With the start of a new year often comes resolutions. The emphasis tends to be on weight loss or “getting fit” and products and programs encouraging these goals are everywhere. Gyms tend to have specials, diet foods are on sale, Weight Watchers undoubtedly has some new offer and some program tweaks to entice you into trying it (often for a second or third time). Commercials on the radio talk about how right now we might be hiding under winter clothes, but May - and bathing suit/shorts season - is only four short months from now.

It’s enough to nauseate me. It’s also enough to test even the will of the most resolved NOT to diet again, or at least to question our choices to love, accept and respect our bodies as they are.

We all have our moments of self-doubt. We see a picture and think we look fatter. We’re hearing tales of newly committed dieters and their “incredible” successes on (insert fad diet of the moment). Many of us have been that person at some point in our lives. The one who decides “this is the year. This is when I lose the weight.”

Most of us failed to accomplish that goal, and even the ones who did frequently find that the next year is the one where they gain that weight (and oftentimes more) back. That is a familiar feeling of failure. A feeling of sinking so low you want to cry. You had tasted success. How could you have let it slip away?

Intuitive Eating reminds us that we are not the failures. Diets are. If diets worked long term, the industry pay check wouldn’t be in the area of $50 billion dollars a year. Diets are designed to seduce you. You believe that if you just try harder or eat less or eat some bizarre combination of foods, you will lose weight. Initially, most do. The reality of eating in such a controlled way, combined with the body’s natural desire to self-regulate, however, is often a harsh wake up call.

I am a good example of this. I have (proudly) not gotten on a scale since 2007. I do not know what I weigh, nor do I (for the most part) care. It would be lovely to be a smaller size. I am not willing, however, to sign my soul away to try to get there - and that’s what dieting felt like for me. It was an all or nothing game. I either was “good” or “bad.” I am far, far happier being whatever number on the scale I am than I was fighting against that scale weekly. I am far happier in accepting who I am and what I look like than I was in constantly battling to be someone else.

Still, there are times when I get frustrated. I caught a glimpse of myself in an unattractive pose recently and thought, geesh, I’m SO fat. I have these moments far less frequently than I did while dieting (even when I was actively succeeding to lose weight). I’m human, though, and still susceptible to those thoughts from time to time.

I have been dealing with a lot of issues related to my stomach for some weeks now. Gastrointestinal issues are often bedfellows with fibromyalgia, so this isn’t shocking. That said, the problems have worsened in recent weeks, and it’s incredibly frustrating. I never know what might cause nausea or horrid reflux. The result of these issues is that I’ve been eating far less because I often can’t decide what will make me feel better or worse. I’ve been hungry, but sometimes just unable to deal with that hunger because what I can eat I don’t happen to have, or because there’s nothing I can think of to eat that won’t make me feel worse.

In the past, I’d probably have taken advantage of this situation to try to milk it for weight loss. I am very glad, however, that my mind no longer automatically goes there. Why? Well, amongst the obvious reasons there is the bitter reality of I haven’t lost an ounce. In fact, I’ve probably gained a few pounds. My engagement ring is too snug to wear, which is the only barometer for my weight that I have since I will not get on a scale. So, this would be incredibly frustrating - and undoubtedly defeating - if I were dieting.

But I’m not dieting, and while the irony of eating less and weighing more is not lost on me, and while not being able to wear my ring is frustrating, I’m not beating myself up. I would be, though, if I were still trying to do Weight Watchers or something akin to that. I would be furious and angry and I’d be calling myself horrible names in my head. Instead, I’m mildly irritated and wistful for the point at which my body decides to behave more normally again and I can wear my ring. Probably when I can start eating more, that will happen.

Whether you’re in ED recovery or you are a former chronic dieter, I hope the New Year’s fuss over looks hasn’t challenged you or weakened your resolve to live a healthier lifestyle - one without recrimination and repeated disappointment. One without the danger an eating disorder brings.

xoxo,

Juliet

PS. I have an article from a guest blogger that I will be posting in the next day or two, so keep an eye out for that. Happy (belated) 2010!

