Meet ED

"Food is medicine," or so Dr. Joy Jacobs has told me, but despite my inclination to believe her every thought of eating is still quite sickening . For my week long endeavor, I will be doing something that comes naturally to most people: eating 3 meals a day. You might wonder why I would choose such a project, it seems pretty mundane, right? Well, you haven't met ED yet. ED is my alter-ego. ED wants to kill me. He is quite anal when it comes to my diet, and restricts me to miniscule amounts of food over intense daily exercise. You may also know this manifestation as anorexia. For several months, I have been guided by this voice in my head. It has become my being and my sole purpose for existence. I have given up all interests, friendships, and aspirations to pursue it. I do not know why ED is in my head; whether it was caused by depression, anger, or insecurity with my own body, but I do know one thing: I want myself back. I recently told my parents that I believed I had this disorder and needed help, so we are now seeing Dr. Joy Jacobs, an eating disorder specialist for help. For this week and on until my illness is eradicated, I will be following a widely accepted treatment regimen for anorexia, the Maudsley method. This consists of "refeeding" the patient, through six meals a day, breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. This will continue until I reach an acceptable weight. At the moment I weight 112.6 pounds, and I have been told I need to be around 135. As I write this, I still find this method hard to accept. It seems harsh to throw someone who has been eating just over 1000 calories a day straight into eating 3000 calories. I know there will be severe physical side effects as well as mental as my body adjusts to ingesting such massive amounts of food. As another rule: I am not allowed to purge (throw-up) any of my meals, hide any part of my meals, or exercise surreptitiously. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee you that I will be able to uphold those promises. My parents have stocked our pantry with foods so heinously fattening ED will surely have a panic attack. When ED has a panic attack, I lose control, and I become an unsavory character. I would almost compare it to Gollum and Smeagol; that Gollum is so much stronger however when I am around food. I want to cast this disorder into the fires of Mount Doom and walk away freed from this burden, but at the same time I am afraid to. I've been in such a depressed state, possibly because I am far below the starvation threshold as Dr. Jacobs has told me. But I've been feeling so depressed that following the routine I have been on the disorder seems to be the only thing that would give my life substance. In order to succeed at this, I will need to take a leap of faith, to truly believe that food is medicine, that it will solve my myriad of problems, and hopefully, by the end of this, the dilapidated mess my life seems to be at the moment will fall together again.