the longest post ever! :)
i'm just so screwed up when it comes to food. you don't have to read this, as it's INCREDIBLY long, but i'm hoping that somebody will relate to my issues. i hope i'm not alone out here! either way, i needed to rant and type this up for me!

i'm 22 years old, 5'6" and 125 pounds. i don't think i have an eating disorder, but i'm so messed up about food. i just don't know what is wrong with me.

i used to have binge eating disorder. i mean, it was bad. i was eating probably around 5,000 calories daily at the worst part of it, some days even more. i didn't ever count -- i never wanted to know how bad it was -- but i estimate that some days it was considerably higher than 5,000 calories. i went from my natural weight of about 130 to 165-170ish. at that point, i knew i had to do something about my weight, since i was miserable. so i went on weight watchers. to be honest, the binge eating just stopped all of a sudden. (of course, like most people, i still have the occasional binge but nowhere near 5,000 calories, especially daily!) i did it the healthy way and got down to 125, which was amazing. i always obsessed about food and my body, but when i started weight watchers it got 100 times worse. it just exacerbated all of my emotional and mental issues with food and weight.

i never felt good about myself, even after i lost all the weight. i've been at this weight for a year and a half now, and while i know logically i'm not fat, i'm still miserable in my own skin. it gets bad sometimes. i weigh obsessively. all i think about is food or my weight. there are the few moments where those worries slip away, but for the most part, it's always at the front of my mind, the only thing i can really think about. some days i even skip class because i feel like i look too fat. it's prevented me from getting close to people, boys in particular, because i feel like a blimp.

the thing is, i know i'm not fat! i'm at a normal weight, at the lower end of the healthy weight spectrum. people call me tiny all of the time (though i'm not incredibly thin, i do look tiny compared to how i used to look). and sometimes i'll find out somebody i thought was super thin and who i wanted to look like weighs more than me... but i can't see that on me. this has gone beyond just feeling like a normal woman who thinks she's chubbier than she really is; it's affecting my life. when i eat a normal amount of calories, i feel so guilty. i ate 600 calories yesterday and felt awful about myself! it's ridiculous!!!

the reason i don't think i have an eating disorder (i realize i'm likely in denial and i suffer from some form of disordered eating) is because sometimes those thoughts go away. for a couple of weeks at a time. see, that's why i never really lose weight and get below 120 or so. i restrict heavily for a couple of weeks, then all of a sudden, i eat like a normal human being for a couple of weeks. it's weird, because i still obsess over my weight during my "normal" weeks (although not as much) but i don't even think about staying away from food. the opposite is true -- i obsess over when my next meal is going to be or what i'm going to eat or what i'm craving.

you see, i've always loved food. i'm a food-a-holic. i used to love going to dinner with my friends (and during my "normal" weeks, i still do) and i even work at a restaurant. food has always been my drug of choice. if i'm sad, it cheers me up. if i'm happy, i can celebrate with it. if i'm nervous, it has a calming effect. whatever is going on in my life, food -- or the lack of it -- is my answer. i didn't realize until a few months ago that maybe i've always had these problems...

i found an old food journal, when i was about 15 years old. i have no recollection of making it or obsessing over my weight, but granted, it was a traumatic time in my life for several reasons, so i've blocked out a lot of my memories of that age. the average day was two waffles for breakfast, a dr pepper for lunch, and nothing for dinner. i obviously had issues then as well; i just never realized it. i did drop a lot of weight around that time -- around 20 pounds in about a month or two. i always thought it was because i cut back to one soda a day. apparently, it was because i dropped to one soda a day and not much more!

recently, i began talking to one of my sorority sisters who suffers from bulimia. we've talked back and forth about eating disorders. i OBVIOUSLY don't have a full-blown disorder like most of you girls, and i don't have a full-blown disorder like her, either. but the similarities we shared when we talked about our feelings about food and weight were uncanny. i knew i had some obsession with my weight, but i thought i was normal until i talked to her. discussing it with her just made me realize i had a problem. i don't know what it is, but i know it's there. i've mentioned it to my therapist, but he kind of blows me off, since i'm not too unhealthy when it comes to my food intake, plus i'm at a normal weight. so on one hand, i know i have a problem, but i don't feel like i do, since a professional doesn't think it's a big deal to be like i am.

next semester scares me. i have an independent studies course where i'm researching the effect of pro-anorexia websites on college-aged women. because i will be spending a lot of time researching these sites and being on them myself, i am afraid that i am just going to feel worse about myself and it worries me very much. but this is something i want to do as a career -- i want to counsel college-aged women with eating disorders and eventually begin a program to raise awareness of eating disorders and disordered eating on college campuses. (it's very interesting that i've wanted to do that before i realized i had any issues with food myself!) i've been on these forums before under an old username, but deleted the username as i wanted to watch out for myself. interestingly enough, i made this username and came back on these sites the week before my professor suggested this topic to me; i think it was fate! i want to do the research, but i'm very scared about what it will do to me. still, this is very important and the professor in charge of me says i have a chance of getting published since i'm a good writer. getting published in a journal with an article about the topic i want to work with would DEFINITELY help with graduate school!

anyways, this was SO long, so if you read this entire thing, i want to send you hugs and kisses in spirit! :) i just needed to rant, i guess!