Trigger Warning: This blog post deals with the topic of ARFID, an eating disorder.
There's a lot of talk on the internet recently about a book called Sad Perfect. I haven't read the book, and I don't have any immediate plans to. It's about a girl with Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder, also known as ARFID. It is a disorder characterized by eating a very limited selection of foods. One good thing from this situation for me is possibly having a name for something that happened to me two years ago. I think I should share this story in case anyone wants to know about ARFID from the perspective of someone who has been through it.
Here's a disclaimer: I have never been diagnosed with ARFID. I am not a medical or psychological professional, so I can't diagnose myself. I didn't know what ARFID was until I read a review of Sad Perfect, and I have now read up on it on the website for National Eating Disorders Association. All I can say for sure is the symptoms described seem to match mine.
Now, I can get to the story.
For a long time, I had problems with portion control, especially when it came to sugar. When I started college in 2012, sugar was much more accessible than it had been at home, and the problem got worse. I kept trying to get it under control, but my method's weren't effective, and my efforts weren't what they need to be.
Finally, in spring 2014, I found a possible way to combat this problem. I started watching videos about raw veganism, and I experimented with it. Raw fruit, and especially bananas, helped kicked my cravings for processed sugar. It wasn't a perfect solution, but I felt like I was making progress. I don't know if I was still taking in too high an amount of sugar (which is likely), or if I'd already done a lot of damage to my body. Regardless, in August 2014, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
My diabetes diagnosis happened in a pretty standard way, I guess. I started getting lightheaded at random times, I had a two-day period of insatiable thirst, and then I ate half of a Starbucks brownie and started feeling like I was going to pass out. So, I went to the doctor, and got diagnosed.
At that time, I was both surprised and not. Not surprised because I had a lot of risk factors, including an extensive family history of type 2. (Yes, family history is a factor in type 2.) But surprised because I was having one of those "It can't happen to me," moments. And I had a lot of negative thought patterns.
Soon after my diagnosis, I started to hate certain foods. I once ate half of a pop tart and became almost too anxious to form sentences, so I started to hate pop tarts, and any food that made me feel sick, any food that seemed like it was going to make me feel sick, and some foods I just resented because I was upset that they had a lot of sugar. I was afraid these foods would harm non-diabetic people, and at the same time, I was jealous of those people. I resented a certain brand of soda, for example, for having 30 grams of sugar in 8 fluid ounces, which came out to about 75 grams per bottle. I'm told that the recommended daily value of sugar for a non-diabetic person is 30 grams. So, a bottle of soda is 2.5 times that, and it's not even a meal. That made me angry.
The sudden hatred of foods I used to love sort of turned into a bit of joy at limiting them. A triumphant momentary feeling of being in control, which brings me to the next point:
I felt out of control. I resolved from day 1 that I wouldn't be a stereotypical non-compliant diabetic person, and that I would do everything right. So, when I wasn't seeing the numbers I thought I should see on my blood sugar meter after two weeks, I started to get upset. I now know that it takes a lot longer than two weeks to learn to manage diabetes, but I somehow thought at the time that I wasn't supposed to experience a learning curve.
The control issue manifested in other ways, too. My diagnosis happened one week before the start of my junior year of college. I had planned to do a work experience in South Florida (not far from my home town) that year while taking classes online, but instead, I dropped everything and went back to my college 1,000 miles away, reasoning that the old routine would make it a little easier to learn to manage diabetes. I also reasoned that I couldn't let diabetes stop me from reaching my goals, which meant I had to graduate early, which meant I had to take a nineteen-credit schedule. This was a bad idea.
All of this resulted in a fun but extremely difficult semester. I built up some good habits and started setting a timer on my phone to remind me to eat. But with all those credits, I got BURNT THE FREAK OUT. I've heard people talk about being burnt out, also known as tired of college, and I'd experienced the feeling before, but never as intensely as I did in December 2014. Diabetes management was sort of getting easier, but I did not want to go back to college after Christmas break. I went anyway, because I wanted to be done as soon as possible.
That spring, I became severely anemic, and I made the tough decision to withdraw from college. I knew I wouldn't be able to go back the same college after leaving. I think I was more stressed about it than I realized. Around the same time, I had a few days of bad acid reflux. At the time I was quite emetephobic (afraid of vomiting), so I didn't want the acid reflux to progress too far. I googled some things and decided to start the acid reflux diet. It's low in fat and high in whole grains. It has a strict period of about two weeks, and then you're supposed to add in more foods, but I didn't.
