maintining health: my struggle with food

Today’s post is a heavy one. However, as a big sister, I feel it’s my job to spread awareness behind the healthy lifestyle stigma. Growing up with social media is so damaging to a young person’s mental health in so many ways.

I grew up with Tumblr girls and thigh gaps. Eating disorders were fantasized online. I would binge watch videos learning all about disordered eating. I spent days of my middle school life looking up ways to stay in shape and stay skinny.

When I was little, I became aware of my body at an early age. I blame the media. When I was three years old, I asked my mom if my skirt made me look fat. That literally breaks my heart. I grew up before Kim Kardashian and big butts were in. I was caught in the wave of skinny super models. I thought slim was beautiful. In preschool, I told my teacher my favorite food was salad and my favorite drink was water. Not because that’s what I throughly enjoyed, but because I thought that’s what was healthy and I wanted to brand myself as healthy. In preschool.

My cousin told me a story that when I was about six years old she saw me running around the house for no apparent reason. She studied me closer and noticed I was running to the kitchen to grab a carrot and then running across the house and back to repeat the process. Understandably, she asked what in the world I was doing. I answered “I don’t want to get fat, so I’m eating carrots and working off the calories”.

Around seventh grade was when I started going to the gym and working out. I became obsessed with getting in daily cardio. I thought I was the emblem of healthy. However, healthy starts from the inside. My concept of ‘healthy’ was so warped due to the media.

When I was a freshman in high school I started to put on some weight. I was bigger than the other girls in my school. I even got a nickname for being ‘fat’. In reality, I was nowhere near overweight. However, I listened to my peers and started telling myself I was what they saw me as.

I dove back into my dieting Youtube binge. I spent hours reading how to get skinny. I tried the Military Diet which claims to help you shed ten pounds in a week. I thought I had struck gold. However, those ten pounds come back. Diets are so stupid. Once you quit, you go back and your body overcompensates.

I tried working out and cutting back portions. I had successfully dropped eight pounds in the span of a month. However, this wasn’t enough.

The sad thing about ‘losing weight’ in a numerical sense is it’s a never ending battle. You’re never happy with a number. You set a goal and make a new one. You’re never satisfied.

I would research celebrities I looked up to and find out how much they weighed. I calculated my BMI weekly and tried to find how much weight it would take for me to be underweight. I wanted to be underweight. I thought that was beautiful. I had a number in my head. If I reached it, I would be happy. But the number kept getting smaller. I would wrap my hands around my wrists and thighs to see if my fingers touched. If they did, I told myself I was beautiful. The only time I felt pretty was when I was starving.

The cycle worsened. I started to throw up my food. If I felt too full after a meal, I would punish myself by getting it all out. I looked up tips on what food was easiest to expel and how to successfully be bulimic. Oh yeah, there was a forum on that. On top of that, I started skipping meals.

I got caught making myself purge one night, so I stopped. My sophomore year I rarely made myself throw up. However, I was far from healthy. At this time I was at my ‘goal weight’. It wasn’t good enough. I wanted to be the skinny friend. I wanted to be so thin that people told me to eat more.

I tracked my calories in an app that recommended I eat 1300 calories in a day to get to my goal weight. That’s terrible! Especially for a growing body and mind. Admittedly, I would try to stay under half that number.

My junior year I dropped to the lowest weight I ever had. I weighed how much I did in sixth grade.

*I’m avoiding using numbers in this article because I know on the other side as a reader, I would envy this number. Numbers are toxic and promote an unhealthy standard. Numbers are triggering for me, so I will not include them in my post. I’m also not including pictures for the same reason*

My Snapchat ‘my eyes only’ was full of pictures of me on the scale or pictures that showed my ‘progress’. They never went anywhere, they were just for me. I didn’t delete those pictures until last year.

Looking at that number on the scale made me so happy at the time. The freshman girl inside of me was rejoicing. I was shocked. I wasn’t consciously making choices to shed any pounds. On occasion, I would purge, but it wasn’t a regular thing. Subconsciously, I was starving myself. Because I refused to gain weight. My desires to be skinny infested themselves into my subconscious.

I would weigh myself every chance I got. But, if the number was over my ‘goal’ I was unhappy. It’s normal for weight to fluctuate. Especially as a women, you can gain up to ten pounds around your cycle just due to water weight. It’s completely normal!

My freshman year of college I reached a new low. Surprise, surprise I still struggle with staying healthy. I had reached a new lower weight. I had plateaued at a weight for years and never was able to get below it. And finally I had. The culprit? Stress. I wasn’t happy at the time. But this new number felt like a victory to me. The girl who was labeled ‘fat’ was still inside of me. And she wanted so badly to be skinny.

After I lost some pounds my sophomore year, no one ever commented on my weight. I did get a few comments about how small I was, but it made me happy (sadly, it still does). Despite the fact I was no longer being labeled as ‘fat’, the memories were still there. To this day, it still lingers in my mind.

Body positivity has been welcomed on social media with open arms. However, there are still those thin Pinterest girls. And they’re not doing anything wrong! Every body is different. Some people are naturally thin. I’m not. It doesn’t run in my family. I forced myself to be thin.

I never was diagnosed with an eating disorder and I’m not trying to advocate myself as a survivor. However, I think we need to address unhealthy eating habits and disordered-like eating. The ways I was treating my body were not healthy and it had an impact on my mental health.

I am not a health expert. At all. However, I am a normal girl, just like anyone reading this article. And I know what it’s like to live in the world of stigma.

Today, I am at a healthy weight. I don’t count my calories. I workout when I want to and not to lose weight, but to stay productive and release stress. Even though I am healthy on the outside, I will always struggle with the stigma around my weight. To this day I still add value to the number on the scale. I don’t weigh myself unless I’m at the doctor’s to avoid this. There will always be that voice inside of me telling me to look at the calories on the menu.

The only advice I can give you to stay healthy, is to work from the inside out. A healthy body starts with a healthy mind. Focus on your mental health and make sure you’re stimulating the things you enjoy. Workout with purpose. If you love to dance, do that for your workout. Shift your mindset to your mental health. If your mental health is struggling, everything else will crumble. I’m a full believer in taking mental health days to refocus your mind and energy. Do the things you truly love. Write them down and try to do one thing on your list daily. You are the best source for your happiness. You know what works for you.

Eat whatever the f you want dude. A burger will not hurt you. Balance is key. Intuitive eating is a life changer. Read more about it here.

You are not the number you read on the scale. Weight carries in different bodies in different ways.

As i’m writing this, I haven’t eaten lunch. So I’m gonna go make my favorite pasta and chill tf out. Eat what makes you happy. Nourish your mind first and everything else will fall into place.