ANOTHER ROUND

Here I go again. A new day, waking up in a strange bed. I wish there were a more exciting circumstance but, no, I get up, shower and experience a different walk of shame. No wondering about whether some guy will text me, no worrying that this is just a one-off. I have absolute certainty that I’ll wake up in the same bed tomorrow and the morning after that. It will be the same routine for the next fourteen weeks. And then, for better or for worse, it will all be over.

There’s no other guy involved. This is my own doing. I moved into a group home yesterday for another crack at treating my eating disorder. On the surface, it’s all perfectly tolerable, possibly even a great gig. I’m only five kilometers from my condo but now, instead of being in the bustle of the seedier part of downtown Vancouver, I’m smack in the middle of a charming neighborhood of older character homes and shaded parks. I’m a block from Commercial Drive, the city’s Little Italy, dotted with cafes competing to serve up the best cappuccino and all sorts of trendy new restaurants that have strayed from the lasagne-fettucine script and now offer Lebanese, Ethiopian and Japanese fare. If only eating out had some appeal.

As good as it may all seem, I can’t shake the fact that this is not normal. Fifty-somethings don’t flit off to three months of summer camp in the city. They get to sleep in their own bed whenever they want. They don’t go for programming at a hospital four days a week. They don’t have their meals monitored. They don’t have restrictions placed on how much exercise is acceptable. What fifty-year-old man has his exercise limited?!

The confusing thing to others—and even to me—is that I don’t look the part of someone with an eating disorder. I’m not eerily thin. I’d say I’m actually having to fight that middle-aged belly bulge that most men get. I’m consumed with fear that I am repulsively fat. I obsess over belly watching when in public, noting all the stomachs that may be bigger than mine, trying to take some comfort in the notion that mine might be less prominent and desperately wanting to assure myself that my tummy is normal for a guy my age. But the sense I have, at least now, is it will never be okay.

Prior to my group home gig, I spent an inordinate amount of time each day ignoring hunger cues and pushing myself to exercise longer, harder. In a way, I’m an eating disorder failure—massively blistered feet, worn out body, significant food deprivation and still no results. Not enough weight loss, not a trace of muscle gain. So much effort with nothing to show for it. A rational person would abandon a regimen that doesn’t produce results.

Drastic thoughts about my body image directly chip away at my self-esteem. Being in a group home for three months—regardless of the pleasant surroundings—is wildly threatening. With my exercise reduced to only five one-hour sessions per week and a meal plan that requires me to eat three meals and three snacks per day, it pokes at all my fears of gaining belly weight, going flabby and never being able to correct the “damage” done.

There’s another fear, a deeper one. What if I don’t see significant weight gain and, despite the encouraging evidence, I return to my extreme routines anyway? After all, this eating disorder is a fierce beast. In the spring, I spent six weeks in hospital for another treatment program. Upon discharge, I immediately went back to my eating disordered routines. I fretted that I’d gone flabby. I lost five pounds in the month between programs and the news made me giddy. This from a guy who, due to medications and moods, had thought he’d lost his ability to laugh. “It will never be enough,” the dietitian told me, referring to my weight loss intentions. Still, I wonder if the same goes for treatment.

Much of the work in program is intended to examine the underlying thoughts, emotions and events that brought on the eating disorder and continue to feed into it. I meet one-on-one each week with a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a dietitian and participate in multiple group sessions with the other residents each day. The feedback I got from the team working with me in hospital was that I’m a tough nut to crack. There were no insights, no breakthroughs. What if I can’t dig deeper? What if my sharing remains vague and evasive? How successful can I be at changing entrenched habits if I never chip away at what drives them?

I feel great pressure for treatment to work while also having no confidence that it will. What if I go through all this—the hospitalization, the group home experience, essentially half a year of intervention—and nothing changes? My eating disorder behaviors go back more than forty years and, while I’ve only been receiving treatment for the past two years, this feels like my last shot. Please don’t let this extended adult camp experiment be all for naught.