aaaaaaand I'm back. And fat as a whale.

"If I could change, I would. Take back the pain, I would. Retrace every wrong move that I made, I would."

Hello ladies. It's me, I'm back. 

I know there has been a VERY long and unintended absence this time. I've missed you all dearly, very dearly. But I stay away on purpose and now I'm crawling back on bended knee, hoping you will welcome back with your open arms. I've been trying to catch up on your blogs, but wow, there is so much!

Let me explain that hodge-podge paragraph. 

I stayed away because I thought that while I was eating, I might as well try to kick the whole eating disorder thing. For a while I did. But now the old habits are creeping back and now I'm fat as a whale and I have a whole lotta work to do. 

First things first. The hot cop is history. 

Let me put it this way. If I can find time in my 80hour working week for him, and for him to be too busy to see me in his 40hour week then something is very wrong. And he gave me a whole lot of excuses that made me realise he's not over his ex, he's in love with her and needs to go to the other side of the world to rediscover himself to get over her. He couldn't stop talking about her. Yes, I miss him. Yes, I'm petrified I will never find anyone. Yes, I knew for a while it was never going to work. But it still feels very hollow. 

And for the past few months I have been solidly plugging that emptiness with food galore. 

I fit none of my old clothes. I'm at my heaviest weight. I feel like a piece of shit. 

The next thing is that I have moved out of home. And funnily enough, it is not helping my diet. I am going out and eating out so much. But I have told my flatmate that I am going on a liquid fast of undetermined length. She's not opposed to it, is not going to make me eat, and so hopefully this will kickstart things in a big way. 

I can't look at myself in the mirror anymore. I just can't do it. There aren't enough words to describe how much I hate the way I have behaved, and continue to behave. 

I feel insecure. I am convinced that I will not find another guy. Which bothers me more than it should. I mean, up until I met the hot cop, I was convinced I was going to be forever alone and had accepted it. But it's like since I actually had a snippet of what it was like to be with someone, I somehow can't go back to that acceptance. 

I'm 24 now girls. I'm so so so so so not young anymore. I haven't met anyone, and I'm pretty sure I just need to get used to that. I certainly won't meet anyone at this weight. 

Ahhhhh fuck. How did I get to this, seriously, how. These should be the best years of my life but everything fucking sucks. 

And now I've reached the point where I need to be happy with something in my life, and the easiest thing is my weight. Like, I have so much extra fat, it shouldn't take too much to start to shift it. I need to do something. I can't stand being this miserable. 

I sincerely hope you've been keeping better than me babes. 

Day 1: my Mark.

Bangarang. 

Day 1: I've decided that I need to try to make more of an effort with this. Today is day 1 of my new plan to get skinny. It's partially motivated by a post I saw on Facebook from a girl who I once knew in high school. It said that she had lost 4kg and her thighs were no longer touching. Now I've always thought of her as a particularly thin girl and to think that she's making such an effort makes me feel ill. 

Part of the reason behind me not posting here much is that I've largely fallen off the wagon. Not only that, while I was off, I enjoyed being off. This is probably the closest I've ever been to not having an ED and I have loved it. It's been extremely liberating to just grab whatever and eat it and enjoy eating and not to count calories or think about consequences of gaining weight. 

So I've gained weight. That's what happens when you restrict and restrict and just give up and eat everything you want to. Faaaaaaaaah, none of my clothes fit any more and this is a big problem when said clothing includes Marc Jacobs and Miu Miu and Lanvin and Aubin and Wills and more. Several thousand pounds of clothing. That I can't fit. This is just intolerable. 

Anyway, my new effort includes working out and dieting, there is no other secret really. I know I'm eating too much. So I must stop. I'm tempted to just stop eating altogether although that would still cause a lot of trouble at work. At any rate, less food is the answer and working out is also the answer. I figure there must be a way of finding half an hour in my day to work out. 

But before I end this post all about weight loss and ED, I want to tell you all about Mark. He is one of the best men in the entire world as far as I'm concerned. He is the infectious diseases specialist and stays late to look after my patients and sends me home. He's one of the most intelligent people that I know and is always so nice to me when I call him for advice. He never thinks of me as stupid and always writes down the name of the patient I tell him about so that he can go and look them up later. 

