I knelt down in my parents' bathroom, stuck my fingers down my throat, and waited for the inevitable. After much persuasion it came.

"It," in this case, was my mother's homemade pizza. Normally one of my favorites, tonight's meal-- well, it didn't set so well. After feeling sure that I had (quietly) purged everything I had consumed, I flushed the toilet and left the bathroom. I wiped the puke from my lips. It was December 24, 1997. Merry fucking Christmas.

I had been overweight my entire life. I fluctuated, but was always too big. (And if you ask me now, I still am.) Middle school was bad. Names. Jokes. None-too-subtle references to the truffle shuffle. In retrospect it was pretty awful, but at the time it didn't seem so bad. I tried to laugh along with people. I thought it was better to be noticed because I was fat than to not be noticed at all.

High school was better, at least socially. As my peers matured, they seemed to care less about my weight than my personality. There were still a few comments, but overall my school life was much easier to deal with. Same with college-- no one cared. College, though, brought on its own temptation: namely, the cafeteria, Domino's Pizza, and beer. I gained the freshman fifteen and then some. The notion of eating healthy never really occurred to me; much less the idea of exercising. I was in college, having fun, and, by the end of my junior year, had ballooned up to 245 pounds.

Then something happened. In May of 1997, my girlfriend of nearly three years broke up with me. It had nothing to do with my size, and I think I even knew that at the time-- at least subconsciously. But in my mind, I could get her back if I lost weight. That's the only reason anyone would break up with a swell fellow like me. Right? Riiight.

So I started running. (No Forrest Gump jokes, please.) I would run a block, then walk a block, from the St. Olaf campus into town and back. To say that it sucked is an understatement. My lungs hurt. My knees hurt. My back hurt. But... slowly... I started to see results. I continued my running regimen when I was home in Austin over the summer, adding blocks and then miles. I'd never done any sort of organized exercise routine before, and the high I got from running was unparalleled. It still is-- very little can compete with the feeling I get about a mile into a run, The Who blaring on my headphones, as the endorphins kick in.

Weight was coming off, but much too slowly. So I started to modify my eating habits. Well, that's not quite correct. I stopped eating. Skipped breakfast. A slice of turkey and two pieces of wheat bread for lunch. Eat as little for dinner as I could get away with. Then go for a four-mile run after I got done with my shift at the pool. By the end of the summer, the running wasn't even enough-- I'd ride the exercise bike in the morning, and then do ab crunches right before I went to bed.

And a little secret? I felt *great*. Honestly-- never better. My confidence was going up at the same rate that my waist size was going down, and by the time I went back to Olaf in the fall I was a bit of a cocky bastard. I was so excited to see the ex-- I could envision her running back to me, the new thin me and realizing she wanted to be with me forever.

Yeah, you can probably guess how that went.

Forget her, I thought. I was looking dapper enough, I could find someone else. Just a few more pounds.

Skip breakfast... fruit and a salad for lunch... carrots for dinner. Now up to a five-mile run at night. Except, I didn't want to lose out on the social scene of my senior year. That meant going to the bar, drinking beer, and then (gasp) eating. That just wouldn't do. So, I started to throw up. I'd done it growing up a few times when I really didn't want to go to school. Just stick a finger down my throat... and voila. I got good enough that I'd be able to make myself gag without using my finger.

It still wasn't enough though. Just a little bit more.

One Friday night I was eating alone in the Olaf cafeteria. (It was easier to eat alone-- no one questioned why my dinner consisted of mixed fruit and a dry salad.) I picked a pamphlet on the table. It listed the symptoms of anorexia and bulimia. I was textbook. Obsessiveness with counting calories. Obsessiveness with exercise. Always cold. Tingling extremities. And the feeling that I always needed to lose just a little more.

And why would I want to stop? People told me I looked great. And, in some way, I believed them. I needed to lose a little more, naturally, but it was a good start. But I was talking to girls, going out on dates with them, actually approaching them when out with friends.

I started to tailspin in January. I was counting every calorie I took into my body-- I had it down to 700 a day at one point. Combine that with the 1200 I burned during my daily workout and you know why I needed three blankets on my bed at night. I got dizzy during the day. I had trouble concentrating. I was down to 170 pounds, 75 pounds lighter than I was seven months earlier. Whenever I ate more than my 6-inch Sub Club (no mayo or cheese, please) and Baked Lays for lunch I threw it up.

One night as I stuck my face into the toilet, I got to thinking... this couldn't go on much longer. I needed to do something. And... I did. I found a book, "Breaking Out of Food Jail." It was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. When was the last time that happened?

Without boring you with the details, I started eating and cut back on cardio. I got back up to 180, a more healthy level. And I'm better... but it's not easy. A few times since then I've fallen back into compulsive eating habits, particularly counting calories. But I've been able to shake it off. I'm one of the lucky ones.