Get Pretty Or Die Trying

Some of my friends started a ‘no-carb’ diet this summer, and they’re still on it. It’s all they’ll talk about it seems. And I just sit there quietly while they go on and on about losing weight.

At least, I sit there quietly for as long as I can. Because this last time, I got sick of it and told them that if they hate their diet so much, why not quit or find a better one. Then one friend pointed out that I too have lost a decent amount of weight recently, and he asked what diet I was on.

As a reflex I said that I wasn’t on one. But that’s not really true I suppose. If diabulimia counts as a ‘diet’. So why they’re challenging themselves, I’m slowly wasting away and killing myself in the process.

But in a way I still felt almost superior as they talked about foods they could no longer eat. Because I can eat whatever I want and as much as I want and still watch the weight melt away.

But I can also feel the exhaustion, the lower quality of life, the constant aches. I know that I’m killing myself but i just don’t care. I don’t care.

I want to feel miserable, because at least that’s feeling something. At least that’s an actual sensation, and not just a numb nothing. I’m trying to get away from the self harm, so I’m choosing internal damage instead. I’ll kill myself from the inside out. And at least this has the added benefit of making me more attractive. Or at least less unattractive.

Cause I don’t care how bad this is for me. I don’t care how much I get hurt. I don’t care if I end up in the hospital again. I just want to feel something. Feel alive. Feel human. Even if that feeling sucks, or hurts, or is miserable. At least it’s something to hold onto.

“Men only like skinny girls because they’re too weak to argue and salads are cheap.”

-A great friend

Some friends are great at cheering a girl up.

I changed my basal rates again.

This time, back to what they should be. This morning I also bolused for the first time in what feels like and eternity.

I can’t handle studying, finals, stress, and diabulimia at the same time. Plus I’m going home for a week after this, so I’m going back to taking care of diabetes. At least temporarily and maybe permanently.

I just can’t keep up with it all. I have enough stress with school, and now drama in my personal life, so I can’t handle constant DKA on top of it all. I’m still trying to lose the weight so i’ll try the more conventional way of watching what I eat and such.

Anyways, I haven’t lost any more weight in the past week even with the diabulimia, so it’s starting to really seem as though it’s not worth it. I feel terrible and can’t focus when I feel sick all the time.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep up being a good diabetic until I turn back to skipping insulin, but for now I’m going to try. I need to. I’m going to fight to keep myself in a more healthy state, but I don’t know how well that’s going to work.

I’m just so exhausted from this whole process. I need to get myself in check. So it’s back to good blood sugars and taking the insulin I know I need. I don’t know how much damage has already been done but maybe if I stay good, I won’t do any more damage to my body. But I don’t know.

We’ll see how this whole taking care of myself and my disease works out. I really do hope I can keep myself from going back for at least a while, but I know it’ll be so tempting, especially if the scale starts telling me that I’m gaining weight again. But right now, I don’t have space in my life for vanity to be a priority, or even really a thought. I can’t handle this like I thought I could.

A part of me wishes I never started, because I don’t want to stop. No matter how much I know I need to.

I’m definitely struggling.

I feel so sick all the time. I just want to lie in bed and sleep, just do nothing. I don’t want to go to class, interact with people, even move, and least of all consume more sugar.

I’m forcing myself to eat enough sugar to keep my levels high enough, but it’s the last thing I want to do. But I know that when I don’t eat sugar, my blood sugar drops too low and I won’t lose the weight. It just feels nearly impossible to find a balance.

I’ve mostly been resorting to just drinking lots of sugary drinks. I figure, if I can’t bring myself to eat anything, then I can at least drink excessive amounts of juice. I don’t even struggle taking down liquid sugar, because I’m always so thirsty anyways. My only problem is that then I tend to feel very sick after downing four glasses of apple juice in the morning. Yesterday it got so bad I had to skip my morning classes because I was throwing up. It got to the point where I felt nauseous every time I so much as moved, and even breathing too deeply made my stomach churn.

This is turning out to be very unpleasant. And I can’t afford to keep missing class because of this. I have finals at the end of February and I don’t know how I’m going to manage passing them while also feeling like death because of this diabulimia.

