My Fitness Story… - Desperate Measures

When I was first contacted by this week’s guest poster, I didn't appreciate the scale of the tale that she had to tell. She outlined her story and admitted she was nervous about telling it. Having reassured her that she could remain completely anonymous, she said she’d write the post when she felt ready. Imagine my surprise when the post arrived in my inbox the following morning.

And then I read her story. I was totally blown away. I understood then why she had been so nervous about reliving this part of her life. She has been, and is, incredibly brave. For this poster took drugs to help her lose weight. Not just "slimming aids", illegal drugs. 

This post is longer than usual, but I urge you to read it and give the poster your full support in the comments. I know she is nervous about the publication of this post and has told me she is unlikely to read the comments, but you're generally very supportive and I'm sure lots of helpful comments will encourage her to read them. (Abuse will just get removed by me anyway). This post is not written to justify her actions because she is ashamed of them. It's written to explain how she came to take drugs to help her lose weight and the effects it had on her and her life. It is a cautionary tale, it is shocking, it is powerful but it's also uplifting.

So, now, I hand you over to my anonymous contributor, who will tell you her fitness story about the desperate measures she took to lose weight. 

Ah. I’d had a bottle of wine when I offered to do this guest post, and I’m already unsure as to whether or not I can pull it off, but I’ll give it a try. I can’t possibly fit the entire story of my battle here, so I’ll try to cut it down to the weight-based bits for the purpose of the post...

Freshly single and working in the pub industry, I suddenly became acutely aware of my weight. Well, not so much my weight but my size. I was 22, 5’2” tall and weighed around 13 stone. My dress size was 16 and I’d never been as big as I was then. Working in the pub wasn’t my only job, so I was tired too and had little time to make new friends. I was lonely.

One day, I was moaning to my flatmate about how knackered/fat/fed up I was when he suggested I do what he did and take a bit of speed at weekends.

I was horrified! It’d never crossed my mind to take such drastic action. He explained to me how if I just took a small amount on a Saturday morning, I’d feel much more energetic and the weight would surely start disappearing. I had no boyfriend, no kids and no real responsibilities back then, so I decided to give it a try and had some the next morning.

It was great! I felt so full of energy and my housework was done in no time! Now what? Oooohh yes, we should go for a walk. We walked for hours, my flatmate and I, until I had finished the 1.5ltr bottle of water I’d taken with me and desperately needed a wee, so we went back. Being this full of energy, I thought, I’d lose weight in no time at all!

And lose weight I did. I didn’t want to wait for months to look great though, so rather than having speed at weekends, I immediately started having some EVERY morning. Even the ones where I went to work at the office. That wasn’t a total disaster either – I was completing the workload of two people every day. The weight just ‘fell off’ (I hate it when people say that now) and within the first week, I’d lost a full stone. I was thrilled! I very quickly became less about the energy and so, so much more about the weight for me. I was taking this stuff every day because it was really helping me.

Four months later, I was a size 10, I had a very busy social life, worked both jobs comfortably and was happy - sort of. I was paranoid, I avoided my family and I was obsessed with not eating. I could live with that though, because I was slowly but surely creeping towards that never-worn-before size 8. Once I got into a size 8 dress, I would definitely stop taking it. Or at least cut down – because I did have some days where I didn’t have any speed and ate like a horse all day (so it wasn’t like I was starving myself, right?) Food became my nemesis – I so desperately craved it but looking at it made me feel fat, I felt like a failure if I ate it. I didn’t do much shopping – most of the meals I did have were from a take-away because they were almost always an impromptu and knee-jerk reaction to a sudden, overwhelming urge for food. Disgusted by what I’d eaten, I’d then eat nothing for at least two days to balance things out.

By the time I met the man who would be my husband, I had reached my goal – I went on my first date with him in a size 8 denim dress from Topshop. I’ll never forget that dress. He wanted to take me out for meals, call at KFC and eat it in the car overlooking a beautiful view, and have McDonalds’ hangover breakfasts. It was brilliant. I didn’t take any drugs for the first few weeks with him and although I missed the feeling of being in control of my hunger, I was having such a great time getting to know him I didn’t really care. At least I didn’t really care until THAT dress stopped fitting me. I only took about 3 weeks to happen, and I didn’t like it. I had eaten too much – what a fat, greedy pig. He would never want me if I was fat so I had to go back to taking speed. I figured I had no choice. It was no real problem though because I’d just have it in the week and see him on the weekends – problem solved! Whatever I did, I couldn’t risk getting fat again because then I would be unhappy.

I couldn’t keep it up. I missed him when he wasn’t there, but couldn’t phone him because I’d talk forever or become furious for no reason and I didn’t want him to think I was a cow. I really wanted this relationship to work, and so one day I made what was a huge decision for me. I told my boyfriend all about it, warts and all.

