Those Evil Calories

I read an article on MSN today about how there are all these pro-ana sites on the internet (pro-ana means pro-anorexia) that are basically encouraging young women to become anorexic.

Just a little back story on me - I was pretty sick when I was in my senior year of high school and my first year of college. At 6 ft I was all the way down to 120 pounds. It started in my senior year. I'll never forget mornings in drill team when we got weighed in front of the whole team. I am sure I have exaggerated it in my mind, but I remember being the heaviest person on the team every time. It never occured to me that I was at least 6 inches taller than almost everyone. All that mattered was that I was the heaviest.

My "issues" with food continued all through the summer and right into college. I didn't gain the freshman 15 - I lost. I was out of the house with no one to notice whether I ate or not. I used to eat nothing all day and then go down to the football field and run around the stadium for hours. Eventually, people noticed the really low body weight. I will never forget sitting in the kitchen with my Mom and the two of us had a battle of wills over a plate of mashed potatoes. She refused to let me up from the table until I ate a bite. I haven't been skinny since.

Anyway, after reading the article I took to the net and looked at a bunch of the sites they talked about. That led me to myspace and all of the pro-ana sites on here. I had a bizarre response to what I read.

On one hand I was saddened by what some of these people were saying. Their hatred of their bodies and anger toward food. They were putting quotes on their pages that talked about "food is the enemy" and "beautiful doesn't equal food" and a lot of other stuff. They encouraged each other to fast longer and eat fewer calories and congratulated each other on getting under 100 pounds. The strangest part is that every one of them seemed to know that they were slowly starving themselves to death.

On the other hand I was compelled. I wanted to be a member of the club again. I wanted to be able to share my tips and tricks and tell them all about how to eat 200 calories over the course of a day so that you don't get dizzy and faint. I wanted to share my stories about going 5 days on nothing but water and tic-tacs. I found myself sitting in my chair lamenting my lack of control over food. How did I let it win?

What a wierd place to be. I can't help but wonder what this means for me. I do know one thing though...food isn't going to win anymore. I am not going to be fat anymore. This is the end of that road and that's a promise. Right now, at this exact moment, all I can think of is that not so very long ago I had the exact same height, weight and measurements as Elle McPherson. Now I have the same measurements as a refrigerator.