Prologue

I am starting this blog to chronicle my journey through recovery from bulimia nervosa.  I have been struggling with this disorder for the last four years, and it is destroying my life at an exponential rate.  I have chosen to enroll as a patient with the Calgary Eating Disorder Program, at the Alberta Children's Hospital, which will be an 8 -12 week process of intensive therapy, psychoeducation, nutrition counseling and transitioning back to "normal" life.  I will post on a daily basis, so stay tuned for updates on how things go!  I've updated this section to include a detailed history of how the eating disorder came about, taken from a presentation I gave about my experience with mental illness.


My sister, Amy, and I grew up in Okotoks, in a nice home, with nice parents, and our younger brother. When people think about addicts, they often assume that these people come from broken homes, or were abused growing up. We were neither of those. If anything, we were a bit spoiled, and our parents would do anything to make sure we were okay. Amy and I both went through awkward, ugly duckling phases, we were both on the chubby side, with braces, and Amy wore glasses starting from age 6. As many of you know, this can be a difficult time for anyone, as bullies like to pick on anyone who is shy, nerdy, or chubby. Amy was teased mercilessly by a boy in her class, from grade 4 through grade 6, prompting our parents to move her out of public school to escape her cruel peers. I was teased a little bit in grade 5, but managed to get through elementary school mostly unscathed. Junior high was tough for me; a boy in my grade 7 class would call me “beached whale” every day, even though my weight was in the normal range for my age and height. I started reading in magazines about girls with anorexia and bulimia that had lost a lot of weight, so I started skipping lunch, and sticking to gum and Pepsi throughout the day. I would be so hungry though by the time I got home that I would eat nonstop until dinner. I experimented a little bit with purging, but it was difficult to do. I tried a number of things to lose weight, although none of them were healthy. Smoking, skipping meals, or taking diet pills, rather than good old fashioned exercise and healthy eating! I fluctuated between 135 and 145 pounds through junior high and high school, so maintained a normal weight for my height.

The teasing about my weight had stopped by high school, but the body dissatisfaction and desire to lose weight were pretty ingrained by then. Any time a friend would blow me off, or a boyfriend would break up with me, I always assumed it was because I was too fat. Amy, on the other hand, was quite chubby through junior high and part of high school. The summer before she turned 17, she lost about 40 pounds, but never disclosed her method. She told us she ate every day, and walked everywhere, but I suspected that there was something underlying her weight loss. She grew more and more obsessed with losing weight, and wanted to have hip bones that jutted out, without any fat on them. She wasn’t necessarily underweight at this point, but wanted to be. Amy had always been the outgoing one of the two of us, and I assumed that her new slim figure was the reason why she was more popular among our shared group of friends.

I experienced my first episode of depression at age 17, my grade 12 year. I had been dumped by the boyfriend I was completely enamored with, and just quit caring about everything. I had maintained honours throughout junior high and high school, but missed graduating with honours because I had just given up trying to get good grades. I isolated myself from many of my friends, and started smoking pot and binge eating regularly. My weight increased to over 150lbs, putting me in the overweight category for my height. I was feeling quite low about myself because of my weight, but didn’t know enough about health at the time to lose weight effectively.

After graduation, I started going out to bars and nightclubs regularly, and became best friends with Deanne, who was the coolest chick I had ever met. I adopted the ‘bar-star’ lifestyle, going out drinking and dancing most nights of the week. I stopped eating throughout the day, so that I would look slimmer in my bar clothes, and get drunk faster. It worked, sometimes so well that I would get too drunk, and would force myself to vomit to make room for more alcohol.  Between the not eating, throwing up, and dancing at the clubs five nights a week, I lost a considerable amount of weight, and was back to around 135 pounds again. Totally normal for my age and height, but compared to Deanne, I always felt like the ‘fat friend’. We started using cocaine on a recreational basis; after the bar, we’d go to a house party and get high until the sun came up. A half a gram a couple nights a week quickly turned into a regular daily habit. Our friends and boyfriends were drug dealers, so we had easy access to it, without having to spend a lot of money. Since I was high most of the time, I had no appetite, and the weight fell off even more. I was never underweight, but just loved the slimmer figure I got as a by-product. However, the easy access to coke wasn’t the great thing I thought it was; before I knew it I was getting high all day, every day, saving a few lines for the next day to get myself through work. Weekends would just be crazy benders; it was nothing to go through an eight-ball a night, staying up all day and night for Friday and Saturday, then crashing on Sunday and sleeping for 16 hours. Once Amy turned 18, I started bringing her out to the clubs with us. She dabbled in a bit of ecstasy, but always seemed so against doing coke. One night, we were at a house party, and Deanne, Amy and I got quite drunk.  I took Amy to the bathroom to do some cocaine to sober up a bit. I thought I was helping her out at the time, but it turns out I was very wrong.

