I just realised I can't remember when was the last time that I had a full meal without puking afterwards. Well, I guess since I'm going away with some friends next week I might have to have the next one then if I can't think of a good excuse to skip meals for three days in a row. And not feeling well wouldn't be a very useful excuse since I don't want to mess up their holidays. I suppose I'll just have to go with salads, vegetables, chicken and such foods.

The memory just hit me of my grandmother calling me fat when I was only 12 or 13 years old. And my father was there, too, and didn't say a word. In fact, some time later he told me I looked like a pig when I run. So much for enjoying sports. It's great to have such a loving and supportive family. *bitter feelings all over the place*
How was I supposed to learn to live with my body or even like it? I have no idea what they thought they were doing. Well, probably they didn't think.
Oh well, what the heck. I don't want to blame my family for my ED. They just made it a little too easy to hate myself. And I guess being called a fat cow in school didn't help either. Why can't I just forget my past, why does it keep coming back?

Definitely no food for me today. Even though I ate very little yesterday, when I weighed myself this morning I had put on 1 lb. I'm so unbelievably fat, it's gross. I don't understand that people without an ED don't put on heaps of weight when they eat their 2000 cals a day. I just put on 1 lb for a mere 500 cals. I'm such a cow.

I really mustn't eat tomorrow. I want to be down at least 7 lbs by Saturday week, so I have to make sure I don't eat any more than 500 cals a day from now on. And I guess I should exercise, too.
Today the weirdest thing happened to me. I had to give back this book which I borrowed from our cantor and I said I'd make sure he had it for evening mass tonight. So I planned to go to adoration and evening mass but when I came into the church just before adoration I felt like leaving as quickly as possible. I felt awful but all I managed was to leave the book and a note outside the sacristy and then leave the church in a hurry. I feel really bad for this, it's like running away from your very best friend, like hitting them in the face, really.
The last few days have been quite good, I guess, I managed to lose a little more weight despite being at two barbeques this week (well ok, I admit I purged as much as I could and took laxatives before going to bed).
I think I'm about to become bulimic, as much as I purge. On Wednesday I even binged on purpose since I knew I could just purge after I'd eaten. Until now I have only been restricting but over the last few weeks I have been purging just a bit too much. And the worrying thing about it is that I can't help it. Whenever I eat I feel so guilty for eating that I have to purge to get rid of those calories that I just consumed. Well at least some of them, unfortunately it seems to be impossible to purge everything and your body starts to digest the food too quickly. I'm thinking about trying to chew and spit for a change but I'm kind of scared of that, so maybe I won't after all.

I hate myself. Today I made myself eat, so I had cauliflower for lunch and for dinner I ordered pizza and had some ice cream as dessert. Now I feel like a cow but I can't purge. Sounds silly, I know. And it's not like I ate because I want to eat and get better but because I want to lose more weight. So I need to keep my metabolism at a good rate which means I have to eat every now and then. I feel awful, depressed, sick, and I really really hate myself for it.
On top of it all I slowly seem to be losing my faith. No, wait, I'm not even sure you can call it losing my faith at all. I still believe in God, and I still believe all the stuff that you believe when you're a Catholic. But today in mass I realised I'm not sure anymore if my faith has any meaning for my life. I couldn't pray, my mind just went blank when I tried. Oh God, who am I going to turn to if not to You??! Help me!
And all the time I just want to bend over the toilet and get rid of all the food that I ate today.
Oh yeah, and if that all wasn't enough now my mother got suspicious - I once told her about the last time I had and ED and since then she freaks whenever I lose a little weight. I think I managed to calm her and said that everything was fine. I hate to lie. But it's not really helping either of us if she worries - she's worrying more than enough anyway so I really don't want to add to that. I'd really want to get better just for her sake and so that I can save her some worry. But it's not going to work like that, and if I don't want to get better for my own sake nothing's going to change. And fortunately I don't live with my parents anymore so my mother won't know everything. I just worry about going home every few weeks - I just can't hide my body from her so she's bound to notice if I've lost weight.

