Men Have Body Image Issues Too

Just like you can't go to a Melissa Etheridge concert without seeing an abundance of pit hair, these days you can't go to an indie rock concert without seeing... emaciated men? This season, anorexic is the new black for the skinny jeans and eyeliner-for-men set. In a profession where rock stars have typically looked drug-emaciated a la Steven Tyler and David Bowie, this new trend hasn't garnered a lot of attention. The difference now however is that rather than all the bony rib cages being a result of popping oxycontin like tic tacs, thinness is sought after as a goal in its own right. Blame American Apparel or Pete Wentz, but men in this particular hipster subculture are now being held up to the impossibly skinny standard - and realizing firsthand how difficult it is to reach and how painful it is to always come up short.

Recently Caleb Followill of Kings of Leon admitted that he struggles with anorexia. In an interview with Q magazine he says, "I always thought I wasn't good enough. I'd do anything to keep my hands and mouth busy without eating." Adds Priya Elan of The Guardian, "He lived on black coffee and would go running in hot weather wearing a heavy tracksuit to sweat off as many pounds as possible in order to stay skinny. It isn't a huge surprise that the singer of one of indie rock's biggest bands was anorexic. What is surprising is that he's admitted it."

Followill might be the most honest of the group but he certainly isn't the only indie boy in this band. Other indie stars known for their bony frames and body issues include Kurt Cobain, Pete Wentz, Kaiser Chief's Ricky Wilson and Amos Lee. Seeing as I love all of their music (yeah, I just admitted to digging Fall Out Boy. I'm 12, I know.), it would be a shame to see any of them go the Karen Carpenter route - barring Cobain as he's already playing his coffeehouse gig in the sky.

Kurt Cobain, still dead, now schills shoes for the living

Pete Wentz, belching the alphabet

Ricky Wilson gives new meaning to Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man

Amos Lee looks over his shoulder in an alley. Which I would be too if I were sitting on such a nice leather "free" chair.

Slowly but surely it's been percolating to the surface of our media-addled public consciousness that men struggle with body issues too, whether it be looking good in bike shorts at the gym or measuring up to David Beckham's, ahem, standard (is that what the kids are calling it these days?). Worse, it is filtering down to all levels of society as evidenced by my literal tug of war with a pair of teenaged boys over a thrift-store pair of women's Chip and Pepper skinny cut jeans. (I won. You do NOT mess with me in a thrift store!)

Reader Andrew (AJH) pointed this out in his comment on my Finding Your Best Weight post:

Don't think these thoughts are just in women's heads, I was just the same when I was "losing" and am still to a degree. I started at 110kg with a goal weight of 90kg. Each time I reached a goal weight, another 5 kgs seemed like a good idea. I got down to about 68kg and my wife started saying I was looking sick, I couldn't see it, but did find I was finding I had less energy when exercising. I went back up to 70kg, and even then it didn't feel right, I decided less than 75kg seemed a good target and have been there for more than 5 years, feeling good. However, I have been around 72kg the last few months, and there is definitely a thought of that "safe buffer" you mentioned. I think if you're eating sensibly, feeling good and can do the things you want with the energy level you want, you're probably at the right weight.

It's also been shown that young gay men are particularly susceptible to body image woes and eating disorders. As a mother to three wonderful sons and one adorable daughter, I often worry about how society in general and my own struggles in particular will affect my daughter's sense of self and vulnerability to eating disorders. But now I am also worried about the messages my boys are getting. Even as young as they are (my eldest is 8), they are still bombarded daily with messages about what it means to be attractive and how to achieve that standard.

Body image issues in men may not be as prevalent or as pernicious as among women but give 'em twenty years to catch up; we had a head start. What do you think? Have you seen this in any of the men or boys in your life? How do I talk to my sons about this issue? Are eating disorders viewed differently in men than in women? Anyone else a thrift-store addict like I am?? (Today was 50% off day! I so totally scored!!)

Finding Your "Best" Weight

Cartoon Credit: The inimitable XKCD.

Woman #1, to me: Girl, you look good! Got rid of all that baby weight! But don't you lose anymore 'cause you're right on the edge of scary skinny, know what I mean?

Woman #2, also to me: Oh you are over that edge, eat a sandwich already!

Woman #3: Shut up! Charlotte, you look fine but definitely don't gain any weight!!

I'm not sure if every woman is the subject of such weight scrutiny or if this is further evidence of my magnetic ability to draw weird comments (probably both) but this conversation sent me on the crazy roller coaster from elation to worry to chagrin in the 15 seconds it took to say it. First I'm perfect, then I'm too thin and then I'm borderline too big? This is exactly what drove Goldilocks to start hiding her porridge under her napkin and taking excessively long hikes in the woods. Fairytale gone bad, my friends.

In an effort to settle the debate - because of course I can't trust my own opinion, I'm nuts remember? - I asked a fourth friend what she thought. Not even glancing at my figure, she gave me a sheepish smile and said, "You know me, no such thing as 'too thin'..." Which is when I realized that my weight is a Rorshach test for how other women feel about their bodies and how each person interprets our societal standards about beauty. I can't trust other people's opinions any more than I can trust my own and yet, just like Goldilocks can't stop sleeping in stranger's beds, I can't stop asking for other people's thoughts.

This question is on my mind because, as those of you who follow me on Twitter already know, my baby Jelly Bean turned one on Friday! (Incidentally the exact same day Heather Eats Almond Butter and her husband welcomed their sweet baby into the world - how cool is that?!) And lurking in the background of the joyous present-opening (why play with the toy when you can shred the wrapping paper?) and the naked cake rolling (her, not me, although I was tempted) that marked this huge milestone (Joy = no more SIDs risk!!) was the Weight Question.

There's a rule that is drilled into the mind of every expectant mother that she has until the baby's first birthday to peel off those baby pounds. After that you get no more free pass and people will resume judging you. Although with all the celebrity baby explosions lately, that free year has been whittled down to a free month. And to be honest, I did pretty well with it. By 9 months post-partum I had just two stubborn pounds hanging around. Then as if by magic (or by barfing my way through a ten-mile race), on her first birthday there I was at exactly my pre-pregnancy weight. Yay?

Here's the slippery slope: My pre-baby weight - three pounds = my "ideal" weight (picked arbitrarily in my head from looking at pictures). But I can guarantee you that once I hit my "ideal" weight then I'll want to lose just a few more pounds to have a safe buffer around that number. And usually by that point I'll want just a few more gone because even though I'll have visible ribs, a chest that makes xylophones weep in envy and collarbones that could take your eye out, my thighs will still have their fatty bits at the top and my hips will still have a little extra padding. (Dear Charlotte, your thighs are Siamese twins. They have never ever not touched. Separating them would be traumatizing. Stop trying - you are not meant to have legs that are widest at the knee.) And so it goes with never feeling good in my skin, with no weight ever being low enough.

I refuse to let that happen again. REFUSE.

I have been down that path to self-hatred more times than I can count. And I have learned that thin does not guarantee happiness. In fact, at my thinnest I was supremely unhappy because I was a) really hungry b) really worried about how to maintain that weight and c) still sure I was fat! But that leaves me with the question of where exactly then is my best, healthiest weight? Do I go by BMI? By what my husband says? My friends (see above, ahem)? My doctor? A website that calculates via a survey what weight other people find you most attractive at? (Yes those websites exist and no I'm not linking one because they are crazy making in the extreme.)

