I finished the book unbearable lightness and I wanted to give the knowledge and wisdom from the book to others. These are only the parts that I think are inspiring and relatable. If you haven't read the book and you don't want to hear the aftermath than do not read this post!
I'm going to say this again: All credit goes to Portia De Rossi! I am in no way trying to take away her wisdom or amazing writing!
I didn't decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was way to make my job as an actress easier by fitting into a simple size dress, by never worrying that i couldn't zip up my wardrobe from episode to episode, day after day. Just as i decided to become anorexic. i didn't choose to not be anorexic.
i didn't decide to become healthy. i decided not to die. i didn't even care to live better than i'd been living, necessarily. I just knew at that moment of hearing my test results that i didn't want to live as a sickly person who would slowly suffer and end up dead. The news that i had seemingly irreversible illnesses punctured my obsessive mind and rendered my weight-loss which made it meaningless.
I lost anorexia. It was too hard to hold on to. By the end i felt like i was clinging onto anorexia in the same way you would cling to the rooftop of a building, your body dangling precariously over to the other side, begging for release. Because it was more exhausting to hold on, and because i had a real reason for the first time in the form of lupus, i let go of dieting. I watched as my biggest accomplishment, my greatest source of self-worth, plummeted to the ground.
I had climbed slowly, methodically, all the way to the top only to fall too fast even to see where i had been. Anorexia was my first love. We met and were instantly attracted to each other. We spent every moment of the day together. Through it's eyes, i saw the world differently.
It taught me how to feel good about myself, how to improve myself and how to think. Through it all, it never left my side. It's always there when everyone else had left, and as long as i didn't ignore it, it never left me alone. Losing anorexia was painful-like losing your sense of purpose. i no longer knew what to do without it to consider.
Whether the drill sergeant approved or disapproved was no longer a concern because he was no longer there. i let him go with the overwhelming feeling that continuing to fight with him would be futile because he was too good for me; he was too perfect, too strict and demanding. Slowly, after several months, maybe even years, the feeling that i wasn't good enough for him decapitated, and i gradually came to feel as though we were just a mismatch, he and I. We never should have been together in the first place. We were too different from each other, and we wanted different things from life.
Knowing that, however, didn't make it less painful. Without anorexia, i had nothing. Without it, i had nothing. I wasn't even a failure, i simply felt like i didn't exist. i was diagnosed with lupus. i had osteoporosis and was showing signs of cirrhosis of the liver.
My potassium and electrolyte balances were at critical levels, threatening the function of my organs. I no longer felt lazy, like i was giving up because it was too hard. i felt defeated. I felt as though i simply didn't have a choice. i had to accept that the road i had chosen was the long road. it led to sickness and death.
i had to allow the professionals into my closed mind. i had to take their road. As i began the long journey on the road to recovery, there were a couple of detours that i wasn't prepared for. Initially, i had thought that once i began to gain back the weight, i would have the strong support base that i'd felt in Australia. I thought that i would have loving, concerned people around me to ensure that i was getting healthy. But after i gained an acceptable amount of weight and looked like a regular person, mostly everyone in my life assumed that the problem was solved.
Almost instantly, i felt like no one was listening anymore, no one cared. It felt like caring was only necessary when my life was on the line. As i gained weight i no longer was something to worry about. I truly felt like a pubescent thirteen-year-old, ugly, voiceless; my cute days of being delightful were in the past, and my future accomplishments were too distant to elicit and any kind of hope or joy.
At that point, if i still had the axe to the grind, if i hadn't got what i wanted from the disorder, some sense of acceptance of my sexuality, i would have relapsed. It would have been very easy to start losing weight again to get the attention and the concern that felt like love. It would have felt like a great accomplishment to not just do it once, but twice, proving to myself that i had the willpower i had always suspected was fleeting. Gaining weight is a critical time. The anorexic mind doesn't just magically go away when weight is gained-it gets more active.
Anorexia becomes bigger and stronger as it struggles to hold on, as it fights for it's life. If i hadn't seen my mother break down and accept me for being gay, i would've gotten right back on the path that made me rebel in the first place, because being anorexic didn't feel like a rebellion. It felt like a passive-aggressive way of renouncing my mothers control over me. It was definitely a statement tha t demanded "accept my sexuality or accept my death!" Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well means you have to check back in.