Mark is also reasonably dishy. In a way that not many people would agree with me. Apparently I really do have a type. A type that means that most females aren't going to fight me for these guys. Although Mark is great, so great. Makes me feel looked after in an odd way. I don't know why, but I want to lose weight for him. Is that odd? It must be reasonably common. I mean, we're not dating, we don't even have that much of a professional relationship. We're borderline colleagues. And I want to lose weight for him?

In my head, I imagine the two of us sitting together. He'll put his arms around me and I will rest my head on his shoulder. And for some reason, that particular fantasy needs me to be stick thin. I need to be stick thin for him. None of it makes any sense to me but that is really how I feel. 

buoyed by painkillers

"Learn and love and to do what it takes to move through." 

Being sent home has been one of the low points of my life. Not that being sick at work was that much fun. Now that I'm home again, I have resumed by schedule of painkillers that I had foolishly given up. 

I'm always convinced that painkillers don't work. Then I stop taking them and boy do I feel the pain. I'm floating, floating on a mass of paracetamol and ibuprofen and I've just dug out some codeine to add to the mix. I'm really not some druggie but this cold is hitting me hard and it feels like it's literally hitting me. No, that was not not a clever simile, but I can't do any better. 

At any rate, I will drag my sorry ass out of bed tomorrow and go back to work. I wish I could just kick it out of my system and go to work. I hate being this useless. Or I just want to stay at home and get better with no guilt. 

The lovely striveforperfection has nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award, so in addition to my previous blog post, I shall be answering her questions too. 

Strive for Perfection's Questions:

1. What would your ideal day be if you didn't have an ED?

Oh gosh. I can't even imagine. Let's see. It would be waking up in London in a stylish Soho penthouse at mid morning. Then I would have a nice pot of tea and a full English breakfast. There is almost nothing that I love more than a full English, but really, all those calories. But this is supposing I don't have an ED and so I don't care. After breakfast, I'd head for a wander around the British Natural History Museum before heading down Oxford Street and New Bond Street for a spot of shopping. I'd buy everything in Marc Jacobs. Then meet up with friends at Claridges for some high tea. We would all go back to my penthouse, tart ourselves up and go to dinner at Sketch, and we'd eat in the Michelin star Lecture Room. Post dinner, we'd see Phantom, or Les Mis, then to a nice bar for a port or sherry. 

Well, turns out I could imagine it very well. Very well indeed. And sometime this coming year, I will make it happen. Maybe not the food bits though. But minus the food, it's still a good day. 

2. What was the moment you realized you had an ED?

I can't say the exact moment, I do remember the exact moment I realised I had a self harm problem though. It was quite soon after that that I realised I had an eating problem too, but the exact moment isn't clear. I can remember so well what set it off, but the realisation of having an eating disorder and not just trying to lose weight is a bit fuzzy. 

3. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Scotland. The Highlands. No, wait, Iceland. One of those places anyway. I love both of those places so much, but right at this moment, I think I'd sooner fly off to Edinburgh, then get my ass into the Highlands and just sit and stare. 

4. What is your biggest fear?

Spiders. Heights. Spiders. Heights. It varies, depending on which of the two I am facing. That and facing a medical emergency and not knowing what to do. 

5. If you could ask someone anything and they had to be 100% honest with you, who and what would you ask?

Oh, that's easy, the professor. I've spent so long speculating over what he thinks of me, it would be such a relief for him to just tell me. Chances are, I could just ask him, and he would be 100% honest, but then he would ask me why I wanted to know and I would have no answer for that. 

6. If you could tell someone anything without fear of judgement, who and what would you tell?

Well, there's really no one. I'm pretty blunt in my life, so everyone already knows what I think of them. Even the people I hate. Problem is, I'm so bluntly honest that not everyone believes me. The only thing they don't know is the ED, and the self harm. And I don't want them to know that anyway. Sometimes I want to tell the professor and his wife how much they mean to me. But then at other times I think it's best they don't know. 

7. Describe a time when you were truly, unquestioningly happy.

Front row at the Trend show at London Fashion Weekend. 

8. If your house was burning down and you had time to save one thing, what would it be and why?

My handbag. My life is in my handbag. Not to mention my wallet. If I have that, then I have the means to sort out the consequences of all the other things I lost in the fire. Nothing is of such sentimental value to me, or rather, too many to choose just one.

