Monthly Archives: January 2013

Day 10: Drained

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Hi Everyone,

I went to sleep last night feeling sad and broken.

After what I felt was a day of successful recovery,  I had someone who I barely know message me to let me know that they don’t think I have an eating disorder.  For whatever reason, this comment really threw me off.

Who is this person to tell me about my struggles?  Who is this person to try to take away my pain and tell me that this journey–that this fight for my life–is not really happening?  It is times like this, where I start to get doubtful about myself, that I need to remind myself of why I am here and why I am writing this blog: and that is for my life, and what others think of that cannot be a priority to me.

This morning, I wake up writing to you all knowing that I need to go visit a doctor today for a full physical exam and I know he will be asking me lots of questions about my eating disorder; but most importantly and most frightening, I know he will weigh me.

Of course, I have already made the decision to do a “back weigh,” where I turn backwards when I get weighed so I do not see the number.  But to be so honest, I truthfully do not know where I am going to gather the inner strength to stand backward and not turn around and see what that scale says.

This is where I need to remind myself that I am more than a number .

But I know that no matter how badly I feel the need to turn around and look at that number, I know I will not do it and I will keep my commitment and promise to myself.  Because even though I am fearful and unsure at the moment, there is one thing about me that always holds true, and that is that I never give up-and I sure as hell am not going to start now.

I have made the choice to be scale free for a year and that is what I will do.

How will I do it?  I do not know.

Right now, I feel hopeless and extremely alone in this fight for freedom.

The strength that I felt  I had the past few days seems to be so far away from me right now.  I am trying to sit here and close my eyes and tell myself that I am strong and that I can do this, (by this i mean my recovery) but I just cannot seem to find it.

I feel broken, I feel lost, and I feel drained- but I know that I need to pick myself up off this bed and go face the world today head on.

I need to remind myself  of the reason I am on this path to recovery in the first place, and that reason is called life. 

So,here is what I am going to do:

I am going to get myself together, sit up straight, and tell myself over and over again “hello life, hello life, hello life.”

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Day 9: Taking Back My Body

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Hello to all my amazing supporters,

Today, I came to find that I really did not know who or what was looking back at me in the mirror after I got dressed.  I knew it was my body, but it did not feel like that.  I felt like it was a being whom I had never met.

All of our relationships in life, whether it’s with a friend,lover, or acquaintance, usually go something like this: both people meet, they get to know each other, then they start to like each other.  From liking each other, they grow to loving each other, and from that love they grow to trust each other.

Right now, I am in two different relationships.

The first relationship is my relationship with my eating disorder, who I am fighting with every ounce of strength I have to break away from and to ultimately end this vicious cycle of abuse.

The second relationship is my relationship with my body.  Me and my body feel like two completely separate entities; like two separate beings.  For as long as I have been in my eating disorder, my body has not been a part of me-it has been part of my eating disorder.

Today, I am taking back my body from my eating disorder and reclaiming it.

For the past year and a half, I have known my body only through these few things: my number on the scale, by what bones I could see or by what skin was hanging off me. I apologize if this is a graphic image for some readers, but I said I would be truthful on this blog, and this is part of the cold hard truth of what an eating disorder looks like.

It is now time to find a new way to know my body. and to be very honest, I don’t know what that way is yet. If I look at myself for too long, I find a never ending list of imperfections.  If I don’t look at myself at all, I feel I am running from the truth.

So for now, since I can’t tell you anything I like about my body, or truthfully know anything about my body, me and my body are simply in the stages of just meeting each other again, and I am going to have to be OK with that.  I have hope that one day we will like each other again, and eventually love and trust each other.

There is however, one good thing that I can say about my body, and that is that I am extremely grateful that it has gotten me to where I am today.  Despite the fact that I starved it and deprived it of so many essential nutrients for so long, it kept me alive and brought me through until today-and for that, I am deeply grateful and appreciative.

On the same token as me pushing myself out of my comfort zone today and forcing myself to say hello to my new body and try to be as accepting as I can of it, comes me finding a glimpse of inner strength,holding my head high and being able to smile and tell myself, “hello life.”

Day 8: Swept Away By Support

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Hi everyone,

I just need to start this entry by saying how speechless I am by all the unconditional love and support I have received from family, friends and even strangers during the past day.  To be honest, exposing my biggest secret (my eating disorder) to pretty much the entire world was scary enough as is. But when I made the choice to commit to myself, and everyone else who will follow this blog, that I will not weigh myself and be scale free for an entire year, it took things to a new level of scary.  But saying that, I know that I can do this now.  Because of your guys’ support and love, I know I can do this, and I will.

At first I thought I will give myself a few goals of where I want to be by next Jan 21, 2014, the official one year date of me being scale free.  But as I sit here and think about it, I find it impossible to do that because that year feels so far away, I don’t even know how to make it to that point.  All I do know is this: I need to make it through today.  So, for that reason, I am not going to set some specific goal for myself of where I want to be a year from now after being scale free, which is a weird feeling since I am always the kind of person to set extremely high goals for myself (sometimes that are unattainable) and do anything I can do reach them. This time around, I am going to make the goal to just get through this year; to get from point A to point B and God willing have the strength to be healthy while doing it.

Also, I feel I should let you guys know that not only did I make the decision to be scale free for an entire year, but I gave my scale to E (my therapist), so it is not even in my house.  Part of me feels like that is a relief and part of me, like right now, feels sad about it.

