Would I Lie To You?

Denial. Deception, lies, secrets and excuses are what the parasitic disorder Anorexia Nervosa feeds on whilst depriving its sufferers of the true and beneficial sustenance- solid food. The illness is extremely cunning in the way it will fool its victims and force them to be deceitful to even the most trustworthy of people. In many cases the Anorexia will leach its way subtly through the mind, benefitting from the control it gets by creating false pleasures from restriction and over exercising, much to the detriment of its helpless host. It will therefore often be too late to stop the disorder, as it has already taken over the logical mind releasing toxic thoughts and feelings, which invade like a virus in opposition to the person you used to be. Describing anorexia metaphorically is the only way to convey the harm it causes, due to the complexity of the human mind. If you try to explain any emotion such as anger in words, it is near impossible to reveal what it feels like without saying ‘it’s when you feel angry’. We have ALL at some point experienced this sensation and therefore it is easy to sympathise with the person unlike the thoughts fabricated by anorexia. This is why there is so little known about the disorder, as any verbal description can only lie close to how it is like to experience it. There will unfortunately never be a truly effective way of showing a person blessed with the opportunity to never go through anorexia exactly what it’s like.

Surely I must have known that I was succumbing to anorexia… -a contemplation often pondered aloud to me. I question myself a lot at times whether or not I could see it coming and therefore could have prevented it from becoming an obsession. Although I try to think of ideas to blame the illness on, there is only one thing at fault- myself. I feel I can’t hide behind any other theory. Travelling as far back as the summer of 2007 when I was 14, I remember noticing my body was changing and there was a subsequent appearance of stretch marks over my thighs. Like many teenage girls, I obsessed over their apparition, wondering whether I put on weight in those areas and led myself to believe I had to tone up and so I got the notorious step-machine. We all have a part of ourselves that creates that niggling feeling of a need for change and this asset is all we seem to see when looking in the mirror. Fortunately being relatively young and carefree, I decided to move on and accept I was going through puberty and so the step-machine lay in my room gathering dust. However, then came the summer of 2010 when I had become highly confident in myself, taking pride in my appearance and becoming conscious of how much I weighed. As previously mentioned I had unconsciously lost a little weight that year and felt happy with my figure for once and so over the holidays when I had broken up for dance, I started using my step-machine to keep fit. My sister and I would take turns on it, encouraging each other to stay on for half an hour sessions. At the time it was all healthy. To me it was simply a way of MAINTAINING the weight I was at. My sister soon got bored of the monotonous form of exercise, but I became curious as to how it could tone the muscles up on my ‘problem area’ should I continue to use it regularly. So I did.

I have always had a sweet tooth and enjoyed a daily bar of chocolate as a little indulgence and congratulatory treat after a tiring dance class or session on the step-machine. Being French, I have a very European diet, whereby we get most of our carbohydrates from the bread we accompany a meal with, consisting of usually a protein and vegetable followed traditionally by cheese. I never thought twice about my diet, as it was all healthy and homemade. I would even be the joke of the family, always checking there’d be enough for me to have seconds! It would seem that my weight loss in the summer of 2010 was due to me obliviously reducing portion sizes (this was all noticed by my mum). I became very aware of calorie dense food I would consume, such as the bread, cheese and chocolate and therefore strove to cut these down. My weakness for chocolate however, led me to continue with its consumption so long as I counter-acted its negative effects by exercising more. My parents rapidly noticed I had stopped taking cheese and had restricted myself to one slice of bread. I innocently told them not to worry as I would be eating chocolate after to make up for it (obviously leaving out that I would burn the energy from the chocolate later that evening on my step-machine). I was still weighing myself almost daily and when I saw my weight initially begin to slowly drop I was happy. I fooled myself into having a mantra that ‘the more weight I lose, the more chocolate I can eat’. But then I stopped eating chocolate. In April 2011 I stopped eating bread. In June I was surviving off barely any calories a day.

