Self-Confidence

Before my eating disorder, I had pretty low self-confidence.  Like I've said before, I had zero control over what I ate.  I would eat constantly through out the day, so that I was never actually hungry.  I would eat a ton, feel guilty about what I ate, and then eat some more to temporarilly get the pleasure associated with eating.  Then I would feel even more depressed and guilty.  It was a vicious cycle that I couldn't break.  Whenever I had an event that I wanted to be thin for, I would always not eat dinner the night before nor eat anything the day of.  I assumed that this would make my stomach flat.  Of course what I did not realize then was that my arms, legs, and face were all fat too because of my food intake.  I could never eat at the beach, didn't eat at either of the proms I went to senior year, or picture days.  I began to associate both pleasure and guilt with food and it was a constant battle between those two feelings when I ate.

Since developing my eating disorder I am much more confident.  When I was at my lowest weight (97 pounds) last Halloween weekend, I literally felt on top of the world.  I had eaten particularilly light the few previous days so that I would look extra skinny in my halloween costume (which consisted of a little black dress).  With my heels and extremely skinny body, I felt like a model when my friends and I were taking pictures before we went out.  And what was even greater was that I was able to eat a bunch of jello shots and still have a flat stomach!  I had shrunken my stomach so that eating wouldn't give me a "food baby" like it always had before.  That truely was a great experience.  Of course immediately after posting the pictures on facebook, a few friends messaged me asking if everything was ok because I looked sickly thin.  Now I can see that my shoulders were way to "skeleton-y." 

But what my newfound confidence stems from is that I finally developed self control.  Don't get me wrong I'm definitely not perfect with my eating habits.  I will occasionally binge, but instead of binging on a whole box of cookies, I'll have a ton of almonds/pistachios or peanut butter (my favorite food).  So even if I'm eating way too much of something, it's at least healthy and within my vegan and healthy diet.  Plus I know that even if I feel like I am having a fat day, the scale can always show me that I am still light.  I also know that I have a warped view of my body so even if I am seeing fat, everyone else is probably seeing skinny.

I also had very high self-esteem regarding my body image after developing my eating disorder.  But this was up until I started seeing my therapist and nutritionist.  All they seem to do is to try to shoot down my confidence.  In meeting after meeting I tell them that I am so much happier and more confident now and that I DON'T WANT to overcome this eating disorder because it has more pros than cons.  But when I start listing the pros and cons, they attack my pros and focus on the cons.  It almost seems as if their strategy is to bring down my self-confidence about my new skinny body to make me want to gain weight, so much so that I've started to stop trying to convince them.  I know how I feel and it really isn't their buisness to get to interpret my feelings.

All in all, my eating disorder has made me more self-confident because I am finally in control of my body.  Even though the doctors are all telling me that this is a dangerous mental disease, to me it just seems like the key to keep my brand new make-over.