Feeding Maggie

In 2002 I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa/bulimia subtype. Upon entering university, I underwent a lot of life changes all at once which created a great deal of stress, ultimately causing me to enter a caloric deficit (I wasn't eating enough) which triggered something that is now known as a migration reaction (I started exercising obsessively). By the end of my first semester, I was virtually unrecognizable to my family. I had to drop out of school and seek treatment fast. I understood the brevity of my situation, and I was willing and actively looking for help. Now, nearly 22 years later, and half a lifetime into the illness, I'm asking for help that I need more than ever. Back in 2003, I found a therapist at my school, worked with a specialist in my hometown, and eventually moved back in with my parents. I was accepted into a treatment center, but was unable to gain the weight that they expected, and was asked to leave the program. Months later I was accepted into another program but left without completing it due to the desire to return to university the following Autumn. In due time, perhaps not surprisingly, I had lost all the weight again and then some. By the time I graduated, I was so sick I knew I had to apply again for inpatient treatment. I spent five months in an intensive program and successfully gained to my "low-end" healthy weight, continued with outpatient treatment and follow-up appointments, until again I found myself unable to meet the weight requirements of the system and was again asked to leave. This was 2007. My Mother passed away from ovarian cancer in 2013, and my dad died after an unplanned surgery in 2017. My family quite literally fell apart, and I have almost no contact with any familial supports. In the years since leaving treatment I have seen five friends succumb to this illness that I suffer with. Over time, my weight and my mental health have been up and down, at some times what I would consider rock bottom, and at others mostly sustainable, but the behind-the-scenes was always much different than I could ever possibly communicate to my friends and community. The constant starvation, self-deprivation, self-loathing, mind manipulation, over-exercise, exhaustion, and mental torture that come with a severe eating disorder is like nothing you could imagine unless you have been there yourself. It has quite rightly been compared to being trapped in an abusive relationship, where part of you longs for the freedom to get away, and another is so tightly tied to the familiarity of the situation, you can't imagine living any other way. The physical repercussions I have sustained include amenorrhea, digestive issues, extremely dry skin, muscle wasting, irregular heart rhythms, low blood pressure, dehydration, insomnia, osteoporosis, peripheral neuralgia, blacking out, severe nutritional imbalances, and more. I know that I will never be able to have children, something that I hoped for my entire life. In 2019 I hit my lowest weight. At 5'5" and 62 pounds, my BMI was 11. Anything under 13 puts you at constant risk for heart failure. I was literally the living dead. I was skin and bones and still exercising excessively nearly every day. I would have weeks where I only ate two meals. On the days I wasn't running myself ragged, I was sleeping. I was so depressed and so tired all the time. I wanted to die. In 2020 I was hospitalized against my will, put in the psych ward for a month where they didn't know what to do with me, and finally released when I gained the minimal amount of weight necessary to be declared "medically stable." Again, I walked out the doors and lost all the weight. The following year I was fortunate enough to meet a personal trainer who was willing to work with me on compassionate grounds, and with very VERY hard work, getting in the gym doing weight-bearing activities and eating a LOT more food, I eventually was able to gain up to 88 pounds. At the time I had been working in a high-stress environment for two years, and in the Fall of last year, I knew I needed to go. I took a "respite" from the city for seven months ... during which time again I lost significant weight. Which brings us to today.

While many people have an assumed understanding of eating disorders that is too simply explained by the field of psychology as "one which occurs when a person refuses to eat an adequate amount of food and/or is unable to maintain a minimally healthy weight (BMI below 18.5), often accompanied by a distorted body image and an intense fear of gaining weight." Upon recent study, I have gained a more thorough and scientific understanding of what really happens when a person like me sustains a severe chronic eating disorder that involves restriction/starvation and the overuse of movement/exercise that leads to and perpetuates extreme weight loss. Migration theory states that when a person goes into caloric deficit, the brain believes there is a lack of food in the environment due to famine or another catastrophic event, and the natural instinct that most humans would follow would be to lay low and look for food until the situation changes. When a person with a genetic predisposition to anorexia engages in restricted eating due to any number of factors (in my case, stress and a dietary change/vegan), their response is to migrate: thereby the brain tells them they most move on to a place where there is abundant food. The behaviours that follow are those you may already understand about people with eating disorders, but here's why: The person will start to eat less and less because the brain/body has entered migration mode. If you were really in a crisis where you had to move on to another place to find food in order to save your life, you would have no time to waste: the primitive brain/body is telling you, "keep moving, cover as much ground as possible, don't stop to eat, only as much as will keep you going ..." Hence, the pattern of eating very little and moving a lot is adopted. What was once seen as a life-saving behavior becomes one that will eventually kill you. Because the starving and moving aren't actually caused by a temporary environmental condition, there's no end in sight. There is never a signal to the brain that turns off the migration phase, and so the person continues to eat as little as possible and move as much as possible until they begin to suffer tremendous side effects. The avoidance of food and rest has become habitual and fearful because any stopping for food or resting, in migration, is deadly. If you're laying around all day eating snacks, you'll never make it to the promised land.

The reason for this lengthy explanation is not only for you to have a better understanding of the disorder, but because for me, this understanding was also that anorexia, so frequently made out to be a "self-imposed" disorder, was not entirely my fault. The years I spent punishing and hating what I had "done to myself" were such a waste of time. Now I see clearly that the illness has a genetic root, and its manifestation was more a matter of what was happening in my limbic cortex than my inability to get over it, move on, just gain the weight, it's only food ... all the things I had been made to believe were true. This realization has inspired me to take control of recovery as much as anything else.

In the Bible, Exodus tells the story of how the Israelites wandered for forty years in the desert, rather than take a journey that was intended to take eleven days. In Deuteronomy 1:6 God says, "you have stayed long enough at this mountain." I believe it is time for me to move on. I don't want to look at the calendar five months from now and know I have been doing this for half my lifetime.

I'm setting up this gofundme to help me access the resources, as well as perhaps more importantly, the courage and ability to believe that I am worthy of help. It will afford me to buy the food I need (supplements, high-energy foods, and vitally ANY food that I am terrified to buy that I would otherwise avoid) and the belief that nothing is holding me back in a tangible manner from reaching nutritional rehabilitation: the only thing that will save my life. I haven't worked in over a month due to the inability to remain reliable and consistent with shifts because my symptoms had become so bad. This week I need to put down first and last month's rent, and I have no furniture. I haven't bought food in a month so I've been eating dumpster-dived food and weird packaged things that I got from the food bank that I would normally never resort to that are mostly expired. I'd also like to work with a personal trainer again since that was the one time I was able to deliberately and willfully gain healthy weight outside of treatment. In short, your donations will go towards healthful, calorie-dense, vitality-giving, nourishing food and the physical support that will change my life!

When I started this plea, I was uncertain I would have enough to say lol Well, here we are. I believe that with your help I can recover fully and go on to live a beautiful blessed abundant God-glorifying life, and ultimately to help others who are struggling with disordered eating. I believe that my journey, with all the storms and fires, was written with a greater purpose in mind. I will not let this illness take my life: that wasn't written in my story. For all of you who have so faithfully stood next to me through all the days and weeks and months and years, I have no words left to express my gratitude. I would be dead without you.

Please join with me to see what the next chapter might be.