I've decided to eat today. So far I had a slice of cheese cake and I am also planning to have something tonight at the graduation ceremony. I know, it's not very much but it's a whole lot more than I had over the last couple of weeks. I'm feeling terribly full right now from the cheese cake but I'll try and bear it. Puking isn't really a good thing to do and today I hope I have the strength to not do it even though I feel I already ate too much.
God seems to be very distant these days. The funny thing is I don't feel like I'm losing faith at all, I believe as strongly as I ever have. But I feel like I'm moving away from God, I can't really pray anymore, yet I still go to mass and I don't feel I'm a hypocrit for going. I need God but somehow I don't seem to be able to ask Him for help. Maybe I should go to confession about this.
Two days ago I talked to my sister about our adolescence and all I could think is 'I wouldn't want to go back there for all the money in the world yet it seems to be exactly where I am right now'...

Not many practising Catholics I know have an eating disorder. Actually, I don't know a single one. It doesn't really seem to fit very well together, does it...
Even I struggle to make out how these two parts of my life go together.
I haven't always had an ED (and btw, strictly speaking I have never been diagnosed, but that's due to the fact that so far I've either managed to avoid my GP or to pretend that everything is fine). The first time I developed an ED was when I was 15 and we were doing food chemistry in school. I had been fat for quite a few years; after my parent's divorce I had started to put on weight. When I realised one day in November in class how much calories I actually eat every day I was really shocked and disgusted by myself. I decided it was time to seriously lose some weight now.
As disgusted as I was I couldn't eat a thing the next day. And well, as things go, I discovered what a powerful feeling it is to have conquered myself, my hunger, my body, and basically everything that I hated about me.
Since my parents were divorced but still living in the same area it was so easy for me to avoid meals - I just told them I had eaten at the other's place or at school or at a friend's house. No one ever managed to keep track of were I and my siblings were all the time so no one worried about my eating habits simply because no one noticed they were kind of odd.
I started to lose weight very quickly and lost about two stone over the first month. Still then no one really seemed to notice, I still wore the same clothes and frankly, people tend to ignore you when you are shy, not particularly beautiful and in no other way sticking out of the crowd.
After a few months when I had already lost more than three stone my mum began to see that I lost weight but since I was the fattie of the family this was a good thing. She also saw that I ate little but never actually grasped that it wasn't really little but more or less nothing at all. I hid food wherever I could - during meal times in my mouth (and then ran to the toilet or the kitchen sink to spit it out) or I'd secretly put it back or on my brother's plate, and I used to spoon yoghurts and other creamy food down the sink and leave the empty boxes in the kitchen so that my mother would think I ate them.
Sooner or later other people noticed I had lost weight, teachers, friends and the family I used to babysit for. Scarily enough, none of them ever worried, all I got was compliments on how well I looked. When I look now at the few photos I have of this time I look terrible - circles under my eyes, pale as death, frizzy hair and terribly baggy clothes. I can't believe nobody ever worried. Either I was a very talented and convincing actress or else they all never really looked at me in the first place.
When I think back to the feelings of the time all I remember is anger, self-hatred and - yes - the wonderful and amazing feeling of power. Power over my own body, power that allowed me to deceive everyone around me, and this immense willpower which let me succeed.
At all this time I was decidedly christian (not really Catholic then but I guess I'll come to that in due time), reading the bible, going to church, praying and all that. And, believe it or not, fasting is a very effective religious exercise. You can feel very close to God when you haven't eaten for a couple of days, and even in retrospective I don't think that this feeling of closeness to God was an illusion. He was there with me all the time, and the worse I felt in life the closer He was to me.
I must have been very thin then. Not dangerously skinny, I never reached this stage, but thin. As it is with EDs you don't see yourself for what you are. I never felt thin, but was always the fattie that I used to be. So no number on the scales was low enough because I'd not feel it.
By March I realised I had a serious problem: I was starting to worry about receiving the Eucharist because it might make me put on weight. This thought struck me with such intensity that I decided I had to change. God was the only one I could still trust and rely on so not being able to receive Him because of my ED was just too much to bear. It wasn't like I changed over night. It took me weeks, months even, to start eating again. I had no support from anyone but God - after all, no one else knew about my problem. People are blind for what they do not want to see. I prayed, I prayed and I prayed, and slowly, ever so slowly I could let go. I still counted calories, I still was afraid to put on weight. But I would make myself eat because I had had a glimpse of what I would become if I continued on this way. The prospect of losing God was the only thing that made me turn. Of course, I put on weight. But over time I found out that those who like me don't care about my weight and those who don't like me don't either - they just use it as a means to hurt me but they still didn't like me when I was thin so what's the point in destroying yourself for them.
So, that's briefly how it all started with my ED...