It is absolutely crucial that you are ready to check back in because you feel as though something has changed from the time you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start life over. And with all the time it takes to have an eating disorder-literally your whole day is consumed by it, both mentally and physically-it's important to find something other than your body image to be passionate about. You have to create a new life to check into, and the life i knew was waiting for me was a future relationship and the acceptance of it from my family. I had the key ingredient to want to check back in: i had hope.
For a straight-A student, a model, an actress being on a hit tv show, the bar was set very high. I'm the one who set it. I thought by accomplishing things that were exciting to people, i would receive admiration and love. i thought if i had accomplished enough that somehow i would be let off the hook in the future. Like i didn't have to keep striving and achieving because i had done that already, and it would add up to being enough. Anorexia lowered the bar.
Instead of having to be a high achiever to receive love, all i had to do was be alive. All i had to do for the caring, nurturing kind of love was losing another pound. All i had to do for the acceptance of my sexuality was to not eat. Of course i didn't think that i was doing that at the time. i thought i was trying to stay thin.
Recovery feels like shit, it didn't feel like i was doing something good; it felt like i was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again. I felt pathetic. I remember having so little self-esteem that i couldn't talk loudly; i literally couldn't make myself be heard because i wanted to disappear.
I didn't want to be spoken to or looked at or acknowledged. When someone paid attention to me i thought they were doing it out of sympathy, kindness and so it felt condescending. All recovery meant to me was being fat. Unlike the case of an alcoholic or a drug addict, there are no immediate benefits to getting well. My joints might have stopped aching pretty quickly, but after that, it didn't make me feel better, it made me feel worse.
I experienced all kinds of physically changes that made me feel gross: my period returned, i had gas and was constipated. And then there was the fat that came back. It was truly awful for me, one week i felt lean and perfect, and the next week i was fat. Again, i felt like a failure. i hated every moment of it.
I missed my bones so much. i cried at night because i couldn't feel my hipbones and not having then to physically hold on to, was like losing a dear friend. Being anorexic was incredibly difficult. Eating once i allowed myself to do it, i was easy. Being diagnosed with lupus was like a pardon, it granted me the freedom to give up.
It felt like an excuse to let go of starvation, and it allowed me to eat again. I could no longer starve or i'd die. Therefore, it was essential to eat. So i did. I ate every thing in myself. i started by eating the healthy foods i'd missed: bran muffins, protein bars, granola and smoothies.
But very quickly the list began to include candy, cake, chocolate and fried food. I felt like if i were going to give up, i might as well give up all the way. The floodgate had opened. Just because i'd stopped starving didn't mean i didn't still have an eating disorder. My eating disorder felt the same to me.
It took up the same space in my head, and driving around the city to find the perfect comfort foods took as much time than to find the perfect tuna with the lowest sodium content. It was still there. It was the other side of the same coin. As it turned out, i wasn't quite ready to rejoin life. i still wanted to disappear, and i chose to disappear behind layers of fat.
I still felt unattractive to both sexes, still not really living, merely existing. i still was testing the theory whether i'd be loved and accepted for my mind, my kindness, and everything about me other than what i looked like. i went from one extreme to the other. I went from 82 pounds to 168 pounds in ten months.
At first, after starving for so long, it was difficult to begin eating again even though i had to in order to regain my health. A component in breaking the cycle of starvation is medicine. When the bone-density results showed that i was osteoporotic, i was put on hormone replacement therapy in an attempt to strengthen my bones. I has also quit smoking after hearing the diagnosis and started on a psychotropic medication after having the brain scans by a renowned neuropharmachologist Dr. Hamlin Emory. The chemical changes in my body, and i think most importantly, physcotrophic drug quelling the obsessive behavior helped me to eat again and gained weight.
At the time i walked through the doors of the Monte Nido Eating Disorder treatment center, i had gained 27 pounds. It was only 4 weeks after my diagnosis. I had gone from 98 pounds to 125 pounds in four weeks. Toward the end of my starving phase of my eating disorder, i knew that hovering over 100 pounds didn't feel like my real weight. i was almost certain that the second i began to binge i would immediately catapult to the weight before i started starving myself. i knew that i would be 130 pounds within weeks.
