Monthly Archives: February 2013

Day 12: Changing My Morning Routine

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Every day for the past year and a half, I have started my morning like this:

I wake up, walk to the mirror, lift my shirt, inspect my body and then weigh myself.  And even though for the past 12 days I have not weighed myself,  I have continued this exhausting process of what I call body checking every single morning.

My body checks go exactly like this:

First I look at my waist, then I look at my upper stomach and then I move down to my lower stomach.  After this I look at my chest bones, my shoulder bones and then my arms.  Lastly, I look at my cheeks and my jaw bones.

Once I get dressed, I complete the body checking process by checking how the  front of my legs look in my jeans, then the inside of my legs, and then the outside of my legs.  Every single part of my body has to be in check-meaning that it has to look exactly the same way it did the day before, and if it doesn’t,(which lately it definitely hasn’t), my eating disorder starts to tell me all the unhealthy things to do to fix it.

Ever since I have stopped weighing myself,  my body checking has become more intense than ever before. I find myself checking how my stomach looks and how my skin hangs from multiple angles in the mirror every single morning.

Beyond that, every day this week when I have gotten dressed, I have purposely made the conscience choice to wear the skinniest and smallest pants that I own to see if they fit tighter on me.

And it really makes me think, “why am I doing this to myself?”  It is pure cruelty.

If I saw a woman on the street treat herself the same way I have been treating myself,  I would take her hand, look into her eyes and tell her how beautiful she is and how deserving she is of treating herself well.

It makes me so sad to think that I would treat a complete stranger better than I treat myself.  It is a true measure of how far I have let my eating disorder go, and it hurts me to realize that.

But instead of continuing to feel sad and sorry for myself, I am going to make a decision right now to make a change.  I am committing to myself and to those reading this blog entry,  that I will not body check today when I get out of bed and I will not try on pants that I know I bought when I was starving myself. I simply will not do it.

I cannot say that I can do this every day, but I will do it for today.

The reason I will not body check today is because I feel that I need to make a change in the way that I treat myself, and it is going to start now.

I know that if I challenge myself every single day to make one small change at a time,  that I will successfully carry myself all the way to the finish line of recovery.

I know that getting up and getting dressed in my bathroom without a mirror will be extremely hard.  I know that learning to be kind to myself again will take a lot of time and adjustment–but I am ready to make it happen.

Today, instead of walking to the mirror and lifting my shirt to look at my stomach,  I am going to walk over to that mirror, look into my own eyes and tell myself, “hello life.”

Day 11: A New Kind Of Friday

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Hello everyone,

I am so proud to tell you all that I was able to successfully go through with the back weigh yesterday and not turn around to see the number.  I feel like I have just over come the first of many challenges that I will be facing on this journey and I have you all, my incredible family, friends and supporters to thank for it.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for your love and encouragement.

On that note, I am happy to say that today is a new kind of Friday for me. I know that statement might not make a lot of sense, so let me explain what I mean.

When I was still weighing myself, Friday was considered my ultimate weigh in day.  I would starve all week to prepare for Friday.  In other words, Friday was my judgement day.

Depending on what that scale said on Friday, I would either have a great day or a horrible day. It would tell me if I let myself go out to dinner with my boyfriend on Saturday or not.  It would predict my entire weekend for that matter.  That number would determine what I would eat that night at Shabbat dinner with my family and exactly how little or how much.  Sometimes it would even be the deciding factor if I would even go to dinner at all.

And this preparation for Friday would last all week, but Thursdays were particularly intense.  Thursdays would be the day that I would restrict calories and my fluid intake the most.  Thursdays were also the one night a week that I would see my grandma for dinner . Because of Friday,  my grandma and I would only eat at one restaurant only; the restaurant that I could get a salad with only lettuce, tomato, and  cucumber with no dressing.  Even on the days that even I was so sick of this restaurant, and I am sure my grandma was too, she continued to go for me because that’s what I was comfortable with.  I let my eating disorder take control of my one night a week with my grandma and it pains me to think how selfish of me that was. I never want to let that happen again.

But yesterday I had a totally different Thursday night experience because I knew I did not have to weigh myself this morning–the beginning of many weigh-less Fridays.

I was actually able to take my 3 younger brothers out to dinner and even frozen yogurt.  Not only that, but I was even able to eat the same food with them at dinner that they were eating- something that would never have happened before I started my path to recovery. And even though the voice of my eating disorder was extremely loud in my head, I found the strength to silence it just for those few minutes when we were eating together.

Last night was made up of tiny moments of freedom from my eating disorder – and I hope to hold onto those moments as long as I can and use them for strength and encouragement during times of weakness.

The fact that I was actually able to eat on a Thursday and then wake up this morning and not weigh myself marks the official beginning of a new kind of Friday for me, and I have to say, it feels pretty damn good.

Last night after we got home,  the four of us just sat on the couch and watched tv together.  As we were watching tv,  I found myself literally just starring at the faces of my younger brothers.  I was starring at the most beautiful, innocent and loving faces in the world–and at that exact moment last night,  I remember genuinely thinking to myself, “hello life.”