Doctors

Within the last couple weeks, I've been struggling with my body.  It's too big here, too squishy there and all the foods I am eating or drinking are just wrong.  I hate when these times come back because they make me feel as though I've had no progress, though I know that is not true.  So while I've had the thoughts of going back to a certain diet or planning to workout everyday, I've tried pushing through that.  I ate some things yesterday that would never be on that imaginary diet plan I might have started, and I did nothing but take a nice walk instead of going to the gym or doing something harder like a bike workout.  I also thought real hard about where this recent slump has come from.

In another month, I have a doctor's appointment - a follow up to something that's not that big of a deal (not really worth mentioning here - I am fine).  My last visit elicited the question from my doctor "Would you like to be weighed?"  I asked if she needed the number and that if not, I would like to decline.  While she honored my request, she did comment how it's good to record my weight every once in a while.

Now, knowing she is aware of my history with an eating disorder, it might be a good thing to monitor to see if I don't lose.  But I suspect something else might be up...

I won't go into any more personal feelings about my doctor and any suspicions, but I do want to raise the point about weight and health. And charts.  Oh, the charts.

My first experience with a weight chart was when I was about 14 or 15.  I learned what 20 or so pounds my weight needed to be within according to these charts and I obliged.  Furthermore, a family doctor I had as a child supported these charts as the tell-all to health.  At the time, my body was trying to furiously adjust to where it needed to be and according to the charts, I was probably a bit overweight.  Despite being active on sports teams, I started getting a taste of what it was like to both diet and then eat everything in site.  Being a frustrated teenager and dealing with a host of other goodies (feelings!  other stuff!), I was determined to be within the chart weight and if it took not eating to get there, then that was what it was going to be.  Sure enough, that tactic worked to get me within the charts.  At my pre-school year physical, my doctor was delighted I had lost weight but told me to keep going.  She had never asked me how I lost weight or what I was doing to lose weight at 15 when my body was still going through major changes into adulthood.  I wonder what would be different today had the early stages of my eating disorder been caught.

At my lowest weight after the worst relapse two years ago, my body weight was still in the charts.  The charts said I was OK.  Reality?  I was quite literally starving, cold all the time, moody and developing amenorrhea for the second time in my life.  To be quite honest, I felt crazy, and I mean that in mentally clinical terms - I felt like a complete monster.  ED had possessed me again, making me walk around in a heavy glass bubble. 

This information about my own personal body trends, the charts and where my body seems to end up after I go through these recovery periods is a history of only my own.  Personal, unique, mine.  You can't find that on a chart, and chances are your history is not on a chart either.  If that is the case, why are medical professionals so eager to box us in? 

When I did get weighed last January, my doctor told me it was fine because my BMI was in the healthy range.  On a blood work report I received a few months later, my doctor forgot to block out my weight on the paper (as I requested) so I saw my weight, BMI - all the numbers.  And while my BMI may have been healthy, a mere 2-5 pound weight gain will put me into the overweight category and I won't be healthy anymore according to this calculation.  That would worry most people, probably.  For me and others with EDs, it's triggering and the most frightening thing we could ever hear.

So here I sit, a month out from possibly being labeled overweight.  Or being labeled healthy and ok.  Who knows.  And should it matter?  I'm still trying to find my way through recovery.  My body, just like when I was 15 years old, is working on the journey to settling where it needs to be.  Most of all, while I might feel fat or not attractive, I truly do not feel overweight. I do not feel the extra weight I have put on through recovery is detrimental - if nothing else, it is the opposite.  My energy levels are higher when I move my body.  I don't feel exhausted walking up steps, or even taking my bike out for a ride after being sidelined with an injury all winter and spring.  Mentally, I am healthier when I am not occupying my thoughts with losing weight, food or how my body looks.  My health depends on how I feel and a host of other factors, not some chart or misinformed calculation.