Now, if you asked her, she’d tell you that she went out of her way to make sure I had special “treats,” often that she herself made. Things like sugar free pudding or fruit salads. The problem is that it was always presented to me in such a way that I was made to feel inferior and left out. I wasn’t “normal” like everyone else. I couldn’t be trusted with anything. I was shamed into eating alone, and by the time I was a teenager, I was what was then called a non-purging bulimic (though only because my attempts to make myself throw up repeatedly failed).

A month before this fateful conversation with my husband, I had begun seeing a nutritionist. She gave me another thinly disguuised diet to try. I was disgusted. I felt broken. I’d dieted for years, and the roller coaster of ups and downs was getting to be a major problem. I was trapped in a never-ending cycle of failure/success/failure. I’d gain, lose, gain. I wound up heavier each time I dieted, and I was frustrated beyond expression.

When I found Bonnie, a therapist who specialized in eating disorders, I was skeptical at best. I was waiting for her to hand me the next not-a-diet diet and start asking me how much I weighed each week. Imagine my surprise when she instead handed me a book called Intuitive Eating. Not only would she not ask my weight, she discouraged me from finding it out.

The Principles of IE can be read here. The bare bones basic gist of it, however, is simple. Don’t obsess over food. It’s fuel. It’s fun. It is meant to be enjoyed. It should not equate torturous rituals of weighing or counting Points (ala Weight Watchers). It is far more simple than you can possibly imagine, and yet, because of our twisted culutral obsession with thinness and fat phobia, it is almost impossible for most to follow.

I was ready for it, though. I had learned that dieting was emotionally and physically damaging for me. I wound up heavier and more sure I had ‘failed’ with each passing attempt.

Well, it’s been two years. In that time, I have struggled with and embraced the concept of IE. I am no longer worried about a number on the scale. I have chosen to accept the body I have, to love the body I have and to let go of insane fantasies regarding bikini bathing suits at high school reunions. I’ve come to accept that with my disordered thought processes, I would undoubtedly struggle with body image regardless of what the scale said. I have addressed my disordered eating behaviors and thoughts as opposed to worrying about how many stars I’ve got on my Weight Watchers bookmark.

The result? I have never been happier with my body. I have never been less obssessed or concerned with food. In the two years since I gave up dieting, I have essentially maintained my weight. Early on, there was (and often is) some weight gain. I know this not because of a scale, but because my wedding rings didn’t fit for a few months, or because the seatbelt fit a bit more snugly. After about six months, though, the rings fit again. The seatbelt felt less snug.

I still wear the same clothes I wore two years ago. I have probably maintained this weight within ten or fifteen pounds in either direction the entire two years. I don’t know what that weight is. I am lucky enough to have a primary care doctor who supports what I am doing, who recognizes that not every pain in the human body can be attributed to being fat (love the doctor who told my girlfriend she had carpal tunnel syndrome because she was fat!!!). My doctor also recognizes that the mental health benefits of not obsessing over dieting are enormous to me, and that the chronic yo-yo dieting I did was unhealthy.

I still have bad days. I still, sometimes, struggle with my weight… with not feeling pretty enough because of it. But these thoughts are fleeting where once they were constant. I am able to remind myself that being pretty doesn’t make one happy or emotionally healthy… and that being thin doesn’t necessarily lead to health, either. Especially if unhealthy means are used to achieve the so-called-ideal results on the BMI charts.

Where food is concerned, I eat what I want when I want it. I do not check food labels. I don’t obsess over whether or not I should eat a cream puff. If something tastes bad, I don’t eat it… if something tastes good, I usually eat until I am comfortably full. I almost never cross the line from full into stuffed, and the rare times that I do, I am usually aware that it is happening, and it’s a choice I have made for any number of reasons (something at a fancy dinner tastes really good and I decide I want a bite more, or I am actually giving in and emotionally eating - which is rare, but still happens once in a while).