Logically, I know I should just stop right now. Get myself back on track and get healthy. But I don’t want to, at least not more than I want to lose weight.

Or maybe I honestly can’t just stop. This whole time, I’ve thought of diabulimia as being under my control; a switch that I can flip on or off and be done with. That’s just how I need to think of things though. If I let myself believe that it’s not under my control, I’d probably freak out and lose it.

I come from a very black-and-white way of thinking. I’m of an engineering and science mindset where things are clear-cut. So I have to think of the diabulmia as black or white, on or off. Something I can simply choose to change and then be done with it. I need that control, even if it’s only an imagined control. That’s just how I think.

I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up before I need to get healthy again, but I guess I’ll just have to wait it out and see what the breaking point is actually going to be.

Anyone who thinks diabulimia is easy, is entirely wrong.

It’s incredibly difficult. Perhaps it is an ‘easy’ way to lose weight on paper, but the reality is vastly different.

Aside from just the nasty complications of being in a constant state of DKA, even the logistics are rather difficult.

I mean, you have to keep your sugars high enough at all times so that you force yourself into DKA. But a side effect is that you lose all desire to really eat from the nausea, and thus your sugar drops since you aren’t consuming any more. Or really, it just drops enough for the DKA to stop and also for the weight to start creeping back.

But you also can’t let the hyperglycemia get too out of hand or you’ll end up in the hospital. So you have stay healthy enough to keep alive and keep outside people from taking notice of your perpetual state of illness.

It’s an immensely difficult balance, and you have to deal with that whilst also feeling akin to death.

And now currently I’m also at college, where I frequently lack time to even sleep, so it’s all just adding up to feel pretty impossible. I’m somehow keeping my head above water with the massive amounts of schoolwork, but as a result I’ve managed to only get sleep for one of the past 52 hours. Literally. One hour-long nap, and nothing else.

But the diabulimia is making me so exhausted, I feel like I could sleep for days.

I can’t deal with this all very well. So I need to speed up the process. If I’m going to do this, I have to stop half-assing it so much. I’m dialing back the basal rates by 20%. And yes, I legitimately did the math for that.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. But I have a feeling it’s not going to be good.

Whatever, I just want some sleep.

I definitely gained back some of the weight I had lost this summer, though not completely. So I still count it as a win. Well, as far as the scale goes anyways.

I’ve kind of half-assedly gone back to the diabulimia. I don’t bolus anymore, but I’ve kept my basal rates at the level they should be. I’ve basically just completely ignored the fact that I’m diabetic, except for switching sites for my pump every few days.

I don’t bolus. I don’t test my blood sugar. I don’t care.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I bolused and I don’t remember where the hell I even left my meter. I know, I know, it’s a terrible way to go, but it is what it is.

But I’ve also been trying to intake much less sugar, to sort of balance it out a bit. The hyperglycemia is high enough that it takes away my appetite so I don’t really eat much sugar and I’ve been trying to stick to healthier food choices in general. So I wouldn’t consider myself fully diabulimic again, but I’m definitely flirting with that line of distinction.

I’ve been losing a little bit of weight, but not much really. So I think I need to take a different route. I’m going to start actively watching what I eat and try to start being a better diabetic again. I’ll start with actually testing my blood sugars, and then try to find the motivation to start bolusing again.

But I still desperately want to lose more of this weight.

I’ll try the whole eat healthy and exercise thing, but I’m not going to completely let go of hyperglycemia. But I’m definitely going to tone it down, because I’m starting to see some warning signs.

I’ve been getting sick a lot lately. And I just got a nasty infection, which last time this started I ended up in the hospital because of it. So I just don’t think my already damaged immune system can handle much more of this.

So It’s less sugar, more testing, considering bolusing, and hopefully less weight.

We’ll see how this goes.

Sorry it’s been so long.

Things got a little crazy for a while.

See, I got really sick. Beyond the diabulimia. I got an intense infection that caused me to have a bunch of abscesses that grew to the size of tennis balls.

I couldn’t deal with both illnesses at once so I made the choice to stop with the diabulimia since I could actually prevent that one from affecting me anymore.

