Free Thin by Grace Bowman Page B

restriction was the mechanism for me that initially helped me feel less fragile, and triggered this change of mood inside.
    The initial buzz that not-eating provides is something that I often hear repeated. Take two girls talking about fasting, about restriction, as a means of finding themselves and feeling better:
    ‘It’s amazing. It’s like I’m a different me. I’m superwoman when I’m fasting! It helps, with everything.’ The faster casts a wry smile.
    ‘But don’t you get hungry and need energy to live a normal life?’ The listening girl is intrigued.
    ‘I feel a bit spaced out when I do it. I can’t concentrate on problem-solving, that type of thing, but I totally escape myself. It’s a freeing feeling.’
    I can recall the beginning of my addiction to not-eating. The feeling of lightness – of happiness – and a fuzzy, airy kind of an energy, which seemed to be irreplaceable. This is the high – every addiction has one – something that makes you feel good, something that is worth the low, or so it seems. Initially, my addiction brought me power and pleasure. With each new shape I made for myself, I was more optimistic, more alert, more euphoric and more in charge. I ended up feeding only from my addiction. I was surging off the highs that my super-control gave to me.

Power and Control
    Those suffering from eating disorders often feel that they have walked into a relationship with food they did not choose. They feel that it took them over and that they are suddenly powerless to its effects. They didn’t mean to get addicted, they didn’t mean to lose so much weight; they didn’t mean to interrupt everyone’s lives, not on purpose, anyway. At the same time, however, they also feel a sense of immense control over their relationship with food. Whereas other issues and decisions might seem overwhelming and unconquerable, food is manageable and can be manipulated by the sufferer. Anorexia moves life into a restricted pattern of behaviour based solely around food and exercise. It means a regression into a simple, straight, black or white way of living.
    In my experience, my food patterns gave me comfort – there were answers to problems. There were merely shapes – shapes of me – that told me how good or bad I was feeling and this reassured me. Not-eating seemed to work like a magic trick – the more I restricted myself, the more I sensed my own power. I also developed a feeling of righteousness about what I was doing. Controlling and restricting my body empowered me with a code, a way of fixing and structuring anything that was thrown at me.
    In fact, many anorexics, when forcibly taken to the doctor for a diagnosis (as often happens), can only see the positive in what they are doing. They feel that other people simply misunderstand them, because there really is ‘nothing wrong’. They are acting to expectation, they are being ‘healthy’ and‘fit’ and ‘thin’. They are not shovelling fast food into their bodies and eating all the ‘wrong things’. They are in control, right?
    However, whereas their friends who count their WeightWatchers’ points or watch their GI levels are conforming to other people’s patterns, and obeying the most current world order, an anorexic is actually defying it, and making up a set of her own rules. A diet is acting to a set of prescribed rules laid down by a book, a magazine or a slimming club. It is about participation and regulation. An anorexic does not want this direction from the outside. She wants control of her own game, thank you very much.
    I certainly did not want any help with my anorexia. I knew that what was happening to me wasn’t right but I couldn’t get past the feeling that I had everything in place just as I wanted it. Any discussion of interference into my way of handling it was terrifying and inconceivable. I was petrified that if I didn’t keep my hunger under control everything would collapse.
    My memory of this time is