Food is not a friend or an enemy now. It is something I enjoy very much when I need and/or want it, and something I walk away from if I am full or don’t like it. I rarely choose to eat emotionally because food is not the panacea it once was. I now face my problems head on and try to find other means with which to solve them. Food never solved a problem in my life. It may have allowed me to avoid it… and as Bonnie used to tell me, after years of using food in that manner, there are times when it’s okay to give in and do so. There are times when you need to allow yourself to shut off… but in allowing that, the “reward” of distraction is so insignificant that it is rarely worth that awful, overstuffed, my-stomach-hurts-from-eating-so much-feeling.

After two years of IE, I am happier than I have ever been with how I handle what I eat. I am more comfortable in my own skin than I’ve ever been, including that brief moment in time when my aunt managed to diet me down to my so-called healthy weight (and I thought I was fat). I am far more emotionally stable because I’ve developed skills to cope with my issues, whereas before I used food to avoid facing them.

Am I perfect? Hell, no. Do I falter some days? Sure. But overall I have a relationship with food that is far, far healthier than I ever dared dream it could become. Food is not my foe, nor my ally. It’s what fuels my body. It is social and sensual and enjoyable, but it is not something I need to be happy, social or sensual. It is simply food. It tastes good or bad. I eat it or I don’t… and no one tsk-tsks because I’m up a pound one week, and no one cheers and gives me an inflated ego because I happened to lose a pound another week. My weight is just a number on the scale that I refuse to consider or worry about, and I can’t even begin to describe the freedom I feel because of this.

xoxo,

Juliet

This is the hardest principle, in many respects, because it is so deeply ingrained in our psyche that we should “diet,” that it is hard to let go of the behaviors that come with years of dieting, or being forced by (usually) well-meaning family members (as a child, I mean) to diet.

When one considers that we spend nearly $50 billion a year on diets and dieting products, it’s foolish to not acknowledge that diets want you to fail. If you succeed, you stop needing their products. Unless, of course, it’s one of those diets that you basically can never go off of, or you gain back every hard earned ounce. Then you’re in their pockets, and they could care less if you fail or succeed - either way, you’ll need the snake oil they’re offering you.

I spent over 20 years dieting. Either by my choice, or by the choice of my evil aunt or some other family member. I spent 20 years alternating between the elation of losing weight or the crushing sense of failure when another diet ended with my going off the plan and gaining back all the weight… and then some. For 20 years, I was abusing my emotional health, and I turned an already disordered way of thinking about food into a full-blown eating disorder in the process. I had no idea what I was doing to myself. I had yet to realize that I wasn’t the failure. The failure was in the dieting mentality. I had adopted a thought process that was assured to fail me every time.

I was so ready for IE when I found it. I had already learned that diets were not the answer. I wanted something that was crazy… but had NO clue that simply NOT dieting was an option. When I met the therapist who introduced me to IE, I fully expected her thoughts and ideas on eating and eating disorders to translate into another diet in masquerade. I was so wrong. From the minute I opened the book and began to read, I knew that IE was different. I knew it was what I wanted.

So, for me, this first principle was fairly easy. I’d all but adopted it before even finding IE. However, the thought processes I’d come to know over 23 years of dieting didn’t just go away, so I did find my battles. The idea that some foods are “good” and others “bad,” is an example of something I had to conquer. Now I see food as what it is. Some is more nutritious… but that’s just science, not a moral judgment of what I eat.

Some people don’t adapt as readily. While I honestly think that IE *could* work for anyone (as it works for us all as infants), I also think there are some people who, for whatever reasons, won’t be able to let go of the dieting mentality. I don’t say this to judge. I state this simply as a fact. There may be some people who pick up IE and can’t do it and then years later, find their way back to it and are successful. It’s NOT easy to deprogram your mind from years of “thinner is better,” especially when the media insists on propagating so many unfounded myths on how “bad” is to be fat, and how “good” it is to be thin. For more on that, I highly recommend you check out this blog. Sandy Szwarc, who writes that blog, is a nurse and has a very interesting and unusual take on things… she looks for actual answers, instead of blindly believing what doctors and the media try to say is true. I am absolutely sure that if I had found IE before moving to Colorado (while still under the heavy influence of looks are everything in Manhattan), that I couldn’t have accepted it. The idea of not thinking about losing weight would’ve been inconceivable to me. So I know there are mindsets for which it is just not an option. That’s fine. You have to do what works for you… and you have to find your own way to that, whatever it might be.

