A Memoir to the Scale

 Hello, my name is Katherine.  Katherine, Katie, Kate, Kat and I have an eating disorder.  Several of them.  One to go along with each of my names.  I write to share with you my story.  Which is all it is, just another story; my story.  The story I tell of my past.  I share not because I have all of the answers, but because along the way I have found some tools to help quell the beast; the raging monster that resides within.  At times it reared its ugly head and ate its way thru the King Buffet placing fear in bus boys and linebackers alike.  Other times it wrapped its claws around portion control making the diet of a two week starved runway model look like that of a glutton. 

 I have vehemently hated food and I have fervently loved it.  I would yearn for my favorite indulgences, dream of delectable delicacies, and lust over forbidden fruits.  This secret and passionate affair brought with it a torrid darkness that threatened to engulf my existence.  Food became my friend, my fuel, my addiction, and my enemy.  I used it for pleasure, to entertain my loneliness, excite my boredom, stuff down my anger, punish my bad side, and control my wild child.  It is how I soothed myself, loved myself and numbed myself in order to check out from the tumultuous throws of my world.  When life threatened to consume me, I consumed food. 

 My little sister always said that everyone has pain.  Some wear their pain on the inside while there are those that wear their pain on the outside for everyone to see.  Looking back on the rollercoaster ride I’ve had with the scale, the starving, the binging, the purging, and the just plain old overeating, it was always a reflection of my inner world.  And the pain… well, I wore it on the outside for everyone to see.

 I was pissed the day I realized that no specific diet, no exact exercise regime, no diet pill, or nutrition guru was going to solve my weight problem or end my issues with food.  I had to trust myself, be my own guru, and that no one, no diet, no thing, could do it for me.  I had to go through the fire and do the work in order to come out the other side.  “Crap,” was all I thought.  “How the hell do I do that?”