In 2003, Deanne and I moved in together, and things quickly went downhill. I was enrolled in courses at Mount Royal, but ended up dropping out because I was either too high or strung out to go to class or get my work done. Deanne had trouble keeping jobs, and we were drinking and getting high more often than not. I started to hate getting high, and was spending all of my money on coke, staying up all night, and desperately jonesing for more when I ran out in the morning. I would lay in bed, wide awake at 5 in the morning, and think about how I just wanted to fade away, or maybe OD, just as an easy way out. Deanne and I started fighting all the time; and I moved out in April. Barely six weeks later in the early hours of May 12, Deanne was killed in a drunk driving accident. She and her boyfriend were speeding down Bow Trail, when he lost control of the car going around the bend between 37th and 33rd St SW and hit a row of trees on the side of the road. She was thrown from the car and died on impact. They were on their way to get more beer. She was 22.

Deanne’s death was quite the wake-up call for me; I had been ready to quit the party scene for a while by then, and this was just the kicker I needed to get my life on track. I found a good job, got a place with my boyfriend, and things were great. We were engaged, pregnant and married over the next two years. Becoming a mother and wife encouraged me to stay away from drugs and alcohol, and started teaching myself about nutrition and exercise to help me lose the baby weight. I managed to lose 50 of the 55 pounds I gained, in a healthy way, without triggering any disordered behaviours. Amy’s life began taking a turn for the worse; she had moved in with a mutual friend of ours, and started doing cocaine regularly. Eventually, someone introduced her to crystal meth, and it all went downhill from there. Her relationships became volatile and unstable, and she was kicked out of the friend's home she lived in.

In 2006, I found myself a 24-year-old divorced single mom to a toddler (Luc was about 18 months old then), living at my parents’ house again. A few weeks before Orlando and I split up, I had delivered our stillborn daughter, Layla.  I was not quite 19 weeks along in the pregnancy, and the cord got wrapped around her neck and she basically suffocated.  It was devastating.  I remember the day I moved back home, Amy had also moved back, along with her drug-dealer boyfriend, Kurt*. She came down the hall to give me a hug, and she looked awful. She weighed about 95 pounds, completely emaciated and bony. Her hair was messy, and she looked dirty from poorly applying her self-tanning lotion. I asked her what happened, and she claimed to have lost weight through using “diet pills and laxatives”, but I knew that by this point she was badly addicted to meth. By this point, my soon-to-be ex-husband had moved on and in with a much thinner, new girlfriend, and I could stop thinking about the extra 10 pounds I was carrying in response to the separation. Afraid to use Amy’s drastic method of weight loss, I went to Weight Watchers, lost about 15 pounds, and felt like everything was better.

