Obesity After Orthorexia

I’m in my ensuite, naked as the day I was born. The scales taunt me on the floor before my bare feet. I am whispering under my breath, not sure if I’m praying or pleading with myself. As if 100 is the breaking point and not every digit that comes before it. As if 100 is the line I simply cannot cross. The scales blink at me.Somehow this is worse. 100 would mean I had completely failed, that I could give in to the pain, comfort myself. Maybe even make excuses. Well fuck it, I’m already 100kg, right? I’ll figure out the solution later. But the scales glare at me with blinking red lights. A silent challenge. Don’t reach 100. There is a small voice inside my head that crawls out from where I buried her. She calls me with her siren song. Let me out, she says. I can help. She promises she can make me thin. She promises treasure chests full of small clothes that fit. She promises the respect and admiration of everyone around me. I don’t want to listen to her. She had her teeth in me for years before I pried her loose and buried her under therapy and self-love. But at least when I listened to her, my weight was never close to 100kg. No, my weight was closer to 40kg. I don’t know the exact number because, unlike other stories I have heard, my eating disorder and weight loss was never about the number. It was about the control. It was about unresolved childhood trauma begging to surface and the fight to keep it hidden. It was about feeling I had no control over the rest of my life, but I could at least control what I did and didn’t eat. But what I’m doing now, my recovery — eating. Has recovery gone too far? Eating food was originally my path to health. Now, according to my BMI, I’m considered obese. I don’t feel obese. I have more energy at 100kg than I did at 40kg. I can dance for hours as I clean the house. I…

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