And i was, i never felt so ashamed as i did walking into an eating disorder clinic to be treated with anorexia at 125 pounds. I didn't belong there. Even though my treatment was private due to the fact i was terrified that my shameful secret would become public, i was fearful that i might run into people who deserved to be there. I still struggled with the feeling of unworthiness throughout my entire treatment. Even though i was paying for it and driving almost daily to Malibu to seek treatment with Carolyn Costin one of the most respected and successful counselors in the country, I felt compelled to lie.
Every single session i lied about my feelings, my eating habits, and my progress. I lied to her because i was embarrassed. I felt like i wasn't worthy of her time when she had girls in her program who were fatally ill when i was so average in size. I was being treated for anorexia, but due to the fact that i was 125 pounds and at a healthy weight for my height, i thought there was no reason for me to be there. I thought the physcological healing and my relationship with food we're not worth talking about.
Bulimia and overeating, abuse of laxatives and excessive exercising we're not life-or-death illnesses in my mind, and i didn't really share much with Carolyn as much as i should have about my dalliances in all of those practices. Despite the fact that i thought anything other than anorexia was a second class eating disorder not worthy of attention, when i was being treated by Carolyn i was severely bulimic. Grossly overeating. The pendulum was swinging the other way, and i was sicker than i had ever been in my life. I was told that recovering from a eating disorder is hard and not very fun. But apart from honesty, the gift that Carolyn gave me was the knowledge that i would be recovered.
Carolyn herself recovered, and she told me that i wasn't just going to have to manage anorexia and bulimia like an alcoholic managing her drinking. Managing the disorder-thinking about food to any degree other than something nutritious and enjoyable-is to me, the very definition of disordered eating. I didn't just want to maintain my weight, suppress the urge to purge, and still have a list of foods that were "safe" to eat. I never wanted to think about food or weight ever again. For me, that's the definition of recovered.
Within a very short amount of time I weighed 168 pounds. More than hating myself, I simply had no sense of myself. It was like i was completely without ego for those months of being my heaviest. I had reentered life, but it didn't seem like my own life. It seemed like i was passively observing other people's lives.
I didn't talk about myself. I was only interested in talking about other people. I had decided that i would very carefully make it known that i was gay to a few gay people around me. I figured that i completely ruined my career by being fat, so i might as well be gay also. I figured that if i'd worked again, it would be as a "character" actress or playing a best friend of a leading female, so if my homosexuality was rumored around town, it wouldn't really do any further damage to the image i had already created for myself by being fat. My paranoia and fear of being exposed-to have having an eating disorder and for my sexuality-we're excruciating. By the time i entered my relationship with Ellen, i had recovered from my eating disorder. Living with Francesca forced to me to deal with issues surrounding my sexuality, and it also forced me to deal with my relationship to food.
I shared a kitchen-a bathroom. I couldn't binge and purge without a length and embarrassing discussion. I slowly stopped purging and just binged in my car or at work when she wasn't there to see it. The rest of the time i would eat salads with no dressing. I was still fighting a heavier weight over the next two years, but what really became obvious to me that i was doing something very wrong.
I began to understand that i restricted my caloric intake, i would binge immediately after. Sometimes i could diet for a week or two without bingeing and i would lose a few pounds but then the binge would inevitably follow and i would gain all the weight back, and sometimes a couple pounds more. I was always on a diet. I was either being "good" or "bad", but i was always on a diet-even when i was bingeing. I lived my life day to day weighing myself and measuring my successes and failures solely on weight lost or gained-just as i had done from the time i was twelve.
I'd measured my accomplishments and self-worth based on that scale for my entire life with the same intensity and emotion, from 82 pounds all the way to 168. While i had begun to examine my behavior in treatment, i was forced to continue my self-examination when i was living with Francesca because simply having to explain my actions to another person made me question them. I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, i had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole entire life. I restricted when i was hungry and binged when i so grotesquely full that i couldn't be in any position but laying down. Diets that tell people what or when to eat are the practices of the in-between. And dieting, i discovered another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is about eating for enjoyment, for health, and to sustain life. "Ordered" eating is not restricting certain foods because they are "bad". Obsessing about what and when to eat is not natural, normal or orderly. Thinking about food to the point of obsession and ignoring your body's signals is a disorder. Living without dieting sounded like a utopian psychological ideal. That is what i witnessed at work with Francesca. A naturally thin women who ate whatever she wanted and never gained or lost a pound was the most fascinating case study for this woman who had spent her life gaining and losing weight.
