Dealing with an eating disorder

I'm on a list on Facebook called Diabetics with Eating Disorders. You may or may not know that I decided to go into treatment last April because I was literally starving myself, and the day I woke up and couldn't face eating at all, I knew I needed to do something. In fact, I've been bingeing since I was in my teens, but bingeing and not taking insulin is a whole different story. After I binged myself into a coma in Sept. 2010, and was confronted with the reality of the fact that I NEED to control my food intake and take my insulin. So I swung in the opposite direction, and started to limit -- at first under the guise of low-carb, but not true low-carb, because those who are following low-carb diets are not eliminating all plant and most animal foods, nor are they limiting the quantity of what they eat. So I decided to enter treatment.

So one of the women posted about the fact that she had fantasies about gaining enough weight to qualify for weight-reduction surgery, and I have to admit that I've had the same thoughts. But I know people who've had weight-loss surgery, and it's no picnic -- some of them succeed in keeping the weight off by following a draconian diet, and others just stretch out their stomachs by eating too much, and gain the weight back. So I guess we ALL, both people with ED and those without, have to accept, somehow, that we were born predisposed to our own body builds, and we AREN'T going to all look like the models in the magazines. Which is not to say that it's easy -- I just ate a Mounds bar, and felt like crying about it -- but either I work on self-acceptance, or I might as well toss it all in. Because there is no realistic or practical choice, even though your mind tells you lies. I'm going to bet that there are LOTS of other women out there listening to the lies, and trying all the miracle diets and pills, and maybe they can abuse their bodies more easily because they don't have to deal with the diabetes demon as well, but we all have to learn to believe that life doesn't HAVE to be that way. 


So my goal is to accept that I'm NOT obese, and I'm NOT willowy, but I'm shaped just like a 64-year-old should be. And to accept that yes, I have to take insulin, but I'm not even taking all that much -- certainly within "normal" limits, and that it's not a catastrophe to take a little more when I'm having a big meal, which is not very often. My body lets me BE and DO, and the insulin lets my body live and not die. So I need to just let that be, and stop obsessing over it.