Overeating for me is worse than having a hangover. I can't just sleep the weight off. Instead I eat throughout the night, taking in even more calories than I do during the day.
How I wish I could shake this bad habit and no longer feel I have to cover my fat with a habit. The more I binge at night the more sick, tired and 'fed up' I get with myself the following day. I feel like a failure. Still it is hard to stop bad habits, to keep myself from slipping further. It only takes one binge to land me in deep depression.
Having to take medication for schizophrenia greatly increases my appetite. I take Clozaril, an antipsychotic, which as well as stimulating my appetite also heightens the symptoms of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). This exacerbates my already existing compulsions with food.
I am a wicked creature of the night. I have never slept well. The more I munch in sinful silence the more I feel as if I am trespassing with the dead. Food did my head in even before I took tablets for my head. I feel myself turning into a beast with a huge midnight feast as I go wild with chocolate, cake and ice-cream. Sometimes I try to limit the feast to just fruit and vegetables, but doing this though requires a lot of forward planning.
I have managed at times to beat the OCD and stop myself dead in my tracks from the bed to the kitchen. This makes me feel powerful and in control. But I obviously have an eating disorder. Even though I have come a long way from my bulimic teens, I still am obsessed, and think I will always be.
Food is a mixed bag of feelings for me. I feel guilt, weakness and remorse, yet also excitement, danger and fun. I'm either really good or really bad with food and often feel more demonic rather than angelic in the dangerous Easter and Christmas periods.
Often I feel my body and mind have been possessed by food. I feel alienated from other people at parties as I go for the smorgasbord rather than the small talk and chomp instead of chat. It is easier to swallow sweet, beautiful, delicious food than take in the negativity that people often dish out for me with my disability.
Sometimes I feel I cannot help myself with food except maybe to a few extra helpings. I chew Extra gum and this sometimes works. I warn myself in advance that the more I let myself go with food the weaker I will feel in myself and in trying to manage my disability. With the loss in willpower I trip up in other areas of my life such as managing money, having an orderly routine, making rational decisions and taking steps towards recovery.
Going to the gym is the first step towards recovery, and even a slow cycle can start to slowly break the starve-binge cycle. The treadmill stops me from going through the mill (bread is a particular weakness of mine). The cross trainer stops me from getting even more cross with myself over everything I have eaten.
I tell myself that I simply can't have my cake and eat it too. The pounds come on like thunder with all my eating blunders. Sometimes I get desperate, and have even considered going off all my tablets, as well as under the knife. But stopping medication is not an option.
Instead I would like to try the healthy, natural approach of a proper diet and exercise plan guided by an experienced dietitian and trainer. I also would like to be gentler to my body, with hypnotherapy or Pilates rather than invasive plastic surgery. Somehow I feel there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Even though often I feel at a loss, having tried every diet and fitness trainer in the book, I have also found writing down everything I eat in a book to be really helpful. I hope through this to finally turn over a new leaf and win back some more control and power over my life.
Isabella Fels is a Melbourne poet and writer. She has been published in various publications including Positive Words, Mental Illness Voice, The Big Issue and The Record.
Empty plate image from Shutterstock