I feel like I start every blog post with “this one is the hardest”. Maybe because EVERYTHING about eating disorder recovery is hard! It is hard guys – please remember that. I have yet to meet someone to said that it is the easy! If it is I don’t think they really dove DEEP into their eating disorder and may be lying to themselves. Freedom from your ENTIRE eating disorder is extremely challenging. You will be challenged every minute of every day while you are healing. If not from yourself, from society and those around you. I cannot emphasize this enough – you are doing the hardest thing you’ve ever done!!! It doesn’t feel good going against everything you’ve ever know in your entire life! I can’t tell you what waits on the other side because I’m still in the thick of it, but I know I can’t go back to where I was before. That’s all I know.
Moving on to today’s subject – the simple things. I don’t ever remember not being able to do anything simple when I had an eating disorder. I was lucky enough to be thin and was able to do anything I wanted without my weight or body “getting in the way”. Now, being the size I am, I completely and totally took for granted all the simple things I now struggle to do. Things like painting my toe nails and clipping them; I used to prop my leg up on the sink or sit down on the floor and bend towards my toes. I can’t do it anymore without causing pain to my stomach and legs. I can’t reach that far anymore. My fat is literally in the way. How did I solve this? Well, in the summer months, I splurged for a pedicure – it lasted about 2 months. But in the winter time when I needed my toe nails cut – I just pushed myself through the pain and cut them as quickly as possible. I went as far as to search for some sort of device where I could reach my toes without having to bend over, but I wasn’t able to find anything. I’m getting emotional as I write this post, tears welling up. Because this hurts – this is really tough for me. I love painting my toes pretty colors and looking down as my feet admiring how colorful they are. And now without paying someone to do it, or struggling A LOT on my own, I don’t get to have my painted toes. It was something that meant so much to me that I can no longer do. I hurts and it sucks.
The same goes for shaving my legs. In order to do that it requires SOME sort of bending at the waist. Whenever I try to shave my legs my stomach gets in the way. I’ve resorted to literally grabbing my stomach and moving it out of the way so I can bend down and reach my lower legs/ankles. Can you see me – water from the shower pouring down my head and back while I struggle with grabbing my stomach, to get it out of the way so that I can shave? I spent so many showers crying as I was trying to shave. I tried so many different ways to position my body and none seemed to allow me to shave like I used to. When I brought some of this up to my therapist she told me I had to learn to live in a larger body, and with that came some basic challenges. I didn’t like her answer. I just wanted to be able to shave my legs without crying. The same goes for using a luffa in the shower. I love the the warm sudsy bubbles going over my body – it feels wonderful and luxurious. I tried to use it to clean my vaginal area; but, I couldn’t always reach. From the front my stomach was in the way and because I’d gotten so large, I couldn’t reach my arm all the way back to reach by bottom and that area. Again, crying because I can’t reach my most basic private areas to insure I keep them clean and free of odor and bacteria. I solved this one by getting a loofah on a stick, but I’ll be honest – it’s NOT the same. But I come out clean and fresh and it’s the compromise I had to make.
Whenever I do laundry I always, inevitably, drop a sock or 2 behind the dryer. Back in the day, I used to hop on the machine, bend down and reach to pick up the offending sock from the back. I tried to this and I couldn’t even hop onto the top of anything. I got a small step stool and got onto the dryer, but my stomach got in the way when I tried to bend over. Oh, and I also dented the lid in with my weight and had to hit it back into place – it still has a small dent to this day. Eventually I had to purchase one of the grabber things and use it as an extra long arm. If I’m being completely honest, there are tons of socks behind the dryer because I just can’t be bothered to get everything needed to grab them anymore.
We have a mini-van; I used to be able to move freely from the front to the middle row and to the back row with ease. Now, I am unable to get to the middle row from the front and struggle to get to the back row. It’s embarrassing and I HATE that feeling. That feeling of helplessness of wanting your body to do something, but your OWN body getting in the way. It’s such an oxymoron that the very thing you can’t do is being preventing by the one thing that can do it. Things like getting up from the couch require a lot more energy than they used to. I literally have to PULL myself up off the couch and sometimes I fall back because my momentum wasn’t strong enough. It’s so de-humanizing to lose to your own body weight.