9. How has having an ED affected you?

Wow. It is every part of every day. It floats up behind every meal and every snack and every drink and every spot of exercise. It floats up behind every spare moment of the day. Imagine all the other things I could be thinking of I weren't preoccupied with my ED all the time. 

I might have a boyfriend, I might even be married. I might want children. I might not be so scared of sex. I might not self harm. I would be a different person.

10. How many people know about your ED?

One. The professor. A few others have been concerned about my weight loss at various points of my life, but he is the only one who knows for sure.

11. Given the choice, would you choose recovery or your goal weight?

I choose goal weight. Although there have been moments in my past where I would have chosen recovery, but I haven't had one of those for a while. I want my goal weight now. And I want nothing else more. I just want to be thin. 

a follow on from "curvy girls" - aka a rant.

Miss Fat Piggy's "Curvy Girls" post...has inspired this rant. And warning girls, this is a RAAAAAAAANT. 

I could rant about overweight people all day, every day but really, I try to hold it in most days, but reading Fat Piggy's post has really triggered me off, not to mention some of the responses to it. Here is my comment on her post, plus a little more elaboration.

Here is my stance on being "curvy" and being overweight and "having a low metabolism". Sure, there are metabolic disorders that PREDISPOSE you to being fat, but at the end of the day, it's all intake vs. output. There are only 3 disorders in the whole world that I think will totally excuse you from being fat: Angelman's, Prader-Willi and leptin deficiency. 

Let's get this straight. Some of the thinnest people I know have PCOS, and NOBODY can blame being fat on having a LOW metabolism because metabolic rate is directly proportional to weight so the more you weigh, the HIGHER your metabolism. Exercise only changes your metabolic rate by a small amount so all that shit about HAVING A LOW METABOLISM IS JUST BULLSHIT. People who are overweight and think they have a "low metabolism" generally are counting their calories wrong. There was a study on these "low metabolism" people and they were compared with those thin people with "high metabolisms" who thought they were thin because they had a "high metabolism". 

GUESS WHAT???? They gave everyone radioactive double labelled water, which measures the number of calories that you eat, and those "low metabolism" people ate roughly twice as many calories than their "high metabolism" counterparts. And GUESS WHAT???? The "low metabolism" people actually had metabolisms that were 30% higher than those people who were supposed to have higher metabolisms. 

And also people, I give this speech to each overweight patient who tries to sell me the "low metabolism" bullshit. I went through 6 years of medical school bitches, you think you can fool me with that mainstream bullshit??? And yeah, sure, you might have the "obesity gene", the greatest excuse for being lazy any generation has ever had. But GUESS WHAT, only 10% of overweight people have that gene. So 90% of them are just overeating. 

Fat people use it as such an excuse for being fat. "Oh I have a low metabolism because everyone in my family has a low metabolism." Bullshit. The reason your whole family is fat is because you all eat the same shit. 

I do think that overeating is a behavioural issue, and that is is taught by observing other people's behaviour or is developed as a coping mechanism and you can't really blame people too much for that. However, it is their choice whether or not to continue their pattern, or to make a change. 

And NOOOOOOO, weight loss DOES NOT depend on WORKING OUT. So all those people too fat to move, or actually physically disabled in some way (perhaps they lost a limb due to the diabetes they gave themselves from being too fat) have no excuse. 80% of weight loss is diet related. And working out generally makes people more hungry, so they eat more. It's all about the food people. IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FOOD!!!! 

No, it's not easy to diet and lose weight. Of course it's not. If it was, nobody would be fat. And yes, food tastes good and food comforts us when we're upset. That's why it's so easy to be overweight. I'm not saying "fuck fat people, it's their own fault so tough titties". I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that until they start to really recognise their own eating and behavioural patterns as contributing to them being overweight, they will not be able to lose weight. 

If being overweight was really just simply metabolic, I'm sure medical research would be pouring billions of dollars into finding a step in that metabolic pathway to block and then BAM! SKINNY PEOPLE! But that's not happening, because it's not metabolic. 

And Angelman's, Prader-Willi and leptin deficiency? BOOM! CHROMOSOMAL DISORDERS! No cure, sorry. But when you don't have the ability to feel full, yes, of course you keep eating. 

Don't get the impression that I have a thing against fat people. Not at all. Yes, they might sometimes make my heart sink because they make my job harder. And yes, sometimes all their excuses make me want to beat my head against a wall. But the only reason I feel like this is because I've been on the other end of it. 

