By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-09 08:41:24 | Updated at 2024-12-24 16:20:39
2 weeks ago
For the entire three years I was at university, I probably subsisted on about 800 calories a day in food – plus a whole lot more in booze.
I didn't bother with breakfast. I ate one Pret sandwich for lunch and that was pretty much it for the day. Instead, I puffed endless cigarettes which suppressed most of my hunger pangs and then, every night, I drank my body weight in alcohol – a combination of Smirnoff Ice, white wine, vodka and Diet Coke.
As a result of this very deliberate lifestyle, I was whippet thin. At my most slender, I weighed less than 8 st. My body shrank until my tummy really was as flat as a pancake, my shoulders were boney, my thighs were pin-like and, if you wrapped your hands around my waist, your thumbs and forefingers would touch.
But I didn't care. In fact, though I would never have admitted it at the time, I secretly liked being almost disconcertingly thin and, besides, drinking without worrying about calories was far more important to me back then than nourishing my body.
Of course, because I ate so little, I got far more drunk, and faster, than I would have if I was consuming three balanced meals a day.
I recall friends saying that they 'lined their stomachs' before a big night out, by eating a big bowl of pasta or some other starchy carb that would soak up the alcohol to stop them from getting too drunk. At the time, this befuddled me. I wasn't looking for any methods to lessen my inebriation.
Even though I was already regularly blacking out, I was in thrall to oblivion. I thought the whole point of getting drunk was to get out of your mind and, it seemed to me at the time, free. I also just didn't want to eat that pasta.
For the entire three years I was at university, I ate one Pret sandwich for lunch and that was pretty much it for the day. Instead, I puffed endless cigarettes and drank my body weight in alcohol, writes Isolde Walters
At that point in my life, I would probably have been classified as a 'drunkorexic' – a new term that describes individuals, particularly women, who drink excessively but skip meals to offset the calories in the alcohol.
Women who suffer from this condition – that many medical experts believe should be termed a disease – also often engage in excessive exercise.
Studies have shown that this kind of behaviour affects between 14 and 46 per cent of women and poses significant health risks such as malnutrition, dehydration and cardiovascular issues.
Researchers found that one in three female students were regularly cutting back on food and increasing physical activity to compensate for calories gained from alcohol.
I only became aware of the term 'drunkorexic' recently (I'm now 36 years old) but, from my own experience, and knowing many women in recovery for an alcohol problem, I have long suspected that there is a link between eating disorders and alcohol abuse. 'Drunkorexia' seems to me to be a particularly female offshoot of alcoholism.
Like most women I know, I have never had an easy relationship with food since puberty hit. I was a self conscious teenager convinced that I was fat and ugly.
Looking back at pictures of my 18-year-old self, I realise I was neither. At most I was carrying about ten pounds of rather sweet teenage puppy fat and I certainly didn't deserve all the unkind things I told myself.
But I'm a Millennial and I was raised on images of Victoria's Secret catwalk models with impeccable abs and jutting clavicles, paparazzi shots of Kate Moss wandering through London in tiny shorts that showed off her sinewy thighs, and Heat magazine's infamous red circle of shame that would loop around a celebrity's slightly swollen tummy or merest suggestion of cellulite.
As far as my teenage self was concerned, being thin was the one prize in life.
I would probably have been classified as a 'drunkorexic' – a term that describes individuals, particularly women, who drink excessively but skip meals to offset the calories in the alcohol (File image)
At school, although I never had an eating disorder, I suffered from what would now be called disordered eating. I would subsist on a strict diet of hardly any calories and then, after around four days, I'd inevitably fall off the wagon and eat everything in sight – peanut butter and jam sandwiches, ice cream, pasta, spoonfuls of Nutella straight out the jar – until my tummy felt uncomfortably full and I was disgusted with myself.
But that all changed when I discovered alcohol. Getting drunk allowed me to shrug off all that self-consciousness with an ease I'd never imagined possible. Booze, at first, gave me a freedom from myself that I never thought I'd achieve.
There were so many elements to this freedom but one of them was not worrying about what my body looked like. When you are sloshed, you are not worrying that your jeans are too tight and that someone might think you are pudgy.
I swapped binge eating for blackouts and, at first, my plummeting weight was just a happy by-product of the boozing – it wasn't the main intention.
But I quickly found I loved being a skinny minny. I loved people commenting on just how slender I was. I loved wearing anything and it looking fantastic. I even loved the occasional concerned comment from my parents that I was, in fact, too thin.
