this past year and having experienced a weight gain of seventy pounds precipitated by a change in medication, I have lost any desire to eat. Food has no flavour. I balk at how food feels in my mouth. The aroma of food cooking nauseates me. My esophagus resists swallowing and my stomach engages a mechanism called gastric dumping to push food directly into my intestinal tract. I no longer experience the natural responses of hunger or the anticipation of eating.

Without nourishment, my bodily functions have decreased; my heart rate has slowed, my body temperature dropped and my oxygen saturation reduced.

So, perpetually cold, I sit in the recliner sandwiched between a heating pad and fuzzy blanket. I drink cold Tim Horton's Dark Roast coffee by the cupful. I read and reread books of all kinds. I visit with my Facebook friends. I snooze the days away.

This is not the first time I have been blindsided by a food-related illness. In 2001, I completely lost the ability to swallow food. Nine months later after the loss of sixty pounds, my allergist discovered that I have celiac disease with the autoimmune component of dermatitis herpetiformis lesions in my throat. My body reacts adversely not only to gluten, but to many other common foods as well. The severe diet restrictions I needed to learn to live with destroyed much of my pleasure in preparing food and precipitated a long period of resisting eating.

When you are overweight, the idea that you might not eat enough is ludicrous. I look in the mirror, and that image jeers at me, "Fatty, fatty, two by four, can't get through the kitchen door." The struggle to find clothing that suits this new normal defeats me and further erodes my body image. My arms, wracked by the arthralgia of lupus haven't the strength to pull on tights or leggings, fingers knarled by arthritis refuse to snap bra closures and manipulate buttons. I live in my pajamas, a sweater vest and slippers.

I tell myself I HAVE to get over this!

I devise meal plans I don't follow. I buy food I think I'll eat, then no longer want it when I get it home. I go to the grocery store and wander the aisles, only to leave empty-handed. I cook something I crave, but after the first taste, leave it to become a science experiment in the fridge.

My husband is amazing; shops for groceries, cooks delicious food, entertains our company with great meals, makes coffee runs and asks regularly, "Can I get you anything?"

Our family and friends invite us often to eat with them, meals served with love and laughter, making sure we take all the "leftovers" home with us. They come to our home often, bringing food and joy, gently reminding me to remain in the land of the living.

Perhaps most important right now, I have found a group of women with similar eating disorders who all understand what I mean when I talk about how I am feeling about food.

I am not weird and I am not alone.

Someone is listening!