You only have to witness one failed resuscitation, of a young woman in her 50s, who had a heart attack because of her eating. Doing CPR on this lady, three times my size, while her family stand around me, crying and wailing, her children begging her "mum! wake up!", I only had to see that once to know that I would happily whip and beat every overweight person I come across to avoid that happening to another family. 

You only have to go to the amputations ward once, see the young men and women in their 40s and 50s, missing legs due to their diabetes, waiting on super large wheelchairs, going blind from their diabetes, crying about how they are dying because they can't stop eating, yet eating chocolates at the same time to comfort themselves. You only have to see that once to know that you will never care about making a fat person angry, or making them cry if that means that there is a slight chance of the message getting across. At night I weep for the people who are blind from their diabetes, who will never be able to look at their children again. 

Yes, I'm harsh. I'm the same with smokers. Seeing one lung cancer patient will do that to you. And I used to run lung cancer clinics. And by the time they get to me, I know they are going to die. These wonderful people, these wonderful caring people, RUINED by eating too much and smoking too much. So yes, I'm harsh. Because I'm trying to save them from themselves. If I don't tell them, then who will?

If women have a natural hourglass, curvy figure, great. If they are fat, then fuck, their fat. And if they don't face it then I will happily see them in hospital after their heart attack or stroke at 45 years of age, or when they are 50 and their knees are worn out because of the massive strain on them. And you know what, then they will have to face a lifetime of medication, and then they will have to face themselves. 

What goes around comes around sisters. And if people choose not to do something about their weight today, then they can face the consequences of that decision later.

knowledge is power

"We give and take a little more, the eternal game of tug and war. Power and control."

The endless pit that is my stomach rumbles shamelessly and the noise seems to echo through my ears. I'm convinced that the whole room can hear it. Ramming my fist into my abdomen in a vain attempt to curb the sound, I stubbornly continue to flick through my stack of x-rays. It's a test and a woman stands over my shoulder, listening to my every word. It is the final test, in many ways I am already qualified. 

The words spill from my mouth in such rapid succession that my fellow clinicians look concerned. I'm so mechanical in this, I barely know what I'm saying myself, my voice sounds like a far away drone and in my state, the words mean nothing. "PA erect chest x-ray of an elderly female patient of good penetration and minimal rotation. There are no obvious bony defects or soft tissue swellings. Gross cardiomegaly is present with increased interstitial markings, blunting of both costophrenic angles and septal lines. There is peribronchial cuffing in both lungs as well as upper lobe diversion. All of this is consistent with congestive heart failure."

The woman behind me nods and moves onto the person next to me. I release a breath that I didn't know I was holding. I'm done. Next time I walk into a hospital, I won't be a student anymore. Fully qualified, holding lives in my hands. I think back to the first lecture I ever had at medical school. The opening line of this lecture was "as doctors, you will all kill patients. Hopefully none of you will do it deliberately. This is something you have to accept now or you will have a hard time." I don't know if I've ever come to terms with this. It scares me to the bone. 

I try not to think about it. Try to get on with what I need to do. 

"Oh my gosh, you're so thin!" But I'm not. Most of the other girls have lost much more weight than me. In England, I got down to almost 50kg. Then I got back up to 57kg. I think I'm hovering around 54kg to 55kg now. I have lost a bit of weight since I got home and away from that recovery house. I can feel that I'm thinner, but nowhere near as thin as I was when I was in England. Not as thin as I was when I was in control of my own food. 

But this just goes to show that I can do it. I can lose a lot of weight very quickly. I can also put it back on very quickly, but I can lose it, and that's a relief to know. A little discipline is all I need. And it does come off. I had the faintest of thigh gaps for a while there. So it's possible. Now all I have to do is to get back there as fast as I can. 

Tune out the hunger, it means nothing. Tune out the headaches. It means nothing. It's so simple when you boil it right down. At the be all and end all of any conversation, when I don't eat, I lose weight. So if I want to lose weight, all I have to do is not eat. It's very, very simple. 

the german boys.

"So we're back here again, tip-toeing around the edge of the end."

Back at home, lying in bed, using internet and jetlagged as all hell. I'm too scared to even weight myself because I know that I am still fat. I have gained weight. Thanks to stupid and amazingly hot German bloke I lived with. But now I am home, away from that dratted recovery house and things will be back on my terms thank you very much. 