When I was complaining about my "last three pounds" (I know, first-world country problem) to Gym Buddy Allison she pointed out, "How cool is it that you lost all your baby weight without dieting??" And the Intuitive Eating lightbulb clicked on. She's right. For the first time, eating whatever my body needs (not necessarily whatever it wants), I've lost my pregnancy weight without craziness. That's a freaking coup. (For reference, after the last two babies were born I ended up in eating disorder treatment.) And that's also my answer: if I trust my body enough to tell me when it's hungry and when it's full then I also have to trust it enough to tell me when it is at a healthy sustainable weight - whether or not that is the magic number in my head. That is a very scary thought for me. How will I know it when I hit it? What range should I expect for normal fluctuations? How do I quiet the crazy thoughts that tell me it's just not enough? And yet I'm 100% committed to making this work because these past few months I've come to enjoy an ease and, dare I say it?, JOY around food. I'm not giving that up. Even if it means hanging on to a few "extra" pounds.

Please help me out - tell me how you know when you are at your "best" weight! How have you learned to trust yourself? Anyone else get caught in that slippery slope of "just a couple more pounds and then I'll be perfect"?? What do you say when people comment about your weight?

The Problem With "Thinspiration"

Portia De Rossi was my thinspo crush. For those of you unacquainted with the '90s, before she was Ellen Degeneres' wife she was on a little show called Ally McBeal where she starred as a blond super skinny lawyer who liked to sleep around. No, not the main blond super skinny chick - that was Calista Flockhart. No, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Courtney Thorne-Smith. Noooo, not the other blond super skinny chick - that was Jane Krakowski. The other other other other one, ok? Right, now I'm starting to remember why I hated that show. But while I hated the insipid plot lines and abundance of Barbie locks (seriously, was there even one female brunette on the whole show?), I loved Portia. I wanted to be her. Most importantly, I wanted to look like her. Which is where this came in:

Technically this isn't the exact pic in my journal - I couldn't find that one on the Internet, alas Google failed me - but it's close enough.

Thinspo is a term used mostly by girls with disordered eating - although it is becoming more mainstream these days - to describe a picture, usually of an actress or other super skinny woman, that shows the kind of body you covet. The kind of body you are working for. The kind of body worth starving yourself for. Back in the early hysterical days of the Internet, thinspo sites were everywhere, encouraging readers to pin up the pictures on their refrigerator or in their closet to remind them why they should like that feeling of their stomach turning in on itself and linking to each other in one long daisy chain of jutting hip bones and popping clavicles. You could click from link to link for hours staring at endless pictures of women with unattainable stick figures. And I did.

Being the obedient little disordered eater that I was, I took this thin ideal to heart and tacked up pictures of gorgeous models, actresses and singers and surrounded them with admonitions like "nothing tastes as good as thin feels!!" (so creative, I) and "Do 200 crunches every night before bed! No matter how tired you think you are!!" As the years went on and I imitated Portia's casual-yet-confident pose in the mirror only to be horrified how my stomach buckled and bulged and the bend where hers lay flat with the only crinkles being from her shirt, I added things like "I hate you!" and "You are ugly and fat and no one will ever love you!" I saw my stomach as failure.

This "thinspiration" journal - heavy on the thin, light on any actual inspiration - stayed with me far longer than I want to admit. But I know I am not alone in this exercise in self-loathing. It isn't just the eating disordered who tout thinspo as a great get-thin trick. Popular trainers, TV shows and women's magazines across the board parrot this. These tips run the gamut from telling you to tape a photo of you at your fattest to your refrigerator, to eating naked in front of a mirror, to posting pics of celebs you admire, to hanging the skinny jeans you're dying to fit into on your closet door, to having pictures of yourself digitally altered to give you a thinner you ideal to strive for. Heck, the entire premise of The Biggest Loser is based on this one concept. All of these things are supposed to inspire you to be better, to stick to your diet, to hone your willpower and perhaps they do work for some people. But all they ever taught me was how I don't measure up, how I'm not beautiful and why I should hate myself. Even if they did help me put down the candy, it was never out of a feeling of caring or loving for myself but out of punishment and denial. Every time I looked at those pictures I felt worse about myself.

Portia pre-Ally McBeal and post-Ally McBeal

My poster girl Portia was recently on Oprah talking about her new book, Unbearable Lightness, that just came out in which she discusses her long battle with anorexia and bulimia stemming from her days on Ally McBeal. While she'd long been rumored to be anorexic - all the girls on that show were - hearing the words from her own mouth ended up being more wrenching than I had expected. My first reaction was to want to scream at her, "How could you do this to me?! All those years! Wasted! Because I wanted to look like you! Like eating-disordered you! How could you let me think all this time that your standard of beauty was an achievable one?" I wanted to go find her picture (I still have that journal somewhere) and rip it into tiny pieces. I was so so angry at her.

And then I calmed down. Of course my eating disorders were not her fault. They were mine, built choice by choice and honed over many years. And honestly I should have known better; it's not like Hollywood is known for its meticulous honesty. But the feeling of betrayal is still there. It isn't that I want her to be silent and unhealthily skinny again. Nor do I want her to be naturally super skinny. I just wanted her to be honest then, when I was so vulnerable and really needed to hear it. But she couldn't do it then. She lost as much (more, probably) to her eating disorder as I did. So I'm grateful that she can do it now and I applaud her speaking out about it. But it still leaves the issue of thinspo in general.

What do you think about "thinspiration"? Does it motivate you in a positive way to live a healthier life or is it one more way to beat yourself up? Who was your thinspo? Anyone else love to hate the show Ally McBeal??

Body Checking: The One Bad Health Habit I Just Can't Break [Help Meee!]

Reusing my floss because I'm too lazy to get up and get a new piece. Downing my daily cocktail of Splenda, artificial colors and fake flavors. Sleeping in my makeup (sometimes I like waking up looking like Boy George). Let's be honest, I have quite a few bad health habits that need breaking but only one is really driving me nuts right now. And it's a doozy. I've been doing this as long as I can remember. Honestly, I can remember doing this in Kindergarten, it's been with me that long.

So what is it? Body checking. Not the ice hockey kind (although that would be really cool if slamming people into the wall on ice skates were my big problem). The kind of body checking I mean is the kind that makes me have to look at myself in every reflective surface hundreds of times a day. The kind where I am constantly adjusting my clothing or fixing my hair. The kind that makes me change my clothes at least three times a day - and often many more. The kind where the first thing I do upon standing, sitting or changing positions is to put my hand over my lower belly and squish it. Because I have to check myself.

At first glance, I look like the vainest person in the world. I remember my cousin once joking on a group shopping trip, "Quick we've got to find another mirror so Charlotte can check herself out again! It's been, like, 5 whole minutes since she's seen herself." But - you must believe me - it is not vanity. Vanity means that you like the way you look and enjoy staring at yourself. I do not generally like the way I look (working on that!) and I certainly don't enjoy staring at myself. And yet I replay this little ritual of see mirror, turn sideways, smooth tummy, straighten shirt, fix hair, turn forward, check my teeth, smooth tummy dozens of times a day. If you count every little body check, it's closer to a hundred times a day.

My compulsion - because that's exactly what it is: a ritualistic behavior performed to relieve a specific anxiety - to check my body is especially bad at the gym. A combination, I think, of all the mirrors (seriously, the Gorgon would be dead before she made it past the lobby of most gyms) and wearing fitted clothing. Although as I type that, I feel forced to admit that even at home in my baggiest of sweats, I still have to smooth my hand over my stomach, still have to look in the mirror.

