By the time I got to high school I had a pretty versed and well established eating disorder tool set that I dabbled in often. Sometimes exacerbating my “symptoms” when things were hard, sometimes relaxing when things were going well, pretty much always tied to my emotions. During high school I stepped up my sports involvement. I played volleyball, became a year round cheerleader, did diving, and played tennis. I adopted a boyfriend cause and kept up a pretty diverse social presence all the while “controlling” my weight with these tactics. At some point during my sophomore year the use of diuretics (Exlax) was added to my my routine as well.
When I say “controlled” my weight, I don’t mean that I was thin or maintaining a healthy BMI. I was still between 20 and 40 lbs over weight, self conscience and struggling with my self image. But I was not at this point, obese. I think much of the reason for that based on the food I was eating was due primarily to the 2 plus hours of sports practice and gym time I was grinding out each day.
For the most part though I was happy and pretty healthy and look back at those days (about 180 lbs on my 5′ 8″ frame as some of the best shape and condition of my life.
Things were not great, but they were stable. However, my eating habits remained poor. Always over eating even though I tried to eat “healthy”. In those days it was before no carb diets really took off. There were low fat and “no sugar” substitutes deeply ingrained in my life and my family had a two batch or roughly 4 dozen a week cookie habit courtesy of my Great Aunt, who lived with us at the time.
“My you are getting fat.” My aunt would say whenever I walked around the corner. And yet, each week a new batch of sugar cookies or peanut butter cookies would appear and then disappear. All told over the time I was in high school despite the sports, my weight rose gradually until by the time I started college in the fall of 2004, I was just topping out at 204 lbs.
Whole 365 