It feels strange to be at home, it feels as though I never left. This trip hasn't changed me at all. I feel the same about myself. It is so easy to pick up the strands that I dropped 2 months ago. 

I need to go back to the professor at some point in time. And I can already feel the anxiety rising in my chest just thinking about it. The old illness rising, the old emotions awakening.

Work looms. I am looking forward to it simply because of the weight loss potential there. No matter what happens in my life, weight loss is still the only thing that I crave. 

My weight is really holding me back. And I realised this while I was in the UK. The first German guy I lived with, Chris, was the one to start force feeding me. Even though I hated him for this, I absolutely adored him. He was cute, he was extremely nice and we ran on the same wavelengths. We used to go on long walks together, go explore the city together and he always had an umbrella to hold over me when it started raining. He would kill spiders for me even though I knew he was terrified of them too. I missed him so much when he left.

I'm terrible at reading what a guy thinks of me, but by the end of our 5 weeks together, I knew he liked me, and I knew by the end of the 3rd week that if I wanted him, I could have got him. But I couldn't try. I couldn't bear the thought of him touching me even though I wanted nothing more, and feeling all the fat on my body. I started to push him away in the last week. I wouldn't go to any of his dinner invitations, wouldn't go out clubbing with him. He was really upset with me in the end. 

He still messages me on facebook. And I feel terrible each time I hear from him. 

Andreas, the second guy, was very different, although he was the one who fed me the most. He made me feel even worse about myself. Andy is one of the best looking guys I've ever seen in my life and I hated being in the same room as him. I felt I was far too fat and ugly for him to even look at me and that is something that I just couldn't get past. 

I remember the first time I saw him. I'm sure he could see the physical response I had to first seeing him. I stopped what I was doing, my eyes bulged, my jaw dropped and I became extremely flushed. He is just so good looking. Deadly charismatic, but not charming in the way that Chris was. Maybe I say that because Chris was trying to get to me, and Andy wasn't. 

I wonder how things would have turned out if I had been thin. Would I have gone out with Chris? Would I have talked to Andy more? 

But does that matter, because I am fat and I didn't do any of those things. 

do you know this house is falling apart

"We've got no money but we've got hearts."

All my hard earned progress, each pound fought for, all in vain. Stupid, stupid doctors. Stupid doctors. 

For the past 3 weeks my house here in England has turned into a recovery unit. A recovery unit with one patient. Me. It sucks. I'm back to where I started. Right back to where I started. All that exercise and restricting, for nothing. It's all back on. This is what happens when you live with doctors. 

You can't hide anything. You can't run away. They don't listen to any of my excuses, we all know we've heard them before from those conniving anorexics in our inpatient psychiatric units. 

I don't know what to do. They are strangers to me. Poor students, poor students with no money. Poor medical students who are forcing me to eat. I have absolutely no food in the house. It's one of my ways of restricting. If there is no food, I can't eat. And I'm generally too lazy to go out and buy food when I'm starving. 

But that's no barrier, they give me their food. Well, he does anyway. He cooks for me, caesar salad with chicken, pasta with prawn and whiskey and cream sauce, baked potato with tuna. Out of his own pocket he is buying each pound I put on. And I can't say no. When someone that good looking cooks a meal that smells so good it makes me salivate as I sit, defeated at the kitchen table, and puts it down in front of me as he sits opposite, eating his own portion and watching me eat. 

There are no weigh ins at this house, thankfully. But they can see the weight going on. I can see the weight going on. He might only see me for dinner, but he makes damn sure there are enough calories in it for me to put on weight.

After dinner, he breaks out the chocolate, or ice cream, or both. It doesn't matter when I come home. He's there, waiting, with dinner and dessert. 

Part of me hates him to the very core. Part of me is torn because he is after all one of the best looking guys I have ever seen and I want to make him happy. What the fuck is happening to me. 

But there is still one fact that I can hold onto. 2 and a half more weeks of this and I'll be gone, away from him, half a world away from him. And then, just you watch. 

pretty hate machine

I got my heart but my heart is no good. You're the only one that's understood. I come along but I don't know where you're taking me, I shouldn't go but you're reaching back and shaking me. 

Turn off the sun, pull the stars from the sky. The more I give to you the more I die. 

You're the perfect drug. 