My scale was like my God-it was my number and it was what I defined myself by for that day. If it was low enough, I would be happy and proud but at the same time I would be ashamed because I knew the unhealthy things I had to do to get to that number. If it was high enough, I would be sad and angry and would punish myself by starving the rest of the day to fix it-but no matter what that number was, weather it was good or bad, it was a fact.

Today, I step into the world of the unknown, and that is scary.

I do not know what I weigh today.  I do not know the “damage” that I have done in the past 8 days of not weighing myself.  I have no number to tell me that I have eaten too much or that I have gone too far.  The only thing I have is myself-and that is the scariest thing of all.

I have never been in a place in my life other than right now, where I have not been able to trust myself.  I don’t trust what I see when I look in the mirror, I don’t trust my body when it tells me that it needs food or water, and I don’t completely yet  trust myself to be healthy.  But I am hoping this gets easier every day.

Right now, I can feel my skinny jeans pushing into the little tummy I now have and it does not feel good, but it is happening and I just have to go with it.  It is times like these, where I truly believe (whether it is true or not, I do not know) that my jeans and shirt are fitting significantly tighter on me and I need to find a way to stop it-but I know I can’t because that would mean letting this eating disorder take my life, and I am not going to let that happen.  I will win this.

So even though in this moment I feel uncomfortable in my own skin, and unsure of  myself, I know that I can truly look forward into my future and I can see that these hard moments are the moments that are going to make up a new life for me-a life full of freedom and a life free of this eating disorder.

I am going to finish this blog entry and take a second to realize, that yes, I feel not so great today about the way my clothes fit and I feel a little antsy and frustrated that I don’t know what I weigh, but I started my day by being Shira, not by being some number on the scale-and to that I can close my eyes and tell myself: hello life.

About My Blog

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Let me take some time to introduce myself and tell you a little about the purpose behind this blog.

My name is Shira Moskowitz, I am 22 years old and I am in recovery for an eating disorder.  I am studying journalism at CSUN and hope to be an awesome reporter one day.

Now ,I have a few reasons for why I am doing this blog.  The first reason is to help myself.  I have realized that if I am going to go on this journey of one entire year without a scale, I am going to need some kind of outlet to express every emotion I am feeling.  What will those emotions be?  I am not totally sure; actually, I am not sure at all.  All I do know if that whatever it is I will be feeling and going through, I am going to post it all right here to document my journey.

The second reason I am writing this blog is to help others who are struggling like me.  If you are someone who is battling an eating disorder,  this blog is for you.  If you are someone who has ever been at odds with the person starring back at you in the mirror, this blog is for you.  If you are someone who has ever felt insignificant or undeserving of anything short of the best, than this blog is for you.

This blog is for those brave and courageous souls in the world-with or without an eating disorder, who have ever challenged themselves to do something and made the painstaking decision to stick with it and fight as hard as they can to make sure they succeed. 

This blog, my fellow fighters, this is for us.

Day 7: Body Soreness

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If this is your first visit to my blog,let me start by saying that you should read the “about me” page before this post, so this entry makes sense.

Although this is my first documented post about my one year without a scale, I am already 7 days into it.  I was talking with my therapist, and for our purposes for this blog, we will call her E.  I was telling E about my idea for this blog and how documenting my journey of a year without a scale might be  a cool idea and that I would make a final decision by Friday.  When E asked me why I was going to wait until Friday, I really could not give her an answer.  So world, here I am.  I have officially made the commitment for be scale free for an entire 365 days and my documentation starts here.

The firs thing that I need to say is that I am going to be completely and utterly honest on this blog.  There will be nothing that is sugar coated, nothing that is fake, and I cannot assure you that everything you read will be happy or positive, but I can promise you that it will be the truth.

So I am just going to dive right in.  Today I feel horrible.  I woke up with my entire body feeling sore all over.  This happens to me every time i basically eat any amount of substantial calories. My entire stomach and chest feel like they have bruises every where.  I have accounted this feeling to to0 much sodium intake the day before, but I am still not sure if that totally makes sense.  If this has ever happened to anyone else out there in the world,  I would love to know so I can see that I am not the only one.

For me, the biggest challenge of my day so far has been being able to be kind to myself and eat and drink properly when I feel this soreness every time I move.  It’s like a constant reminder of the pizza, wine, cake and chocolate I ate last night-the results of  having one glass of wine too many.

This is where this blog comes in.  I know that I have two choices today.  Choice one, which is to sit at home, forget about school and my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday and sit all day drinking only tea and coffee and obsessing over how huge I feel I have become in the past 7 days, or I can be proactive, write this blog ,focus on school and not let this eating disorder take over my life for yet another God damn day.

While choice one is by far the easiest choice above all, it would be letting my eating disorder win me over and on a day like today where I am celebrating a milestone,( one week of being scale free), I am not going to let that happen.  So choice 2 it is.

I am not sure how I am going to get through today, I am not sure how many times I might cry or cringe when I walk past a mirror, but one thing is certain; I will get through it and I will wake up tomorrow and my life will go on past this uncomfortable body soreness and obsessive negative thinking.  It will, it will, it will.

And in my weakest moments, like right now, where I can feel my tummy growling for food and I know I need to go eat lunch, I will remind myself of one thing: saying good bye to my scale means saying hello to a new life.

So I will end this first entry how I am going to end every single entry for the next 358 days, by saying this simple and yet very true statement: Hello life!