Are there women out there who don't think about their bodies 24/7? If there are, if you're one of them, please write me and speak up, because at this point, I don't see any end to this cycle of fat pinching and calorie counting.

I know you just have to love yourself, self-esteem cakes. Everyone knows that, but come on. Let's talk honestly here for a second.
My university was notorious for its eating disorder epidemic. Sure, colleges aren't exactly bastions of high self-esteem and good eating, but MU was pretty ridiculous. There was an article in a national monthly women's mag; we had an eating disorder coalition; sororities had members selected just to promote awareness. I'm not sure what it was - the students, the lifestyle we lived, the backgrounds we came from. It was everywhere, in some twisted way it was cool, and I was swept right up in it.

And we were so stupid. I thought eating pasta with fat-free sauce was going to keep me thin. As long as I worked out 5 days a week and drank Diet Coke and just. ate. pasta, I'd be fine. Or if I just have a bagel with turkey on it. Just turkey. And is it okay if I eat 5?

You'd go to the dining hall and you'd see trays with plain baked potatoes (plus ketchup, of course) and white rice. Carbs are fat free! Carbs keep you skinny! Drink water. Carry a bottle with you. At all times. 

Then again, Ben & Jerry's was always sold out at the Spring Street Market, so what does that tell you?

The rec center was packed no matter what time of day. You'd see those girls, the ones with the "real" problems, there two or three times a day. The ones we felt sorry for. The ones who "needed help."
But what about me? I was ravaging my body too and didn't know it. I'd compensate that entire tube of (low-fat, mind you) cookie dough by skipping breakfast, sometimes lunch the next day.

We'd sit around our residence halls and apartments and talk about what we'd eaten that day. How hard we'd worked out. How fat we were getting. "I'm fat" was probably a phrase second only to "I'm so wasted!"  

I'm not blaming MU. At all. My food issues were way out of control before I got there. But it was the fact that I found kindred spirits at college; other girls who'd binge and starve and binge and exercise until exhaustion. I was normal!

It's been really hard for me - this journaling of my food for Derek. Some Fridays I get so embarrassed when he reviews my food diary. I just want to tell him, I can't not eat that Bunch-a-crunch. I need those chocolate-covered pretzels. But of course, that's bullshit. And he knows it, and he knows that I know it. So what do I say? Oops, sorry! I have no discipline. . . I react emotionally to food. . . Do you know any Freud?

And I have made progress. I know this. I don't eat past dinner. I've learned it's okay to eat protein - you should eat protein. There are other vegetables, better ones even, than baby carrots. This excites me, but I don't want to be thinking about it all the time.

How do I take this new approach to food seriously without letting it encompass my life? Without it becoming the epicenter of my day to day existence? I want to control it. I want to be on top. And I know that in order to do that I have to give it my all, I have to make it a priority. But that scares the hell out of me, because I can see it becoming an obsession again. I don't want to think about it all the time!

Where's the happy medium?

I've been down that road - the one filled with 'I'm fat' whines and shared giddiness over late-night Kroger bingeing runs. Squealing over sheet cake and meringue pie. Chicks bond over that shit, man.
So I'll continue going to see Derek - let him weigh me, track what I've been eating and keep me in line. Someday I won't need him. I won't even think about it. I'll eat because I love it, not because I'm IN love with it. Because I don't want to lose the pleasure of food, I just don't want to have a movie-of-the-week relationship with it either.