Hungry (9 page)

At twenty-four, Elaine was doing work she loved. She was born to teach. Still, she felt like a fat, old-maid schoolteacher. Her longtime best friend, Carol, a pretty little thing, had already been married and divorced.

This was 1972, at the peak of the feminist movement. Economic self-sufficiency and equality in romantic relationships were all the rage, with women acting out the slogan “The personal is the political.” The landmark Supreme Court abortion decision in
Roe v. Wade
came in 1973. Elaine didn’t track any of that. She just wanted to be married and be a mom. When she met her husband, David, he not only made low-calorie foods for her, he thought she was cute. Nobody had ever thought she was cute.

When did she stop taking the amphetamine diet pills? “I only remember starting things that made me thinner,” Elaine told us, sadly, “never how they ended.”

 

 

 

While Elaine was talking in our living room, Ned had a hard time sitting still. He kept getting up to check the computer, then the refrigerator, then some piece of paperwork. Reliving his sister’s struggles in painful detail, Ned felt some responsibility for his role in the family drama. While she got stuck being the good girl in the family, Ned was simply “the boy.” He had a lot more latitude. With behavior and food, Ned got green lights while Elaine got Stop signs. And then he wondered how his edginess affected his behavior in raising Lisa. He had tried so hard not to show anxiety, but it had to have broken through.

Brother and sister had a few points of historical disagreement. Ned remembered Elaine wanting to kill herself, even picking up a knife. Elaine had no memory of that.

In their experience of specific foods, especially sweets, it was as if they were raised in different houses.

One weight-related incident was seared in both of their minds. When Elaine was twenty-one and Ned eighteen, they and a friend of Elaine’s spent the summer traveling around Europe. Elaine gained twenty-five pounds; Ned lost twenty-five pounds. Elaine couldn’t believe the injustice. “We ate the same food!” she said, exasperated. And worse: “When we got off the plane Dad said, ‘Oh my god, what happened to you?’” To her, not to Ned.

This is a textbook example of what fathers, particularly, are cautioned not to say to their daughters. Eating disorders are about the hunger for love and acceptance. Girls often yearn for their fathers’ affection, approval, and ideas about what’s attractive and desirable in women. Their dad was not a cruel man. Les loved his family and liked to joke around. But he had gone bankrupt and had had two heart attacks by then, and though happy to see his children again after their long trip, he probably wasn’t feeling great. He made a comment that confirmed Elaine’s negative view of herself.

Elaine’s forever best friend, the trim and petite Carol, always got the guys. Elaine resented Carol’s good luck in the size department. Now in their sixties, they wear the same size. Still, Elaine is so wrapped up in being the fat girl that she admits, “Now, she’s almost irritating me over it. It was okay when I was the one doing all the fussing about weight. Now she’s fussing; it’s annoying.”

Whenever somebody thinner than Elaine complains about her weight, she thinks, “If I looked like that I wouldn’t have to always be worried about my weight, so why are they? People have said I look good or I look nice, but nobody has
ever
suggested I should stop losing weight.”

Lisa feels the same irritation with friends. Why are they complaining about their weight? Eating disorders are a bad thing, but they’re
her
bad thing, not theirs. Skinny friends can be the worst offenders. When they moan that they couldn’t possibly have another bite of ice cream, Lisa thinks, “Yeah, right.”

Exercise is another of Lisa’s things. For Elaine, exercise mainly is painful medicine.

Instead, she diets. She has done Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, grapefruit, Metrecal, and a dozen diets recommended by the Kaiser Permanente health plan, among others. As a child, one regimen required her mother to make Elaine’s sandwiches with lettuce instead of bread. Let’s imagine how that went over at school. The Jenny Craig diet plan was successful while Elaine ate Jenny Craig products, but as soon as she was making her own choices, she gained the weight right back.

Elaine has had the best results with Weight Watchers, which she joined in 1974. In those thirty-five years, she has re-upped at least fifteen times. Most recently, Elaine lost thirty pounds, but she still feels she is fifteen pounds too heavy.

“I was once my ideal weight—130,” Elaine says, sighing. “It was for one year, between twenty-five and twenty-six. Then I got pregnant. In the past twenty years I’ve weighed between 160 and 209.” Elaine’s Weight Watchers range is 135 to 155, but her goal is 150.

How much mental energy this takes! Like people with diagnosed eating disorders, Elaine keeps track of numbers the way baseball fans know batting averages. And she has a system. “I weigh myself at home every day, always at the same time and in the same way: with no clothes on, when I get up in the morning. If I weigh less, I don’t have to worry about what I eat that day. If I weigh more, then I worry.”

In fact, she worries either way. If not initially about what to eat that day, then remorse later about all she ate. But the system continues:

“I take a diuretic for my blood pressure. I’ll take an extra dose if I’m going to the doctor or to Weight Watchers, so I’ll weigh a pound or a pound and a half less.”

I get this. I take my shoes off when getting weighed in the doctor’s office. But Elaine’s excessive use of diuretics makes her dizzy and probably contributed to a very scary accident that left her in pain for years. She was touring an aircraft carrier and fell while climbing stairs, requiring a rescue by helicopter that made the evening news in San Diego. Despite a fractured skull, the total loss of hearing in one ear, and excruciating back problems, she still takes the diuretic. As if she’d read some pro-eating disorders guidebook, Elaine puts her health at risk to save a few pounds.

 

 

 

When not on a specific diet, Elaine picks at food all day long, although she claims, “I don’t binge, really. I just nibble all the time.” Don’t we all.

