Is It An Eating Disorder?

I was young when I thought I was fat. I am not sure what age. My mother was a pill person and thought there was a pill for everything. She took vitamin V(valium) when they first came out and were popular. That is until they were deemed an addictive substance. She took diet pills when she was pregnant with the two siblings just younger than me. She told me her doctor didn't want her gaining too much weight, like when she was pregnant with her first child. Me.

When I turned ten, my dad died on my birthday. After that school year, we moved up north. My mother went to a doctor and took me with her. She was given diet pills. I started taking diet pills soon after. At the time, the doctor said that as long as you are 5 pounds overweight according to the insurance charts, then you can get diet pills. That was in the 60's. Not any more. I got my own diet pills, after trying my mothers for awhile.

Diet pills helped me with the depression, that I didn't know I had. I could talk to anyone, I was not hungry all of the time. I could get a lot done and I believed they made me smarter. I was on diet pills until age 26, when I quit drinking alcohol and taking drugs. Any and all drugs. I carried some in my purse for about a year, just in case of an emergency! Well, that is what I thought anyway. Today, I think, what kind of emergency? Crazy!

Quitting drinking and drugs was not easy but food helped. Especially sugar and carbs. In the days when I quit, there was encouragement to eat candy or sweets when you wanted to drink. That first year, I wanted to drink all of the time. Eating sweets is no longer a recommendation. It is now recommended you quit smoking when you quit drinking. I had quit smoking a couple years before I quit drinking as I was smoking 2-3 packs a day.

A bit compulsive and obsessive. That is the way it was with addiction. And that is what happened when I switched from alcohol/drugs to food. My weight went up and I tried getting obsessive and compulsive about exercise, fasting, weighing, and all of the fad diets. I was on weight watchers, tops, and went to overeaters anonymous, even before I went to the other support groups. I knew my relationship with food was not normal, before I stopped drinking.

After working a good solid program and knowing that I could be successful without alcohol and drugs, I thought I would try the same with food. When I would start dieting every day and not make it past 10:00 a.m. I thought I would kill myself eating or at least weigh 600 pounds. I turned to working steps 1-7 and miracle of miracles, it worked. No longer obsessive and compulsive with food. It really wasn't as simple as it sounds. I had to be miserable enough to be powerless and unmanageable and ask for help. I did the inventory step and shared that with another, then I was truly ready to have the obsession and compulsion removed.

Does that mean I got to a good weight and stayed there. No. I believe I will always be a compulsive overeater. I eat with stress, fear, worry, feelings in general! When I was younger and thought I was fat, I wasn't. I am fat now, but I feel the best about my body now, than I ever have. My top weight, when I was weighing was 280 pounds, probably 30 years ago or more. I am sure I went over that but I stopped weighing. I weigh 237 now. I have been diabetic for 21 years. I am on a sliding scale with insulin, no pills. I have been taking insulin every once in a while now for years. I believe my heart was effected by the years of diet pills. I have a mitral valve issue that is attributed to scarlet fever, that occurred when on a speed run. I live with atrial fibrillation (AFIB) and take medication for that.

I work a recovery program and food, like shopping, plants, relationship codependency, drugs and alcohol, all of it could get out of hand. My program is not perfect but progress happens. I am happy, joyous and free most of the time. I have serenity and I work hard to keep it. I seldom have any kind of relapse, and lately it has been with too many plants. I guess maybe I should work 6 & 7 with my plants. Just kidding. I am a woman in long term recovery and that means I have not drank alcohol or taken drugs in 41 years. I did have over 100 plants in my house at one time and that is why plants are on my list. Since then I had zero and now I have plants that take the toxins out of the house as I live in farm country, and roundup is used frequently. I have just two other house plants from my uncles and my brothers funeral. I am good. No relapse.