All of which means I can be really annoying. I've had more than one Gym Buddy tell me some form of "Stop pulling your shirt down, it's fine!" or "Quit tucking your sports bra straps under, nobody cares!" My roommates thought I had a bladder infection because every time I walked past a bathroom, I had to go in it. Even my husband loses patience sometimes when we're trying to go somewhere and I have to change my outfit for the 17th time (cute when you're two, massively irritating when you're 32). It's even led to a bit of a shopping addiction - thankfully I'm addicted to thrift stores so the financial impact has been minimal - a never-ending quest to find clothes that make me look "not fat." There are days when I even annoy myself: I'll be running 10 minutes late but still have to run back inside and change my top or, heaven help me, my entire outfit. I desperately want to not care but I know if don't change, I'll be so consumed by what I'm wearing (Do I look fat? Are other people staring at me? Am I underdressed?) that it will drive me nuts.

If you ask me why I'm doing it, I'll tell you: "I'm afraid of looking fat."

But I've had enough therapy to know by now that "fat" isn't the issue so much as "crazy" is. It's turned into a nervous tic of sorts. When I'm feeling happy and well-adjusted - so about 5% of the time - I don't think about my clothing or hair or stomach at all. When I'm really nervous or upset, I get as handsy as Brody Jenner and Joe Francis at the last sorority party of the year.

Unsurprisingly body checking behaviors are highly correlated with eating disorders. It only makes sense that when a person is hypercritical of their body that it will manifest in a variety of ways. I also know I'm not alone in this. Our society is very reinforcing of body checking with the constant attention to people's bodies. We blow up celebrity butts and circle them with red pen. We giggle at the lady in Wal-Mart with her thong showing on both ends. We watch so many television shows (in high definition!) about how to properly dress, accessorize and do our make up that they had to create an entire channel to fill the need. When you live in a world where Gwyneth Paltrow has to wear two (!) pairs of Spanx to feel beautiful then who can be surprised that the rest of us become self conscious about our tummies.

Unfortunately I don't know how to stop doing it. Even though this feels like one of the most embarrassing confessions I've made on this site (kinda hilarious when you remember I'm the girl who copped to farting through an entire exercise class after I ate soybeans), I think writing it out here has been a great help. I've never really admitted to myself before how much I do this and how much it negatively impacts my life.

So - do you body check? If not, do you have a bad habit that even annoys yourself? Anyone else change their clothes multiple times a day? Have you ever put on an outfit and felt completely awesome in it until the second you step out the door and then suddenly it gives you cankles, a tummy roll and bad skin to boot? What do I do to quit this??

Where is the Line Between Your Weight and Yourself?

Girl Disappearing by Curly Tops

Perfectly round. A circular platform encircled by a raised bar. Like a stage! The kind that lights up underneath and lifts the performer above the crowd as mist billows beneath! And indeed I am being watched. But there is no applause and I am given no chance for a monologue. Perhaps, I think - silently, to myself - it reminds me less of a stage and more of a teleportation device. Closing my eyes I wait for a beam of light to descend and obliterate the particles of my mortal shell, to reduce me, no more no less, to the same matter that permeates the universe. No light comes. My atoms stay rigidly arranged, the faulty DNA that is Broken Me still intact, still informing.

I wish it were anything but what it actually is: a scale.

The brushed steel platform on which I stand, obediently thinking defiant thoughts, does not look like any scale I am used to. Certainly it doesn't resemble either of the torture devices to which I have arranged my bathroom, and my life, around. (Two: one to check the other. Accuracy is paramount.) This is an industrial scale, large enough to weigh an elephant but stark enough to weigh an anorectic. Even if she is too weak to hold herself up and must lean on the circular rail for support. But not comfort. No scale has ever been comforting. The very idea of weighing and measuring a human being is not so they can be loved but so they can be compared.

I know quite well what I am being compared to. The problem is that I don't know how I measure up. The digital display that shows the all-important numbers is across the room. Across the room! And turned away so only the nutritionist can read it. Upon first entering the eating disorder clinic, I had protested vehemently at this weighing ritual. "But I'm at a healthy weight!" And then, "But I'm not anorexic! I'm here for compulsive exercise and orthorexia!" Then finally, "My shoes (large wedged heels) and my coat (thick for winter) are so heavy!" All of these things were quite true.

"It doesn't matter. This is just to get a baseline. All patients are weighed at every appointment. Please step on the scale."

"But I'm not even trying to lose weight!!" My final plea. This, incidentally, was not true.

The nutritionist didn't blink. "We can't continue until you are weighed."

There was a standoff. I held out for a half hour, picking my nails, studying the pastel 80's artwork, staring blatantly at my nutritionist - a woman so thin that she must always get asked if she has an eating disorder, if she is a size 0, if she has any tips . Of course these things are filtered through the madness of my illness. I can't see anyone in any other light except fat or thin, evil or righteous, rebellious or obedient.

The thing that breaks me is knowing my babysitter can't stay past an hour. White as a sheet, I step on the scale. The silence that had started at our inauspicious beginning continues to blanket the room. I make not a peep as my worth blinks in black and white. She makes not a sound as she writes it down on my chart, her face inscrutable. Surely, I think, she had never seen someone weigh as much as I do. Surely, I think, she is horrified. Surely she thinks I'm faking sickness. It makes me feel so angry and impotent and worthless that the only thing I can think to say when we finally sit down in proper chairs - as if one of us hadn't just subjected the other to an invasive and dehumanizing ritual - in her office is, "My shoes have solid rubber heels, they probably weigh two pounds each."

She nods, unsmiling, "I'll make a note of that on your chart." And she does. Although I do not know whether she notes it under my weight or under the "disordered fixations of patient" column. I reassure myself with the thought that next time I will wear tiny sandals and take my coat off in the waiting room, no matter the fact that it is winter. No matter the fact that I am always, always freezing. Next time, I vow, that number will be less.

"Excuse me," my lips stretch and I show my teeth in what I hope is a smile, "but I didn't catch the number. What was it?"

"I already told you, the number doesn't matter. It's just a baseline for our charts. Something to see if the intervention is working." Her bony chest, visible through her v-neck sweater, rises and falls as she sighs.

Intervention. I bristle at the word. Bristle at the thought that something as intensely personal, as intrinsic to my corporeal self, as my weight is kept from me. It's mine! I want to scream. It's all I have left! I don't want to add.

"Now, since it took so long getting started," she pauses and I stare right back into her hollow-cheeked face, "I won't be able to finish all of the intake questions. But I'd like you to take this and read it before our meeting next week." She slides a bound booklet across the desk to me. It has a clip-art picture of a fruit bowl on the cover. Nutritional Guidelines the title reads. It is tacky and I hate it without opening it.

But then I remember Pam, my beloved therapist, the one who insisted that I go to this meeting, do this intake, finish this outpatient program. I can't face her next week and report yet another week of no progress. Flipping open the booklet, the first page tells me to eat a protein, a grain and a fat at every meal. The nutritionist leans over to point out more clip-art pictures illustrating each of these categories. As if I don't already know every macronutrient, every calorie, every gram, every vitamin, every category that a food could possibly be compartmentalized into by heart. Did you know an apple is a fruit?

My sickness does not make me stupid.

The nutritionist thinks it does. She hands me a list and asks me to circle which foods I will eat. Scanning the everlong list - is every food in the world really on there? Because I am an adventurous eater. At least, I used to be - I draw a heavy X through them all. This will be faster: I scrawl on the bottom "salad, berries, nuts, steel-cut oats and non-starchy vegetables."

"This is what you will eat?"

A lump forms in my throat as I realize that several days ago I struck oatmeal off the list. Grains are bad for you, our primal ancestors didn't eat them, our systems haven't evolved to digest them without inflammation. See? I had to take them off. It was the right thing to do.

"Charlotte?"

