I am sensitive. I would never change that. A musician and composer, I know I bring joy into people’s lives that they would not otherwise experience. But there’s a price to be paid for having the sensitivity that makes artists valuable to a culture. I’m emotionally vulnerable and have always suffered with depression and anxiety.
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a reformed junk food addict. You have read about people like me in science articles and more recently in the mainstream press. I am one of the legions of Americans who have most likely eaten their way into the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Sharing my story is part of my healing. The truth hurts and reading my story in black-and-white hurts more, but I have hope that my story may heal you or someone you love.
Some place inside my fragile frame there was an athlete incubating, chomping at the bit and waiting to take off once released from the prison of rheumatoid arthritis. At age 16, I was diagnosed with a disease that would define my personality, my relationships, my sense of who I was and limit my sense of what I could be. But that nascent athlete was somewhere in there under all that inflammation.
I have at least 10 stories I’d like to share with people who have disordered eating. This one is about my experience with inpatient treatment. My personal pattern was bingeing, not eating, bingeing, not eating. But in treatment, I was lumped together with bulimics and anorexics, and there was no effort to individualize our treatment plans. Maybe you can see where this is going.
I joined the Suppers meeting series after hearing about it from a friend. I was interested because it sounded like a novel approach to support for healthy living, something I strive for. A couple of weeks into the program, I had my annual blood work done and found out that my triglycerides were dangerously high. My doctor asked me to go on a particular diet for three months, and then get my blood work redone.