But most of all, I loved being free from fretting about my body. Not going through the endless dithering about what to wear to make sure I looked as slim as possible, not feeling self-conscious in changing rooms, not experiencing the dig of too-tight jeans.
The diet was easy to maintain as a student but when I left university and started working, it became an everyday struggle. Surviving on a sandwich a day and copious booze at night isn't really compatible with working life, in my experience.
Rather than cut back on drinking, my struggle to curb calories through restricting food intensified.
I was forever trying new diets. I went through an Atkins phase, tried out a low-glycemic index diet, kept food journals, totted up calories – and yet not once did I ever seriously attempt to control the obviously looming problem of my out-of-control drinking, which was by this point not only sabotaging any diet but rapidly curtailing my life.
I was raised on images of Victoria's Secret catwalk models with impeccable abs and jutting clavicles. As far as my teenage self was concerned, being thin was the one prize in life. Pictured, a model on the Victoria's Secret runway in Cannes, 2000
Even though I had graduated, in many ways, for most of my 20s, I continued to live the lifestyle of a drunken student. Blackouts remained a regular and terrifying feature. I spent many, many days with crippling hangovers that left me reaching for fatty, unhealthy but delicious food to help my pounding head, only to then be beset by guilt at the extra calories I'd consumed.
Medical experts say that drunkorexia can lead to serious nutritional deficiencies and, while I was never checked out by a doctor at the time, I did notice things I now suspect were caused by an inadequate diet combined with way too much alcohol.
My legs were forever bruised. I assumed these ugly marks were from clumsy falls or knockabouts that happened while I was inebriated. But I have since found out that one reason alcoholics tend to bruise more easily than normal drinkers is that they are often deficient in vitamin C, which is important for collagen production and maintaining antioxidant activity.
In all the time I have now been sober – more than six years now – I think I've had about two bruises on my legs.
I also suffered from what I called 'hangover skin' when I was drinking. After a big session, I would wake up in the morning and my face would look almost yellow with awful dark bags underneath my eyes. I would cover it with make-up but this never really worked – within an hour or so, the oils in my skin would have disturbed the cover-up and my skin would be yellow-ish again.
I now know that this was likely because I was so dehydrated and alcohol's diuretic (water-loss) effect also means you lose vitamins and nutrients needed to give you a healthy complexion.
When I finally got sober in 2017, I actually put on weight. This isn't that unusual. Although many people lose weight when they stop drinking, others find themselves beset with sugar cravings once that alcohol – which contains a lot of sugar – is no longer on the menu. They find themselves chomping on sweets and biscuits or guzzling lots of sugary tea to get their fix, which of course can lead to extra pounds.
In my case, getting sober loosened up my attitude towards food.
Early sobriety is a very generous time. I was surrounded by supportive people who encouraged me to have that slice of cake if I wanted it. I did have that cake.
In fact, I ate a lot of cake in those early weeks and months.
I put on a few pounds. But for the first time in my life, I didn't beat myself up about it and, actually, I think I looked better for it.
I also discovered in recovery the strong link, particularly in women, between food issues and alcohol issues. Almost all the women I know who have tackled a drinking problem have also struggled with some sort of food issue, whether that's a full-blown eating disorder – I know many women who were first treated for an eating disorder before developing alcoholism – or disordered eating and body image issues.
It is strikingly common for the two issues to go hand-in-hand.
Many women will also report food issues developing as they tackle their alcoholism. A desire for control, to use a substance to change the way one feels, is often what drives the urge for a drink.
That is also the compulsion behind an eating disorder –whether comfort eating to lift your mood with that rush of dopamine, or restricting your food to exert control over your body.
I have also known women who have developed exercise addiction in recovery. They will put themselves through gruelling workouts and militant regimes to chase that endorphin high to the point where they are harming, not helping, their bodies.
In recovery, we call this compulsive behaviour the 'ism' – the 'ism' may start out as a powerlessness over alcohol but we soon learn that it can be switched out for all manner of things – whether overexercising, dieting, compulsive spending, and more. It's why you often hear recovery referred to as 'whack a mole', once you've tackled one compulsive pattern, another springs up in its place.
For myself, while I cannot say that getting sober fixed my relationship with food and my body completely, it is a million miles better than it was.
Nowadays, I don't track my food. I no longer count calories.
I eat too much sugar and I sometimes overindulge and feel gross about it, but I don't beat myself up or call myself fat and ugly any more.
I exercise a lot and this has helped me appreciate and feel grateful for my body instead of constantly judging it.
It's been a slow, slow road but I'm thankful to be free of the binge drinking and disordered eating that came to define my student years.
