can a season be a trigger?

Summer is my favourite season, I love the colours and the warm weather and sweet smells. I also love summer activities, swimming, biking, running, bbqing etc.  Summer makes me happy, but for about the last 10 years of my life, summer has also brought a lot of mental pain.  The first time I remember trying to lose weight it was at the end of the school year in Grade 11 when I had just turned 17. That was my anorexic summer. The next summer was the summer I remember arguing a lot with my family, admitting to my mom that I had an eating problem, and certainly not being ready to move away to University. Every summer after that for about 4 years this season meant diet pills and exercise so I could wear all my favourite clothes and bikini’s. One summer it got to be too much for me, the mental effects of my lack of food brought me to a place where weight and food were all I thought about, that was the summer I decided I needed out of this mental hell, and started on the recovery path.

Every summer since then it seems to be the same for me, feelings of anxiety. Wishing it would be easy to turn to my old habits so I could feel good in summer clothes. Feeling sadness that I feel so uncomfortable in my own skin that I have to x out many options of attire I might wear including bikinis and anything strapless or form fitting. Every summer the acceptable length of shorts gets longer for me to the point where this year I hate wearing shorts, I don’t want to, I just want to buy dresses, but again my body type is hard to fit dresses correctly without it being too small on top or too big on the bottom.

I spend so much time lying around hating my body and the fact that I don’t feel like I look nice in summer clothes right now. This has consumed me for so many years. I was going to buy a summer pass for the pool in my village but I am now realizing the terror I feel this summer of being in a bathing suit (not even a bikini) in front of other people. It sucks. I know there are so many others out there that feel the same as I do, and even worse. I have come so far from that first summer, and I would never go back to my old eating disordered habits, but I just wish I knew how to stay positive! I know it helps to focus on what you like about yourself, but lately my problem is I am starting not to like those parts anymore since my recent weight gain due to physical illness and the halting of physical activity for a few months.

I want so bad to inspire others that have disordered eating that there is a better way, but it is still so hard for me most days to like my body and that was always the question “is it better to be skinny and miserable or normal size (feeling constantly fat) and miserable?”

The answer is definitely normal size, because at least I can focus on other things in life besides my body image, and that is worth the most, being able to live life!

The goal: not to care so much about how I feel in summer clothes, and just enjoy the summer!

the desire for food comes from another place

They always say that having an eating disorder is not really about the food. Well, it becomes a little bit more about the food when you smoke marijuana every day. By a little a mean a lot. *warning, there are some descriptive parts of my eating disordered behavior not everyone will want to read*

Eating disorders usually represent a grasp for control over ones life. The ability to control how much food you eat and when. The ability to control what your body looks like, to hide the horror inside. Pretty much all of that control is thrown out as soon as I decide getting stoned will ease my mind. Not only does the hunger set in even more, but the desire for sugar, food, anything that tastes good, is amplified greatly. I found that by restricting what I was eating in the day would really effect how much I would eat when I got stoned in the evening. I would eat whatever I could. Anything that had sugar in it, anything you could consider a snack. I hated eating meals but would fill my face until I wanted to puke with things that had pretty much no nutritional value. This was my life for a few years. Of course these binge sessions were followed by extreme guilt and the need to purge. But when I say that I do not mean throwing up! Not once have I made myself throw up after eating (although I did try a few times). My ways of purging were through exercise and diet pills/laxatives. What a terrible cycle I brought myself into, and it took way too long to get out of it. But what I did find, was that when I started eating more healthy food, I had less cravings (even when stoned) for yummy treats, and when I did eat them, enjoyed eating less and didn't need to get my hands on every snack type thing possible.

Today marijuana still has a say in what I want to eat and how much I eat. I find that I have the ability to eat way more food when I am stoned and that the desire for food and to cook is way higher. If not stoned then I have a hard time eating enough food and find that I don't care much about meals or different things. It helps me to eat more and healthier, which is good and bad. When I can smoke weed I give myself the opportunity to eat correctly, although I also still eat too many snacks/goodies, I have much more control over it than I did in the past. It is bad because without it I still feel like there might be some lingering behaviors that could creep in without this constant desire for food. An issue I will have to deal with someday but I am not sure how close or far that day is.