TW: Eating Disorder

About a year ago, I finally hit my goal weight after trying for many years. In this piece, I have taken something that I wrote when I had managed to hold my goal weight for about a week and just edited it a little bit recently. This is a subject that I am quite open about when it happens to come  up because it was something that I struggled with for a while and helped me become who I am today. Food is a huge part of my life and this helped me build a healthy relationship with it. I will admit, some bad days roll around but it happens so rarely that it’s nothing I’m ever worried about but I still like to recognize that it happens and it’s still a part of who I am today.

It has taken me about 4 1/2 years to finally hit my goal weight after realizing I had eating problems. I have maintained this weight for a little over a week now and want to share my story just cause this account is my safe space (so is this blog). I refer to this issue as my eating problems and not a disorder because I can’t really find one to classify it as. I talk about my parents in this a couple times and even though we had some rough patches together through this, I know they just wanted me to be healthy. Food and cooking is one of the biggest parts of my family which made this kind of confusing and a challenge to my parents. I left out a lot of details during this story and before this timeline began, but there were a lot of emotions involved throughout the course of this story but I guess we're getting into it.

My first semester of college (2018) was a rollercoaster of emotions but I was very focused on my classes and was still taking the same ADD medication I had started in high school. My parents knew that the medication affected my appetite but not to its fullest extent. My first semester, I was still dating my first serious boyfriend who I saw just about every day and we almost always had dinner together. Sometimes I would snack after having dinner and he would consistently call me 'fatass’. Between that 'nickname' and losing my appetite, I stopped eating breakfast and lunch and started doing 70 flights of stairs on the stairmaster almost every day. This caused me to lose a bunch of weight. After that relationship ended at the end of the year, my parents recognized my terrible eating habits and brought me to the doctor who recommended I go to a nutritionist.

At that point, I was a little less than 100 pounds. I started seeing my nutritionist, Susan (a full blown angel), and felt like I was on track. We set the goal weight (which is what I finally hit last year). After seeing Susan for a few months, my mom talked to me about what was going on and said something along the lines of 'we're spending all this money on help and you're not getting better.’ When she said that, I felt like I needed to lie about the progress I was making because I was really struggling with the process. I started writing more food in my food journal than I had actually eaten and told my parents I weighed more than I actually was. I told Susan I didn't need to see her anymore and that was that. In my mind, I had tricked myself and everyone else that I was fine.

Early 2021, I started struggling again. Since I had told everyone I was fine I was eating somewhat better. But I didn't tell many people what my new issue was: every month for a week (on the dot) I wouldn't eat anything all day but a very small dinner. In my mind it was ok because after that week I would go back to eating lunch and dinner everyday. It was a routine that I was ok with. Then one time, that week and a half turned into two weeks and I was just caught completely off guard. I couldn't get back into eating normally and was sobbing when food was in front of me. Not because I didn't want to eat it but because I couldn't bring myself to eat it at all. I wanted to eat but the actual thought of eating a piece of bread or fruit made me want to throw up. Sometimes I would sit with food in front of me for a couple hours and just cry. I was losing weight again but didn't really tell anyone what was going on. My confidence was gone and I didn't like looking at myself in the mirror because I was so disappointed in myself. Eventually after a month of not eating very consistently (there were good and bad days), I called my dad to tell him I needed to see Susan again and once I started seeing her again it was great. I talked to her every week for an hour and that later turned into twice a month for 30 minutes. She could tell I wanted to hit my goal weight that we had set so long ago and trusted me to put the work in. She retired in the summer of 2022 which meant I was now independent in my eating journey.

I had help from people who knew how much this meant to me but I was still struggling. I was doing everything I could to try different techniques and foods to help. What I started doing was making a meal plan every week that made me excited to eat and cook. The system I have now makes me excited to eat everyday rather than it being a chore. I am proud of my progress and am trying to work on myself in other parts of my life now that I don't have to put all my energy into this. It's been a rollercoaster of emotions and quite the journey.  But I'm just happy to be where I am now. This may be silly to share but I would shout it from the rooftops if I could even if no one cared.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk :) <3

You may be wondering why I wrote about this, but I promise there is a purpose. When I posted this last year, I was nervous how people were going to view me. I had received some negative comments from some people in my past who I don’t think really understood how difficult this is. But I was so relieved with receiving the kindest words from friends and family that made me happy I shared my story. My goal with sharing this is to let people who are in similar situations know that they’re not alone. A lot more people than you think are struggling with issues like this. When I was still in recovery, I felt like I was never going to get better. No matter the time it takes, the good and bad days, how many people are supporting you or not, the hard work pays off. Everyone’s story is different and there’s no one way to recover. For the people who have a difficult relationship with food or eating, you have my heart and I am confident you will be comfortable in your body soon.