The bottom line is, if you’ve found my blog because you’re curious about intuitive eating, you need to ask yourself this question: Am I ready to let go of the concept that I need to diet because I need to lose weight to look better and/or to be healthier? If your answer is no, then this probably isn’t the right time for you to try IE. If your answer is maybe, go for it… you might be surprised by what you learn. Finally, if your answer is yes, that’s wonderful - just don’t be discouraged when you discover that letting go of the mindset isn’t always as easy as saying to yourself, “I don’t want to diet again.” That’s the critical first step, absolutely… but it’s only the initial part of the first, all important principal of IE.

xoxo,
Juliet

PS. I promised this series a while ago. A heated debate about IE with our girlfriend today sparked my writing this first in the ten part series. It’s a way for me to remind myself of why this works for me, and why it’s important to me.

Ready

I am ready to let go
To give up on the dream
Of holding our newborn son or daughter
I no longer imagine her face
Would his son have his eyes and my hair?
I don’t dream of these things…
Anymore

I want to move on
To different, if not better, dreams
But memories rush in
Painful splashes of red
And tell me I’m not really a woman,
Just a facsimile of one

My hell is this excruciating reminder
Of my failure to give him both of us
My soul as torn to shreds as my insides,
I’m barren like the trees of winter
My mind as twisted as their stark, black limbs

My heart repeatedly crushed,
Just as it beats again
The healing process endless
The pain a relentless rush of red

In January, my husband and I began to play Second Life. It’s a virtual world, for those who don’t know.

In February, we met this girl… we soon developed feelings for her.

In April, we met her in real life. She’s been to our house twice now and is eventually moving in with us.

We’re redefining love.

We never would’ve looked for this, and never could’ve imagined we’d want it. If you’d told us this in January, we’d have laughed our asses off.

But it’s real, and should we walk away just because it defies convention?

It’s complicated and yet so effortless. We all just fit together.

So… that’s what has kept me busy these past few months. It’s a good busy, at least.

xoxo,

Juliet

Taken from the website that supports the book Intuitive Eating.

10 Principles of Intuitive Eating

1. Reject the Diet Mentality Throw out the diet books and magazine articles that offer you false hope of losing weight quickly, easily, and permanently. Get angry at the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight. If you allow even one small hope to linger that a new and better diet might be lurking around the corner, it will prevent you from being free to rediscover Intuitive Eating.

2. Honor Your Hunger Keep your body biologically fed with adequate energy and carbohydrates. Otherwise you can trigger a primal drive to overeat. Once you reach the moment of excessive hunger, all intentions of moderate, conscious eating are fleeting and irrelevant. Learning to honor this first biological signal sets the stage for re-building trust with yourself and food.

3. Make Peace with Food Call a truce, stop the food fight! Give yourself unconditional permission to eat. If you tell yourself that you can’t or shouldn’t have a particular food, it can lead to intense feelings of deprivation that build into uncontrollable cravings and, often, bingeing When you finally “give-in” to your forbidden food, eating will be experienced with such intensity, it usually results in Last Supper overeating, and overwhelming guilt.

4. Challenge the Food Police .Scream a loud “NO” to thoughts in your head that declare you’re “good” for eating under 1000 calories or “bad” because you ate a piece of chocolate cake. The Food Police monitor the unreasonable rules that dieting has created . The police station is housed deep in your psyche, and its loud speaker shouts negative barbs, hopeless phrases, and guilt-provoking indictments. Chasing the Food Police away is a critical step in returning to Intuitive Eating.

5. Respect Your Fullness Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or food and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what is your current fullness level?

