Depression Cure #20: Lose Five Pounds

This is an excerpt from a memoir I’m currently writing, Thirty Cures in Thirty Years: A Depression Survival Story. It is a lighthearted book about the heavy work of mental health. For updates and availability info, subscribe to the right.

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When I think about the low moment of my eating disorder, I immediately recall the day in my late twenties in which I set two empty glasses on a shelf next to the treadmill in my living room and then, as I walked and watched Bravo reruns, slowly filled them both with vomit.

During my post-college hibernation, after I bought my house, I also splurged on cable TV and a treadmill. For hours after work and on my days off, I would walk on the treadmill and catch up on all of the excellent shows I had opted out of since high school. On Bravo and TLC, these played in season-length marathons: Netflix binging before Neflix was a thing. I don’t remember once watching these from the couch. Did I ever even sit on that couch? Instead, in-between my waitressing job–which consisted of near-constant walking–and my hour-long walks to the bus station each night afterwards–I would walk for hours, keeping track of each theoretical calorie burned. Then I would replace said calories with whatever food was allowed on my current diet.

After all, I had earned them.

This, however, was not the actual low point of my eating disorder. It’s just one of the many of them.

For years, I’d been on some kind of diet. I had the ED variety pack: periodic times of starving, restricting, purging and binging. My obsession saw me through fake diet pills and bathroom-floor enemas and self-guided fasting “retreats” (was seven days my record? or was it four?). I spent countless hours on websites devoted to sharing diet tips and diet journals. Once, I read someone’s sixty-odd-page weight loss saga full of salacious details such as how, exactly, he prepared his zero-carb hamburgers … and was sad when it ended. On an English-teaching stint in China, I tore the ligaments in all five fingers of my right hand after tripping on a sidewalk during a morning jog. I’d been too tired to run, but I’d run anyway. Some weeks after that, I stole a pot sticker out of the soup that some of the teachers made every day to feed to the schoolchildren. Then, starving, I stole five more.

Fasting was my favorite weight loss strategy, though counting calories worked, too. When I wasn’t assigning a numerical value to every bite I ate and everything I did that could be considered exercise, I was starving myself and trying to focus on anything other than food.

While some of my weight loss strategies were more problematic than others, one habit of mine was undoubtedly terrible for my mental health. I was a binge eater, and had been since elementary school.

My binges were feats. Half a jar of peanut butter. A whole batch of cookies. A loaf of bread with butter. I ate till I was sick, and the next day, relief: I didn’t want to binge. Not that day.

Always, though, the desire curled back around. If I didn’t have a binge to look forward to, what could I look forward to? I knew I had a problem, but I didn’t understand how it was possible for other people not to. Don’t they want more? I’d wonder as I watched someone push away a half-eaten hamburger. Don’t they ever want to binge? And always, What must it be like to be them?

What you cannot understand, you cannot do. It just isn’t an option in your mind. I couldn’t eat normally because I couldn’t see how much easier it is when you don’t starve yourself and when you know you can have more–of whatever you want

I simply couldn’t understand that they ate normally and listened to their bodies because they didn’t starve themselves, and because they knew they could eat more (of anything they wanted, maybe?) the next day.

I couldn’t. I had to start another diet.

That day on the treadmill, though, I added another disorder to the list–the most shameful of all: throwing up. Realizing that I’d already debited my calorie account with calories now returned, I approximated the number of calories in the cup and subtracted those along with my current hour of exercise. Then I got another glass, and filled that one, too.

I flushed the contents of the glasses and thought, this will have to work. It’s science.

Later, looking over my calorie tally for the day, I thought, “I am binging, then walking to purge, and now purging to purge. It’s a never-ending cycle. I never actually get ahead–the treadmill is just an excuse to eat more.”

Like walking on my treadmill, I was getting nowhere.

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The goal of this behavior never varied: lose five pounds. Just five pounds, and then I’d stop obsessing. Maybe I’d still have depression; it wasn’t quite within my powers of imagination to conjure a future of actual cheer. But surely, when the time came that I lost the weight and kept it off, I’d look at my perfectly flat stomach and trim, perky ass and experience the same output of endorphins that I felt whenever I stepped on the scale and seeing a lower number. I might not enjoy life, exactly. But I’d have that little self-satisfaction high every day. At the time, it seemed like a modest and reasonable plan for fulfillment. Besides, what better ideas did I have?

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When it came to eating, I believed I knew everything. The truth is, I had no clue. Periodically, I read about intuitive eating, but I never believed that simply not overeating would work for me.

It didn’t help that the people around me didn’t believe it, either. My overweight mom, who regularly commented on my weight, shared no helpful advice. Her friends were heavy and dieting, as was my sister. I had one naturally skinny friend, but she was the exception and so self-righteous that she’d lost all credibility with me long ago. Women and men alike traded diet tips and leg-toning workouts that they swore by, then switched allegiances the following week. I sometimes wonder what would’ve happened if someone would’ve looked at me and said, “You know, you don’t need to do this.”

Actually, though, I know what would’ve happened. I would’ve changed the subject.

Talking about my problem never seemed a viable or even helpful option. If I refused to go to therapy to help alleviate my lifelong depression, I certainly wasn’t going with the purpose of gaining weight.

Like I said, though, this wasn’t the low point of my eating disorder. There wasn’t one. As with my depression, my ED symptoms operated a steady rate. There was no rock bottom. There was just one day wasted obsessing about food, followed by another. At least this day, I felt in control of the situation. I had calorie charts and a carefully drawn plan.