I’m always sweating. Like ALWAYS. Things that, I think, really shouldn’t induce a sweating response. We’re talking about sorting laundry, sweeping the floor for 5 min, emptying the dishwasher, putting away groceries, walking to the mailbox, putting my kids clothes away in their drawers. And the sweat is everywhere – not just the classic armpits. I sweat along my hairline, behind my ears, under my breasts, behind my knees, on my upper lip, and of course my vaginal and anal area. ALL the time. I always hot, I’m always sweating. It feels so gross. Sometimes I need to shower twice a day because I’ve done something like attempt to clean basement which for some reason results in excessive sweating. Climbing one flight of stairs – I’m breathing heavily for at least 5 minutes after. My daughter even asks me if I’m ok when I get to her room to say goodnight. This isn’t due to “being out of shape” it’s due to carrying around 100 lbs. It is HARD AS HELL to live your daily life carrying that around. I don’t think people with thin privilege who have recovered in a smaller body understand this. I challenge them to walk around in a fat suit weighing an extra 100 lbs for 2 weeks – it would REALLY help them to realize that challenges their larger clients have.
I think the WORST part about this is not being able to do the things with my kids that I used too. Taking a walk isn’t easy and I can only go for about ½ a hour before my ankles and legs start to hurt. Riding my bike is difficult (Easier after I got a WIDE bike seat) but again, I can only last about half the time I used to. And I am trying, boy am I trying. I didn’t want to be that Mom who couldn’t have fun with her kids. I tried to go sledding with my kids and walking up and down the hill was exhausting. I was breathing so hard, ice crystals started to appear on my neck warmer. We used to love going to the zoo together, but now I have to stop and take long breaks and sit down. We aren’t able to cover everything we use too and miss out on seeing a lot of animals. We’ve discussed planning a trip to Disney World, but I’m absolutely TERRFIED of holding my family back from being able to enjoy all the park has to offer because I’ll slow them down and have to take breaks. Almost makes me not want to go just to avoid all the emotionally damage it entails when I do go.
I was, like ALWAYS, tired. ALL THE TIME. I can now look back and realize that COVID was the best thing that ever happened in terms of the opportunity to REST. I was home & unemployed, my kids were doing online school and we were in some sort of lockdown where we could only go to the grocery store and back. Most, if not all forms of recreation were shut down. I really had nowhere to go. So I was able to rest. And REST a lot because my body was exhausted. There were times I woke up, got my kids breakfast, signed them in online for school and went back to bed. Not to sleep, but to rest my body because it was always SORE and in PAIN. Everything was aching. My back, my legs, my arms, my sides; my extra fat even hurt – was painful to the touch, almost like a neurological response. I took Tylenol to help, but it was short lived. I was miserable and still am. The pain shifted from one body part to the next like a never ending cycle. It started with intense upper back pain (saw a chiropractor and purchased a new mattress) but it didn’t make it go away. After about 3-4 months, the pain moved to the hips, then lower back, then feet/ankles (on top of my tendonitis there), then shoulders, then thighs then calves then intense migraines for 3-4 days at a time. And when the pain would stop it would just jump to the body part. I live with some sort of pain every single day of my life. It’s miserable and depressing.
The extra weight has most definitely robbed me of being able to do the simple things in life. It makes me so sad. I wish I had someone to blame for this. But blaming someone would imply that someone made a mistake. And I can’t do that to myself. Instead I live with the discomfort of having to take more breaks, acknowledge that I’ve lost the ability to do certain things that I once used to and sit with it. Take in the crying and the pain and the embarrassment and frustration at my body. And tell myself that it’s ok to grieve the body I had. It’s gone and I lost it. It’s never going to return. Even in the event that I lose a significant amount of overshoot weight, the body I once had is gone and is not coming back. And I’m allowed to be sad about that. If you just look at everything I used to be able to do and can no longer do because of recovery weight gain, anyone would pick being able to do the simple things in life again. I just wish I can go back to that. This experience has given me so much compassion for those who have lived in a larger body their entire lives and struggled with this for decades. I’m a mess and have only dealt with this for 14+ months. My compassion is through the roof for you.