It sounds like such a cliché, but he saved my life. By the time I started to see things properly, I realised just how much of a mess my life had become. I didn’t have friends at all – only people who used my house to chill out in. (Don’t picture some kind of crack den when you read that – I didn’t have a large group of ‘drug friends’.) I might’ve been thin but I was desperately unhappy – I’d started and dropped out of a degree course because I couldn’t do the work required. I’d had other, more pressing matters to attend to. One evening for example, before an assignment was due, I spent 6 hours rearranging my CD collection.

I asked my flat mate to move out (after he’d stolen my car and I scolded the policeman who pulled him over) and began to get my life in order. It was incredibly hard going for both of us. Panic attacks, paranoia, sleep paralysis and totally unforgivably irrational behaviour towards my boyfriend were just the tip of the iceberg. I was so very depressed, too. I’m not sure I will ever truly get over the depression really. If anyone was going to help me through this though, it was this man. He has been so, so patient with me over this whole thing and for that I will never, ever be able to tell him just how grateful I am.

Now I look back, and I feel lots of things. Shame, sadness, disgust. Worry that my children will one day inevitably be offered drugs. Hope that they will be a stronger person than me and say no.

Most of all though, I look back at those old photos and feel so very lucky to have been ‘found’. I honestly have no idea where I would be now without my husband, although I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be a great place. I may have been thin, I may have worn designer clothes and looked great (in my eyes) but now, 6 years on and back to my original size 16, I realise that I was never, ever, happy. Yes, I complain regularly about my thunder thighs, my baby belly and my bingo wings, but if I’m truly honest I don’t do much about it because I can’t be bothered. It’s been 6 years and the thought of writing this post still woke me at 4am, filled with dread.

I made some terrible decisions when I was younger, with some consequences that will be with me forever. The most important one though was the best one I ever made, and so as I finish this post to go and eat left over Chinese food for breakfast, all I can really tell you is that I would far rather be fat and happy than thin and ... lonely? Homeless? Unemployed? Unloved? Paranoid?

Dead?

The first reaction I had when I read this was "Wow". I've read it several times since and I say "Wow" every time. Thank you so much for writing this post and for telling your story so powerfully. I really hope writing this helped you in some way, but I also hope that this post helps others who might consider such a course of action, as it shows that what might seem like a simple solution is actually nothing of the sort. There were huge repercussions, which impact on your life to this day. What I think this shows is there is no such thing as a magic bullet, no easy way. Losing weight is a lifestyle change and it can't just be solved by taking drugs.

Do you have any similar experiences that you'd like to share? If so, please leave a comment below. Even if you don't, leave some supportive comments for my guest poster. She has been so very brave in coming forward.

If you have a fitness story to tell, then get in touch with me on Twitter or via the email address on the About me page. I will link back to any blog you write if you wish, or you can remain either partly or fully anonymous. Don't forget you can read all the previous posts in the series by clicking on the My Fitness Story... tab above. 

My Fitness Story... - The Black Cloak

Today's post is anonymous at the author's request, for reasons they explain in the post. When I first received this post, it made me cry because it is utterly heartbreaking that someone has suffered alone for so long, and so uplifting that they found the strength of mind to overcome this alone. I won't say anymore, I will just hand you over to today's guest poster.

Starting to write this post is one of the hardest things I have ever done. I've known for some time that I needed to write it, but my own blog didn't seem like the right place. So when Kate asked for people to write about their experience of eating disorders,  I took her up on the opportunity to get this out there finally. But writing this, just getting to the point of writing, has taken me several days. In reality, it has taken years, if not decades. Writing this post is going to make me face lots of things about myself that are long buried, and if I'm truthful, that I really don't like about myself. I have asked for this to remain anonymous because the person I'm about to write about is no longer me and I don't want people to judge me for someone I no longer am. Perhaps that is a message of hope to carry you through the me I'm going to tell you about.

I am a binge-eater. There, I said it. OK, so I am not anymore, but part of me feels like that, given the right/wrong circumstances, it could happen again. I've never been diagnosed with an eating disorder but deep down, I know that is the label that would be placed on it if only I were to admit to someone. Because I haven't. Like all addicts, I've been clever. I've never been caught out. No-one in my real life knows my shame. I have lived this alone.

When did it start? Possibly, childhood. I can remember taking food secretly from the fridge from a youngish age. Back then, it was low grade - just taking food and eating more than I should. But the seeds were sown. I grew in size, I was teased at school. It wasn't pretty. Instead, I kept my head down and got on with school work.

It really started when I moved away from home in my late teens. I didn't want to be overweight anymore so I started to learn a bit more about weight loss and dieting. I stopped eating. Brilliant. I didn't stop totally but the amount I ate was horrendously small. I found things I could "eat" that were very low in calories but could stop me feeling hungry. Lunch could often be a cup-a-soup. Or it might have been dinner. On top of the eating regime - for it was a regime, it was that tough - I took up regular running.

