What's it Like to Be Me

Binge. Purge. Exercise. Hungry. Binge. Purge. Feel guilty. Exercise. Binge. Purge.

This used to be my cycle when I was already a junior in college, being a small, fat, couch potato kid really made a lot of difference when I was growing up. Insecurities rose. Low self-esteem elevated. Personal physical concept morphed.

All took a toll on me, all made me someone very pessimistic, anhedonistic, negativistic. Define Devil Wears Osh Kosh B' Gosh. I was that kid. Although at an early age I somehow managed to be civil and friendly especially when I'm with my relatives or some family and friend gatherings.

You see, growing up fat, heck ,morbidly obese, you get taunted a lot, mocked a-plenty, insulted incessantly, and humiliated repeatedly. I was the center of the attention and not in a good way.

So over the years I have come to accept what I am, who I am and how I am as a person. My mom would always pressure me and nag at me to lose weight, which, being a rebellious teen would make me just cringe at her and go outside our home so as not to hear her talk about my body weight anymore.

People should accept me for who I am. That was always what I say when we argue about dieting and banishing my oh-so-priceless love handles.

But as I grew older, I somehow felt rejected by the society. I somehow felt indifferent, very, very indifferent. And it didn't help that I ate a lot during night time. Midnight snacks are a must.

Then one day it hit me, I could be someone better. It was a realization I had been longing to surface from my innermost thoughts.

I started dieting, avoiding junk foods and sodas for afternoon snacks and sacrificing those precious grains of rice for the sake of being a better me.

With that I also went jogging with my cousins. One round and it got me all sweating and gasping for air. That was some start but at least I started than not having started at all. :)

Over the months, I started curbing my appetite, choosing green leafy over fried and fatty. It really contributed that I have my cousins to back me up and vice-versa.

From over than my Ideal Body Weight to Nearly There Body Weight, good things really come to those who know how to wait and with the discipline to wait. Was I happy with the results? Not so.

Before I even stepped into College, I used to buy this local magazine named FWD (short for Forward) and it contains a heap of interesting articles from exercises to trends to models. Yum! Models! And so, every time I buy and turn the pages I would ogle over the models' hot bodies wishing that somehow, I could be like them, not necessarily height wise because that would be impossible but physicality-wise. And with that, I tried to strive harder to lose weight but it seems that envy is such a fiend that I would end up eating more than what I exercised for. So for a while the equation of my daily caloric intake is unequal to the output: 

Food Input < Food Output

Which made me feel worse, which made me feel more guilty, which made me feel sadder. I wasn't going nowhere! My weight is still the same! Why is this happening to me?

Soon after, I spiraled into deep shit, excuse my French. I was confused for the longest time. I needed to vent out and I needed to do it fast!

Some people told me to put up pictures of guys with great bodies around my room to get me motivated but for me, it just doesn't work. It works the other way around. I get uninspired and so unmotivated.

Then school work started to pile up, the paperworks we had to do was just amazingly voluminous. Document after document, client interview after client interview, type after type. My viewpoint of becoming thinner took a standstill and I concentrated on what matters most.

By the time I hit Junior year, my thinking changed and I told myself again that I need to be better on how I perceive myself. Not a little, fat, me but of someone who could actually make something, do something, tell something, and change something. So, I exercised again in order to be better, yeah, I missed the good old days I would jog with my cousins but that was a long time ago, we all have our busy schedules to match and we all have so many deadlines to finish.

Uh-oh.

School work plus Stress plus Body Image Disorder plus Anxiety led me to my binge-purge episodes. At first, the feeling of vomiting what you just ate gave me a sense of accomplishment, that somehow, I was tricking my mind into thinking that I ate. Then I noticed some changes in my body; I think slower, I move slower, I feel slower and my body feels heavier. And also, I noticed that every time I would eat and vomit, I would feel hungry again. Looks like the joke's on me this time. So it became a vicious cycle for me. 

Sure, my parents and siblings got so worried what's happening to me, that every time we would finish eating I would go to the wash room and turn on the faucet real long and just be there for about 30 minutes. Then one day, my mom found out what I was doing because I forgot to clean up the evidence of my dirty and unlawful act. She saw bits and pieces of meat and vegetables all swirling around the lavatory. Gross as it may sound but yes, it is definitely gross.

She told me to stop but how could I? I'm not yet that perfectly chiseled model I see and drool over at magazines. I still don't have a waist line of an anorexic teenage girl. I was feeling ambivalent but the idea of being an ideal still took control of me.

Every time I would eat I would feel guilty, every time I threw up I would feel all mighty and powerful. You see the analogy? Here I am looking absolutely normal and decent inside and outside campus but once I get home I turn into a ravaging, low self-esteem, fugly monster. I do have friends but most of the time, I don't confide in them for the reason that I may seem too preoccupied with myself. And that was absolutely true.

So, after a long bout with my id, ego and superego, I turned to our school psychologist for help.

With a lot of recollection, thought-rambling and mind-boggling hoo-hah's, she instilled in me light and that's what I truly appreciated her for that.

I'm not afraid to say that yes, I did see a psychologist because I badly needed to. People have this notion that when you see a psychologist you're some mad man out on the streets ready to slay people with your imaginary chainsaw or something like that. But that's not really what my case or what most cases are all about. 

I tried reaching out to my family but they are just people whom I know I can't depend on some things so I let that go. I tried reaching out to my friends and classmates but academics are our main priority that time and so I let that go also. I wasn't a blogger then nor do I read anything online so talking to a person who may know what I'm feeling through online messages is next to nothing. I reached out to a Psychologist and well, she seemed to be worthy of my trust and what I have to say to her so why not? At that point in my life and time, WHAT HAVE I GOT TO LOSE?


I didn't turn bulimic because according to what the Diagnostic Statistics Manual say about bulimics is that you should have a binge-purge episode of at least 3 times a week in a span of 3 months. My episodes were shorter than that.

Thank goodness I overcame that ordeal and came out as a winner. Do I still feel insecure about myself? Yes. Do I still feel fat sometimes? Yes. Do I still feel like I'm the ugliest person in the world? Yes. But when I think about it again, most of us does and it doesn't bother me the way it bothered me back then that I have to see someone in order to feel accepted.

My market value appreciated. 

But up to what extent?