Delusions

I grew up a thin child.  I was extremely active, and my parents didn’t keep junk food in the house.  I didn’t think a lot about food one way or the other (besides how much I hated tuna and tamale casserole) until I was around ten years old.

Then my dad, because he had problems of his own, became obsessed with my weight.  Not that I was fat, but that I would BECOME fat.  Now that’s a hard one to fight.  It’s “no, you’re not doing anything wrong, but you might in the future, so you have to be treated like a criminal now just in case.”

My dad taped a paper to the wall in the family bathroom and every morning he would weigh me. If I gained weight he would write my weight on the paper and the date in red ink. If I maintained or lost weight, he would write it in black ink.

Now, I was 10, 11, 12 during this time.  I was still growing. I gained about three inches between 5th and 9th grade.  But I lived in constant dread of that red pen.

But, strangely, I didn’t really restrict my eating.  I WANTED to eat at that point. I would sneak food home from school in my backpack (my dad started checking my backpack for food).  I would sneak food from the refrigerator and hide it in my room.

During meals my dad wouldn’t let me have more than one serving, and limited my serving sizes. I was guilted about eating desert.  I was given an apple as a snack after school every day, and grapefruit for breakfast (because it burns calories).

Food became a battleground, despite obvious physical signs that I was undernourished.  And slowly, over time, I internalized my father’s delusion.  I began to see myself as fat.

And so began my descent into bulimia and anorexia.

When I was in high school I was hospitalized for undiagnosed bipolar.  I was put on heavy medications and I gained 100 pounds in six months.

I hadn’t known what fat meant before that.  All of the sudden my body was a foreign place.  I didn’t have spacial awareness.  I didn’t have coordination.  I couldn’t function.  But the medication, at least, prevented me from caring too much about any of it.

When I was released, I lost the weight again, and then some.  My freshman year in college I LOST the freshman fifteen and my dorm supervisor was concerned about me.

Then my bipolar was diagnosed and I was back on medication.  The 100 pounds came back on and didn’t go away.  And the meds didn’t last for 6 months this time.  This time it was 12 years.

When I finally got off of them a few years ago…  I couldn’t lose the weight again.

I had thought all that time that the meds (true) caused me to gain weight, so when I stopped taking them I’d go back to my normal body (false.)

It’s been more than five years.

I’ve eaten paleo, autoimmune, and now keto diets, I’ve excercised and counted calories in and out.  I’ve heard all the “It’s just about numbers, calories in vs. calories out” bullshit that means nothing because I do and have done everything “right” to lose weight.  I just don’t.

My doctors all scratch their heads. And ultimately come back to, “Maybe you’re eating more than you realize…”

No, I’m fucking well not.

So I finally get another diagnosis. Through years of medication and autoimmune disease, the very complicated system that is my hormones is fucked.

So the ketogenic diet because everything else to restabilize my hormones has failed.  My body may be permanently unable to process carbohydrates.

And… it might be working.

But I can’t believe that it could.

Nothing else has.  So many “answers” that weren’t.  So many “cures” that didn’t.  I think my brain is incapable of believing anymore.  Of seeing it anymore.

I am probably losing weight right now (don’t have a scale) and yet, I somehow can’t believe that I am without the scale.

Homecoming will be interesting.

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