Coming Clean

As someone who has had a poor body image most of my life, I finally feel like I'm on the right track to a healthy, realistic image of myself. Starting at the age of maybe 4, I can remember being in the shower and thinking that my belly was fat.  As I got older, I thinned out, but only because I was sick. I still think I looked my best between the ages of 8 and 9, when I was at my all time skinniest. One problem; I was SICK. While I looked thin, it was because I had no energy, wasn't getting nutrients from food, and had constant fevers. My body was under attack. 

Fast Forward to age 12, I was the polar opposite. I was a fat faced pre-teen on Prednisone. Nothing kills one's self esteem like the villain, Prednisone. It lurks in your body, makes you feel like you could eat everything on the menu at McDonald's and then want seconds, gives you the dreaded "moon" face and makes your whole body look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. As soon as I stopped the meds, I started to feel "normal" again. The weight fell off and I felt cute. 

There were periods of time when I had to go on "the one who shall not be named", aka, Prednisone. The pros: I felt freaking fantastic. It gives you the energy of 10 Red Bulls on a daily basis. Cons: I was fat again, moody and always starving. Not only was I on this evil beast from the age of 9 through 12, but I also had to take it during my sophomore year of college, in 2001 before I got married (to my ex-husband), and just  a year ago. 

Through all of this, food became my enemy. As you can imagine, trying to eat lots of fruits and veggies to stave off weight gain does not go hand in hand with Crohn's disease. Could I just eat steamed veggies and chicken? Sure, minus the veggies. My food choices bored me to tears.

In an effort to feel like I could eat the foods I craved, I developed a very bad habit; I started chewing and spitting.  I thought it was a perfectly good solution to my growing problem. It started with popcorn, my favorite snack food of all time. After being sent to the ER in 2003 after eating popcorn at the movies, I could no longer enjoy the savory snack. I found chewing and spitting it out to be a perfect balance for me. I could eat the foods I love and not get the calories! Brilliant. Honestly, I thought I brainstormed this phenomenon. Popcorn turned into cookies, which turned into candy, which turned into chips, and basically anything fattening that I wanted to taste, yet not get the calories. I still had no idea there was anything wrong with this. Most recently, I found myself eating cooked onions, baby carrots, and lettuce. This nasty "habit" didn't have any boundaries. I was eating foods that were forbidden, things that would send me to the ER for pain meds and fluids. 

It wasn't until the Summer of 2012 that I realized that chewing and spitting wasn't a bad habit, it was disordered eating. A term I had never heard of. When my friend shared her blog that began out of disordered eating, it was the first time that I admitted that I too had disordered eating. I went for almost 10 years thinking I was just doing myself a favor by skipping the calories by tasting foods I couldn't eat. Instead I learned just how disordered I really was. 

I am still trying to combat this very personal problem. Most of my friends and family have no idea that I struggle with this. It's embarrassing. The world may not look at this like a disease such as anorexia or bulimia, but rather a gross habit. I am here to educate the general public, because I know I am not alone. 

Fellow Crohnies, this issue with food began after struggling with bland food choices during flare ups. Have any of you ever had issues with food, other than not being able to eat certain things? 

To learn more about disordered eating, visit these sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disordered_eating

http://let-there-be-light.net