Weight Is Not Always a Direct Correlation Of Your Mental Health.

It isn’t always about your size, shape or the input/output from your body that defines how severe an eating disorder is. According to the UK criteria for an anorexia nervosa diagnosis, you do have to have certain measurements to be diagnosed formally however.

Yet not every eating disorder is anorexia. Body dysmorphia and eating disorders are closely linked and it is often the internal dialogue or conflict that defines your difficulties with body shape and eating habits. Long before I started severely cutting calories, I knew I had a problem with food. I would rationalize to other people that I had a breakfast, small lunch and large dinner and therefore was eating plenty to stay alive.

Yet my eating was regimented and caused me great stress. Foods were assigned to an ‘allowed to have’ and a ‘not allowed to have.’ Even when I was training more or generally hungrier on certain days, my food intake did not adjust and I forced myself to adhere to a disciplined structure of eating. A lot of people are able to tolerate this, when dieting for instance, but I just knew it was deeper than that for me. If I did ‘break’ and have something I shouldn’t have had, I would obsess and attempt to compensate for it by cutting out a meal down the line.

I look ‘normal’ now and my eating habits have largely relaxed, yet I have not shaken many habits from the days when my eating was at its most ordered (or disordered when I was struggling more with bulimia.)

For instance, I still cannot stand bras. The sensation of fat rolling underneath them makes me feel hot, prickly and slimy. As if somehow that roll of fat labels me as grotesque. In fact, since I put on weight having recovered from anorexia, I suffer quite badly with the fear that people view me as dirty. I worry that they may think I smell, or that I am not clean enough for them. Luckily this hasn’t sparked some OTT OCD body cleaning paranoia, but again it creates unease and anxiety in my mind.

If I do not make it to the gym for a few days, I feel gigantic. I tend to try and attend a gym regularly anyway because I enjoy it, but following a few days of absence, I find it very difficult to get myself back in to my gym clothes. I envisage that my body has ballooned and that my tight gym clothes will no longer fit. It creates a very genuine fear.

In fact, if I wear loose clothing for too long, I become afraid to wear normal fitting clothes. When I worked solely in ICU, I would wear these wonderful big baggy scrubs that fit like oversized pyjamas – wonderful attire for work! However, I would tend to do a ‘dirty john’ and continue to wear scrubs for any activities following work. I was so frightened that towards the end of the day, my real clothes would no longer fit me, as if I had somehow begun to expand and expand.

I still feel this way now. It is the main reason I like to exercise in the morning. As the day wears on, I feel bigger, bigger and heavier and hence less interested in jumping around.

I do not wear anything that touches my waist and if I do, it makes me feel suffocated and stressed all day. No belts, no tight clothing and no waistlines. I usually buy clothes a few sizes to big (especially swimwear. My husband always comments that I seem to have no problem displaying my undergarters to the world in a baggy costume as long as I have hidden my stomach. This is true!)

I am sharing this, because I think it is important to realise that all people have depth. Medically, we tend to label behaviours with a diagnosis , but this is only the tip to an iceberg (as the cliché goes.) We never truly know what is going on the minds of others or what anxieties or concerns they may be experiencing.

If you do relate to anything that I have shared above, do not be afraid to talk about them. Professional therapists and psychologists are wonderful people at helping us identify thought patterns and try to work through them.
My problems are long embedded within me and I may be working my entire life to detangle them. But it does not stop me. For every knot untied, I sleep that bit easier and enjoy myself that bit more.

I did not have a relevant photograph for this post – so here is a random one of me and James actually dressed up! This is as rare as how my Dad eats his steak.
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