How to find balance in recovering from eating disorders by managing type 1 diabetes, doing handstands, and learning how to find a community.
Twenty years after I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, I didn’t think about doing a handstand until I was 22 years old.
I was working at CU Boulder Recreation Center as a personal trainer when my boss invited me to try out her new handstand class. Although I would never lift my nose at the possibility of adventure, I was enthusiastic about the invitation.
That first class was tough. My hands fought the floor to make the toddler take her first step. The movement of genuinely trusting my hands to balance my whole body was horrifying.
The only drill I had excellent was the hollow hold I did at the start of the class, strengthening the core I placed on the floor in between. From there, I felt more and more tuned, oafish and fell out of my element.
By the end of class, I was a stranger in my body.
As a type 1 diabetes, I was familiar with the outsider-like feelings inside my body.
When Knock came to the door I knew it was over.
“Clair? That’s your resident advisor, Gisele. Would you like to let me in?”
I have not moved out of the dorm bed I had lying on for the past two days.
“Clair, I’m with a woman in medical services. We’ll unlock your door.”
I counted them and stared at the tiles on the ceiling.
I moved to my University of New Jersey dorm three days ago. Before that, I pretended I hadn’t had a T1D for over two years. I skipped the insulin dose to control my weight, but I was afraid to eat most of the food.
The first morning after moving to college, I went to the cafeteria with all the other freshmen. What could have been an easy task turned into a nightmare.
I ate a bowl of granola and underestimated the insulin bolus to prevent my blood sugar from falling. Within minutes my blood sugar level was spiked up to 500 mg/dL.
When my classmate left the dining room for the first activity of the day, I was so sick I went to the bathroom.
As I sat on the bathroom floor, my runaway thoughts wrapped around my mind like a poison ivy.
If you can’t manage your T1D, how do you end up going to class, making friends, or doing something?
My worst doubt has been confirmed. I couldn’t take care of myself. Everything is worth it. I went to bed and there I stayed until a knock came at the door.
That wasn’t the first knock at the door I heard. My friends and family were knocking on the door for months. Still, you can only hope to defeat the door, as you can only lead the horse into the water.
For the days before CGM and insulin pumps, my daily routine consisted of finger stab wounds, blood drops, syringes, insulin vials, and over 120 T1D-related decisions per day.
I’m still reasoning how my mother did this for me and for me throughout my toddler and elementary school year. She is definitely a hero.
In junior high school, he took over T1D management. Scale and glucose meter. The numbers these machines showed have become a powerful dictator of all my self-worth.
I tried hard for perfection, but nothing is as perfect as T1D management.
The high numbers made me feel uneasy and then I felt depressed. I began to give up.
I could have asked my mother for help, but I was so embarrassed about my spiral situation. I lied about my blood sugar levels and told my mom and the school nurse that they were in range as they consistently creeping up above 300 mg/dl.
That was my dirty little secret. With an unlimited snowball of self-destruction and shame, I gained size and speed every day. So I decided to slow everything down.
When I was 11, I stopped eating.
Cutting food out of my life has been effective for weeks even in euphoria. As my diet shrank, my blood sugar levels remained in range. For a moment, I found a balance of control.
However, control was not sustainable and the scale was quickly tilted towards extremes. Control began to eat oranges and three tablespoons of oatmeal for a day, tucking chicken from socks into socks at the dinner table, not realising my mom wasn’t eating, and couldn’t eat on the internet for hours.
Control carved me into the hardened hollow shell of a joyful child I came many weeks ago.
People with T1D can develop twice as much eating disorder as people without T1D. A huge amount of focus T1D management, combined with our culture’s obsession with weight, is required by numbers and food, and mixes together to form a powerful concoction of shame and guilt surrounding the body, creating the food they put in.
I spent my adolescence going in and out of the eating disorder clinics and therapist’s offices, but nothing went well.
My high school days were a marathon that nourished eating disorders, where my T1D existed, feeding eating disorders, and digging deep into holes where I learned to resort to self-harm in the dark.
On this foundation, I moved to university to live alone and take care of myself.
After three knocks, Campus Mental Health Service unlocked the door to my dorm room and watched enough to decide I wasn’t sure if I wanted to live anymore.
I don’t remember the ambulance getting into the emergency room from my dorm building. I was shocked by how balanced my life was.
Knocking on the door marked the ending and therefore a new beginning.
On the day I reached the 60-second handstand hold goal, it felt an anti-climax.
“Ah, oh oh,” I muttered as the metronome hit 60 seconds.
I remember hugging my friend Carla and coach Matt. I remember that after the initial excitement faded, achieving this goal forgotten the strict realization that it would not make us feel different than a minute ago.
This change was already made a few days after consistent handstand drills and practice, encouragement from coaches and friends, and holds of 8, 15, 30, 38, 47, 44, 50, 54 seconds.
Every day of commitment to caring for yourself and practicing your handstands is lacking in the self-terrifying granite rock, like a slow, merciless IV drip from the water tap.
My new balance was carved out of fear of what I could do if I gave myself a chance.
I dropped out of college after that knock fell on the door of my dorm room.
I finally found a way to calculate my insulin dose and go back to a healthier version of myself a few days after facing food problems. There have also been some major changes, such as getting a continuous glucose monitor and replacing the insulin pen with an insulin pump.
A few months later, I returned to school, became a personal trainer and eventually found my way into a handstand class, as I learned that there was nothing more worthwhile than the community.
There are no 60-second milestones for T1D management. There is no moment when the metronome beat announces that you can achieve something and check that goal from the list.
Every day I have to wake up, take care of myself and choose to answer that knock on that door.
This choice is easy when you are surrounded by people who care about you. In college, I found a community with an in-wall soccer team and a club that I started for Type 1 diabetic students. Most recently I made lifelong friends in my handstand class.
Today I choose to give myself a chance. I choose to take insulin, eat a variety of foods, and indulge in the community and movement.
Without these, my life would have become very out of balance and I could see that my very leaning from my axis.
The paradox of eating disorder recovery and type 1 diabetes management is a formidable knot that requires research to continue and find ways to begin to unravel.
To maintain a handstand you need to maintain a strong body line. This means you will continue to engage in the core to connect your arms and legs with one tight line.
When the body line breaks, the feet fall above or behind the hands, causing them to lose their balance. Unless you can quickly shift your weight in your hands, you will fall.
Luckily, T1D Management taught me to stand up and try again.
