I distinctly remember having lunch with a friend in my late twenties when she gave me a little advice, “you can eat, or you can drink, but you can’t do both.” Choosing the empty calories and the mind-obliterating wine over the breadbasket was my vice. I hated my body anyways. My friend chided, “Let’s just call it a liquid lunch.”
I learned that day that I could allow myself the calories of a few glasses of wine if I went hungry. A slang term refers to a self-imposed restriction of calories reserved for drinking. It’s called drunkorexia. But I didn’t plan on becoming a drunk or an anorexic, so it seemed like a cautionary wife’s tale. Plus, it was decades before I could understand the phenomenon, and that term wasn’t even in the common lexicon. It was just the way many women survived.
You see how it started for me was just wanting to lose a little weight. To not look like the “big buff bride” my aunt called me at my wedding. I wasn’t overweight by any standards, but I wanted to be thin. To be waif-like and tiny. To disappear in my low-rise jeans. I realized that running miles and miles on my treadmill wasn’t going to do the trick, so I began restricting myself. The hungrier I was, the more successful I felt. I began working 12-hour shifts at the hospital on my feet with only a few snacks as nourishment. Sometimes no food at all. My weight plummeted only because I began muscle wasting. My once athletic body morphing into a misshapen, hollowed-out shell.
The Cycle
After several months of starvation, I began to quit the game mentally. To give up. To surrender to the fact that I had lost control of my body. I couldn’t even bring myself to eat. My friends and family became extremely concerned, but the issue was beyond something I could explain. In a rage of hunger one night, I began drinking a glass of red wine. Then guzzling it. Screw the calories, I needed to be numb.
Booze boosted my energy, and I was disinhibited enough to eat. Sometimes this led to a binge of food in which I would promptly throw up. And the cycle continued. Starve, drink, binge, repeat. I became addicted to alcohol but also to the process itself. The knowledge that relief was coming with that glass of wine and the cycle of rage that followed.
I worshipped thinness like the evil two-headed serpent it was, and I thought there was no way out of my cycle. I spent over a decade of my life starving, drinking, and collapsing into the pressure of it all. It took me years to figure out why this phenomenon was so powerful. I never drank in high school or in college. But hunger plunged me straight into alcoholic behaviors in my twenties and progressed to full-blow addiction by my thirties.
The chicken or the egg?
By the time I got sober at thirty-eight, my body was ravaged. I had four teeth pulled due to decay from vomiting. My skin was frail, itchy, and sun spotted. Sadly, my hair and nails were brittle and weak, and my insides were torn to shreds. Within two years of sobriety, I felt booze was no longer alluring, but I was still binging and purging. I was restricting calories and allowing the cycle to happen sans booze. It wasn’t until I realized that my eating disorder was the first culprit, my first addiction, that I began to do the work of healing.
I was anorexic and an alcoholic. How did I let this happen? What came first, the chicken or the egg? I decided to explore this topic more. When I looked around a women’s meeting, I noticed several of us succumbed to the same fate. We had struggled with both an eating disorder and a substance use disorder. As it turns out, the statistic is one in five people do. But nobody was really talking about the fact that we felt compelled to drink only on an empty stomach. Sure, we got drunk faster, but we also did mental gymnastics by weighing out the caloric intake. I was not the only one. And I don’t want you to feel like you are either. If I can #recoveroutloud about alcohol abuse, I can do the same for the other dragons I was slaying.
I’m ready to speak up. Are you ready to listen?
This video explains my journey with eating disorders and alcohol addiction. (Which is now dubbed “Drunkorexia”) I hope to open the conversation to those who have struggled in the past, are still struggling, or experiencing a loved one struggle. Body image and food issues are running rampant amongst people of all shapes and sizes, and we don’t have to suffer alone. I want to open the dialogue necessary to dismantle the shame and stigma many of us carry. I use science, humor, and personal experience to cut through the noise and shed some light on this painful topic.
Grace & Glam,
Kate
Photo credit of Kate Vitela in red blazer by @halleysun.photography
“When I got sober, fashion allowed me to re-introduce myself to the world as the flawesome, yet dignified, ever-evolving spirit that I am.” – KV
WALK YOUR TALK with Sober Fashionista Kate Vitela is our section of the site that celebrates fashion and the role it plays in our recovery. Getting ready for life can be just as fun if not more fun, now that we’re sober…because drunk never looks good.
Living a sober lifestyle? Us too! Our goal is to help smash the stigma surrounding addiction, showing that sober is not boring, by providing positive content on living life to the fullest. The lifestyle section is a catch-all for all things sober living.
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Be sure to check out Kate’s latest adventures on the runway, behind the scenes, down the catwalk, and everywhere in-between over at www.katevitela.com
A Disco Ball is Hundreds of Pieces of Broken Glass, Put Together to Make a Magical Ball of Light. You are NOT Broken, Friend. You are a DISCO BALL!
Resources Are Available
If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulties surrounding alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, please reach out and ask for help. People everywhere can and want to help; you just have to know where to look. And continue to look until you find what works for you. Click here for a list of regional and national resources.
Resources Are Available
If you or someone you know is experiencing difficulties surrounding alcoholism, addiction, or mental illness, please reach out and ask for help. People everywhere can and want to help; you just have to know where to look. And continue to look until you find what works for you. Click here for a list of regional and national resources.
