Recovered Food Biploar Patient

Since I post about food in my other blog (What Paolo Writes) so much, and with the encouragement of a few friends (you know who you are, ha ha), I’ve decided to start a different blog dedicated entirely to, well, FOOD. But before I start posting real posts about food, let me tell you my history with this blog’s main topic.

I’ve had the strangest relationships with food – sort of like someone with bipolar disorder. But instead of experiencing severe highs and lows regarding my mood, I had them with food.

During my prepubescent years, I loved food so much that my size, for lack of a better word, ballooned! I WAS FAT. In fact, I was so fat that my family started calling me “Harry Fatter” (I was and still am a huge Harry Potter fan, and I used to wear round glasses, thus the not-so-nice nickname). That’s when I started to play tennis during the summers, to help mo lose weight, but I remember having my grandmother bring me to Roma Mia almost every after tennis class and I would have their Godfather chops. TWO pieces. Extra rice. So tennis didn’t really work until a few years later.

Grade 4 or 5, I think?

In my 3rd year of high school, I became a member of the school dance troupe, I became my all time thinnest. My Harry Fatter days soon disappeared, and I, to be completely honest with you, started to avoid food. I never ate breakfast. For lunch, I would eat either a banana, an apple, or fat-free yogurt. Dinner was the only real meal I had, and I started to lose weight – a lot of it. My family then started telling me to stop losing weight and to eat more instead, comparing my new-found skinniness to those of drug addicts’ and other unpleasant thin references. This annoyed me, of course, sometimes causing outbursts, with my “you used to make fun of me for being fat; now you complain that I’m too thin. What do you guys really want?” drama (said in Cebuano, by the way, since the Cebuano language has, say, more impact for things like these. Haha).

However, I never saw myself as thin. At night, I would stand in front of the mirror and pinch my stomach, arms and legs. There were times my mother walked in on me doing this nightly ritual of mine. She would ask me what I was doing, and I would tell her, “Ma, can I get liposuction?”. She would then say, “Have you gone crazy?” and walk out. Also, I would find ways to have myself excused from P.E. swimming class because I was seriously afraid of being made fun of for being overweight.

Now that I think about it, I actually feel quite disgusted about myself. I mean, really, I looked… unhealthy. I’m not naturally skinny, so of course my skinniness didn’t seem “normal”. I also regret the times I could have eaten good food, and maybe if I hadn’t avoided eating so much, my growth wouldn’t have halted so soon (haha thinking about this always makes my heart break).

3rd year high school, 1st year college, 3rd year college

But when college came, I gained weight again. There was even one summer I gained 30 pounds! Yes, 30 pounds in about 2 months, more or less. I know it’s pretty hard to believe, but it’s true. I always promised myself that I would start dieting and working out and losing weight, but I never did (partly because school didn’t permit me much time, and mostly becuase I was lazy).

Now that I’ve graduated college, I go to the gym, and in the almost 3 months that I’ve been working out, I have already lost 18 pounds. I started out at 170, now I weigh 152 pounds, and I feel great about it!

I now like to think that I finally have a healthy appetite (although my nutritionist wants me to lose 9 more pounds in the next 6 weeks), but whatever. I’ve made my final diagnosis, and I’m proud to say that I’m a recovered food bipolar patient.