I watched her eat pasta, candy, icecream, and cheese. I watched he dip her bread in olive oil and wash it down with coke-real coke, not diet-while i ate dry salads with no dressing and sipped ice tea. I was dumbfounded that i was eating dry, boring, diet foods and maintaining or gaining weight diring the course of any given month when she never even thought about she ate or how her body looked.
I was equally amazed as i watched her order because she was too full to finish it or skip breakfast and lunch because she got a little too busy and just simply forgot to eat. After initially dismissing her eating habits as a result of her just being one of those lucky people who can eat whatever they want and stay thin, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the ones who stay thin are the ones who eat whatever they want. Do i love myself just the way i am? Yes. (well i'm working on it!) but that doesn't mean i love my body just the way it is.
People who recover from eating disorders can be expected to have higher standards than the rest of society, most of whom would like to alter a body part or two. I'd still like thighs the size of my calves, but the difference is that i'm no longer willing to compromise my health for that, I'm not willing to compromise my happiness to achieve it, or for the thought of my thighs to take up valuable space in my mind. It's just not that important, and while there are things i don't like about my body, i'm very grateful for what it does. I'm grateful that it doesn't restrict me from doing my job the way i restricted it from doing it's job.
When i sat quietly and silently thank the universe for all the blessings in my life, i start with Ellen and end with my thighs. I thank my thighs for being strong and allowing me to walk my dogs around the neighborhood and ride my horses. I thank my body for not punishing me for what i put it through and for being a healthy vessel in which i get to experience this amazing world and the beautiful life i am living full of love.
I have recovered from anorexia and bulimia. I am immensely grateful that the disorders, although robbing me of living freely and unhappily for almost twenty years, aren't continuing to rob me of health. Not everyone who has suffered from eating disorders has the same good fortune.
The disorders have left me unscathed both physically and mentally. However, having anorexia has left me with an intense resistance to exercise. As well as being resistant to exercise, I have an intense resistance to counting calories. And reading labels on the back of jars and cans. And weighing myself. I hate to word exercise. I am allergic to gyms. But I don't think that "formal" exercise in a gym is the only way to achieve a healthy body.
I have discovered that enjoyable daily activities are easy, like walking, can be equally beneficial. I have noticed on my daily walks with my dogs that I rarely see an overweight person walking a dog, whereas I see many overweight people walking on a treadmill, in a gym. I attribute this to not only the frequency of having to walk your dog, but also the good feeling one has when doing something good for another being. Seeing my dogs excitement as I walk them around my neighborhood everyday makes me happy, and when i'm happy I walk a little taller and a little more briskly.
I can only imagine the enjoyment parents must experience when seeing the joy in their kids faces as they play tag football or shoot hoops with them. I also enjoy being outdoors. I like breathing the cold night air deeply into my lungs as I walk up the hills in my neighborhood and smelling the forest air as I walk on walking trails after a morning rain. Another way for me to stay fit is to do activities where I can learn a skill, like horse riding or tennis or dancing.
I find that if I can concentrate on getting better at something rather than getting fitter or looking better I accomplish all three things-the latter two being happy toy products of the original goal. Doing an activity to relax is also important for me. I swim to clear my head rather than to count laps and burn calories. Swimming slowly is a form of meditation for me. I have found ways to increase my heart rate, stretch my muscles, and breath deeply everyday in an enjoyable way that I would never label as exercise. I eat every kind of food that I like, moderating the portions using my appetite and not a calorie counter.
I love fat and I love carbohydrates. Nothing fills you up and is more satisfying then a mashed potato or pasta and olive oil. There are days when I eat a large bag of potato chips for lunch and feel too full and greasy to eat anything else until dinner. It may not be the healthiest, most balanced day in a lifetime of days, but I more than likely won't repeat it the following day. To say that you can stay at your natural weight and be healthy is eating what you want and not working out sounds extremely controversial, and yet people have lived this way for hundreds of years. It seems to me that it's only since around 1970 that the concept of diet and exercise has existed in a way it does now, which is based on exercision and restriction being the key to weight loss, and yet since then when we have seen an increase in obesity in countries that have adopted it.