I'm not aware that I'm not saying any of this out loud. What I know is this: I am crying. And my babysitter can't stay any longer.

"I'm sorry, I have to go now." I stumble over my too-tall, too-heavy shoes. (How could I have ever thought these made my legs look thinner? Clearly I am huge and no shoes are going to hide that.)

"All right, I'll see you next week?"

"Sure." By the waiting room I have chewed my lip raw. Mothers don't have the luxury of eating disorders. By the elevator I have dried the tears. I can't go back to my children with red rimmed eyes. With problems. With heavy shoes. By the front doors I have recovered myself. I toss the booklet in the garbage can under the cigarette sandbox.

I don't come back.

I prefer my small-scale scales. The ones that don't have the power to transport me to another world. The ones that won't take me apart piece by piece, demanding my faith that it will put me back together in the end.

* Note: I wanted to end the essay here. But I worry that some of you will think that this is my contemporary state of mind. And it isn't. This incident happened several years ago and I have made amazing progress with my disordered eating. The reason I write about this today is to try and describe what it felt like for me. Why the scale still holds such prominence in my life. And because today, for the first time since my baby's birth, I weigh the weight that I did that day (of course the first thing I did when I got home and paid the babysitter was to run upstairs and weigh myself, shoes, coat and everything). Before you worry - do realize that my weight today, totally naked, is what I weighed then fully (overly) clothed. It isn't truly the same but seeing that number brought back this memory. It seemed important to write it down.

Do you have a weight that holds particular importance for you? A number that brings back a particular memory, good or bad? Edited to add: I ask this not to have you fixate on an arbitrary number but to encourage you to challenge the beliefs that you hold about yourself and your weight. You are so much more than a number.

Have You Ever Hid a Healthy Habit?

Best hiding place ever! My kids would never find me in here!!

My house is a veritable treasure trove of hidden goodies. There are birthday presents stashed at the top of my closet, lingerie under the bed, dark chocolate peanut butter cups in the freezer (bonus: takes me longer to eat them that way. un-bonus: I have to pass by the cookie dough on the way to them.) and our emergency flashlight that my husband and I have hid and re-hid so many times that we don't even know where it is anymore. Obviously, my squirrel tendencies are because I live with 4 little people who have zero concept of respecting other people's belongings. Seriously, they think my panty liners are huge awesome stickers and no matter how many times I hide those suckers I still find them stuck all over the house.

But when it comes to food, I can't really blame the kiddos. In the past I've had some admittedly bizarre behaviors around food (behaviors that I have made a LOT of progress in fixing as of late - wahoo!). I hated eating in front of people. And yet I couldn't eat alone either. I destroyed food. I lied about it. I even hated it. And I hid it. While my food-hiding tendencies run more towards eating abstemiously in public and then shoveling in a half gallon of ice cream at home alone, a comment left on my post "The Slow Metabolism: Fact or Myth?" made me see food-hiding in a totally new perspective. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own neuroses that I forget other people have their own closeted crazies.

Jessica wrote, "I'm not sure I buy the whole 'some people can eat whatever they want and never gain weight' thing. There have been points in my life when I felt like I could eat whatever I wanted, and points where I've felt so obsessed with food that I was never going to win. Maybe there are a couple of people in the world who really can eat thousands and thousands of calories a day, but I think they're extremely rare. I think if you look more closely at those people who seem to be eating junk all the time, you'll find that the numbers add up-- they are not actually eating as many calories in a day as you think they are. If you're thin and don't have much stress around food, it's easier to only eat when you're hungry, and that cuts out a lot of calories. Also, people love to make it look effortless, because it makes them feel special and important, which means they're eating the candy in front of you and hiding the turkey on whole wheat. " [emphasis mine.]

I have this problem: I always think that people have always been the way that I know them now. For instance, when I meet someone new who is very thin it never occurs to me that they might have been heavy in the past or are recovering from a long illness or work very very hard for that tiny body. I just assume that they have always been thin and that it is easy for them. Weird, right? So when I see some skinny girl chowing down on the pie and ice cream, I think "Huh, she's really lucky. She must be one of those who can eat whatever she wants." And then I try not to roll up into a ball of shame and jealousy.

But Jessica makes an excellent point. Of course people are not always as they appear to be. This was brought home to me the other day when I walked into a lady's room to change Jelly Bean's diaper. A young, beautiful mother sat nursing her baby (it was one of those fancy lady's rooms with rocking chairs and plush couches and artwork! Oh yes men, those bathrooms really exist!) and we chatted a bit about our kids who were almost the same age. As I threw away the diaper - in a pail much nicer than the one I have at home, sigh - she suddenly stood up and the distressed look on her face surprised me. "I know this is really weird but I just have to ask you this before you leave?" I blinked. If she was going to try to sell me Amway or Quixstar or whatever it is now, I was ready to bolt. "How did you do it? You're so thin. I mean, you look like you've never even had kids." I turned 7 shades of red and stammered something about my last 10 pounds still hanging around. "No," she said more insistently, "I really really want to know. Did you do a diet? A workout? Pills??" My eyes widened as I contemplated explaining to her my brand of crazy. "I'm desperate," she added as if the tears filling her eyes didn't explain that well enough.

"Well yeah, I do eat healthy most of the time. And I workout." I thought about just leaving it at that - it is true, after all - but then I realized I'd be leaving her with the impression that I've always been this way and that it is easy for me, both of which are so laughably untrue that I plopped my butt down on the couch next to her, gave her a hug and proceeded to tell her my whole sorry story. Four different kinds of eating disorders, my Very Bad Boyfriend, my gymnastics team, my 6th grade health teacher, my bulimic grandmother - the whole shebang. We spoke for about 45 minutes during which I learned that she had been hospitalized with an eating disorder before she'd had her daughter and was now really struggling with the way motherhood had changed her body. By the time we parted I think she felt a lot better and I was immensely glad I had resisted the urge to let her believe I was what she assumed me to be. Sure I obliterated my "perfect" image but that conversation was so healing for both of us that I don't regret my honesty one little bit.

So whether it's hiding the fact that you eat healthy food 90% of the time so you can eat hamburgers and fries when you're in front of people, like Jessica pointed out, or whether it's hiding how much you workout, like I was tempted to do - I want to know, have you ever hid a healthy habit? What made you do it - were you afraid of being called a health nut? Afraid of being labeled as eating disordered (whether you were or not)? Were you just trying to avoid a slew of unwanted advice (You're a vegetarian?! You're going to die from a protein deficiency!!)? Are you ever tempted to just let others think you have it all together?

Can Exercise Hurt Your Breast Milk? [A Study in Mother Guilt]

A mother's love - they say that nothing is more powerful. (At least if you believe Harry Potter, which of course I do. I'm a sucker for green eyes.) So if this is true then I know the second most powerful force on the planet: A mother's guilt.

Whether they hand it to you as you exit the hospital, a neat little package of the shame you carry for sending your precious infant to the nursery to spend his first night on the planet alone amongst the bright lights and loud noises or whether you don't discover the little box hidden like a pipe bomb under the baby seat that you realize you've installed incorrectly and yet have been using it to tote your fragile baby around for months, it is an inevitability. It hits you like a knife to the stomach twisting your innards as your mind races to all the what-could-haves and thank-God-it-didn'ts as you repeat the Happiest Baby on the Block like so many nursery rhyme Hail Marys in an effort to prevent the worst by imagining all incarnations of it. Once the guilt has finished consuming you from the gut upward in its fiendish flames, it settles in quietly, rock-like, deep inside your person. Some mothers carry their neutron-star guilt in their stomachs perpetually churning with acid, others in their heads in the migraine spot right behind their eyes, but I, I carry mine in my heart. With every beat of my own I can feel the pulse, like an echo, of the hearts of each of my children. From their utmost beginning their hearts have beat inside me - how could I not still be swayed by their rhythm?

