Help.
I have got disordered eating.
I think it's because I grew up being regularly told by my mum and dad (who were divorced so I got it whilst at my mum's, then again when I went to stay at my dad's) that I was fat. I was taken to a chemist at 12 and made to stand on the scales (they had old fashioned weighing scales for anyone to use) and had my weight read out loud and then derided for it by my dad in public and was then told he was ashamed of me on the walk home. My mum would half starve me and I sat with 2 slices of wholemeal bread with no butter or spread filled with dry marmite and alfalfa sprouts throughout my entire school packed lunch years, with nothing else whatsoever to eat in my packed lunch and a bottle of water to drink, whilst friends ate ham & cheese & mayonnaise baps and crisps and yogurts and club chocolate bars and juice cartons for their packed lunch. Then I'd get home starving and be told to wait till dinner time, never got an after school snack, then at evening meal I'd be served vegetable stew. Nothing else. No pudding. I was told this was because I was fat. I'd then regularly be sent to stay with my grandparents by myself for 2 days because my mother 'needed a break' from looking after me, and they'd offer me trifle for pudding, cream cakes for afternoon tea, roast dinners, biscuits with a juice drink for 'elevenses', jam on toast for breakfast, all the things I was never ever allowed at home. Then I'd return home after 2 days and my mum would shout at me for "getting bloody fat again" over 2 days at my grandparents.
One time when she shouted this at me when I was 13, I said "At least they give me nice food to eat" because I was still being half starved at home, and I got sent to bed early for speaking back and then got woken up at 1am with my mother bursting into my room and pulling all my clothes out of my wardrobe and chest of drawers and throwing them wildly all over my bedroom floor whilst screaming at me to get out, move out, take all my things and go and live with my grandparents permanently if I loved it there so much, she was screaming at me and trashing my bedroom. I had to get up and go to school the next morning and I think it was the day after that that I stopped eating meals for about 8 years. I became very thin with barely enough energy to do anything energetic but was praised constantly by friends for how amazing I looked whilst so thin. Nobody knew I'd stopped eating due to trauma.
I look back at photos of me in childhood and I never was fat. I look in disbelief and think whatever were my parents ever telling me I was fat for? I was never fat.
I got train track braces on my teeth at 13 and they were so painful I cried and couldn't chew food, I could only drink through straws. Looking back I remember the Orthodontist tightening the braces tighter and tighter until I was in too much pain then we went home with me in agony. When I would cry in pain and couldn't bite or chew food, I remember my mother saying it was good because it would stop me being so fat. The internalised shame I felt at that comment was painful beyond words. But I've got a photo of me with those braces (that an aunt took) and I was thin. I was tall, thin and had long limbs. I was so pretty - I can't believe how pretty I was in that photo; I remember the photo being taken and feeling awkward because I thought it would show how fat and ugly I was just like my parents always told me. But only as an adult can I now look back and see I looked nothing like how I felt I looked.
When I was 16 and got a boyfriend, my mother stood behind me staring me up and down and said "Your boyfriend must have a thing for big women." And how did I look at the time? I was model thin. And I was absolutely bloody beautiful at 16 when I look at pictures that old friends have of me, though I felt I looked hideously ugly, and I know we should never say about ourselves that we are good looking but I feel it's ok for me to look back and say it about how I was when I was 16 at a time when I was repeatedly being told I was fat yet I wasn't. I was never, ever told I was beautiful or pretty, or looked nice. I was only ever told the opposite. So much emphasis was placed on how I looked all through my life but all of it was negative and critical (and false).
In my 20s I discovered independence and the distance away from my parents allowed me to start cooking nice food for myself and I gained weight. This led to years of negative comments about my weight from my mother. That led to a lifetime of disordered eating.
And here I am now at 45.
2.5 stone overweight.
Decided to go on a diet last week. Tried hard. Then yesterday something odd that my mother did yesterday triggered an emotional response in me, I could feel my emotions collapsing over night, and I got up this morning and ate 4 thick slices of bread each slice covered with butter, peanut butter and jam, all spread thickly on to each slice, 1 giant chocolate cookie, and 3 giant choc chip cookie. All in one go at 9am. Basically I've eaten a whole day's worth of calories before 10am. And now the shame has kicked in. The self loathing. The internal berating. My mother in my head saying see I told you you'll get fat if you eat.
So what do I do now?
Do I carry on with eating lunch and dinner today meaning I will eat way in excess of my total calorie intake for the day, or do I now starve myself for the rest of the day in order to avoid excess calories but knowing that will trigger am emotional response to my history of being half starved by my mother all my childhood and adolescence and then starving my own self for years?
Both options are making me want to cry. But I'm at home with my 2 wonderful and joyous DC and I just want to have a lovely, happy summers' day with them.