Infestation

You've Gone Mad

 Plateaued. Stalled. I wasn't losing weight at all. I kept going between 112.4 and 114.

The first few days of this wasn't a problem. I just ate and exercised I usually did, yet nothing changed. I found it beginning to get to a point of desperation in this time. I was pretty much desperate to lose the weight. I had to get to 100 pounds by Warped Tour.

So it hits a week. I haven't lost weight that week, and it was terrifying. Something was wrong.

I start to get a bit anxious. The weight had to be water retention right? I could just sweat it out, and so I try.

In the middle of the summer heat I put on three jackets, my space heater, and I workout. I try to sweat as much as possible while drinking as much water as possible. I had to get this weight off; I couldn't stall here.

Didn't work, and I retained more water from the working out. It was ridiculous. I kept going. I try to eat less; which didn't work, obviously. I went straight back to the same routine.

By the next weekend it was pride, and I had still not dropped weight, but this could be the day. I was walking all day, and barely eating. It could finally be the day.

I ate what I usually did, brought some food along, and did exactly what I expected to. I find the whole experience of pride was diminished by the disorder. I found myself thinking so much more about weight and all the bullshit instead of the experience with other folks. I was wasting valuable time on such a bullshit idea of losing weight, but it's part of the disorder.

Lost nothing from that day. I found myself still stuck, and it seemed nothing at all was working.

So I start to play with diets. I started to play with the concept of eating far less for a day or two, or eating only oatmeal for a day.

This started an odd phase that I call the "wtf phase" this was when the true nature of the illness began to set in. I started with this weird idea to eat only oats for a day. It would work, obviously, totally.

False.

I attempted it on days where I didn't have aerial, as I needed "energy" for class and rehearsals (as if I was even eating enough at all). I would eat a bowl of oats for 160 in the morning, and again for lunch, but then at my so-called "dinner" I found I would always want other stuff, as the oats barely gave me anything. I needed the vitamins and anything I could get from all the vegetables I was eating. I was a volume eater at this point in time. I ate a bunch of low-calorie things instead of a single higher-calorie food. It also created the illusion of fullness in my stomach and kept my bowels regular (we'll get to the nitty gritty of that bullshit soon).

It seemed they all failed, and I would eat two bowls of oatmeal and some other veggies for a grand total of 800 calories a day instead of 900.

Still nothing was breaking. I kept working out every night, I ate so little, and yet I was still the same damn weight of 112.4.

The day I first started buying my own groceries was another day of freedom. I went after a session of aerial and went to a Kroger in the downtown area of my town. I bought 20$ worth of veggies, oatmeal, rice cakes, and some other shit. It was literally screaming "anorexia" as I bought it, and the cashier gave me funny looks, as I still didn't know the self-checkout machines yet.

Then I got home, and it seemed I was just starving. I was so hungry. Pop-Con was on the weekend, and I needed to lose before then. I had to look great in Anakin, and my face was just too fat.

I made a bowl of fruit. Pineapple, cantaloupe, and grapes.

Then another, and another, and another.