All I could think about was food. Every minute of the day. But I had to fit into one of my dresses from high school. And that thought would keep me going, through the hunger pangs and the growing agitation.

My vanity and self-hatred kept my gluttony in check. Gotta love that.

Finally, the day of homecoming arrived. I could fit into the dress I wanted to wear. Not quite as I did six months earlier, but nevertheless. And that very day, I went out and bought bags of candy. I would eat them the next day, when it didn't matter as much anymore. I needed to celebrate fitting into my homecoming dress.

And what better way to celebrate successful anorexia than with a Halloween-candy binge?

This has been my pattern of eating ever since 1992....binge, starve, binge, starve. Except, not when I was pregnant with my children. No, at that point I ate. And ate. And ate. Food tasted better than ever.

I even had a dream that I gave birth to a baby ham and cheese sandwich (and was trying to nurse it and got very frustrated.) And I had a dream that I had a magic bottle of syrup, and wherever I poured it, the ground beneath me would turn to waffles and french toast, and it would be all mine. Right before I woke up, I was standing overlooking a vast field, anticipating all of the french toast and waffles I was about to eat. I was so upset to be awakened!

Then, to my surprise, nursing babies burns 500 calories a day. I lost the nearly 60 pounds I gained pretty quickly. Wow, with 500 extra calories being burned a day, I wanted to nurse my children til they were full grown. (not really, that is a disturbing thought.)

But I have been wrestling with this problem, this food problem, for my whole life. It's always been too big of a deal. Why can't food just be food? There's a problem if I eat too much. There's a problem if I eat too little. It is like a drug. But a drug I have to learn to live with and face every day.

I eat to soothe the self-hatred inside, and then feel so much self-hatred when that food shows up as fat on my body. It's a cycle, as anyone who has struggled with this issue will tell you.

As I go through therapy, I am trying to deal with the extreme self-hatred in other ways. It's slow going. Sometimes I still wake up in the middle of the night and find myself downstairs in the kitchen eating. Now, that is totally unfair--I didn't even enjoy those calories!

I try so hard to overcome this, mostly for my children. I don't want them to be affected by my issues.

So I'm trying to find balance, which does NOT come easily to me. I'm very extreme usually. I'm trying really hard, and I'm making some progress by trying to find comfort in other things. And i go to the gym with my friend Jessica, and we both hate working out, so it's fun, and it never, ever has been before. We pretty much laugh most of the time. And although I don't look forward to the exercise, I always feel so much better when I walk out of there.

So this is new for me. I still slip up. But I'm trying to get to the root of what I am trying to comfort. And I am trying to eat like a normal person. Not too much. Not too little. This is a first. We'll see how it goes.