Rather than relaxing entertainment, restaurants are often torture for Elaine. She would never go to a restaurant by herself, even to sit at the counter. She thinks people would notice and judge.

Instead, Elaine would eat in the car. However, she says, “When I go out with friends, I order food they’ll think is a good choice for a fat person.” This reminds me of a college roommate who was slightly round and similarly self-conscious. In the cavernous dormitory cafeteria, she would ask me to fetch dessert for her. She’d still have to eat it there, but according to her system it was okay to eat ice cream in public, just not to be seen carrying it across the room. People with eating disorders are exquisitely conscious of eating in public, sure that all eyes are disapprovingly on them.

Elaine’s friends talk a lot about eating and not eating. She says, “Most of what we talk about is weight and diets. In the teachers’ lounge, there are always treats. We say, ‘I shouldn’t be eating this, but . . .’ People check out each other’s lunches. I am known for baking, and being the dessert person.” When Elaine goes to national conferences, the teachers and administrators who know her say, “Okay, Elaine. Where are we going for dessert?” Of course she keeps a candy dish in her office. Everybody knows it’s there and expects it. When it runs out, people ask, “Where’s the candy?”

Elaine has been a mentor teacher and Teacher of the Year in the gigantic San Diego Unified School District. When pressed, she’ll acknowledge that she had a very rewarding career. She knows she is a good teacher, mother, and friend. But fifteen pounds drown all that out. “Why can’t I control my weight? Nothing else I could ever do could ever make up for it. When people say, ‘You look good,’ I always feel that what they don’t say is, ‘But you’re fat.’ I always wished I could have anorexia or bulimia, until Lisa. Then I realized it wasn’t something to wish for.”

 

lisa:
I’m honestly shocked to come to know that my Aunt Elaine would ever have desired the very disorders that have caused me so much torment. I guess I can see the glory gained by starvation, but bulimia? There’s never any glamour in throwing up one’s meal. A sickening satisfaction, maybe, even a little high, like, “I have rid myself of something awful,” but before I became bulimic I would do anything to avoid vomiting. I thought it was gross and an unrealistic approach to weight loss.

I’ve always been aware of Aunt Elaine’s struggles with weight. I remember as a kid seeing her “I Lost Ten Pounds” ribbon posted on the refrigerator. I loved going to her house because I knew I’d be able to stuff my little face with goodies I never got to eat at home. There were potato chips and cinnamon Pop Tarts in the cupboard. She had American cheese, individually wrapped! As were the Fruit Roll-Ups. There was always soda and Snapple. My parents never let me have soda in the house, only on occasions when we ate out.

My aunt is definitely one of the most loving women one will ever have the pleasure of meeting. I wish for her, as for me, someday to be able to judge our characters based on qualities that matter, like being able to love, rather than what the scale reads.

I remember at my cousin’s wedding, under her joy and elation she bemoaned the fact that she hadn’t lost an additional five pounds and her one hope was that she didn’t look fat in her dress. Of course she didn’t look fat, because she’s not fat!

I see the way she picks at food, proclaiming to only eat a few bites and that we must stop her if she goes back for more. Food never seems to be pleasurable for her. I wish she could enjoy it more, especially at family events, where we can all sit together and engage in conversation instead of intently focusing on how many calories lie in whatever delicious dish someone prepared.

Food is obviously a major focal point of many gatherings for us. I understand the stress it causes her; I feel it, too. But oftentimes I just have to calm down and realize that eating doesn’t have to be such a source of woe. I want for both of us to sit down to a family dinner and enjoy whatever we order or are served, and turn our focus to the joy that is our tight-knit family.

 

sheila:
I’m thrilled that Lisa can be so clear-sighted, now at twenty-four, about someone else. During the worst years of her eating disorders, she barely recognized that other people existed. She didn’t have time. Like Elaine, she was spending most of her life thinking about her weight.

When you ask ED patients how much of the day they focus on food, it’s always more than ninety percent. This stunning statistic explains a lot. Ned and I learned this at an event we didn’t want to attend, a three-hour “Eating Disorders Training” workshop for caregivers. It was midway through Lisa’s first year of college, when she’d gone from anorexia to bulimia, and we were scared to death. About half the attendees were parents, the rest nurses, counselors, and teachers. With the first handout, just after coffee and bagels, Ned and I aimed blaming looks at each other, as in, “We are
so
in the wrong place. Whose idea was this?” We already knew the horrifying statistics and many of the concepts, such as, “A caregiver should be nonjudgmental when talking about ED.”
Please.
And we really didn’t want to hear other peoples’ stories. The perky blond trainer’s name, Tonja, conveyed ice-skater to me, not a respected authority. We just wanted to grab a to-do list that would specifically help Lisa, and get out of class.

But Tonja Krautter, LCSW, was serious. She kept us on point with useful information and gave us new ways of looking at eating disorders. Even though the statistics were grim, Krautter helped us apply them, so that Ned and I came away feeling a little stronger and more hopeful. We weren’t flailing around in the dark. For a few weeks I didn’t wake up sweating.

But that one statistic, ninety percent of your time focused on food! No wonder Lisa had such trouble completing schoolwork and maintaining other interests.

I could only relate to the time I starved myself, during a three-day fast with a group. I didn’t know what anorexia was at the time, but I was enjoying the lightness and could have continued fasting. Except for one thing: All I could think about was food. What others were eating, how disgusting much of it was, and what admirable foods I’d have when I started eating again. I had nothing but time, but I got nothing done.