OBESITY AND ME

i'm fascinated by obesity and compulsive eating. Why not, it's my story

although i spent years as an anorexic and bulimic, it's obesity and compulsive eating that feel like "home" to me. that's what i am -- a compulsive eater, hwo sometimes masqueraded as anorexic

food was my world. sophomore year of college, i gained 70 pounds in six months. i couldn't sleep, i couldn't breathe, i wouldn't do anything but eat. yet, for all the pain -- emotional and physical, i kept eating. and eating. eating.......

when i was obese, i was miserable -- emotionally demoralized and physically uncomfortable most of the time.

emotional pain -- the terror that i couldn't, wouldn't stop eating, the shame that i'd grown 12 sizes in six months, the certainty that i'd never be anything to anyone.

physically, i hurt. my thighs chafed daily, my bra strap left deep angry marks on my still narrow shoulders, my belly rolls folded and folded, making it uncomfortable to sit.

and still, i ate.

in the years i was starving, all i thought about was food. i made long, endless lists of all the food i would eat if i wouldn't gain weight. it was huge amounts of high calorie mixtures -- pancakes drenched in butter and syrup with bacon and eggs, pecan pie with wet walnuts, ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream,

with bulimia, i ate all those foods and so many more and then purged, starved and binged again trying to fill the bottomless pit that was my soul.

if weight gain were not an option, i would have eaten constantly all day without breaks.  when asked, hypothetically, what i would do if i found out i had only hours to live, i wanted to pull my car into Applegate's Dairy in Montclair, NJ and eat ice cream until the end.

such a sad life, limited to food