The makeup-less makeover: Kat James shares her story of total transformation - Cover Story - Brief Article

Better Nutrition, Oct, 2002

I was lying alone in bed after my usual bulimic binge--this time it was each flavor of Rosa's fudge from the deli across the street from my New York City apartment. When I couldn't eat any more, my heart started pounding. I was scared, but I forced myself to lie still. I tried to breathe deeply and make my heart calm down, but the pounding just wouldn't stop. I was only 24, but I felt like I was having a heart attack. "What makes you do this?" I thought. "What are you afraid of?" I opened my diary and started writing.

I began with my list of When-I-Get-Thin dreams--to become the dancer, the singer, the Broadway performer, the person who would get back at those who had rejected her in her youth. There were so many things I would do when I got thin.

I imagined doing none of them, letting myself off the hook. In my journal, I gave myself permission to fail, to not even attempt these things. In fact, I promised myself the kind of "padding" from the world that my weight problem had always given me--both literally and figuratively. I could remain antisocial, give up perfectionism, let go of those When-I-Get-Thin dreams and love myself anyway.

I fell asleep with the kind of peace you feel after a good cry. In the morning, I was still experiencing that same sense of peace. I'll never forget how I felt when I looked in the mirror that day. Instead of the shame and self-loathing my reflection normally evoked, I saw my body for the first time as the victim of a disease, not a lack of willpower.

It was as if I became my own ideal mother, seeing her battered child at the front door after a terrible journey. There was an outpouring of love and sadness toward my body that was like nothing I'd ever felt. Those feelings of love and peace stayed with me. And I never binged again.

early signs

When I was 13, I was a pudgy child who started a string of diets. It was during these first attempts at calorie restriction that I began to binge. By high school, I was a fan of large, baggy dresses and wore a thick mask of painstakingly applied makeup to distract from my pear-shaped body. I'd been a singer and dancer since childhood, but my talent couldn't land me the roles or scholarships I wanted--until my senior year, when I discovered speed pills and began bulimic purging.

The result? I lost more than 20 pounds. I got the lead in the school play, the boyfriend, the choir scholarship, the dance solo. It was like a dream.

By the time I was 20, I'd become a physically distorted beauty statistic of our times--heavy, well-coiffed, meticulously made-up, manicured, perfumed, powdered and groomed, yet riddled with uncomfortable skin rashes, digestive troubles, allergies and a powerful addiction to food.

In college, my weight yo-yoed between 140 and 185 pounds. I began to understand the emotional triggers that made me eat, but my chemical relationship with food was so strong that my emotional breakthroughs failed to provide any relief. With no escape in sight, I gave up my performing arts scholarship, dropped out of college and enrolled in beauty school. I later joined my sister in New York City and became a makeup artist--I'd always been good at making others look beautiful. And I was ready to accept a life behind the scenes.

fashion & food

Working with models in the Big Apple wasn't so bad, once I adjusted to my place in that world. I suffered moments of extreme mortification, especially on location shoots when everyone else was dying to jump into the ocean after a hot day on the beach, while I was merely dying to escape a possibly humiliating situation, get back to my hotel room and binge yet again.

But there were some upsides to moving to New York. The catered food on fashion shoots was a revelation. Who knew that while I was eating instant noodles and iceberg salads, other humans regularly dined on grainy pilafs, grilled vegetables and herb-crusted fish? I'd always been leery of "health food," but these delicately cooked, aromatic dishes began to change my views. I soon came to realize that eating this way all the time would be the ultimate luxury. I began to accumulate a list of gourmet and ethnic foods available from restaurants in my neighborhood.

But changing my palate didn't change my need to use food as a drug. I was becoming a convert to real food and whole grains--yet I also ordered two or three desserts when I called for delivery.

I continued to binge daily, both alone and on the Job. I was good at sneaking extra entree portions while other crew members socialized, and I owned the dessert tray, generously leaving one of each kind of pastry for the rest of the crew to nibble on. I didn't have much of a social life. I much preferred the company of food to that of people. I would even leave friends' gatherings early to go home and eat.

herbal miracle

At 24, my body began to break down. It started with fatigue and heart palpitations. Then came blurry vision on the mornings after a binge. But when I finally began passing undigested material--I was actually happy for a time because I wasn't absorbing calories--I decided to see a doctor. I learned that I had a severely inflamed liver and pre-diabetic symptoms. I was looking at a life time of notorious immunosuppressants unless a miracle happened.