Initially the denial of the disorder kept me in check. Although I was very much aware that I had an obsession with calorie counting, I was still having 3 meals a day that in my eyes were regular portions. Little did I know that the anorexia was clouding my judgement making my portions seem far larger than they were. I started cutting off every inch of fat I could see on meat and take tiny bites of food, taking a huge glass of water before meals to ‘fill me up’. The weird thing is, is that I have no recollection of doing it purposefully or even being aware I was doing it; this is all a testimony from my parents who witnessed my changing behaviour at meal times. A further misleading factor was down to the contraceptive pill. Had I not been taking it, I would have noticed that I had reached such a low BMI that I had stopped menstruating, as it happened the pill caused a normal monthly cycle. Lies and excuses came naturally to me, my favourite being ‘it was cakeday at school’ (in some lessons, we would take it in turns to bring cake in for the class every week) or my go to line of ‘I’m quite bloated I didn’t digest very well today’, as a reason for my smaller portions and lack of appetite. It was a gradual accumulation of restrictions at first, however as soon as I was made to admit to myself I had Anorexia Nervosa; I let the illness consume me. There was no reason to hide anymore. This especially crushed my mum, as she took it all to heart that in forcing me to be aware I had anorexic tendencies, it caused me to deteriorate. She was never to blame. Not her or my dad for that matter.

At the peak of my illness I had agreed with my parents to consume a minimum number of calories a day. This number to me was a strict guideline; there was no way I would have more and I would therefore weigh every single food and drink meticulously to the 0.1 of a gram, checking it twice so as not to be fooled by potentially faulty scales. I will not mention at this stage how much I was having, as I understand how competitive the illness is and revealing such information could be detrimental to others on a path of recovery. I had an inability to understand the reasons why I should eat a single item of food that was so dense in calories and therefore despite my fear of portion sizes, I managed to stick to my guideline by eating many small portions of low calorie food with an equal number as the single item. My mind had established an irrational link between calorie density and portion size. To me a piece of lettuce and a slab of meat of the same size might as well have had the same amount of calories. Eating dinner was a nightmare as I remembered all the food I had already consumed and so it felt like I was eating all those calories at once on top of my evening meal. Any food that was prepared by my parents had to be weighed both before and after cooking and absolutely no fat, butter or oil was to go anywhere near what I was to eat during the cooking stage. Food was dry and bland, which to me was for the best, as I could not allow myself to enjoy it. I created a conspiracy theory that my parents would secretly add fats to my food or cook a larger portion when I wasn’t looking, which led me to rigidly follow their every move whilst they cooked my meal. I am happy to say this seemingly ridiculous and obsessive behaviour has ceased.

My parents over this summer decided to leave me to my own devices developing a bit of trust in me to build up- which has now broke down, and only starting to be regained. This meant a relapse was not only possible, but with my newfound lying skills, positively easy. Anorexia forced me to lie every week to my parents about how much I weighed, telling them I was maintaining at a constant level. This was so far from the truth but I had forced myself to turn my back on the undeniable truth that I was quickly losing more weight. I cannot understand how I could simply lie to myself now when I look at the graph of my weight that my therapist has kept which plummeted rapidly (I am happy to report it is now on the rise again!). The lies and secrets were like a huge weight (if you’ll pardon the pun), which was lifted when my parents sought help from my therapist and forced me to come to terms that I was dangerously close to becoming an inpatient. Anorexia is a true conniving trickster, who has evolved to become virtually immune to any fight for rational thought.

It often just hits me that I am ill. A lot of the time I have a defence mechanism built up where just saying it out loud and making little derogatory jibes about myself, makes it seem less real and serious. Therapy makes me feel like I have an illness, as I need to go to my local hospital weekly for sessions along with a monthly blood test to monitor my organs. It helps me realise that I do have a problem and I do have something I need to recover from. By hiding from the illness I am denying myself not only the fact that this is a serious illness but also the opportunity to build up a motivation to do something about it. I can run, but I can’t hide. I must never forget that I am ill.

‘You never believe it until it’s in front of you’, is a quote I formulated when I was younger, which has led me to realise I have always had a sense of pessimism within me, heightened with the anorexia. This is why I was able to kid myself into believing I was healthy, until it was literally staring at me in the face- the unavoidable demon. Denial recurs in its many twisted and damaging forms when an ally to anorexia. I denied the illness to myself. I denied the illness to my family and friends. I denied myself of food. I denied my family of a stress-free year. I denied myself the notion of control. If there is one thing I will adamantly not allow the anorexia to deny from me is the ability to recover.