“With your history,” ML is telling me one day, “there was a very low chance that you wouldn’t have developed some form of an eating disorder.”

Each term she used felt like a dagger, partly because putting definitions to each thing I had done connected me to the reality of having an eating disorder and I was struggling to accept that. Again, my sick thoughts were (and still are, at times) so comfortable accepting and believing the lies of the enemy, that trying to peel that away felt impossible at the time.

Here is a breakdown and, in parentheses, what I had been calling each of these.

Binging : (emotional eating) A period of excessive or uncontrolled indulgence, especially in food or drink.

Purging: (getting rid of something I shouldn’t have eaten) behavior to induce weight loss or manipulate body shape and can mean a number of things, including self-induced vomiting.

Restricting: (starvation diet) Limiting food intake to a certain number of calories or to certain foods or food groups.

I had used each of these to varying degrees, and in combination with each other, over the years and had fallen into binge eating, which was my ‘official’ diagnosis (with a slight twist, of course).

Binge Eating Disorder defined: When you have binge-eating disorder, you regularly eat too much food (binge) and feel a lack of control over your eating. You may eat quickly or eat more food than intended, even when you’re not hungry, and you may continue eating even long after you’re uncomfortably full. After a binge, you may feel guilty, disgusted or ashamed by your behavior and the amount of food eaten. But you don’t try to compensate for this behavior with excessive exercise or purging, as someone with bulimia or anorexia might. Embarrassment can lead to eating alone to hide your bingeing. A new round of bingeing usually occurs at least once a week. You may be normal weight, overweight or obese.

The twist on this was that I would go through periods where I ‘punished’ myself with hard exercise. I was pissed off that I couldn’t get addicted enough to the hard exercising in order to offset the ‘emotional eating.’

The other disorders – anorexia and bulimia – were the only ‘real’ eating disorders I knew of prior to all of this. I had to continue consulting the Google to verify in my mind that this was a ‘real’ thing. During an extremely emotional conversation with ML, while I was in a particularly dark state of self-hatred, I said to her “well, I SURE WISH, mine would have “manifested itself” (using sharp air quotes to emphasize how truly angry this made me) as anorexia.” “Being skinny would be far more accepted by others than what I am,” I said as anger turned to sadness and tears started rolling. Again.

I shocked even myself when I verbalized this tightly guarded feeling. I knew that the bodies I considered goals were unhealthy. Correction. I didn’t REALLY know this, but had been told over and over by others when I would point out one of the rail-thin figures that I thought would be ideal to look like.

ML, again, ever-so-kindly pointed me back to reality. “Melissa, you do not REALLY wish that. I promise you that rehabilitation for anorexia is far more complicated than what you face.”

We spent much time discussing the reality of all the dieting that I had done. Diets, as we know them, are set up to fail and the failure rate is something like 98%. That stung, but certainly made sense. Of all the hundreds of diets I had been on, my failure rate was 100%. Additionally, the residual damage was harsh. My body had no trust in me. Was I going to starve it, over feed it, “intermittently” feed it, use the ‘good foods’ or ‘bad foods’ list to nourish it?

Worse was the emotional damage. I felt like a complete failure and my perfectionism was raging. I needed others to see that my world was controlled because I was deeply out of control inside. This was where I learned that my perfectionism was related to my eating disorder. Remember how I ‘simply’ wanted to maintain a 4.0 in college, graduate Summa Cum Laude? That was to the detriment of my own sanity as well as others. I had just discovered that was my way of attempting to control the chaos and failure I felt in the area of food and health. I NEEDED to get other things right. There was no balance.

My mind was ALWAYS in some state of dieting – either planning the next one, thinking about how I needed to, or ALL IN on one. With a simple exercise on paper, ML had me draw a pie chart and fill in how often I was in ED mode and how often not. 85/15 and part of the 15 was probably when I was asleep. I was so sad looking at that, knowing there were hundreds of better ways to use my mind.

Even more harmful was how I spoke to myself and the self-hatred within me. Maybe I had the I’ll-get-myself-before-you-can-get-me mentality? What I am now blogging about in full was formed in my mind as just one post titled “I’ve Always Been A But” where I intended to basically share all of the hurtful comments I’ve heard over the years and that I believed were a huge source of my struggles. “Melissa, you are so pretty, but (insert a variety of weight-related comments).” “Melissa, you would be this, but just if you were this.” Yes, people do this more than is believable. However, in an attempt to now STOP reliving that garbage, and having people in my life that are helping repair the damage, that post may never happen. TBD.

In the past few weeks, a year and a half after this journey began, I have realized that I never want to comment on anyone’s weight, ever again. I’ve never negatively commented to someone directly, but even acknowledging a weight loss – an intended positive, may not be what someone needs. Someone like myself, who’s still recovering from a disorder, may perceive a slight look, a tone, or at the very least it will set those wheels of negative thinking in motion. The enemy can take even a nicely intended comment and start his devouring. TRUST ME on this.

At any rate, it was all a tenacious, soul destroying mess that, to be honest, I often felt hopeless by.

“Can you think of anyone else that you would talk about the way you talk about yourself,” ML asked me one day. Eyes as wide as those previous air quotes had been, “Nooooo,” I said.

Sobering.

I spoke to myself worse than I would ever speak about anyone else. Sadder, I couldn’t help it.

Plenty of times I felt, and at times still do, that this battle will always be within me. Fear drives me on some days, fear of failure, fear that this painful recovery process will not result in full healing, fear of judgement, fear I will always look in the mirror with disgust, even if I achieve a certain weight, as I have done in the past. So many fears that the enemy wants me to believe.

BUT – and I’ve always been a but, I invited God along with me on this journey. Yes, I fully believe He has been here all along, but I asked Him to join me in an assignment from ML – a letter to myself that quickly became a letter talking to God. As It turns out, this is less about a weight battle and more about a spiritual battle that is going on and, with extreme vulnerability, I will share parts next time.

One of my God-given cheerleaders told me last week when I was on a “Worst” level day, when I could feel the enemy ripping at me with reckless abandon and a vengeance, “that just means you have something good worth taking.” I keep on and keep on thinking about that. I, Melissa Vance, have something good worth taking. That one positive comment, genuinely given, probably burned at least five bad files with fire.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭43:19‬