And I had a treadmill.

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When the change finally came, it came suddenly. I have no explanation for this, only guesses. One late November afternoon, as my son Xavier and I were sitting on the large dark green comforter that was spread over the playroom floor, I knew, all at once, I was done.

Just minutes previous, I was lying against a few pillows that I keep a long one wall, preparing a binge. If I remember correctly, I started with a mostly-full container of peanut butter. Just the peanut butter, I reasoned. It’s low in carbs. I ate it plain as my baby watched, fascinated. I still remember the look on his face. He was always more interested in people than in baubles and I remember feeling like somehow, he understood.

As the peanut butter jar emptied and the speed of my spoon increased, I felt the familiar surge of adrenaline flood my body. When the jar reached the half-empty point, I decided that a full blown binge was inevitable. I got up from my spot on the blanket and stared pawing through the fridge and cabinets. Like always, I was unprepared. After every crappy leftovers binge, I always promised myself to have better food on hand next time–to really enjoy the experience. As soon as the food was in the house, though, the temptation proved too great, so mostly, I avoided buying these items at all. The lack of binge-worthy food didn’t stop me this day, though. I found some frozen muffins and, while heating bread and cheese in the microwave, ate them cold. After the hastily prepared cheese sandwiches (grilling them never happened; that took too much time) I ate some more peanut butter, then topped everything off with a bowl of cereal. Once I got to the milk or water, I knew I couldn’t last much longer. Though dehydrated, I never left much room for fluids. Full–stuffed–the spoon would finally slow. A few more bites, and I would be done.

Quickly, I hid the evidence of the experience. Dishes were washed. Packaging was thrown away. Xavier still watched me, concerned. I told myself that he was too young to understand what I was up to. But I also knew that even if he didn’t then, he would.

Back on the floor, I’d chide myself. Damn it. Another eighteen hours of exercise wasted. My stomach hurt with fullness and I wanted to throw up.

And yet, my feelings in that moment weren’t all bad. Though physically uncomfortable, I was aware that for now, I didn’t want to eat, and the relief of this was not insignificant.

It was rare that I ever didn’t want to eat.

I held my arms out to Xavier, who came to me. I handed him a baby book and he took it half-heartedly. It was the day before my thirty-second [fact check] birthday. A few days after that, Xavier would be one. And that’s when the thought came to me.

I think I’m done. It wasn’t my usual regret-filled resolution; never before had I resolved to quit my binges completely. Manage them, yes. But I needed those binges. Without them, what would I look forward to?

This thought was different. It wasn’t a thought so much as a knowing. It was a moment of clarity that brought me peace. Suddenly, I just knew that I didn’t need the binges anymore. I had a kid now.

It was time to change.

Besides, did I still need it? Wasn’t my life fuller now? Wasn’t I ready to focus on other things? I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a full grown functional working parent with a mortgage and a husband. It wasn’t only that I wanted to stop binging. It was that I knew I could.

I considered the matter further. No binges. What would this mean? It would mean no extreme dieting either. It would also mean no overeating: if I couldn’t diet, I couldn’t overeat. Otherwise, I’d just keep gaining weight.

I recalled a three-week period in my twenties when, after reading a book about intuitive eating, I didn’t overeat at all. The first week I lost one pound. The second week I lost half a pound. When the third week I lost nothing, I gave up the practice. At the time, it felt like just another diet. But that day with Xavier, I remembered how different it had felt. For once, I felt … normal. I could just eat. And stop eating. I’d never been able to do that before. Also, there was that pride that I felt, that feeling of rightness. At my kitchen table with my mom and sister, after talking with them about my plan, they decided to try the same thing. I said, excitedly, “We’re going to be naturally skinny!” They tried to match my enthusiasm, but couldn’t.

I quickly lost the excitement, too, but this time, it would be different. Slow weight loss was a small price to pay for greatly improved mental health. Also, my binges were the cause of my weight gain in the first place. Without them, I wouldn’t even need to lose weight.

I can do this, I realized. How did I know? I must have known already without knowing it. Some process must’ve already taken place. I wanted to be done, and I could be.

It would be my birthday gift to myself.

The following day, I celebrated my birthday not telling anyone that something wonderful had happened.

That day and every day that week, then every day that month, I ate modestly and without any special restrictions. What’s more: the cravings were gone. This is when a religious person would say that God delivered them from their habit. But I knew it wasn’t God; it was myself. Without the crazy diets, food was always available. I could eat anything I wanted–just not right now.

I’d wait till I was hungry again.

Besides, I was a mother now; I had something more important to focus on. I didn’t need another project.

For over a decade, my eating disorder had been the most painful part of my life, consuming not only much of my free time but also a great deal of my self-esteem and social life as I attempted to hide the problem. My life had revolved around food, exercise and diet, but I was free now.

It was the best thing that could’ve happened.

To my great surprise, losing five pounds wasn’t the depression cure I’d been hoping for. Instead, the truth was closer to the opposite. Though during my thirties I made great strides in my mental health, it wasn’t finding a partner or meditating or having kids or a job I liked that made the biggest dent in my depression.

It was ditching my eating disorder.

Nothing else is even a close second.

It’s been almost eleven years since that moment on the playroom floor with my baby. And I have not binge eaten since.

In the years since, I’ve given myself an extravagant birthday present every year. But none comes close to this one or ever will.

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“Man conquers the world by conquering himself.” Zeno.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” Henry David Thoreau.

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It’s Zen, only more practical. Get The Naked House: Five Principles for a More Peaceful Home at your preferred book retailer today.

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