I shall tell you all the facts. There aren't many, it won't take long. Indeed, on the grand scale of parental mistakes this one is perhaps minor. But it is the thing that it represents that so wounds me: my ability to hurt my children even while doing my best to protect them. But I am ahead of myself.

Anyone who has had a baby, seen a baby, read about a baby or just happens to have breasts will know what a contentious topic breast feeding is. Breast is best! The zeal imbued into this cannot be overstated. It's healthier for both mom and baby - it is a magic elixir that prevents health problems now and in the future! Plus, it's free. And yet, knowing this as all of us breast-endowed women (and most men too, I'd wager) do, how is that the vast majority do not breast feed? Or if they do, they don't do it for long?

I'll tell you why. It's hard. It may be a natural process but it sure doesn't come naturally. At least it didn't for me. Nobody told me how much it would hurt - like rug burns with the scabs getting ripped off every 2-3 hours around the clock - until the baby's suckling finally turned my nipples into pencil erasers. Nobody told me of the yeast infections passed back and forth like some insane game of hot potato but where the winner gets their mouth painted purple with gentian violet. Nobody told me of the stage where infants turn piranha and, literally, bite the one that feeds them. Nobody warned me of the nursing strikes, the engorgement, the clogged ducts, the cumbersome nursing bras, the mastitis, the banning of all medicine except worthless Tylenol, the double pump milking machine that is so similar to the ones they use on cows that you can't help but moo, the spontaneous public let downs at the mere thought of my baby's cry. (On an airplane, wetting a stranger's head no less! The only thing that could have made that flight more perfect was if my last name were Joad.)

I don't tell you this to discourage you from ever nursing but rather, having been through all of this multiple times, to explain to you why nursing means so much to me. I have fought so hard to do this simplest of things. To be the mother who can feed her baby.

But now for the facts I promised you. The Jelly Bean was born hale and hearty at 8 1/2 pounds, by far my smallest baby but fairly large as babies in general go. She took to nursing right away and at first all seemed to go well. She was back up to her birth weight by two weeks, just as expected. She pooped and peed like a champ. But along about 3 months, something changed. She stopped gaining weight. The doctor wasn't overly concerned. "Bring her back in a month for another weigh-in." I did. But at that check-up and every check-up that has followed, her weight percentile has continued to drop. Eventually the doctor suggested a lactation consultant who in turn suggested a number things of which I all tried. While she still didn't gain any weight, I comforted myself that she was meeting all of her milestones and seemed happy and healthy in every other measurable way.

And then she weaned herself. Or perhaps my milk gave out. I think the problem might have started with my breasts. I began to notice her fussing when it came time to nurse and despite her frantic sucking, the milk would not let down. Eventually she stopped trying to suck all together, straight-arming me and crying whenever I laid her down to nurse. I, always stubborn, refused to let the nursing go. I went for days trying to keep feeding her only to continue to be rejected. Finally, after a particularly teary session on both our parts, I gave up and made her a bottle of formula. She didn't like that either. At my wit's end, I called the beleaguered pediatrician again who said I either had to get her nurse again or to take the formula and it had to be done now. My milk was finished. I enticed her to drink the bottle by adding a sprinkling of Strawberry Quik powder to it (desperate times call for artificially flavored measures!).

I am happy to say that Jelly Bean loves her formula now (and we no longer have to spike it with Quik to get her to drink it). I am also happy to report that in the few weeks she's been on formula her weight bounced up to the appropriate percentile quite quickly. All's well that ends well. Right?

Those are the facts. Now for the questions. Was my milk compromised because of my obsession with losing the baby weight? Was her failure to gain weight due to my early and intense return to exercise? Or because of my very restrictive diet? It was during those middle months of my being a no-wheat, no-dairy calorie-counting vegetarian that she lost the most ground. Was my tumble into sane eating too late? The question that haunts me: Did I sacrifice my daughter's health on the altar of my own vanity?

My guilt may be misplaced. There are other explanations, other narratives I could tell for this story. (At the very least, the process of weaning has called down a hellstorm of hormones that alone could account for my angst.) And yet the guilt gnaws at me. I carry their very lives in my hands - how could it not?

If you're a mom - how did nursing go for you? Were you able to nurse and exercise with no problems? If you aren't a mom, what do you have irrational guilt about? Or are you one of those rare women (whom I envy) that is impervious to guilt?

I Eat Everything!

Okay, so there's one thing I wouldn't eat. Any food that requires a c-section to eat is off my list.

Dining with me is an experience. And often it's not one conducive to gastronomic pleasure. I've admitted in the past to a multitude of eating sins including, but not limited to, looking up calorie counts on my phone during the meal, saying said calorie counts aloud, driving a waitress to the brink of madness with the complexity of my special order and then refusing to eat more than one bite of said meal when it was brought to me. I've sat hungry through beautiful Easter banquets. And then chewed and spit a bag of sugar free jelly beans in the parking lot of the convenience store where I bought them. I've self-righteously turned down homemade, once-in-a-lifetime English Trifle. And then cried as I made myself run an extra mile the next day for "insurance" against future once-in-a-lifetime English Trifles. My disordered eating started at twelve and had become so ingrained over the years that I honestly had no hope of ever eating like a normal person (those exist, right?).

And then Geneen Roth happened.

The past few months have been nothing short of a miracle. I blogged about my budding confidence in the program and in myself a few weeks ago and it has only gotten better since then. I know that I risk ruining all my new-found success in writing it on the Internet but I'm going to go out on a limb and just say it: I Eat Everything!

I came to an important realization about a month ago, as I sat one day at lunch eating my carefully prepared food in an undistracting environment and listening to my body's hunger cues. (For those of you uninitiated into the Geneen Roth school of food guidelines, the thought process goes something like this: "How full am I? If I'm a four or less I should eat. If I'm a 6 or more I should stop. Am I a five? What does that mean? Now that I've eaten a few more bites, I might be a five and a half. Or perhaps a five and three-quarters. If I burp soundly can I subtract a few points? Does water count? Since when did hunger require calculus?!") I realized that much of my eating behavior is driven by fear. I'll avoid eating when I'm hungry because I'm afraid that I'll eat the whole world, that I'll be so hungry I'll never stop or because I'm afraid admitting hunger is a sign of weakness or because what I'm really hungry for I won't allow myself to eat. I'll eat when I'm not hungry because I'm afraid that there won't be food I will allow myself to eat wherever I'm going later or because it tastes so good I'm afraid there won't be more or because I'm eating something I'm not "supposed" to eat and I'm afraid I'll never get to eat it again or because somebody made me something special.

Most of my mental energy has been devoted to dispelling those totally irrational fears. And the key to unlocking my fear has been - are you ready for the Awwww Moment? - to be gentle with myself. I talk to myself as if I were speaking to one of my beloved children. (Which at the moment is only 3 of them - the 3-year-old is driving me nuts. Kidding. Mostly.) When I feel panicky about getting hungry, I kindly tell myself, "It's okay to eat. Everyone gets hungry. Feeding your body is not failure, it's nurturing." When I feel scared that I'll be hungry later, I tell myself, "I'll take care of you. You can eat if you need to. I will find you some food." It sounds so simple (or crazy - I am very chatty with myself apparently) but it has been so healing for me.