(These are also the countries where the fast-food industry boomed during that time.) The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, non fat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a little bit of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford. Restriction generates yearning. You want what you can't have. There are many ways to explain why the pendulum swinging occurs and why restriction almost leads to bingeing. I was forced to understand this in order to recover from a life-threatening disorder.
And in a way, I wrote this memoir to help myself understand how I came to have an eating disorder and how I recovered from it. I really hope that my self-exploration can help not only people who are suffering from anorexia and bulimia, but also the perpetual diets. You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight-the weight that is easy to maintain, or your "set point"-and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kids birthday cake.
But the key to accept your body just as it is. Just as I have had to learn to accept that I have thighs that are a little bigger than i'd like, you may have to accept that your arms in a naturally a little thicker of your hips are a little wider. In other words, accept yourself. Love your body the way it is and feel grateful toward it. Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you like.
I made the mistake of thinking that what I look like. I made the mistake of thinking that what I look like is more important than who I am-that what I weight is more important than what I think or what I do. I was ashamed of being gay, and so I only heard the voices that said that being gay is shameful. As I changed, I no longer heard that the condemning voices. When my relationship with Ellen became public, I was amazed by how well the news was received. I was still very scared, but I was very much in love, and love outweighed the fear.
I wanted to celebrate our love. I was so proud to call myself her girlfriend that whatever people might have thought about my sexuality wasn't important anymore. I simply didn't here a single negative comment. I began to see myself as someone who can help understand diversity rather than feeling like a social outcast. Ellen taught me to not care about other peoples opinions. She taught me how to be truthful. She taught me how to be free. I began to live my life in love and complete acceptance. For the first time I had truly accepted myself.
At the time i walked through the doors of the Monte Nido Eating Disorder treatment center, i had gained 27 pounds. It was only 4 weeks after my diagnosis. I had gone from 98 pounds to 125 pounds in four weeks. Toward the end of my starving phase of my eating disorder, i knew that hovering over 100 pounds didn't feel like my real weight. i was almost certain that the second i began to binge i would immediately catapult to the weight before i started starving myself. i knew that i would be 130 pounds within weeks.
And i was, i never felt so ashamed as i did walking into an eating disorder clinic to be treated with anorexia at 125 pounds. I didn't belong there. Even though my treatment was private due to the fact i was terrified that my shameful secret would become public, i was fearful that i might run into people who deserved to be there. I still struggled with the feeling of unworthiness throughout my entire treatment. Even though i was paying for it and driving almost daily to Malibu to seek treatment with Carolyn Costin one of the most respected and successful counselors in the country, I felt compelled to lie.
Every single session i lied about my feelings, my eating habits, and my progress. I lied to her because i was embarrassed. I felt like i wasn't worthy of her time when she had girls in her program who were fatally ill when i was so average in size. I was being treated for anorexia, but due to the fact that i was 125 pounds and at a healthy weight for my height, i thought there was no reason for me to be there. I thought the physcological healing and my relationship with food we're not worth talking about.
Bulimia and overeating, abuse of laxatives and excessive exercising we're not life-or-death illnesses in my mind, and i didn't really share much with Carolyn as much as i should have about my dalliances in all of those practices. Despite the fact that i thought anything other than anorexia was a second class eating disorder not worthy of attention, when i was being treated by Carolyn i was severely bulimic. Grossly overeating. The pendulum was swinging the other way, and i was sicker than i had ever been in my life. I was told that recovering from a eating disorder is hard and not very fun. But apart from honesty, the gift that Carolyn gave me was the knowledge that i would be recovered.
Carolyn herself recovered, and she told me that i wasn't just going to have to manage anorexia and bulimia like an alcoholic managing her drinking. Managing the disorder-thinking about food to any degree other than something nutritious and enjoyable-is to me, the very definition of disordered eating. I didn't just want to maintain my weight, suppress the urge to purge, and still have a list of foods that were "safe" to eat. I never wanted to think about food or weight ever again. For me, that's the definition of recovered.