It's almost 10pm and I'm standing outside ED in the rain. I wrap my coat around me and look up and down the quiet road. There are a few patients smoking in a corner, there is a hobo lying in the bus stop, then there's me. I've not eaten all day, I've been working almost 14hours and I was shaking with the cold. Lights. Blinding. She pulls up and I clamber in. She deposits me at home and drives out and buys me fried chicken. We share it. 

I know the fried chicken was a very deliberate choice. She knows I've not eaten all day. I find it hard to be mad at her. She's one of my best friends, she's my flatmate, she's my colleague. She's been staying up, waiting for me to call her to pick me up because she won't let me walk home in the dark. In a way, I've never been cared for like this before. 

I swallow my chicken, fighting the rising bitterness. I know she's taking care of me. And I do love her for that. This is just an ED, ruining an otherwise lovely moment. 

Paediatrics. I love it, but it's not my thing. Being around kids disturbs me, and this sounds stupid, but it's because they are smaller than me. I feel some sick sense of satisfaction when I see a child who weighs more than me. I want the long, lean, boney appearance of the young girls. I want to look like that. This must be why I hate my boobs. I'd much rather be flat chested. 

I must be the only female I know to complain about having size D cups. My guy friends are apparently very fond of my boobs. Just the other day one of them told me that he and his now ex-gf had an argument over me and my boobs. 

I've been away from this blog for a while because I was PMSing and somehow my hormones convinced me to have a crack at recovery. The thought process was this: if I am this miserable when I'm trying to lose weight, so miserable that I want to die, how bad can it be if I stop trying to lose weight. How bad can it be if I just give in, do what my boss wants me to do and just stop trying and even gain some weight? I can't imagine it being worse than wanting to die. 

And I have to say, that was some solid logic. Pity it didn't really transpire like that. I upped my calorie intake. Probably not by much because I didn't have any high calorie foods in the house, maybe to 1000cal a day. Then I just worked out harder at the gym so that my net calorie intake was about 500cal a day. And I can tell that I've lost some weight doing that. I've not weighed myself yet but I can feel that there is a small change, maybe 2lbs. 

2lbs loss. And that kicks off the vicious cycle. As usual, nothing in this life will feel as good as seeing the number on the scale go down. Now I'm back to restricting. I'm going to keep my calorie intake up a bit more, because I loved the difference I felt at the gym. But the strange thing is, when I wanted to lose weight, all I wanted to do was eat. Now that I'm actually making an effort to eat more, I'm finding it extremely difficult. 

Ah well, see how it goes, I'm so far down that if I go down any more, I'll be 6 feet under. Which is fine too. 

don't care if it hurts, I want to have control.

I want a perfect body. I want a perfect soul. 

Mirror, mirror. The unscrupulous bitch that stares back at me is unrecognisable. Silk shirt tucked into high waisted pants and a lanyard with a garish name tag. In the great hullaballoo of figures and colours and ailments rushing by, her image is the one that strikes me. Breathe in. Fiery hatred floods my being as a natural instinct, everything about the way she looks is so utterly repulsive to me. The bulge of her stomach, the way her arms balloon from her short sleeves, the way her voluptuous breasts seem to be bursting past the buttons, the subtle double chin. Hideous. 

Breathe out and stop. The hullaballoo has moved on, and it is only me who remains, staring. All the hatred, the revulsion, the disgust, the torrent of emotion that flooded through me in a river of rage has been stunned into pause. In the rush I had failed to recognise my own reflection. I had directed so much hate towards someone who I thought was a stranger, only to realise I had been looking at myself. How did I become this?

ANDREA!!!! 


I see you are back to commenting on my blog. If my posts upset you, why do you continue to read them? I think your efforts would be better employed doing something you enjoy, such as going out with friends, or undertaking whatever hobbies you may have instead of leaving abusive comments on my posts. 


Do you really expect me to change views that I have held my entire life because someone like you, who I have never met, finds me selfish and stupid (and whatever else you have called me over the years)? 


I know what I'm doing isn't normal. And I can see why you and others may see it as selfish. But you know nothing of my life and how I grew up and my motivations. Not every woman dreams of having a husband and children to cook for. Just as not every person is able to look at food normally. You can't really think that when I starve myself it is some sort of conscious effort to hurt and betray everyone who might care about me and sabotage some vague dream of an idealised family unit. It certainly isn't. Sometimes, it is a coping mechanism that I must do to make it through the day. 


