Like the Flick of a Switch

It was a night December 2015, I had just finished high school, I had just had my breakthrough race at nationals with a PR and a silver medal, things were working, maybe my dream of making an American Uni would come to fruition... maybe, but it was going to take a bit more work. I had to nail club nationals to get 2 more solid times and performances to show them, and so I was on the hunt for the next big solution, the tools that would enable me to train and perform at my best, to reach that next level. 

Ironically I was reading an article about a former athlete who struggled with eating disorders, and I distinctly remember the starting anecdote of the article. 

"First you look down the starting line and realize you're a bit bigger than the rest of them, you're not fat, not even 'chubby,' but you're a bit bigger... next, you look down the start line and finally you're the same size as most of them, good you think, you keep looking down that line and you see the rail thin girls, that's too far you tell yourself, I will never let myself get like that... the next race rolls around and suddenly you realize you couldn't stop, you are that girl that girl that went all in, that took it too far and now you realize it was never in your control, you were trapped by it from the first day you let a weight define your worth, your speed, your value."

Stupidly I thought unlike everyone else probably reading that article I could stop myself at that midpoint, I could just stop eating, lose a solid amount of weight and then begin eating normal amounts of super healthy food once I got there.

This was the first time I really saw myself as fat, I remember looking back at photos of me standing on the podium at Nationals with my silver medal, “wow my legs were stocky, wow I was much taller and larger than the other two girls, wow if only I was a bit slimmer that photo would look so much nicer, maybe I would have even won...?”

So on that night in December 2015, I decided I could do it, and unlike a few other times when I'd thought about this... I WOULD do it. Being excellent depended on it. 

Calorie counting began, I had previously done this over periods when dancing, and I certainly displayed disordered eating during these times in my life, but never had I become fully consumed by it to the point that it controlled every aspect of my life. 

I was working over the summer and found it hard to not eat because I was doing such a physical job (pulling Carrots) so I felt guilty and jumped between caring and not caring for a while, but all the time trying to still calculate how much was going in vs out and still desperately trying to hold a balance. 

Fast forward to club nationals and suddenly things took a very dark turn. It was still two days till my race and we were chilling out as a team, there were a lot of chips and dips out on platters. I was attempting to be healthy, only eating carrots and hummus, but both are heavy sort of foods and all of a sudden I felt extremely full. My mind started to race, did I just throw all my chances of racing well away, how was I going to fly around the track if I had all this weight... was the tiny amount of progress I had made all gone, why couldn't I have just not eaten that? 

That evening was one of the first times I made a conscious decision to go all the way, to get rid of that food, to solve the problem I saw immediately before me... 

I raced well that weekend, I placed second in both my races and ran a massive 5 second PR in the 800m, and from there I was completely locked and trapped by bulimia as an ‘out’ when restriction didn't work. 

I got a new job working in a hardware store while doing heavy winter cross country training and rehearsing in the local musical theater 'Mary Poppins.' I worked out the back in the warehouse picking orders and unloading pallets. It was freezing all winter long and I walked over 10 km a day according to my Garmin. I only had a 30 min lunch break and so it was suddenly far too easy to control what I ate. 

I would pack next to nothing for lunch, and live on black coffee. After working 8am-5pm I would train with nothing in my system, and then I would go to Mary Poppins rehearsals till about 11 pm, then I'd drive home, shower and crawl into bed exhausted at 12 pm every night, I’d log all my calories, and then finally the days checklist was done and I had reprise until my alarm went off at 6 again the next morning. 

I recall looking at my ceiling every morning when the alarm went off telling myself to just make it through the next 16 hours, then you can be back here again. My life was a dull routine of counting calories, over-exercising, and plastering fake smiles on my face. 

every night I would weigh myself, then I would log the weight into a BMI calculator and compare this to the BMI's of professional athletes, I thought If I had the same number, I would automatically have the same ability to perform at that level ... stupidly I wasn't even thinking of other factors such as VO2 max or years of experience or god forbid the flip side of being under fueled...!

I lost a lot of weight over the next 4 months, I liked the way I looked, but the way I felt was miserable. I was tired, dead tired, I had to prop myself up against boxes in the back of the warehouse at work, I had to sit in the car for 30 minutes after a training session before I felt like I had the energy to drive anywhere, I struggled to run dance numbers more than 3 times in a row at Mary Poppins, and then I would become frustrated that I wasn't dancing my best. but the weight controlled everything. 

The end of June rolled around and suddenly we were in the theater for Mary Poppins, now food was not so easy to control. Food was everywhere, crappy junk food was everywhere, and I was starving. When I was offered food I couldn't say no I was so incredibly hungry. But then the guilt. The guilt was like nothing I had ever felt before, I could not stand the feeling of this food within me, I was giving into hunger I was failing at being a 'dedicated' 'good' athlete.  And so after 4 months of avoiding that horrible 'out,' I again found myself staring down the barrel of bulimia. 

Explaining specifics is pointless but it controlled me in every way, every day. 

It was all or nothing, it was calculating how long after a meal I could excuse myself, it was a new level of shame and secrecy, a new hiding from the world, from those I loved, a new calculation of everything. 

This version of control took away all aspects of the social 'Hannah' that once was. Now not only did I fear going out to eat with friends, but I feared not being able to control myself and then not being able to find a viable excuse as to why I had to leave after eating. I didn't feel like I could go to any of the social club events with cast members in Mary Poppins for fear of losing control, I felt like my survival as a 'good' athlete depended on me clinching the tiny amount of control I still felt I had. 

I was so very very alone and I was haunted by the girl I saw staring back at me in those bathroom mirrors. Who the hell was she, and how the hell did we get here?