Within a very short amount of time I weighed 168 pounds. More than hating myself, I simply had no sense of myself. It was like i was completely without ego for those months of being my heaviest. I had reentered life, but it didn't seem like my own life. It seemed like i was passively observing other people's lives.
I didn't talk about myself. I was only interested in talking about other people. I had decided that i would very carefully make it known that i was gay to a few gay people around me. I figured that i completely ruined my career by being fat, so i might as well be gay also. I figured that if i'd worked again, it would be as a "character" actress or playing a best friend of a leading female, so if my homosexuality was rumored around town, it wouldn't really do any further damage to the image i had already created for myself by being fat. My paranoia and fear of being exposed-to have having an eating disorder and for my sexuality-we're excruciating. By the time i entered my relationship with Ellen, i had recovered from my eating disorder. Living with Francesca forced to me to deal with issues surrounding my sexuality, and it also forced me to deal with my relationship to food.
I shared a kitchen-a bathroom. I couldn't binge and purge without a length and embarrassing discussion. I slowly stopped purging and just binged in my car or at work when she wasn't there to see it. The rest of the time i would eat salads with no dressing. I was still fighting a heavier weight over the next two years, but what really became obvious to me that i was doing something very wrong.
I began to understand that i restricted my caloric intake, i would binge immediately after. Sometimes i could diet for a week or two without bingeing and i would lose a few pounds but then the binge would inevitably follow and i would gain all the weight back, and sometimes a couple pounds more. I was always on a diet. I was either being "good" or "bad", but i was always on a diet-even when i was bingeing. I lived my life day to day weighing myself and measuring my successes and failures solely on weight lost or gained-just as i had done from the time i was twelve.
I'd measured my accomplishments and self-worth based on that scale for my entire life with the same intensity and emotion, from 82 pounds all the way to 168. While i had begun to examine my behavior in treatment, i was forced to continue my self-examination when i was living with Francesca because simply having to explain my actions to another person made me question them. I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, i had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole entire life. I restricted when i was hungry and binged when i so grotesquely full that i couldn't be in any position but laying down. Diets that tell people what or when to eat are the practices of the in-between. And dieting, i discovered another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is about eating for enjoyment, for health, and to sustain life. "Ordered" eating is not restricting certain foods because they are "bad". Obsessing about what and when to eat is not natural, normal or orderly. Thinking about food to the point of obsession and ignoring your body's signals is a disorder. Living without dieting sounded like a utopian psychological ideal. That is what i witnessed at work with Francesca. A naturally thin women who ate whatever she wanted and never gained or lost a pound was the most fascinating case study for this woman who had spent her life gaining and losing weight.
I watched her eat pasta, candy, icecream, and cheese. I watched he dip her bread in olive oil and wash it down with coke-real coke, not diet-while i ate dry salads with no dressing and sipped ice tea. I was dumbfounded that i was eating dry, boring, diet foods and maintaining or gaining weight diring the course of any given month when she never even thought about she ate or how her body looked.
I was equally amazed as i watched her order because she was too full to finish it or skip breakfast and lunch because she got a little too busy and just simply forgot to eat. After initially dismissing her eating habits as a result of her just being one of those lucky people who can eat whatever they want and stay thin, it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the ones who stay thin are the ones who eat whatever they want. Do i love myself just the way i am? Yes. (well i'm working on it!) but that doesn't mean i love my body just the way it is.
People who recover from eating disorders can be expected to have higher standards than the rest of society, most of whom would like to alter a body part or two. I'd still like thighs the size of my calves, but the difference is that i'm no longer willing to compromise my health for that, I'm not willing to compromise my happiness to achieve it, or for the thought of my thighs to take up valuable space in my mind. It's just not that important, and while there are things i don't like about my body, i'm very grateful for what it does. I'm grateful that it doesn't restrict me from doing my job the way i restricted it from doing it's job.
When i sat quietly and silently thank the universe for all the blessings in my life, i start with Ellen and end with my thighs. I thank my thighs for being strong and allowing me to walk my dogs around the neighborhood and ride my horses. I thank my body for not punishing me for what i put it through and for being a healthy vessel in which i get to experience this amazing world and the beautiful life i am living full of love.