And one of the biggest things that I tell myself is that I eat everything. For so many many years I've had an immense number of food rules. I was vegetarian*. Then vegan. Then a gluten- and soy-free vegan. At various points in my life I've eschewed carbs, dairy, protein, the entire nightshade family (don't ask), sugar, grains, anything white and many other foods too numerous to detail. Heck, I had so many restrictions they made a television show about it! I've driven friends, family and waitstaff crazy with my insane food restrictions. There was always something I didn't eat. Not anymore. Now I eat everything.

It's been a weird transition, I'm not going to lie. One of Geneen Roth's guidelines is to eat what your body wants. (Note: this is not the same as eating what your mind wants. Your mind will tell you it wants to eat an entire bag of Reese's peanut butter cups. But your body knows it will feel sick if you do that. Sometimes your body really does want a peanut butter cup but often your body wants a salad or some meat or an apple. Misunderstanding this distinction was one of the major reasons Intuitive Eating didn't work for me the first time I tried it.) I was afraid that I'd so messed up my body's signals that it wouldn't tell me what it wanted to eat (or that it would seek revenge for all I'd put it through and tell me it wanted nothing but Rocky Mountain Oysters) but I think it is safe to say after 3 months of doing this that my body definitely does let me know what it needs. And I don't panic about eating whatever that is because I know that I will only eat when I'm hungry (usually) and that I can stop eating when I'm full. And my body tells me when it is hungry and when it is full!

And it works. It's amazing to me that something so simple actually works! For two months I maintained my weight within a half a pound - a feat so astounding that I'm still in awe at my body's ability to regulate itself so well. And then this last month I've lost 2.5 pounds. Without doing anything major or scary. Without crying in my closet. Without mentally screaming vitriol at myself. Without punishing myself with more food restrictions. Without doing anything at all, really.

What is even more amazing is that since my weight has become so stable, a lot of my desire to over-exercise is diminishing. It used to be that I'd gain two or three pounds in a day, panic, and then do a really punishing workout the next day, lose two or three pounds, celebrate, eat salted popcorn and then go back up the weight roller coaster the next day. I was constantly in the mindset of needing to "earn my food." If I didn't, for some reason, get a workout in then I didn't eat. But being gentle with myself and allowing myself to eat when I'm hungry - regardless of if I've exercised or not - has made all the difference.

I'm not perfect. While my food issues are slowly but very surely fading to the background, I'm still tied to my scale. I still look in the mirror and wish fervently I were ten pounds thinner. I still am drawn to diet books like a Kardashian sister to the letter K. But for the first time I'm really hopeful that I can conquer those things too.

I ate linguine with cream sauce. I can do anything.

Do you ever make decisions about food based on fear? Are you good at differentiating what your body wants versus what your mind wants?

*I am not saying that all people who are vegan or vegetarian or whatever are practicing disordered eating. Just that in my case it was.

Inside a Residential Eating Disorder Facility

The first thing you notice about The Anna Westin House in rural Minnesota, named for one of the saddest stories in eating disorder lore, is that you don't notice it at all. Two light brick townhouses joined at the kitchen, it blends seamlessly in with the surrounding upper middle class neighborhood. From the green and white porch chairs to the single car in the driveway, nothing sets it apart. There is nothing to tell you that this is where girls who are actively courting death come to live. For many it is their last grab at life.

Passing the unobtrusive shrubbery, I step through the door to find myself standing in an open great room. This is how it must be for the girls who live here, I think. No transition. One moment you are in your own life and then you walk through a door and everything's changed. This is a house of rules, you see.

Rule number one: You cannot come and go as you please. Nor can your friends and family. A soft-spoken older woman, the house matron, smiles and asks me to sign in. I do so, the only person on the fresh sheet. My friend Emily, whom I have come to see, stands awkwardly in front of me, hugging a thick sweatshirt around her despite the moderate 74 degrees the thermostat is set to.

Rule number two: There is a time for everything. And I have come at the end of Seminar Time, just before Visiting Time. As the guest speaker for the evening talks about being "recovered" - a word that causes almost unanimous eye rolling; one girl tells me that her highest hope is to be "recovering" for the rest of her life - I glance around the homey living room. The walls are painted in Model Home colors accented with tasteful furnishings and wall hangings. Flowing uninterrupted from the living room, the kitchen carries on the same post-modern Pottery Barn feeling. The most prominent decoration in the kitchen however is a wall-size antique looking chalkboard. White lines split it into a calendar of sorts. I squint and realize I'm looking at a menu complete with chore assignments. Tonight's dinner was apparently seafood salad with lemon bars for dessert although it smells like spaghetti.

Nobody seems to think it strange that the dominant feature of the first room you see in a house for eating disordered girls is a wall-sized menu. Daily Special: Anxiety on a plate.

"I didn't know how much food they were going to make me eat," Emily says plaintively, her knees tucked up under her chin. We're now sitting outside, on the porch, to let Emily warm up. As she readjusts, I notice how much thinner she is even though I just saw her 2 days ago. Her eyes narrow as she notices the gum in my mouth. "If you have gum, you have to give me a piece."

I hem and haw. Rule number three: Caffeine and gum are specifically banned at the beginning of the program and thereafter meted out on an earned basis only. It makes sense as anorexics typically abuse both. (How does one abuse gum? When you use it to occupy your mouth so you don't eat.) I look down at Emily's cute shoes. "Don't you think your first day is a little early to be breaking the rules? I mean, if you're going to be here you should try and be committed..."

"Oh, I'm committed all right," she says wryly and after a pause we both giggle.

We move on to discuss other things, mostly light-hearted gossipy banter, and my hour passes quickly. The flash in her eyes returns as I sigh and stand. Don't go. She doesn't say it but I can see it in her eyes. She is scared. And alone. And so so tiny. Her fragility overwhelms me. I am loathe to leave her like this.

"Here," I whisper, holding out the pack of gum. "You can have one piece." She takes two, pocketing one and chewing the other. I silently curse myself for not remembering to spit out my gum before coming. For not being strong enough to resist her anorexia-fueled manipulations.

We join the rest of the girls out in front of the house. They are watching a Midwestern thunder storm roll in with all its fury - a row of upturned faces searching for funnel clouds. I notice they are all wearing sweatshirts and pants to ward off the chill of a perfect summer night. I feel fat. A small swell of panic rises in my throat as I look down at my adult-sized jeans completing the row of childish denim. I am not immune. Rule number four: Do not talk about body size. Not yours. Not theirs. Not Angelina Jolie's. I swallow my fear.

An attractive young man sans shirt jogs by. I smile and comment, "Well you guys certainly have nice scenery!" The girls glance briefly at him, confusion playing across their faces.

"What I wouldn't give to run," Emily sighs.

"No cardio until you earn it back," a brunette says curtly and then adds, "You'd better hide that gum too." Emily nods, the shirtless man remembered only in the context of lost exercise.

I don't know how to end this. It seems too abrupt to just toss a casual wave over my shoulder as I head down the driveway, as I would at another friend's house. I know it will get easier after future visits but for now it is awkward. Stepping lightly, I hug Emily - so careful, she is so breakable - but she doesn't hug me back.

"What?" I say urgently. "Are you going to be okay?" What a stupid question.

She shrugs and chews at her nails. "Just something you said..."

"What??" I demand. "What did I say?"

"It's nothing," she turns away, trying to draw me back in.

I won't be played this time. "You'll be fine. Really. I'm proud of you for doing this. I know you can do this."

My resolution affects her. She stands straighter. "Can I?"

"Yes. You are a survivor." I don't add that it's her last chance. Her parents have said if she fails this round of therapy - her third in so many years - then she can't come home again. Meaningless threat? Tough love? Parents simply unable to watch their daughter kill herself by inches as they watch? I don't know.

