Zero

One

I didn't ask to be this way. Nobody does, really. At first it felt good, dropping clothes sizes, losing weight, the control I felt I had. The complements everyone was giving me made everything worth it. My friends were jealous of my self control, girls I didn't even know started complementing my outfits, asking for beauty tips. Weight loss tips. Boys started taking notice of me after I dropped the first ten pounds. Even had myself a boyfriend for a while. I loved it. The feeling of my stomach growling at lunch while I sat with a carton of yogurt that I didn't even eat. Watching my friends stuff crackers and brownies and goldfish in their mouths while I ate nothing.
Nobody questioned it. I mean, it's high school, girls are supposed to go in crazy diets, right? I started with a fad diet, lost three pounds in a week, gained it all back the next.
I decided I didn't want to gain the three pounds back, so I cut my calories in half. 1,000 a day. Just looking at that number now makes me gag. How could I have eaten 1,000 calories back then. Even more shockingly, how could anyone eat 2,000 calories on a normal day? Everyday?
But I liked knowing everyone around me was eating 2,000 calories, because that meant i was stronger than them, right?
At first when my hair came out every time I combed it, I panicked. I always loved my hair. But the loss of my hair was the small price to pay for all the complements I was receiving. At first, it was worth it.
I got addicted. I was obsessed. I didn't care. 20 pounds in a month. That's how much I lost. I would look at all these magazines saying "take this pill every morning and lose 20 pounds in a month"
Every time I saw that I would smile. Because I didn't need that pill, I wasn't like most girls with no self control who needed to take pills and diet teas I lose weight. No, I was stronger. I lost that weight all on my own.
At that point I would have no more than 500 calories, making sure to fast once a week, usually on Sunday. Holy day.
After the twenty pounds came off questions started rolling in like

"Are you okay?"
"You don't seem like yourself,"
"Why did you stop eating lunch."
"Did you stop eating other meals too?"
Yes I said.
No, I still eat lunch.
Of course I eat my other meals, too.
And this is when I started hiding it. This is when a little voice started telling me what to do.

I sat with a full tray of fattening processed foods at lunch. Of course, nobody noticed that I didn't even touch it with my fork.
This is when I started telling my parents I was eating dinner with a friend. They didn't question it. Since I had drifted too far away from my friends to even get invited to have dinner anymore, I would jog to the high school. I would run three, sometimes up to five miles in the track.
Then I would walk home slowly, giving my breath time to slow, letting my sweat dry up, so that my parents wouldn't know what I was really doing.
The voice in my head was so annoying. It was the first time I felt like I was losing control and I wanted to push it away. But it was so persuasive. My god it was so persuasive.

I can make you skinny
I can make myself skinny
I can make you strong
I am strong
I'll make you pretty
I am doing that myself
I will be your best friend

I had never had a best friend. I had friends but my closest friends had always had better friends than me. And entering high school I was to shy to start making new friends, but all my friends were meeting new people. And I was left stranded.
I was so close to being utterly alone, the idea of having a friend, someone to guide me was just so appealing.
So I let this little voice in, I let it guide me, I let it control me to the point I didn't have any say in food at all.
I was craving cereal one day. The little voice had brought my calorie limit down to 300. I had eaten 212 calories that day, a bowl of cereal would bring me dangerously close to my limit.
I grabbed the cereal box, a bowl, and some skim milk. The voice was screaming no no no
You've been doing so well
Don't ruin it now

I poured the cereal with the voice screaming for me to stop. Screaming the calories in the cereal screaming it's fat content. But I was so hungry. I wanted this sugary cereal so bad.
I sat down at the table with the bowl of cereal, milk splashing around, and picked up the spoon.

Calories
Calories
Calories.
Fat
Fat
Fat

I took the first bite. It took nearly three minutes before I could swallow it. When I went to take the second bite my hand was shaking so much I couldn't lift it to my mouth. Even if I had, everything in my spoon would have fallen back into the bowl or splashed onto the table by then.
And I realized I wasn't in control anymore. It made me so mad, it made me want to eat again. But at the same time, it felt amazing. I didn't even have to try to resist my cravings. So I let this voice stay. I let it control me because the results were so satisfying.
I had started at 115 pounds, I was 5'4. A little under average but still fat rolled off my stomach.
It was 6 months later and I was 80.5 pounds. My stomach was flat. My rips and hip bones were so sharp, so beautiful, it looked like they could cut right through my skin at anytime. At this point I thought I had reached my goal. But the voice told me to look down.
And there were my thighs. Jiggly, bubbling with fat and the calories I was still eating. There was a gap big enough to to put two fingers in between it. But even with this small gab between them, I could grab at least an inch and a half of fat.
So I kept going. It didn't feel good anymore, this diet. I got dizzy after running three miles. I couldn't even run five anymore. Little white hairs popped up all over my body. My hair was still falling out and my fingernails were blue and purple.
I didn't even have to fall down to get bruised. The dentist said my teeth were decaying, asked if I even brushed my teeth. Of course I did. And I flossed three times a day to make sure no bits of food were hiding, waiting to poison me. It's funny how the dentist was the first one to think something was wrong.
A teacher got suspicious next. Of course it's always horrifying when a teacher, of anyone, finds out your biggest secret. The only thing scarier is your parents knowing. He confronted me after class, when he asked why I was shaking.
He thought maybe I was having an anxiety attack, but I told him his classroom was freezing.
In the middle of May.
When it was eighty degrees.
And I was in a sweater.
He kept asking me what was wrong, if anything was going on.
Nothing
Nothing
Nothing.
A small part of me wanted him to find out wanted someone to save me. But a bigger part of me said no no no.
The bigger part of me told me not to give up now, I had come so far. I had lost 37 pounds and I was sitting at a nice 78 pounds which wasn't nice enough.

75
72
70.
My three goal weights. As I stood there shivering in my baggy sweater and my loose fitting size 00 pants wanting to tell him, or at least hint to him what was going on, what I was doing to myself, I stayed silent.
the numbers always win.
If you get there they'll invent a triple zero. A quadruple zero all for you. Models will envy you.
So I didn't hint to him. I kept a straight face, saying I was fine, telling him nothing was going on.
And then I walked away shivering, without him knowing I was 30 some pounds under weight. Without him knowing I was eating 250-300 calories a day.
And I did it because I wanted to see how low I could get the numbers. Like a game. I wanted to see how much and how fast the numbers would drop, I wanted my clothes to get baggier. I wanted to walk in the snow without leaving footprints. I wanted the wind to be able to blow me away.

I started skipping the lunchroom all together. I went to the library instead. My friends didn't miss me at the table so it's not like I had to explain myself. I would have been disappointed that none my my friends seemed to notice or want to talk to me anymore. But I was distracted by my goals. Distracted about the next meal and how I would get around it.
The only thing was the stronger I got, the weaker I got, which I didn't understand. I was so strong I could go three days a week with only two glasses of water. The other days I was so strong I could eat only 200 calories. But the more I did this the fewer miles I could run. The number of crunches I could do was lowered.
When I had first started this diet almost a year ago, I could do ten pull ups. Now I can do one. And instead of wondering why I was getting so much weaker, I wondered why my weight couldn't be as low as my fitness levels were.
I fainted at school. Luckily during a biology exam, so the teacher thought it was the content on the test that made me faint, not the fact that my brain wasn't functioning correctly. She didn't call the nurse, thank god.
76 pounds. I was getting so close to my goal. And it felt so good. It felt better than being healthy, it felt better than really living.
And as the little backstory comes to an end, 76 pounds is where the rest of the story really begins.