I have recovered from anorexia and bulimia. I am immensely grateful that the disorders, although robbing me of living freely and unhappily for almost twenty years, aren't continuing to rob me of health. Not everyone who has suffered from eating disorders has the same good fortune.
The disorders have left me unscathed both physically and mentally. However, having anorexia has left me with an intense resistance to exercise. As well as being resistant to exercise, I have an intense resistance to counting calories. And reading labels on the back of jars and cans. And weighing myself. I hate to word exercise. I am allergic to gyms. But I don't think that "formal" exercise in a gym is the only way to achieve a healthy body.
I have discovered that enjoyable daily activities are easy, like walking, can be equally beneficial. I have noticed on my daily walks with my dogs that I rarely see an overweight person walking a dog, whereas I see many overweight people walking on a treadmill, in a gym. I attribute this to not only the frequency of having to walk your dog, but also the good feeling one has when doing something good for another being. Seeing my dogs excitement as I walk them around my neighborhood everyday makes me happy, and when i'm happy I walk a little taller and a little more briskly.
I can only imagine the enjoyment parents must experience when seeing the joy in their kids faces as they play tag football or shoot hoops with them. I also enjoy being outdoors. I like breathing the cold night air deeply into my lungs as I walk up the hills in my neighborhood and smelling the forest air as I walk on walking trails after a morning rain. Another way for me to stay fit is to do activities where I can learn a skill, like horse riding or tennis or dancing.
I find that if I can concentrate on getting better at something rather than getting fitter or looking better I accomplish all three things-the latter two being happy toy products of the original goal. Doing an activity to relax is also important for me. I swim to clear my head rather than to count laps and burn calories. Swimming slowly is a form of meditation for me. I have found ways to increase my heart rate, stretch my muscles, and breath deeply everyday in an enjoyable way that I would never label as exercise. I eat every kind of food that I like, moderating the portions using my appetite and not a calorie counter.
I love fat and I love carbohydrates. Nothing fills you up and is more satisfying then a mashed potato or pasta and olive oil. There are days when I eat a large bag of potato chips for lunch and feel too full and greasy to eat anything else until dinner. It may not be the healthiest, most balanced day in a lifetime of days, but I more than likely won't repeat it the following day. To say that you can stay at your natural weight and be healthy is eating what you want and not working out sounds extremely controversial, and yet people have lived this way for hundreds of years. It seems to me that it's only since around 1970 that the concept of diet and exercise has existed in a way it does now, which is based on exercision and restriction being the key to weight loss, and yet since then when we have seen an increase in obesity in countries that have adopted it.
(These are also the countries where the fast-food industry boomed during that time.) The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, non fat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a little bit of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford. Restriction generates yearning. You want what you can't have. There are many ways to explain why the pendulum swinging occurs and why restriction almost leads to bingeing. I was forced to understand this in order to recover from a life-threatening disorder.
And in a way, I wrote this memoir to help myself understand how I came to have an eating disorder and how I recovered from it. I really hope that my self-exploration can help not only people who are suffering from anorexia and bulimia, but also the perpetual diets. You don't have to be emaciated or vomiting to be suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight-the weight that is easy to maintain, or your "set point"-and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kids birthday cake.
But the key to accept your body just as it is. Just as I have had to learn to accept that I have thighs that are a little bigger than i'd like, you may have to accept that your arms in a naturally a little thicker of your hips are a little wider. In other words, accept yourself. Love your body the way it is and feel grateful toward it. Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you like.
I made the mistake of thinking that what I look like. I made the mistake of thinking that what I look like is more important than who I am-that what I weight is more important than what I think or what I do. I was ashamed of being gay, and so I only heard the voices that said that being gay is shameful. As I changed, I no longer heard that the condemning voices. When my relationship with Ellen became public, I was amazed by how well the news was received. I was still very scared, but I was very much in love, and love outweighed the fear.
I wanted to celebrate our love. I was so proud to call myself her girlfriend that whatever people might have thought about my sexuality wasn't important anymore. I simply didn't here a single negative comment. I began to see myself as someone who can help understand diversity rather than feeling like a social outcast. Ellen taught me to not care about other peoples opinions. She taught me how to be truthful. She taught me how to be free. I began to live my life in love and complete acceptance. For the first time I had truly accepted myself.
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