That said, the other infection still became so bad that I had to be hospitalized for four days, where they had to surgically remove the abscesses, while also keeping me on IV antibiotics and a lot of pain medicine.

So I didn’t get out of the hospital until literally the day before I returned to college.

I’ve still not started the diabulimia again, nor do I think I’m going to. Yes, I’m still pretty far from my target weight, but I’m so glad to feel healthy again that I’m not going to risk losing that. Not again.

Plus, I just physically cannot deal with the complications of diabulimia while also being here at school. I go to one of the best engineering colleges in the US, and naturally it’s an extremely demanding school where I’m lucky to get any sleep at all. In addition, I took a job as on residence hall staff, so while trying to pass my classes I’m also in charge of 76 freshmen.

I’m not willing to slack off on my job or schoolwork for the sake of vanity.

Anyways, when I’m here at school I don’t really care about vanity anyways. I’m comfortable with who I am. Sure there are days when I wish I could just be a size 6, but who doesn’t? I’m happy with the person I am as a whole, and that’s good enough for me. If it’s not good enough for someone else then fuck them.

So I’m leaving this chapter of my life behind.

There are much better ways to get what I want in life.

It’s definitely working. I’ve managed to keep my sugars above 400 at all times, and the weight is really coming off. I’ve lowered my basal rate to 0.3 units and zero boluses.

Now, while this is an extremely effective way to lose weight, I DO NOT recommend this to anyone. I’ll be honest here, I feel awful.

My head feels like it’s about to explode; it’s making me want to take a drill to my temple to try to release this unbearable pressure. Every time I so much as sit up, my world wobbles and it takes a minute for my eyes to adjust to the movement.

I can feel my heart. As in, I can feel my heart beating faster than it should, even when I’m just lying down. And if I so much as walk up stairs my hearts pounds so hard that I’m afraid it’s just going to quit.

I feel lightheaded all the time, and I’m afraid that I’ll either pass out or my heart will give out under the extreme stress I’m putting it through. I’m at the point where I’m just counting down the days until I can quit this idiotic plan and stop being terrified that I might keel over any second.

That said, I’m not quitting. I said that I’d keep this up until either school starts, or I reach 130 lbs before then. Or I guess I’d also stop if this puts me into the hospital. But I’m just going to pretend like that’s not even a possibility. Otherwise, I’d be completely freaking out and I’d be too terrified to even get out of bed in the morning.

So really, I am NOT advocating diabulimia for anyone. Yes, it does make losing weight extremely easy, but it’s a nasty trade-off. I can’t even see any progress in the way I look, but I can literally feel that this is causing some serious damage to my body.

I’m not quitting because I already made a commitment and I’m sticking to it. Hey, this really is my way to ‘get pretty or die trying’ after all.

I know a lot of people have issues with what I’m doing and really, I can’t blame them. But please at least respect that this is my life and my choice. An educated one at that. I didn’t just wake up one day and say ‘hey, maybe I should stop taking insulin’.

I’ve known of the existence of diabulimia for years, and I recently started doing more research on it. I’ve read through dozens of medical journals, countless personal accounts of it, and so I had a relative idea of what I was getting myself into.

Even with all that, I did decide to go through with this anyways. And no matter how many people try to preach to me the dangers of my choice (although some really are just people acting out of genuine concern, which I appreciate and applaud) I’m not changing my mind. I’m too damn stubborn for that.

I’m just here, telling my truth. From what I can find, the only people who even talk about diabulimia are doctors, psychiatrists, recovered diabulimics, or entitled people who feel the need to cast hate towards people who choose this path.

So I’m here to offer a different perspective. I am someone who is diabulimic, and I’m chronicling that path, so maybe there can be a little more understanding about this topic. I read everything I could find about diabulimia, and even that barely scratched the surface of what it’s actually like to experience it for myself.

You can disagree, you can hate, you can warn, or you can commiserate. But you can’t stop me. I’m going to do this, and I’m going to put it out there for everyone to see.

If you don’t like what I’m doing, don’t read.

I finally got under the 170 mark, I’m so happy.

