We talk a lot about the diet mentality, how it can mess with your noggin and change a very self-assured kind of girl into one that needs a room full of food groupies to applaud when they lose 5 pounds. But what about after? After all that weight is gone. After a person is struggling to keep it off, trying everything possible not to start sliding up the scale. How can you possibly have an eating disorder if the world keeps telling you how good you look? Check out Melissa's story, of how she went from a happy fit, fat girl, to losing weight through diet and exercise, and then trying to keep it off. Then she realized that somewhere along the way, she had whittled down her positive self-image and the dieting mentality had developed into an actual eating disorder.


A recent SELF survey polled 4,000 women ages 25-45 and discovered that more than 6 in 10 women are "disordered eaters." Out of curiosity, I took the survey online. Anything over a score of 22 was a red flag; I scored a 38. The survey identified six types of disordered eaters: calorie prisoners, secret eaters, career dieters, food addicts, purgers and over-exercisers. Some women fit into one category and others, like me, could easily be grouped into more than one. I was an over-exerciser, a food addict and a calorie prisoner. While I never used laxatives or made myself throw up--and I'm ashamed to admit this--I was semi-purging.

I maintained my goal weight for a year, until December 2005, when stress in my personal life seemed to dominate my thoughts. I'd gotten engaged in the fall, and between a brand new job, wedding planning, and dealing with challenging immigration issues to bring my now-husband here to the U.S. (he lived overseas at the time), I was a ball of stress. It was around that time that the "midnight incidents," as I now call them, began. I started waking in the middle of the night and making a beeline for the kitchen, not fully aware of what I was doing.

There's a moment that I dread with my real friends, the very few people I get to know really well and for whom I let down my guard. We'll be talking about something and I might mention, offhandedly, something about my father, and they'll stop short and look astonished and say, "Wow, I just realized that I know nothing about your dad." That's because I don't have one, I want to say.

My parents started dating when my mother was a freshman. They got married when my mother was 19 and my father 22. My father sports a black eye in their wedding pictures because he got into a fist fight during his bachelor party. It was an auspicious beginning. As a child, I don't remember a time when they were together (apparently they separated when I was under a year old), so I never went through the anger that some kids go through, the anguish over the fact that they should really, truly be together. One of my earliest memories, the only one of my father, is of his back descending down the stairs of our second-floor apartment. I know that it seems way too trite, that image, but it is honest and true. For a long time, I thought it was the last time I saw him, but I know now that it wasn't.

This morning, I drove myself to the airport with minimal worries. This was unusual because, you see, I love to travel, but hate to fly. Not the actual flying part. That doesn't bother me. But as a plus size girl, there are all kinds of other issues involved when you start talking about impinging upon a stranger's personal space. I easily fit into the seats on airlines (although, oy, the bulkhead seat with the solid sides? My ass would only fit happily if my hips could dislocate), and I don't overlap the boundaries of my minuscule little area. I fold my arms into complicated origami shapes over my boobs so that I can give my seat partner full ownership of the armrest (which remains firmly down after I get buckled in). And I only take one carry on that I never touch once it is stowed in the overhead bin. I'd like to think I'm a good seat partner.

Granted, I lust for the empty seat. You see, the empty seat means I can relax a little bit. I don't have to feel as though I'm apologizing for being in the row. I always check in and move myself to the perfect seat situation (window seat in a row where only the aisle is occupied) because I know that the chances of filling that middle seat are slim (ha! pun) to none. Sometimes Esteban, in his frequent travels, gets stuck in the middle seat, but so far, I've been lucky. I don't know what I'd do, quite honestly. Throw a fit, perhaps. Or burst into tears. Or perhaps fake a seizure.

In junior high, my mother picked me up from school in her Volvo station wagon, my sister perched in the back. We waited through the throngs of walkers, and I cowered a bit in the front seat. Like every 14-year-old, I was hyper-self-consciousand the fact that my mom and her boyfriend were major hippies and no one in Wisconsin had ever heard of a Volvo before and thought our car was "weird" was a major embarrassment. (It wasn't until the Volvo finally went to the great Swedish Auto graveyard in the sky that I discovered the untapped cachet of the brand.) In eighth grade, your weapon was your mouth, and I was always on the defense, but was practicing my superpower of turning invisible by not meeting anyone's gaze, by not thinking any thoughts or showing emotion. It was probably my best skill until I learned how to tie a cherry stem in a knot without using my fingers. Two girls in my grade passed in front of the car at an intersection.

