Guest Column: Ordering Pizza
This column was written by my very dear friend Jess. Since each individual eating disorder is different, sharing a variety of perspectives is an important step in shattering the myths. Enjoy.
Ordering pizza may be an ordinary event for the dormitory bound college students, the pre-gaming 20-somethings before hitting the singles bar or the busy mom of three who desperately wants as little clean up as possible after dinner. But for me, ordering pizza is a huge step towards silencing Ed. The last time I ate pizza without the feelings of greased guilt and fears of fat were in my elementary school days, when I still relished out-eating my babysitter and littler brother with seven pieces of extra cheese.
These days, thinking about pizza, let alone actually eating the sinful goodness, would mentally add 10 pounds onto my already too blubbery thighs, my disgustingly roly-poly stomach, my thick upper arms and make my sunken cheeks all puffy. If I actually ate the saturated oily delicacy I would have to do at least an additional two hours of cardio and not eat anything for the next two days.
Obviously all these fears stem from Ed. But they still swirl around my brain and immediately stop any potential consumption of America’s favorite dinner pie. At an early age I learned pizza eating was no longer a fun, social, mindless activity that tasted great, but rather a challenge I had to combat at every single slumber party, cast party or cheap celebration well into adulthood.
Well, I broke the mentally exhausting pizza restricting-purging cycle this past Labor Day, when I agreed to order Papa John’s. I was scared at the suggestion and kept waffling back and forth. “Do I really want this? Should I really eat this? I have already been drinking today and I did eat a big lunch…” and all the typical banter that Ed notoriously rules. Still, I enjoyed three delicious pieces of Garden Fresh pizza. I did not add the caloric and carbo-phobic numbers secretly in my head; I did not pinch my inner fat thigh to remind me that I couldn’t afford to be so lax with my diet; I did not hoard the entire pizza all to myself and then spend the rest of the night purging over the toilet with salty tears staining my face and my body fighting the unnatural gagging; I did not end the guilty splurge by raiding the last of my kitchen for every once of fatty, sugary, bad-for-you grub to further stuff down my throat to punish myself for my moment of pizza weakness and then hide the remnants deep in the trash. No, I actually behaved as any normal, psychologically fit, in-tune person would behave. Of course, no normal person would have given pizza so much thought and consideration. But for me, pizza is a huge deal, and in the end it helped strengthen the grown girl who Ed picked away at, ravaged, for so many years.
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