Emily's eyes cloud over and she chews her lip as if she too is considering her alternatives. Or lack thereof.

I walk away to my car and drive into the night, keenly aware of my freedom. Keenly aware of how very little separates us.

Have you ever had a friend or loved one with an eating disorder? How did you support them? How did it change your relationship?

This post sound familiar? It originally ran in August 2008. Copyrighted by Charlotte Hilton Andersen and The Great Fitness Experiment. Not to be used or republished without permission.

Table For One: Eating Alone

Thankfully I have you guys to keep an eye on me - I won't have to resort to this method.

Sweat running down the insides of my elbows and my stomach churning, I stared down my lunch. Watching me you'd have thought I was afraid that fish was going to seek vengeance on me for its shortened life by jumping off the plate and biting my nose. Or perhaps breaking out in that oddly compelling "gimme that filet-o-fish" McDonald's jingle. (I think I'd prefer my nose being bitten off.) But it wasn't the food itself I was afraid of. It was the fact I was going to eat it completely sans distractions. I thought eating in front of people was the hardest thing for me to do. It turns out I was wrong: eating alone with nothing else to focus on is way, way worse. I blame you.

You guys surprised me. I'll admit it. A couple of weeks ago when I published my post "I Hate Food" outlining all my disordered thoughts surrounding food, I was scared. I was scared to admit how very disturbed my thinking had become. I thought for sure that I would get some mean comments telling me to get over myself and my first-world worries or to grow up already and be an adult or, simply, to just quit whining so much. Nothing like a good Internet freak out to bring on the trolls! But my fear was overruled by my need for help. 130+ comments later that is exactly what I got. Tons of help. And not one single negative or mean comment. This may have set some kind of Internet record. I was overwhelmed by your outpouring of love, support and really great suggestions.

Which is how I found myself staring down my food as if it were wearing blue and I gray and we were stuck in Paris together with nothing but our forbidden love to stave off the advancing armies. There were several themes that many of you included in your comments and one of them was to respect my food, to pay attention to it or treat it as a source of life-giving fuel (which it is) rather than a source of severe anxiety (which it also is but I wish it weren't). One particular comment by Rachel stuck out to me. Essentially she said that when she eats, all she does is eat. She doesn't read or work or watch TV. She just sits down with her plate of food and eats it. Then when she's done eating, she puts her dishes in the sink and moves on to thinking about other things. How awesomely normal does that sound? I can't imagine eating that way.

My meals generally start out with a growling stomach. I know that this means hunger but I don't want to be hungry so I try to stave off the feeling by distracting myself. That doesn't work for very long. Still in denial about being hungry, I grab a few bites of something easy - generally some nuts or a piece of fruit. That'll hold me off for an hour or two. But then I'm realllly hungry. Except I feel guilty about feeling hungry (and yes I realize that makes as much sense as feeling guilty for needing to pee). So I finally decide I need to eat some real food. But what? Just choosing what to eat feels like walking through a minefield. I can find something wrong with anything. So then I grab a couple handfuls of jelly beans. I know they're terrible for me but I'm starving and I'm feeling deprived and the sugar is like a drug. And then I feel 100 times more guilty. Generally at this point I'll make myself something - of course it can't be the healthy meal I cooked for the rest of the family - but taste it so much while I'm making it (because I'm still starving, see) that by the time the meal is ready I think I've already eaten the equivalent of a meal and so I end up just putting it away without sitting down to eat any of it. Of course I have no idea how much I really ate and this makes me feel both deprived and overly full thereby setting me up for the next go-round in a couple of hours. I fill the time in between meals feeling guilty about what I just ate and worrying about what I will eat next. If I do sit down to eat anything I'm always reading a book, at the computer or talking to my kids or on the phone (my apologies to all of my friends who've had to listen to me chew.) Repeat that cycle for the rest of the day.

It's messed up. Clearly Rachel's method of eating is much better.

The first time I tried to Eat Like Rachel, I learned something about myself: I get really really freaked out eating undistracted. Because I don't like to admit that I'm eating. If I'm reading or answering e-mail my mind can pretend that I'm not really ingesting all those calories.

I wasn't sure I could actually do this conscious eating business until I tried out another one of your suggestions. Ann wrote in her comment about her similarly extreme food personality and said she had found solace in "The No S Diet." It turns out that this isn't really a diet in the sense that you are instructed what to eat and how much but rather a method of eating similar to Rachel's. The entire diet is this: "No snacks, no sugar, no seconds... except sometimes on days that start with S." Basically you put your entire meal on your plate, take it to the table and eat it. You decide the number of meals that is right for you - although they suggest 3 - and in between you don't snack. (I know many people swear by the 5 or 6 mini meals a day concept and I'm not knocking that approach but the research has some interesting things to say about snacking.) This way of eating was remarkably liberating. There was no guess work as to how much or what I had eaten - it was all right there in front of me - and because I made sure to eat healthy well-balanced meals with plenty of calories, I wasn't hungry!

It all sounds so stupidly simple when I type it out but it was kind of a revelation to me that I deserve to eat a whole meal and that I don't have to feel guilty about it. In fact, I feel better when I do it. Not to mention it frees up a ton of time. Unfortunately I had to make a little compromise and allow myself to read during breakfast and lunch as the anxiety of just eating was overwhelming. Still, it feels like progress.

Another suggestion from many of you was to get a hobby. I have many many hobbies that don't get nearly enough attention and so I used this as an excuse to redecorate and organize my bedroom. I also practiced the piano, crocheted, played with my kids and changed out all the clothes from winter to summer. This tip definitely helped keep me from obsessing over what I just ate.

A third suggestion that kept popping up from you guys was to do something for someone else. This was probably my favorite one to do and once I started looking around, I found lots of opportunities to be of service. It felt great!

A fourth suggestion involved reading - my favorite pastime ever! - with Geneen Roth's books high on the list. I requested all of her books and the others you suggested from the library (although KatieO suggests I just buy her latest Women, Food and God because it's that good.) Expect my book report shortly.

The last and most popular suggestion from you was to go back to therapy. A few of you suggested I go back to eating disorder therapy but most of you just told me to get over the loss of my old beloved therapist and find a new one. Some of you suggested particular types of therapy to try out. You all are, of course, right. As helpful and wonderful as you all are, it is unfair of me to use you as my primary source of therapy. I did not begin the daunting task of finding a new therapist this week. But I will. I know I need to. Every major resurgence of my disordered eating has come after the birth of one of my kids. I'd be a fool to not recognize the pattern.

By way of explanation, the day that I posted that post I got my period. First one since the birth of the Jelly Bean. That may be TMI but I think the hormonal carnival of that time of the month played a significant part in my level of hysteria (and the bloating didn't help either). It's so funny to me that I've been dealing with this every month for almost 15 years now and it still surprises me every month.

I want to thank each one of you who took the time to reach out to me on that post. Every single comment, whether it was a suggestion or a "me too!" or a show of support - means so much to me and I'm deeply grateful for your concern and love. Thanks for loving me even when I'm a mess. Especially when I'm a mess. And know this: I love you guys right back!

So - anyone else have a hard time eating without distractions? Anyone else try the "No S diet"? How do you feel about snacking vs. 3 squares a day?

Confessions of a Cardioholic [My Life as a Cautionary Tale, Part 625]

This image was titled "What Not to do in an Earthquake." Good advice.