Two average girls, not popular, closer to the cast of Freaks and Geeks than Gossip Girl. One said something to her friend, and then kept walking. I watched the exchange and felt a familiar plummeting feeling in my gut and tried to brush it away, but right then, my 9-year-old sister in the backseat spoke up.

"Do you know those girls, Weet?"

"Yeah, sorta."

"Are they your friends?"

"I don't know!" I actually was friendly with Kim, the speaker. We made each other laugh in one class, but definitely weren't hanging out with each other or anything.

"Oh, because you know what they said? I read her lips. She said 'Weet's fat but her mom is pretty.' "

I am 24 and my friends comment regularly on the fact that whenever we go out dancing, whenever we go anywhere, I usually have one or two men around, men other than my boyfriend, men they refer to as "Weet's boy collection". I shrug and act modest because my female friends sound jealous and this is the correct reaction for me to have. I don't really understand why these guys like to hang out with me. In truth, I find them fascinating. They offer a fresh perspective and also, we all like to watch football and laugh at fart jokes.

There is a running joke that they would be sleeping with me if I weren't already in a relationship, that they love my cleavage. They watch saucily when I apply lipstick. I make comments about my lack of a gag reflex and then laugh when they adjust their position on the bar stool, furtively pull at their jeans as though to make room for expansion. It is a very funny joke, like a nun wearing a red lace bra, a bit of humor that holds the subtext of our evenings taut, a stretched tendon of a joke. This idea that I would be attractive to them? Preposterous.

It is 1993 and I am a full-time college student commuting to a little community college about 40 miles from my house. Given the drive and the inclement winters, once I get to campus, I don't leave until after my last class late in the afternoon, which means two meals at the teensy cafeteria--basically a soda machine and two ladies in hairnets, standing in front of a griddle, waiting to take your order. Most of the time, I have about five bucks to get through two meals. Breakfast is the cheapest vegetarian fare (and the most delicious), so I usually have a biggish meal between my first and second class and then coast through lunch with a cup of vegetable soup ($1.25) and two pieces of wheat toast with peanut butter ($.50).

On this particular day, I am ravenous and the line is long, with lots of people hanging around waiting for their pancakes, omelets and whatnot. I order three scrambled eggs (one with yolk, two whites), a carton of skim milk, a whole wheat bagel without butter (the ladies, god love them, slop a fake butter substance on practically everything) and then I silently deliberate between choosing peanut butter or cream cheese. Finally I decide and complete the order and yes, that is all, and no, no bacon or hashbrowns with the eggs, thanks.

"So close!" A guy smiles at me from the waiting area.

"Excuse me?" Is he talking to me? What?

"You were so close." He says again.

"What do you mean?" I am completely confused. "Oh, the eggs, no yolks. Not getting bacon or any meat with the eggs. The whole wheat bagel without butter. The skim milk. And then you had to go and ruin everything by getting cream cheese!" He groans, like he's just revealed the twist to an elaborate movie plot.

Katherine Heigl, who is unabashedly gorgeous, admits that she was hating on her weight when getting ready to walk down the aisle. Katherine blames the dress and while granted, white is not exactly the most slimming of colors, what is it about an upcoming wedding that turns on our internal inferiority complex? Logistically, isn't this guy marrying you for, you know, you? They say that when a newly engaged guy thinks about his upcoming marriage, the biggest thought in his mind is "I hope she doesn't change". And yet, I'd be willing to bet that the percentage of women who didn't actively try to lose weight for the wedding would be in the single digits. 

And I wish I could take the high road here, but then I'd have to pretend that my short walk down the aisle didn't come after several dozen miles spent huffing and puffing around the walking track at the local Y. You see, I ordered a custom wedding dress that was supposedly cut to fit my proportions and in theory should have fit right out of the box. I had spent the extra money to do this specifically because I knew that I had a propensity to react to high stress situations with disordered eating and I knew that the wedding? With everyone looking at me? With this big expectation that I would be the most beautiful girl in the room? Yeah, that was gearing up for one huge amount of starvation that was thinly veiled as crazy-assed dieting.

Finding a wedding dress when you are a size 24 can be summed up in one word: SUCKS. Oh, they have them. There are wedding dresses out there. And if I were Amish or 75-years-old or enjoyed swathing my fine ass in a three-foot wide bow, to gift wrap the very thing I wanted to hide, there wouldn't be a problem finding a wedding dress.