But I will admit, this ol’ plan of mine is kind of a total bitch. I slipped back a few times, and I think that’s why the weight loss isn’t coming along as quickly. Because I was running in the 500-600 blood sugar range, and it made me feel AWFUL. So I broke down a little and let it drop to the 300-400 range. I know that’s still a pretty shoddy place to be, but it’s a lot more comfortable. However, it’s also a lot less effective.

So I’m thinking that I have two real ways to go about this:

Route A) Keep constant DKA but only stay in the 300-400 range. High enough to maintain DKA, but low enough that I won’t be curled up in bed all day, feeling like death. Still some headaches, and my head will be a little fuzzy, but all manageable. It’ll still cause permanent damage but less quickly than a higher range. However, this also means loosing weight less quickly, and thus keeping this plan up so a longer state of DKA. Also, it’s more likely that my blood sugar could drop enough to leave a state of DKA and that would set me back a bit.

Route B) Keep up a more severe DKA by staying in the 500-600 range. This will definitely keep up a constant DKA, but it also will make me feel horrible. Headaches that literally make me dizzy and make it difficult to focus on anything. Stomach pains, extreme thirst (=a lot of trips to the bathroom), exhaustion, and just feeling like every limb weights 100 lbs. It’s so tiring just to move. But, the weight will start dropping very rapidly, a least one or two pounds in a day. Granted, this is also going to cause some serious damage to my kidneys, my nerves, my eyes, and pretty much my everything. If I keep it up for about a month, I’ll definitely take several years off my life. But even just for now, it’s a pretty fine line between feeling awful and needing to go to the hospital. A lot of diabetics are diagnosed when their blood sugars are around this level because they feel so sick, and I’m trying to stay in this limbo of being sick enough to lose weight but not sick enough require a hospital visit.

And honestly, I’m gonna try my second option. Because, well, if I’m going to do something idiotic, I’m not gonna half-ass it. I go all in. Plus, I do kind of have a time limit on my diabulimia, and the second option is far more likely to adhere to said limit.

So for now, I’m going to cut my insulin down to a .6 unit basal rate all day (I’m on an insulin pump), and no bolus. I figure, if my sugar gets too high, I’ll just exercise more and start eating less sugar in general. Because ideally, I can just keep my sugar up through lack of insulin, while also cutting my calories as a whole and exercising more. That is, if I don’t feel too miserable for the latter.

Well, I guess I’ll see how this goes! Because I only have 33 more days!! (the last week of which is vacation…on an island…so I’ll be wearing a swimsuit…yikes)

Right. So three days and I’ve lost 6 lbs. I’d say that’s a pretty damn good rate.

Granted, I’ve felt miserable since I started my diabulemia (that’s diabetes lingo for not taking our meds in order to lose weight). Terrible headaches, nausea, exhaustion, and just feeling very heavy. Like, when I walk or even just sit, the world feels so heavy, like the air has the consistency of water. Even just walking feels like I’m wading through a pool of jello. It’s just a very odd sensation.

Anyways, I’m starting to see why this might not be the best idea I’ve ever had. Nevertheless, I’m going to stick to it. I mean come on, I’m averaging at losing 2 lbs a day and I’ve been eating MORE than I usually do while not exercising at all (mostly because I feel way to crappy for that). True I can’t really see any result, just the number on my scale, but come on. What’s a month or two of feeling like shit compared to feeling pretty and sexy?

I go back to college August 22, and I want to be hot by then. I want to walk back in and look like a completely different person. My target weight for going back to school is 140, and I’ll reach that even if I average only losing 1 lb a day. So that’s totally legit. And once I get back to school, I’ll stop and go back to caring for my diabetes the way I should.

I just want to feel good about myself. And frankly, I wan’t the guy I like to actually be attracted to me. Yeah yeah, that’s a dumbass reason but whatever, at least it’s honest. I’m just so sick of always being in the ‘friend zone’ So this is how I’m going to prevent it. And even if he still doesn’t want to go out with me when I come back looking pretty, then at least I’ll have the confidence in my own appearance to go out and find some other guy that will like me.

God, that sounds petty but I don’t give a fuck. I’m sticking to my plan because I cannot wait to see everyone’s faces when I come back as the new and improved me.

That anticipation is the only thing that’s keeping me from giving up and feeling healthy again.