I don’t know if there is such thing as an anorexic brain, but it certainly feels like there is. And it is hell to live with.
Over the last few months my body has become softer and I’ve reached the stage of weight gain when it’s obvious in my face. My jawline is softer, my neck more puffy. I’m acutely aware of it when I look in the mirror.
My clothes feel tighter. I feel them starting to pull on my upper arms. My trousers no longer need a belt, and when I sit down I’m aware of my stomach, rounder, larger, more uncomfortable.
And my brain is now screaming at me constantly, telling me to eat less, eat little, eat nothing and lose the weight. It has become all-consuming.
It starts from the very moment I open my eyes in the morning and seems to escalate throughout the day to the point where I reach the end of it, struggling to cope with the noise in my head.
Vowing not to eat their following day is the only way to silence it. But I inevitably do eat, and so the cycle starts again.
The point is I did not need to gain weight. I was already a healthy weight. I faced the weight-gain battle years ago.
Now I’m just trying to live my life. I no longer have an anorexia diagnosis, just a thirty-five year history, and a brain that never fully recovered and now torments me constantly.
I gained weight from enjoying food, perhaps a little too much food, but I was happy in my new job and didn’t feel the need to count calories. I wanted some food freedom.
I’m also conscious of binge eating disorder and I’ve definitely veered close to it at times, eating food when I’m not hungry, eating in secret and hiding what I’m eating.
I’ve been here before. It usually follows a period of severe restriction, my body understandably wanting food resulting in the most insatiable hunger, then not knowing when to stop. I kept going and weight gain is the result.
My mind can no longer cope with my body and there’s a fiery rage in my head.
It isn’t vanity. I don’t feel I need to be thin or ultra-slim at fifty. It’s natural and normal to carry a little more weight and no one is judging me for that. I’m the same as my peers. I blend in for looking normal.
The difference is the anorexic brain that emerged in my teens and remains in my fifties.
And it is slowly driving me insane.
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