It is 1984 and I am thirteen years old. For my golden birthday, my mother informs me that her present to me is that she is taking me to my very first concert. Awesome, I think! My brain immediately swirls to concert footage on MTV, the kind showing Bruce Springsteen pulling Courteney Cox up to dance with him on stage. Or maybe it will be Cyndi Lauper? Or the Police? Or Lionel Richie? The bubble bursts: it’s the Beach Boys, with opening act America, who hadn’t had a hit since 1975. Awesome. It is still a concert. A concert! I am stoked.

My aunt and her friends are going too, which gives me hope, as they are ten years younger than my mom and ten years older than me. Still young enough to have some sense of coolness. I plot all week for what I’m going to wear. I pick out many potential outfits but finally end with a pair of brand new, blinding white Tretorns that I got for my birthday, a pair of white jeans and a red and white striped shirt. My mom’s boyfriend wouldn’t let me wear his straw panama (from actual Panama) hat, but otherwise, it is absolutely perfect.

The concert is held outside, at a fairgrounds, all day on a Saturday. The grounds are still soggy from a few soaking thunderstorms earlier in the week, but they’ve spread out straw on most places. Even still, there’s nowhere to sit without getting muddy, and no one has thought to bring a blanket. With my white pants, it's not like you can just plop down on the ground, so I stand all day. Everything is ridiculously expensive and I am shocked by the simple fact of venue markups. A can of soda for $2.00 when they cost less than a quarter at the gas station? Insanity! I had felt like a mogul when I walked in with $8.00, but in the heat, it’s gone before the first act is off the stage. Luckily, my chaperones have realized that beer costs the same as soda, so they start just handing me dollars in return for my role as beer runner. Rural fairgrounds didn’t think twice about selling a kid beer for their parents, as long as they didn’t look like they were going to drink it themselves. It was a different time.

During one of my errands, I notice two guys looking at me. They both have facial hair and wear the ridiculous short cutoffs that you would imagine at a tractor pull. One isn’t wearing a shirt.

I smile, because it doesn’t occur to me to not, and collect my three Budweisers and a Mountain Dew, clutching them against my stomach for the walk back. One walks over to me.

In Melinda's third contribution to the Vault series, she explores how those around us are sometimes more affected by your weight than you are.

Recently we were having dinner with my father-in-law and his wife, an event that is always a little awkward, since our relationship is tenuous at best. It took exactly five minutes after sitting down before they pissed me off.

"Look at that face! You're getting so skinny!" exclaimed my husband's stepmother.

"We're so proud of you!" My father-in-law enthusiastically chimed in.

"Screw this shit," I answered silently as I averted their eyes with a tight smile. 

In the five years that they have known me, I have walked in the Breast Cancer 3-Day three times; I have volunteered as a Big Sister through Big Brothers/Big Sisters; I have run events for the San Diego County Science Olympiad; I've been promoted twice; I've completed a 13-month professional certificate program; I've helped plan the San Diego American Heart Walk as part of their Logistics Committee; and now I've started working on my MBA.

And yet the one and only thing for which they have ever been proud of me is losing weight.

For Christmas this year, my aunt gave everyone a collage of old pictures of our family. Mine has pictures of my grandmother, my great-grandmother, my mother, her sisters, myself and my siblings—all snaps of time over the last five decades. One of the pictures was taken on the day of my great uncle's funeral. They were taking posed photos, since relatives were there from near and far. This one, I assume, was supposed to be of my great-grandmother and her two surviving children, but for inexplicable reasons, they called me into the shot, maybe because it was common knowledge that I had been Great Uncle Roger's favorite niece.

It's a strange picture for me to see because I remember it being taken, remember looking at the tableau that is behind the camera. My slender mother is standing just out of camera range, next to my stepfather and her very weight-conscious sisters who were coaching the subjects while my great-grandfather snapped away. My uncle's kids, who are very cool and beautiful and have exotic Texas accents (even though they grew up in Wisconsin, which is a very perplexing mystery and allowed me to imagine that there is hope for me yet) are also there, watching from the sidelines, waiting for their own posed photos. My great grandmother is staring just behind the shoulder of the photographer, my surviving Great Uncle is looking there too, shooting is beaming his Hollywood smile. I called him my Rockford Files uncle (and my Uncle Roger was my Hugs and Kisses Uncle, until he got sick and couldn't touch anyone because of germs) and my grandmother looks off to her right, where her daughters were sitting.