6. Discover the Satisfaction Factor The Japanese have the wisdom to promote pleasure as one of their goals of healthy living In our fury to be thin and healthy, we often overlook one of the most basic gifts of existence–the pleasure and satisfaction that can be found in the eating experience. When you eat what you really want, in an environment that is inviting and conducive, the pleasure you derive will be a powerful force in helping you feel satisfied and content. By providing this experience for yourself, you will find that it takes much less food to decide you’ve had “enough”.

7. Honor Your Feelings Without Using Food Find ways to comfort , nurture, distract, and resolve your issues without using food. Anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger are emotions we all experience throughout life. Each has its own trigger, and each has its own appeasement. Food won’t fix any of these feelings. It may comfort for the short term, distract from the pain, or even numb you into a food hangover. But food won’t solve the problem. If anything, eating for an emotional hunger will only make you feel worse in the long run. You’ll ultimately have to deal with the source of the emotion, as well as the discomfort of overeating.

8. Respect Your Body Accept your genetic blueprint. Just as a person with a shoe size of eight would not expect to realistically squeeze into a size six, it is equally as futile (and uncomfortable) to have the same expectation with body size. But mostly, respect your body, so you can feel better about who you are. It’s hard to reject the diet mentality if you are unrealistic and overly critical about your body shape.

9. Exercise–Feel the Difference Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie burning effect of exercise. If you focus on how you feel from working out, such as energized, it can make the difference between rolling out of bed for a brisk morning walk or hitting the snooze alarm. If when you wake up, your only goal is to lose weight, it’s usually not a motivating factor in that moment of time.

10 Honor Your Health–Gentle Nutrition Make food choices that honor your health and tastebuds while making you feel well. Remember that you don’t have to eat a perfect diet to be healthy. You will not suddenly get a nutrient deficiency or gain weight from one snack, one meal, or one day of eating. It’s what you eat consistently over time that matters, progress not perfection is what counts.

xoxo,
Juliet

Body Acceptance in the Office

Most Americans spend the majority of their day sitting at a desk or in front of a computer. That’s roughly 8 hours a day, 4 hours a week spent sitting. It goes without saying that it is important to make sure you are seated properly throughout the day to help avoid back pain. Nothing makes a job harder than attempting to do it while you are uncomfortable or in constant pain. This can lead to stress and stress can lead to a host of other problems.

It is for this reason that it is important that you consider ergonomics when you choose an office chair. Ergonomics is essentially the science of comfort. You want your work station to be ergonomic in order to help banish back pain, stress, and increase your overall physical well being. Things like chronic back pain, neck pain, and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome can all be avoided if you are working in an environment that is ergonomically sound. This entails sitting up straight, with your feet flat on the ground and your elbows resting comfortably at your side. Perhaps the most important factor in achieving ergonomic nirvana is your chair itself.

There are many office chairs on the market today that have been specially designed with ergonomic specifications in mind. Options like lumbar support and adjustable arms help make sitting properly easier. However, as everyone knows people come in a variety of shapes and sizes. This means that a chair that may be considered ergonomic for one person may not necessarily be right for another.
People with larger frames will require a chair that is taller and wider to help give them the proper support. Luckily, many chair manufacturers have taken this fact into account and have designed models that are specifically designed for the big and tall. These chairs help make ergonomics possible for people that can rarely find comfort within the confines of a basic office chair.

There is no reason for you to be forced to buy your own office chair at your place of work. Consider asking your employers if they will supply you with a chair that can better support your specific body type. If it is causing you pain, then the situation is serious and should be dealt with as such. Most employers would most likely gladly pay the extra money for a new chair to help avoid having to pay your chiropractor bills later.

However, right here and right now I will say it… I’m depressed.

It’s not as if I haven’t battled this ugly monster before. I experienced severe depression twice in my life. Once when was between fourteen and fifteen, and then again my freshman year of college when I was between eighteen and nineteen. While I’m human and have certainly felt depressed for a few hours or days at many times in my life, that is NOT the same as being in a severe depression.