It worked. I lost about 2-3 stone and eventually reached the lowest weight I've ever been as an adult. It was however too low. With the benefit of hindsight, I'd say it was more than a stone lower than my minimum healthy weight, even though it was considered at the bottom of the healthy range on all those weight charts. I wanted to be the best and to me, the way to do that was to be the lightest the charts said I should be. I remember getting comments from family and friends - looking back now, I can tell they were worried but at the time, I dismissed them as being overly protective.

I can't remember now when things started to change but after being so strict for so long, something had to give. And it did. One day, I felt an urge to eat something. So I did. And something else, and something else and something else. Before I knew it, I couldn't stop. Even now, I can't explain how or why I did it. Something within me was driving me until it was too late. I'd eaten too much and I felt sick. I wasn't, however, bulimic - I felt sick but I couldn't make myself sick. I felt rubbish for the rest of the day and took myself off to bed, claiming I had an upset stomach. I did, but not in the way that people thought.

I got into this cycle of eating fairly normally or carefully, then bingeing about once a week. Nothing could stop me when it happened. I will admit to you now, I did things I was not proud of. I stole food from others sometimes, when I was in shared housing. I stress now, that person that did those things was me, but was not me. When I binged, I needed to eat; nothing could stop me. When it was over, I didn't feel better - I felt worse. I felt sick, sometimes for hours, sometimes up to a day. Sometimes, I wanted to make myself sick just so I could feel better but something stopped me from doing so. Perhaps, looking back, that was a good thing. The guilt afterwards too was awful. It enveloped my heart like a black cloak. But boy, I was sneaky. No-one ever actually caught me taking food that wasn't mine. To my knowledge, no-one knew what I did. My housemates might have suspected, I really don't know - but if they did, they never told me or confronted me. I was deceitful, I lied, I stole. I sound like an addict. I was. I had to have my regular fix. Sometimes, even when doing it, I wanted to stop but I just couldn't.

With regular bingeing, and a less strict diet and exercise regime, my weight began to increase. I know now that the crash dieting I did would not have been good for my health and that returning to normal eating would have seen me put weight back on at a faster rate than I lost it. I was not happy with my size again. It was a spiral - I was unhappy with my size, which made me feel bad, so I'd binge - almost like a form of self-harm, and I'd feel worse, my size would get bigger... and so on.

The bingeing carried into my twenties which was a turbulent time in my life. I made bad choices in terms of relationships - which were possibly linked to the underlying reasons for my bingeing in the lack of self-esteem and positive body image - and was unhappy more than I was happy. The unhappy times always coincided with more regular binges. I remember thinking after many a binge whether I would ever stop, whether the binges would punctuate my life until I died. And still, none of my partners ever knew I binged or caught me bingeing. A couple of them knew I was totally and utterly obsessed with my weight. I would weigh myself every day and it was a disaster to me if I'd put on a pound or two. This alone could trigger more binges, which made me feel worse. The cycle was apparently endless. In the end, I got rid of my scales and only weighed myself in shops every now and then. This helped to reduce the frequency of binges but it didn't stop them completely.

So what happened? To be honest, I don't know. There was no light bulb moment, no need to stop suddenly. They just did. That's not to say I don't ever overeat but the overwhelming need to eat and eat and eat until I was ill faded gradually - the binges became less and less frequent and I would think about it less. If I did think about it, I could almost guarantee that thinking about it would mean I would binge within days, so I stopped thinking about it. It was buried in the back of my mind for a very long time. Until one day, I thought about it - and the binge never materialised. I'm married now and I've never told my husband about it. It didn't seem relevant, and I am ashamed of that person that I was. I feel that if I tell him, he would see me in a different light and may not love me anymore.

Since stopping bingeing, my weight has gone up and gone down. I have had children which has caused some of that. I know I have a pretty healthy attitude to food - one of the things that I am grateful for is that I have always eaten lots of veg and fruit and prefer wholemeal options to white, so the basis of my diet is not bad anyway. I've managed to lose weight through sensible eating. I know that I can't restrict myself too much. In fact, I'm scared to do that because I don't ever want to go back to the way I was before. It does scare me that I never got treatment for the bingeing now. It worries me that it might come back if I had some major crisis in my life. When I think about it, I feel the presence of that black cloak. It amazes me that I can think about it and not go off and binge. I hope with every ounce of my body that it doesn't push me into bingeing ever again.

Thank you so much for being so brave in sharing your story. My heart truly goes out to you for all the suffering you've been through and the fact that you managed to keep it a secret for so long. 

If you have any comments for today's guest poster, please do so as I know she will value your support. It takes a lot of courage to write posts like this. Please use the comments to share your own experiences of binge-eating, if you have any. 

If you'd like to tell your fitness story, please get in touch with me, either on Twitter or via the email address on the About Me page.