Eating disorders

Link: Eating disorders not otherwise specified.

I realize this may not be a particularly popular view and also that I'm basing it entirely on anecdotal evidence, casual reading of medical literature, and personal experience -- but I'm coming to believe that the majority of women who battle morbid obesity suffer from clinical eating disorders. Those disorders don't always take the form of anorexia or bulimia -- hence, ED-NOS, or "eating disorders not otherwise specified" -- but they're just as real.

(Actually, this is not a new position for me: I've always believed this.)

Further, those disorders generally don't go away with weight-loss surgery or with the excess weight.  They remain, or they morph into some other variant to accommodate the surgically tweaked body -- but they're still often very much present, and they're usually tied to other, larger issues having to do with control/lack of control, and so on.

Me? I fall into the vague DSM-IV category of "binge eating disorder." even before it existed as a diagnosis.  I do far less binge-eating now than I did prior to surgery, but my point is, the urge is still there and sometimes I still do it, mostly when I'm under stress or in need of comfort.  My choice of foods to binge on has changed somewhat (once in a while I can actually get myself to binge on protein!), as has the quantity -- but when I'm of a mind to do it, I can still put away a considerable amount of food, and I will pay the price the next day (no, not with purging -- that's not my particular form -- but with a surgically tweaked body that will rebel against excess carbs and fat and force me to spend lots of time on the pot).

Like an alcoholic, I suspect I'll always be in recovery from this particular disorder; for me, it's a condition that, like Type II diabetes, goes into remission but isn't cured. (I know, I know: folks say that the DS and other forms of WLS "cure" diabetes.  You'll find that most doctors use the term "remission" instead, and I think that's a more realistic way of looking at it.)

But you know what? That's okay. "Recovery" and "remission" are terms with which I can live and which, to me, imply compassion for human frailty and the vicissitudes of human existence.

Recovery and remission are reasons for hope, not guarantees. And hope is priceless.