Rationally, I understand that there are many things in my life right now, many challenges before us, that would cause any person to struggle to cope. Here’s just a short list:

1) My husband has MS and I worry about him because of it
2) I have fibromyalgia and live in chronic pain
3)I had my period for about seven week with terrible cramps and think I have endometriosis
4) Having my period is a slap in the face of my infertility issues
5) I’ve come to realize that it’s better we didn’t have kids because of our health issues
6) I hate knowing I’ll never hold a child created by us in my arms
7) My therapist essentially abandoned me, and she and I really clicked
8 ) My father-in-law, a wonderful man, died recently
9) My baby sister has been struggling and is now back in the hospital for depression and cutting
10) My brother’s in jail, and while I think it serves him right, he’s facing 18 years and it’s deeply upsetting for Missy and my dad, who will probably not see him outside of a jail cell again in his life
11) My mother’s a bitch who dropped 30 grand on his criminal case, but was never planning to pay for Missy to go to college
12) The economy has definitely impacted us

And I could go on and on…

So I look at this list, and realize… well, duh, sweetie… of course you’re depressed. If any of my friends had just one of these challenges on her list and was depressed, I’d tell her how understandable that is, and do all I could to support her through the difficulty. So, why am I so hard on myself???

I’ve made an appointment to see my doctor, and will have my medication tweaked. I take Lexapro, mostly for anxiety… but it IS an antidepressant, so hopefully if the dosage is raised, I’ll feel somewhat better (just as an aside, I have no issues accepting my anxiety problems… perhaps because I’ve been dealing with them for about as long as I can remember and that makes it just a part of who I am?).

The real frustration for me is how little of what I listed up there I can control, and how it impacts things I can control (like school, which I’ve been struggling with). I start to feel like, well, I can’t change any of it, so I just have to suck it up… but that hasn’t been easy to do, and there’s an awful lot up there to suck up.

Anyway, this is why I haven’t been posting much lately. My husband and I have spent a lot of time playing in SecondLife together… it’s an escape we desperately need right now, and since he’s with me there, we have a lot of fun. It gives me a chance to do things I can’t do in real life… like not have pain or seven week long periods. Like have a baby. It sounds silly, but it helps… and my doctor supported this for my husband, so I know she will for me, too.

I’m going to be taking on a neat little partnership of sorts here soon. I’m excited about it because I think it has the potential to really help some of my readers be more comfortable in their home and work lives.

More soon…

xoxo,
Juliet

Imagine being able to eat virtually whatever you want while losing massive amounts of weight, or maintaining an extremely svelte figure. This is a dream many have had, and an opportunity few would turn down. It would be wonderful… but nothing like this can exist without dangerous risks. This is the story of a condition that allows for that “magical combination,” but at a deadly price.

In Type I diabetes, one of the first clues the condition exists is often dramatic weight loss, or an inability to gain weight. Since this condition often starts in childhood, this is a critical period in terms of learning how to have a healthy relationship with the body and the food that fuels the body. Diabetes takes something most of us take for granted as children - eating without much thought beyond “I’m hungry” and “I like this” - and makes it extremely complicated. Food becomes almost like a prison. It’s regimented, organized, structured… and there are major penalties for breaking the rules.

When you add insulin injections to the mix, the situation becomes even more challenging. Suddenly, the body holds on to weight in a way it previously couldn’t and didn’t. This fabulous article details the experiences of diabetics who have struggled with a relatively unknown eating disorder that grew out of a childhood health crisis: Diabulimia.

In diabulimia, the diabetic learns that withholding insulin results in weight loss. Some learn from other diabetics, or websites. Some learn by accident. Regardless, the lesson is a dangerous one, “if I starve my body of insulin, I can eat and lose weight.”

The risks are obvious. Without insulin, the body begins to rapidly deteriorate. Many diabulimics learn to withhold their life saving medications just long enough to avoid a diabetic coma. This, from the article mentioned above, describes that experience.

God, she needed air. Erin Williams lay in bed, her lungs aching with each long, excruciating gasp, and still she couldn’t get enough. Her heart was racing, pounding against her small chest. And she was so thirsty. She’d been up only an hour before to greedily gulp down water before falling back into bed and succumbing to a restless, uneasy sleep. Now she was awake again, her bladder unbearably swollen. Williams pulled herself from the bed, so dizzy she could hardly stand.