Over the next few years, I fell in love again, with a man who grew increasingly more controlling throughout our relationship. Fighting with my ex over child support and custody was frustrating and upsetting, and I found myself eating chocolate and candy to self-soothe. Between this and date-night over-indulgences, my weight began to creep up again, and before I knew it, I had gained back the 15 pounds and then some. So, back to Weight Watchers I went. Over the next few months, I lost 20 pounds, through a combination of healthy eating and exercise. I was in my second year of university then, and things were going really well. Things had picked up for Amy as well; Kurt had been sent to jail, and she moved away from the life of crime and drug abuse. She found a new boyfriend, Caleb*, who helped her sober up, and she maintained a couple of jobs in tattoo shops, which she absolutely loved. In 2009, my boyfriend was laid off, and became increasingly more controlling and abusive; I began “escaping” to the gym just to have time away from him. I turned my focus to eating and exercise, quickly becoming obsessed with every calorie going in or out of my body. We broke up in February of 2010, and I felt free again. I focused my energy on school, my figure, and my son. I had become somewhat obsessed with developing a fit-muscular physique, and spend most of my free time in the gym. I was eating very clean and structured most of the time, but found myself going on food binges once in a while, eating large amounts of chocolate that were definitely off-limits on my strict, self-imposed diet. A bit of extra exercise, some diet pills and laxatives seemed to do the trick to keep me from gaining weight though. I started dating again that summer, but never seemed to luck out. Any of the guys that I thought I had a connection with seemed to just disappear, - either they would move away, or just stop calling, and I couldn’t help but take it personally. Here I was, 130 pounds, in the best shape I had ever been in, and all I could think was that these guys weren’t interested in me because I was too fat. Getting high or drinking away my feelings wasn’t an option for me, so I started binge eating more often. Six pieces of toast with peanut butter and chocolate sauce, chocolate bars, cookies, a big bowl of popcorn – all in one sitting. I would eat until I was so full that I didn’t notice how sad I was. The next day, I’d go work it off in the gym, and refrain from eating anything more than celery and a protein shake, so as not to gain weight. In August of that year, I hurt my back lifting weights that were a bit too heavy, and my workout regime was completely derailed. It hurt to get up, to walk, to do anything. It drained me of all of my energy. Instead of doing something therapeutic like yoga, or massage, I turned to food again. I knew what I was doing wasn’t right; I had taken abnormal psych that spring, and knew that I was developing some kind of eating disorder. At this point, I was still in a healthy weight range, but had stopped menstruating; I was binge eating, but not vomiting, so I wasn’t really sure what it was. A consultation with a psychiatrist in the fall prompted me to contact my doctor for a referral to the eating disorders program, because of my preoccupation with weight loss and body size.

Over the fall, I was bingeing a lot, and gained about 25 pounds. I was miserable. I isolated myself from all of my friends; staying home to eat any and everything I could get my hands on. By January of 2011, I hadn’t heard back from the treatment program, so decided that I could make myself better. I signed up for boot-camp, and went back to Weight Watchers, and slowly but healthfully began to lose weight. I was still bingeing once in a while, but working out normally and eating healthy most of the time. The eating disorders program contacted me in March or April that year, but by that time I was healthy, and no longer met the criteria for treatment. Things were going well for me; I was working on completing my third year of my psych degree, and found out in April that I had been accepted into the Honours program for the fall. So, I did what I always seem to do after losing weight and re-gaining my confidence – I started dating. Again. Met a guy that I felt an instant connection with, and enjoyed spending time with him until he had to go work out of town. I was upset, but moved on, trying not to take it personally. A friend introduced me to the next guy I dated briefly. I liked him, but it turned out that he used cocaine regularly, and I knew I had to stay away from that. Since things weren’t working out in the dating scene for me, I turned again to ice cream and chocolate, bingeing non-stop until reaching my all-time highest weight of 168 pounds in September, putting me at a BMI of 28 – two points away from being obese. I was horribly depressed by this time; I honestly felt that anyone who saw me would think I was disgusting, that I was unworthy of friends, or boyfriends. I would stay up all night, eating; then would be exhausted for classes the next day. I was in my final year of my degree, and really struggling with the workload and raising my son. Throughout the school year, I fell into a cycle of binge eating and restricting my diet; desperate to lose the weight I had gained. I would go for a week subsisting on meal replacement shakes, celery and energy drinks, losing ten pounds in seven days, only to gain it back after a couple of binges. I was taking diet pills every day, even though I knew they didn’t work. The comfort of having them seemed to relax some of the anxiety I had about my weight. Eventually, I started throwing up after bingeing, and would look up pro-eating disorder websites for tips and tricks to help me lose weight and purge 'more effectively'.  I enrolled in a group therapy program for binge eating, which helped to uncover some of the roots of the eating disorder, but it wasn’t enough. After 14 weeks, I didn’t feel that I had enough of the skills to “cure” myself, despite the fact that I was researching eating disorders as part of my Honours thesis. I signed on as a patient for the shared care program here at the university wellness center, which helped a little, but not enough. I went back to the doctor for another referral to the eating disorders program, and was placed on the waiting list. From all of the energy drinks and diet pills I had taken over the previous months, I had developed heart palpitations, and an ECG revealed an abnormality on my heart tracing.