What do I live for if not to be the poster girl for What Not To Do? In March, I was Fitness Magazine's freakshow of the month in an article by Jessica Girdwain titled "Confessions of a Cardioholic." You'd think after being on ABC's 20/20, Fox's Morning Show with Mike & Juliette and in publications to numerous to count talking about my various permutations of eating disorders that I'd be used to the public scrutiny. I'm not.

(Tangent: A friend new to the area told my husband that he had heard I was some sort of local celebrity causing me to exclaim, "People do know the difference between notoriety and celebrity, right??")

The reason that I keep doing these interviews - despite being horribly misquoted on at least two occasions (my fave was the writer who entirely fabricated an interview with me from start to finish, saying that I "always hugged the back wall of fitness classes or used the last elliptical because [I] was too afraid of people staring at [my] huge butt." First, I am always annoyingly front and center in any fitness activity and second, for all my insecurities, my butt really isn't one of them. It's cute and perky and despite being minorly dimpled I love it. Truly, I have enough crazy for 10 articles, you don't need to go making stuff up!) - is because I am hoping to help other women not make the same mistakes I did. Or, if they already have, know they aren't alone. Lots of other people have done just that for me and it has made a huge difference in my life! It's not a desperate bid for attention (and, for the record, I have never ever been paid to do an interview so it's not a money thing) - I just want to keep the good mojo going.

And I do think I'm helping some people. At least, after every media appearance, I always - without fail - get quite a few e-mails/phone calls/comments telling me how I helped them or a family member. I'm still getting e-mails from that 20/20 segment and it's been two years since I filmed it! No joke: Someone even wrote their graduate dissertation on it. (To all of you who have taken the time to write or otherwise contact me, I want to thank you with all my heart - you have no idea how much it means to me.)

But I still feel weird when I actually see the interviews on screen (confession: I watched my 20/20 interview exactly once and still cringe any time someone mentions it) or on paper. They always parse it so that all my lovable nuttiness gets smooshed together in one big block of crazy. I swear I'm not that insane in real life. Or maybe I'm deluded? Anyhow, with no further ado, I present to you the scanned version of my Fitness mag interview (click pictures to enlarge):



Now that you've read it, you will inevitably ask - people usually do - "But you're better now, right?" I am. I'm better than I used to be. But I'm not cured. I think I'll always trend towards the disordered side of things; I'm compulsive and perfectionistic by nature. That doesn't mean I won't stop working on it but don't expect me to be perfect either. Exercise addiction is as insidious a disorder as any eating disorder. If you, or someone you know, (yeah, I just broke out the after-school special trope!), suffers from exercise addiction or exercise bulimia or compulsive over-exercise or cardioholism or whatever you want to call it, here are some additional resources:

From me:
The cost of excessive cardio
How to recognize exercise addiction
Bad things happen when you exercise too much
How over exercising made me gain weight and fat
Confessions of a compulsive over exerciser
Building in rests to your workout
Confessions of a pregnant compulsive exerciser, Part I
Compulsive over-exercise in pregnancy, Part II

From others:
Heather Eats Almond Butter recently blogged about breaking her addiction to cardio

Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple is a former elite triathlete who had a cardio addiction epiphany and now educates the masses about the physical toll of too much exercise.

Quix at Adjusted Reality recently wrote about how running a lot led to weight gain and overall frustration.

NY magazine has an article about the effects of prolonged exercise.

What about you - have you ever been addicted to exercise in an unhealthy way? How did you conquer it? What's your view on cardio: cardio queen, everything in moderation or hate it?

Are You a Secret Eater?

Experiencing the majority of my teen years during the '90s meant a lot of things. First there was Grunge. Not only was it by far the best clothing trend ever - can't beat dumpster diving for economy and you never had to do laundry, hey, hey! Although I could do without the snap-in-the-crotch Adult Onesies a.k.a. bodysuits - who can argue with the genius of Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder? Okay, you can argue but you'll end up either shooting yourself or killed in a tragic 1940's car accident where you sigh, "hold me darlin' just a little while" right before you expire, virgin kiss still warm on your lips. Nothing says romance like those two men.

Second to music, the phenomenon most responsible for warping my developing mind was the After School Special. Don't even pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. Over the years I've discovered that each person has a personal fave that encouraged them to have random nightmares for years afterwards. For me, that one was Little Miss Perfect, a show about a girl who copes with her parents' expectations and her own perfectionism by becoming bulimic. At least, I'm pretty sure it was this one - there were so many ASS's (wow - was that acronym intentional?) about eating disorders that I sometimes get them confused.

That Was Then
Anyhow, I first saw it in Middle School Health Class and was left with two lasting images: a) the girl hiding her vomit in glass jars in her closet (for reals? Wouldn't you run out of room/jars pretty darn quick? Weren't toilets invented for the very purpose of NOT having to put one's bodily fluids into jars?) and b) how her esophagus literally exploded and she died at the end. SHE DIED, people, of a an esophagus that was so enraged at its mistreatment that it ripped through her throat like so many aliens and disgorged a stomach full of ho-hos and twinkies and Big Macs all over the hospital stretcher while two handsome EMTs clucked disapprovingly (at her banana clip, I imagine now). My friends hid their eyes. I was mesmerized. You should have seen us in the cafeteria that next lunch hour.

Never before had I really paid attention to how my friends ate but suddenly we were all hyperaware that there were rules to eating and "signs" we should be watching for and honestly didn't the show make it seem so disgusting it was almost glamorous in a canning-jar kind of way? Some of my friends went on to take that Special as a do-it-yourself guide to all things eating disordered. Others would just go on to hide their ding-dong wrappers under tissue paper in the waste basket for years and never really realize it was weird until a significant other asked them why they were burying their refuse and if they had a squirrel fetish they wanted to talk about.

This Is Now
So you will understand how I was taken right back to that place by Brian's comment on my Functional Anorexia post:

I was at a Youth Conference last week with 25 kids 14-18yrs old. We had spaghetti/salad/rolls one night and many of the girls did not even touch it. The woman in charge over the girls grew up on a ranch in a small Colorado town and commented to me that she doesn't understand why the girls don't eat. She said when she was their age, when she was hungry, she ate. She then told me the next day that the girls ate every scrap of junk food/snacks we brought up for the nighttime. On the other 4th hand, the guys ate heartily, and did not even touch the nighttime snacks. But then again I hope the girls didn't pass gas all night long either.

It's like my scrawny 11-yr old daughter. She picks at her dinner and eats maybe 3 "mandatory" bites. And then raids the pantry all-night for chocolate chips, and potato chips, and cereal. And then complains that she's fat.

Girls eat weird. We have strange habits when we eat with other girls. When we eat in front of men. Or in front of strangers. Or even by ourselves.

I see it in my current and former female students. This strange dance of abstaining righteously from food when it is served and then later binging in private when it is hoarded. As every grown woman (hopefully) knows, this sets up a terrible dynamic, both in regards to your mental state and your blood sugar. You starve in a fit of self-hate or self-righteousness and then pig out later on even worse foods because you are so hungry. It's a terrible cycle.

How many times have I watched the teenage girls in the cafeteria pick half-heartedly at salads and then down a family-size bag of Starbursts at the late night study group? How many times have we as adults, ate perfectly pea-sized portions at a cocktail party (one nibble of eclair, two bites of broccoli and a lick of cheese quiche) and then gone home to eat an entire half gallon of freezer burned ice cream because we felt deprived?

I'll admit it: I've totally done this. Probably more times than I'd like to admit. Do you eat food in secret rather than in front of people? What kinds of foods do you prefer to eat alone? Do you think this is disordered eating or just par for the course?

This post sound familiar? Friday's are Greatest Hits Day here at the GFE. This post originally ran in April 2008.