Most of us who have eating disorders are highly intelligent. You obviously don't think so, as you've called me stupid many times now. But most of us get top grades and have highly paid jobs and have high functioning lives and we know more about nutrition than most people who aren't nutritionists. Nothing about ED is about getting nutrition, it's a fear of food, a fear of losing control, a fear of gaining weight that runs in our bones and it's not something that can be changed by telling us to snap out of it. 


Do I like the way I am? No. I'd change many things. And if I could look at food normally, if there was a chance of that, I would. An existence where I don't have to face my worst fear everywhere would be lovely. I would not wish this upon anybody, not even you. For you to think that this is such a simple problem is rather ignorant of you. I don't think you can understand what it's like, not unless you somehow develop an eating disorder. 


What is it that you try to achieve with your comments? Do you hope to inspire me into recovery? Do you want to shame and ridicule me until I fall into a pool of misery and kill myself? I can tell you right now that neither of those things will happen. 


Do you simply want to point out my stupidity and laugh? Feel free to laugh and jeer all you like. But you don't need to be abusive. You don't need to post those comments on my blog. You don't need to read my blog at all. I like to think I've been reasonably civil with you. And you should give me some credit and believe me when I say I'm not a silly little pre-pubescent girl who is online attention seeking. I'm an much older girl, using this as a forum for expressing my thoughts and perhaps meeting people who follow my wavelength. 

plan for tomorrow, I promise you, you're going to be okay

"We're right here beside you, and right here we will stay. Plan for tomorrow, because I swear to you, you're going to be okay." 

I apologise for my absence. The truth is, I'm thinking of taking a wee break from blogging, and from everything. I don't really understand what's happened. Or how. 

Well, that's not true. I think the truth is more like, there is a huge battle going on in my head right now and it makes me utterly incapable of doing anything, including doing this blog. 

The small part of me that wants recovery is rearing it's head again. It's ugly, ugly head. I've been feeling this way since I saw the professor. 

He asked me how many ribs I could see. I told him that right now I could only see 2 of them.  Down from 4 ribs. How I have failed in life. The look he gives me is one that I have trouble reading, and trouble believing. It's a strange mix of concern, amusement and sadness. 

"I know you can still see your ribs because I can feel them when I hug you." 

In my head I celebrate this sentence. 

This must be what it feels like to be loved. 

Part of me is sad. Because now I realise that in all my 22 years of life, this is the first time I've felt loved. 

It's an unspeakable security, an unfaltering tenderness, a place I belong. 

That warmth that spreads throughout a body when one swallows hot soup. That's how I feel all the time. Always warm. Filled with the assurance of safety. 

Filled with the vulnerability that I have been sheltering for so long. 

In a way it feels good to let some of that go. 

So much of what I have worried over for so long is now leaving me. And all it took was for one person to show that they care. 

A new kind of restlessness has filled my bones.

The agitation of joy. Of having motivation. And the relief of not constantly questioning myself and all that I do. 

I feel so blessed.

How did I find the professor?

A man with no children, who can never have children of his own, but desperately wants a daughter. 

How did he find me?

A girl who has spent most of her life wanting the love and approval of a father who can't ever give it to her. 

I know that he hides his affection for me from his wife.

She has her own set of problems. If she knew mine, she'd fall apart. I am a daughter to her. And following in her ED footsteps. 

When it's just the professor, things are somehow calmer. Open.

He reaches for me. Pulls me into his chest. Wraps his arms around me and squeezes. 

"It's so good to see you."

Peck on the cheek. I crinkle my nose and giggle.

In those moments I feel perfect. 

Not a thing that I would change. Not one thing.

Pity it never lasts long.

As I sit and I feel my thighs touch, I imagine getting liposuction in my head. 

I imagine having a gap between them.

I feel so unhappy with how fat I am. Desperately so. 

I hate lying to him. Really I do.

I hate upsetting him, a better daughter would just obey. 

But I'm not a better daughter. And I can't obey this one thing.

Plan for tomorrow. Those three words mean different things to the two of us.

For him it means me getting over this. Looking at food normally. No more cutting. Gaining some weight. And just a little confidence. Then the two of us moving forwards along the same path.