Throughout this time, Amy’s life began to fall apart again; she had broken up with Caleb in 2010, lost her job at the tattoo shop, and started using drugs again.  She admitted to using drugs to maintain her low weight, but would binge on food when she was sober.  I knew that she had an eating disorder too, but she wasn’t interested in getting treatment for it.  She found herself another abusive boyfriend, and wound up in the hospital after an overdose.  She pulled through though, but struggled to hold a job, and moved around every few months, using drugs more often than not.  She met a nice guy, Rick,* in the summer of 2011; he convinced her to go to rehab.  She went for a few weeks, but left before completing her treatment.  She told us the facility had too many rules; that they wouldn’t let her wear her hair extensions or make-up, and that they were forcing her to eat.  She had gained a noticeable amount of weight, and her fear of getting fat was too strong.  She left rehab, Rick left her, and she quickly lost the weight again from using drugs.  I saw Amy that fall, and she had moved on and found another boyfriend, Robin.*  She seemed to be doing okay, she had an apartment, and he was helping her pay the rent.  Surprise, surprise, things turned violent with this guy too, and the next time I saw her, which was this past April, I was rescuing her from a friend’s apartment after Robin had beaten her up.  I urged her to press charges, but she refused, insisting that he was in a gang, and that he would kill her if she ratted him out.  Soon after though, the boyfriend ended up in jail on other charges, and she told us she was getting her life back together.

By June of 2012, I accomplished something I should be so proud of – I graduated! I received an Honours degree in psychology, with first class honours on top of that! I was the only single mom graduating from psych with Honours, and I really should have been happy about that. But I wasn’t. All I could think about was that I was fat. I had even lost about ten pounds over the winter semester, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t buy any grad pictures, and I can’t stand looking at the ones that my family members took. One of the biggest accomplishments of my life, and it didn’t matter, because I was fat. Over the summer, I took a well-deserved break from school; I had been enrolled in courses for the fall, winter, spring and summer semesters for the last 4 years, and I needed a break. I got a part-time job, and enjoyed spending time with my son, or working out and practicing yoga in my spare time. I met and started dating a new man, Tom,* whom I enjoy spending time with.  I managed to lose another ten pounds, but was still in the habit of restricting my diet excessively, or binge eating and purging when I was alone. Otherwise, things were going well for me.

Then, August 31, I received some of the worst news of my life. Amy had been shot and killed early that morning, after an altercation at a party she was at. Needless to say, I was absolutely devastated. The shockwave ran through our family and community; so many people reached out to show their support. Her death was widely publicized in the local media, likely due to the fact that our father is a successful town councilor in our hometown of Okotoks. The last week of my summer holiday, I was just numb – I could hardly cry, and found myself telling other people about what had happened as if it were the plot of a movie. The day after her funeral, I was back at school, starting a new degree, and often found myself wandering around the halls, unable to focus on anything. I tried to keep myself busy spending time in the gym in between classes, and tried to plan healthy meals to nourish myself during this hard time. It didn’t last long. Before I knew it, I was bingeing and purging every day; on average 3 times per day, spending $20 - $40 a day on food that I had every intention of throwing up. I’m not gonna lie; the last few months have been the toughest of my life. I’ve spent money on food much in the same way I used to spend on drugs, and find myself missing classes in favour of staying home to eat. If I don’t feel that I’ve thrown up enough, then I will exercise until I feel that I have burned a sufficient amount of calories. I really haven’t lost weight – I just gain and lose the same five pounds over and over. My hair is starting to fall out, and my teeth hurt from all of the sugary food and vomit every day. My cheeks are puffy, and my throat hurts from throwing up.  I have asked my ex-husband to be the primary care-giver of my son, because I don’t feel capable of meeting his needs. I know that I have people who are there to support me, but it is difficult to ask for help. It is very hard to admit that I am powerless over food, that at 30 years old, I can’t take care of my child, or spend my money responsibly. I have appointments with the eating disorders program coming up in November, so hopefully I will be able to access the treatment program soon. Living a life that revolves around food is not a life, it’s a miserable existence. I want so desperately to be healthy, but it’s difficult. I know that it is easy to say “just stop eating so much” “just don’t throw up” “don’t worry so much about your size”, but it’s about as effective as telling an addict to “just don’t drink so much” “just don’t use drugs anymore”. The rational, psychology degree-holding part of me knows what I am doing is wrong, and I want to stop. Amy didn’t get a chance to get better, so I feel as though I need to get better, if not for me, but for her. For my son. For my parents.  For my friends and loved ones.  Eating disorders and addictions are chronic, progressive, and sometimes fatal. Addictions indirectly claimed the lives of two of the most important girls in my life, and I can’t let it take me too.

*Some names have been changed, but the information is true.