She reached in the dark for her purse, which held the drug she so desperately needed—insulin. She rummaged through her makeup and car keys, fumbling until her fingers encircled one of the cool glass vials. Merely looking at the bottle filled her with dread, knowing it held the medicine that had become so hated. She drew back the syringe, her shaky hands measuring out just enough to pull her back from the edge of a diabetic coma. Never a full dose, never enough to feel well…

Without proper treatment and insulin dosing, diabetics are at risk for heart conditions, damaged kidneys and visual problems… and ultimately, death. Sadly, this was the ultimate price paid by Matthew, my friend Melanie’s 38 year-old brother. He died just a few short weeks ago, after falling into a diabetic coma and going into cardiac arrest. His heart was strong, and ultimately revived… but the lack of oxygen cause irreparable brain damage. Matthew was gone, and after deliberation and grief, the family made the painful decision to remove life support and donate Matt’s organs.

At the time, they didn’t know yet that Matt had diabulimia. What they did know, was that his Type 1 diabetes had been recently raging out of control. He’d been in the ICU several times in the period of about seven months. He lived alone, in the city, while his wife lived in the home they shared in a rural part of Illinois. It was unconventional, but this was worked for them. Perhaps part of why it worked for Matt was that it gave him privacy his disorder craved. We will never know for sure.

When his wife went through his computer, she discovered dozens of bookmarks linking to sites about diabulimia… and suddenly, the mystery of his relatively dramatic weight loss and frequent visits to the hospital was solved.

Lanie is beside herself. She knows eating disorders all too well, having struggled with one of her own. I know she feels like she should’ve known, somehow. The reality is, though, that even if she had known, Matt might have fooled her into thinking he was fine. As is the case with bulimia and anorexia, diabulimia has its secret tricks to fool those who care. The article mentions one of the women featured dosing her glucose testing strips with alcohol to falsely lower her blood sugar by hundreds of points. Since diabulimics eat, and often have hearty appetites but do not (generally) purge their food, it’s hard to blame the more known, traditional eating disoders… and most people don’t know about diabulimia.

I was one of those people myself, until last Friday when Lanie told me about Matt. I have since discovered several groups to raise awareness on facebook, and have joined those groups. Those of you who have facebook, please consider doing the same thing.

If you know someone with Type I diabetes, and his or her behavior suddenly becomes odd, or they are losing a lot of weight, try to ask questions. Try to raise awareness. Talk to friends or family members who can help.

I know that Lanie loved her brother dearly, despite the expected sibling differences they struggled through. Her mother is distraught over having lost a child, something no parent should ever live through. My gift to Lanie and her mother is this blog post… a chance for Matt’s struggle to turn into a legacy that can help others get the help they desperately need. It’s such a small gesture in the face of so much anguish, but it is the most I can do.

Please, pass along the link to this post to anyone who might know anybody that needs help with this frightening condition. Those of you who blog about ED, if you feel it is appropriate, please link to this post as a way to help raise awareness.

Let’s help Matt’s death not be in vain, and pass along some sense of peace to his grieving family in the process.

xoxo,
Juliet

My heart breaks for this poor girl. First of all, she was 165 pounds. I expected her to be far heavier, based on how the story opens (not that it would’ve been acceptable at any weight, but I just didn’t expect the girl to weigh under 200). Second, I can relate, having been locked out of the fridge and cabinets (literally - the padlocked them) when I was about 13. It was an awful feeling. To add abuse and being chained to the bed on top of that, I can’t even imagine.

The thing that really kills me is that he says he did it for her own good and because she was sneaking food. He knows this because he found corn and pea containers in her room. So, this poor girl was chained to her bed and hit with a stick because she ate VEGETABLES!

This makes me sick. I can’t imagine it’s the first time a child has been abused by a parent because of being too fat, and I’m sure it’s not the last time it will happen. This man should be locked up for a very, very long time.

xoxo,
Juliet