For me it means thin. And thin. And blood and thin. And thin.

laughing with a mouth of blood

Just like an amnesiac, trying to get my senses back. 

Oh where did they go?

Being in psychiatry isn't doing my mental health any favours. I can feel myself losing my grip on absolute space and it is really scaring me. 

Currently I have a patient who is about the same age as me and has anorexia with binge-purge subtype. It's so weird. I feel like I should ask to be taken off her treatment team. It's having a weird affect on me. It makes me want to binge and binge and that scares me because I can't purge. It feels so strange because when I sit and listen to her explain her logic and the way she thinks, it's exactly the same way that I think. 

In a way, I'm jealous that she's so skinny and so able to starve herself and binge and purge. I want to be her. But at the same time, she's so ill. She's got a NG tube. She's got the biggest team of doctors and psychologists and eating disorder specialists and key workers and occupational therapists and more looking after her. We have to book out the special big room to have her treatment meetings. 

What's almost more frightening is how much everyone knows about the tips and tricks of ED. All the tips, everything I've ever read on how to fool people, how to hide things, every single thing and more has been mentioned. Things that I thought was secret to the pro ana community, they're not secret. Everyone knows about them, and in the inpatient centre here, they know how to spot them and stop them and punish them. 

And it's not just her. There is a patient who cuts. And everyone gets so up in arms about it. But I look at them and I realise that I cut deeper, more frequently and for more years of my life than this person. I have no right to treat them or to tell them to stop. It's a bizarre feeling  and it makes me wonder how sick I am and how deep it is in me. 

I think working in psychiatry is making me more sick. It makes me see things that I do that I wasn't aware of before. And it has forced me to face the fact that I am sick. Because there are people less sick than me getting intensive treatment. The only difference is that I  have learnt to hide it. 

...LIKE A BOSS!!!!!

Well girls! I've got some good news for you all! I'm so happy that I can tell you something nice for once. 

I have spent a lot of time worrying my ass off about what will happen when I see the professor. Last time I saw him he wanted to get me therapy for ED and for my cutting and depression. He wanted to monitor my weight to make sure I don't lose any more. He was so worried and I was so worried that I wouldn't be able to lose any more weight with him watching me. I was worried that if he was going to do all this and I did not comply, then I would not be able to keep my job and I was also scared he would report me to the medical council. 


I said that I would try to strike some sort of balance there and try to make him less worried and continue to lose weight without him worrying or wanting to monitor me. 


AND I DID... LIKE A BOSS!!!!!!!


My skinny lovelies, your girl Judith Marie knows how to TURN IT ON when she needs to! Hell yeah! TRIUMPH IS MINE!!!!! I walked out of our encounter wanting to jump around and I drove through the rain really fast with my stereo on really loud....LIKE A BOSS!!! Celebrated by buying lots of too tight clothes that I will soon fit!!! 


When I saw the professor I totally turned it on. I was happy, cheerful, bubbly and really, really smiley. Since I only gained weight in Singapore, I didn't look any thinner and he was really, really pleased about that and seemed to think I'd turned a corner. He didn't ask about the cutting or depression or eating...I think he was really relieved by how I looked and acted that he didn't want to bring it up. 


If he had asked he'd have found out that I'm super upset about gaining weight in Singapore, that I've cut quite a few times since then, that I can't sleep because I'm always crying. And I'm more determined than ever to lose weight, especially with my qualification looming at the end of the year. 


But the point is, he didn't ask. I also told him about my flatmate, and how she's cooking lots and we're eating it. I made it sound like we were regular binging all the time. I didn't tell him my intake is around 800cal per day and I'm going to wean it down to 500cal then 300cal soon, introduce fasting days again and join the gym next week and go every day with my friend. 


God, I am so looking forward to progress again. Sammy, my love, you were so right in your advice to slowly wean down my calorie intake after the Great Singapore Binge of 2011. I really do crave food and it's really, really hard to do. 800cal might sound okay but I'm so suffering. I just want to binge all the time. But if I slowly decrease my intake, I should be back on track soon. 


I haven't felt this upbeat for a long time! Hiking my scales to my new home so that I can keep up to date all the time with my weight. I can't wait to work hard at work and work hard at my weight and get my life back on track. 


Can't wait to give you lovely girls posts with weight loss progress! Think skinny girls! 
With every bite, think: a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. 


We will thin and beautiful together!