It took me a month--from mid-February to mid-March-- to obtain the right documents for medical withdrawal. During that time, I stayed in my dorm room a lot. I ate almost exclusively oatmeal and whole grain crackers the entire time. I was lonely, but felt accomplished in taking control of the situation.
I went home in mid-March, and I kept eating very few foods. The group of foods adjusted a few times over the next seven months, but it was ritualistic, it didn't feel right, and I didn't know how to stop. I was adjusting amounts of sugar to keep my diabetes symptoms in check, and I was eating no dairy, no simple starch, no nuts except almond milk. The main routine I fell into was oatmeal, almond milk, grape nuts and bananas. I would eat some combination of those four foods every single day, for almost every single meal.
It wasn't about acid reflux anymore. I was still scared, but I couldn't quite articulate was I was afraid of. It just seemed like some unknown terrible thing would happen if I ate cheese. Sometimes, it seemed to be about my weight, but not really.
I felt even more in control when I was taken off of my diabetes medicine. My blood sugar wasn't high anymore.
I knew on some level that I was doing wasn't healthy. I lost a stubborn 37 pounds in the first 5 months, and I got some compliments. People would say "What are you doing?" and I smile and reply "I've been eating a lot of whole grains," and not mention that I was not eating anything else. I wasn't exercising either. It was all nutrition. My blood sugar started getting lower than it should be. My hair was about an inch long, and it hardly grew the whole time.
One or two people in my family pointed out that this weight loss might not be good. I deflected their comments. I relished the compliments.
I tracked my food intake for a while on MyFitnessPal. I couldn't deny that it wasn't good. I was really lacking protein, fat and vitamins. I even found that my caloric intake was below 800 on some days. Without meaning to, I'd decreased the amount I was eating.
I kept thinking, I should stop. I should get more variety. But the thought of even a bite of some foods made me feel anxious. I was also embarrassed to admit this to anyone. I only wanted to eat at home, and mostly by myself. I didn't want anyone to watch me and judge my eating habits.
Some people who'd usually been semi-friendly were suddenly super complimentary about my weight and acting really nice to me. I have to admit, around July, I got uncomfortable with that. I don't want people to only be my friend when I'm thin.
I'm a Christian, and in summer 2015, I felt led to apply for a discipleship training program in Missouri. Discipleship training is intensive training on living a life for Jesus -- sort of like Bible school or ministry training, but with no degree. I applied and felt great about it, but I started to have second thoughts. I was going to a state I'd never even visited, to train with people I'd never met in person, and I just knew they were going to judge my eating habits.
I got to discipleship training in August, and it was an absolutely amazing time in my life. While learning about Jesus, I bonded immensely with my classmates, some of whom were also my housemates. We shared meals sometimes, and they knew my eating habits were unusual, but they weren't rude about it. They got concerned sometimes, but they didn't pressure me, and they listened. I knew I didn't have to eat differently just to impress them. It was freeing, and it helped me to start healing. So, throughout October and November 2015, I gradually added in more foods.
Things are not perfect now, but I'm so, so thankful to be feeling a lot better. I thought I was alone in what happened, and there wasn't a name for it, until recently.
With regards to this book, Sad Perfect, I'm hearing people say that it expresses the fear of a person with ARFID being dismissed by those with other eating disorders. Personally, this is not something I fear in real life. I completely understand wanting to feel like your struggle is real and valid, and I'm thankful to have that now; however, I can't picture people with eating disorders creating some type of hierarchy of whose disorder is the most real. This is because having an eating disorder, like many other mental illnesses, is hard to admit to yourself, so you're not likely to brag about it to other people in the way described. Again, I haven't read the book. I could be completely off-base, and if so, I'm sorry.
I think it's important to have conversations. I have no intentions of vilifying any author or reviewer, but it's possible for any book to have problems. If a book is suspected of having deep issues, I think it's important to talk about it, and to listen. I doubt I'll read the book, because I don't want to be triggered, but if I can contribute to the conversation even a little, I want to. Thank you for reading this, and I'd be happy to discuss it further with anyone who wants to. If you're feeling triggered, I'm so sorry, and I'm willing to listen. And if you have symptoms like this, please talk to someone.
