I’m not sure what mine was. It could have been looking at any number of celebrities throughout the years or reading magazines since the age of 12 or it could have been a boy or just the feeling of not being able to please anyone around me but by the time I realized I was starving to death and losing that weight I always wants to lose I felt that I was in control not anorexia.

I was for the better part of my time alone when it came to eating meals. My family wasn’t around and no one seemed to care I was dropping a few pounds. No one seems to care that their child wants to lose some weight especially when your mother or father would like to lose a few pounds too. Looking back, I had all the danger signs. I was losing weight. I wanted to be on a diet continually for a few years before then. I always felt fat even after I was dropping weight. I was scared to death of gaining weight. I counted the calories on everything that went into my mouth, even on drinks and I was drinking ice cold water because I heard that your body burned calories. I started getting up early in the morning to exercise and that turned into an everyday routine. I would feel awful and eat a lot and then stop eating for days after thinking I would gain 20 pounds and eventually my menstrual cycle was effected.

For awhile I felt that I was winning and no one could bring me down. I was beating the battle of weight. It didn’t seem very hard at the time. I didn’t have hunger pains anymore. I didn’t normally go to sleep feeling ill. I wasn’t sick, I didn’t have anorexia, and I just mastered the art of losing weight right? Wrong! As I kept dropping weight I started to notice I was losing hair. Your face looks gaunt and I had dry skin I couldn’t get rid of. My body would bruise easily; my bones would stick out of me. My hands and feet were always freezing cold in fact my whole body was freezing. I suffered from huge mood swings, I was impatient, irritable, insomniac, had constipation and I started to feel depressed and thought about death a lot.

The correct name for “Ana” is Anorexia nervosa. I am a big internet user and I soon figured out that I wouldn’t find too many support groups on the internet looking up anorexia. It took me a long time to figure out that instead of looking up anorexia I needed to look up ‘Pro Ana’ It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for then. I found a website that helped with all the tricks, how to hide weight lose, how to look healthy, what vitamins to take and not take. Exercise ideas but probably the sickest thing looking back on it now was the scheduled starving days. Groups of people would get together and decide which day to start starving and we would all support one another through three or four days of eating nearly nothing. That website, which I won’t give the address to, was the perfect death trap for me. I had someone holding my hand while we walked to death.

When I first decided I needed to lose weight I soon figured out what anorexia was but I never quite understood bulimia. Bulimia is basically characterized as eating, eating, and eating and then throwing every ounce of it up, sometimes doing that 20 times a day. I eventually figured it out. Some days you were just so hungry you were eating before you realized you were even eating. At that point, at least for me, you read up about how to get rid of it. Throw it up. Drink pop, water, fill your stomach and stick your fingers down your throat. It works but it’s not fun. If you get yourself caught up in Bulimia it can be even more harmful then Anorexia. You will be very tired, have a lack of energy, experience dizziness, dehydration, headaches, and shortness of breath, soar throat, irregular heartbeats, anaemia, kidney and liver damage, chest pains, low blood pressure. You will wreck your oesophagus and teeth. The acid will wreck the bones which cannot be fixed for the most part. And if bulimia beats you, you will probably die of heart failure.

I realize now what I had gotten myself into and it’s not over yet, it’s a day to day battle to make sure I eat. You take it one step at a time. You have to get back to a healthy weight, restore healthy eating patterns, treat your health problems and there are a lot of them. Talk about your feelings, and get help. If you are falling into any of these patters you need to seek out help as soon as possible. You need to learn to love yourself and screw what the rest of the world is saying. Magazines are fake, air brushed and no one is perfect. Not even the stars. If someone doesn’t like you because of the way you look then you’d never want to be with them anyway. It’s easier to say then believe but take it from someone who has been through this; losing weight didn’t make me any happier it only made me feel worse. I was desperate to keep going.

There are a lot of books available with first hand accounts of anorexia and bulimia. If you want to read more about this, I suggest getting the book “Wasted” written by Marya Hornbacher. She got below 70 pounds and still fought back to put the weight back on.

Talk to your friends, family, anyone who will listen If you’re not pleased emotionally because feeling bad about yourself does not have to lead to years of battle. If you decide you want to lose weight. Do it healthy. If you starve yourself and then eat your body won’t know when you’re going to feed it next, it will store the fat and eventually you will gain weight. That is why there is a thin line between not eating and starving to death. Exercise, eat three healthy meals a day, have snacks, drink a lot of water and get sleep. Losing weight healthy wasn’t supposed to be fast. But you will feel great inside and out a year later when you’re where you wanted to be, looking and feeling Healthy. Don’t let Anorexia or Bulimia beat you, because if you’re Pro, you’re pro death too.

Other Anorexia/Bulimia related things in this issue of Portrait:
Check out the poem 'Happy - with me' in the Poetry Corner