My Struggles with Disordered Eating

Hi! I'm assuming that if you're reading this you kinda know who I am, but you're about to get to know A LOT more, so buckle up and get ready for the ride. Also, this is like an entire novel long, but I'd really appreciate it if you read it all the way through!

So, sophomore year, I struggled with an unhealthy relationship with food, as you could probably tell by the title of this post. It never became a huge medical concern, but it negatively impacted my life in ways I wasn't even aware of until many months after I had started to recover. I remember for Christmas that year I had gotten some new calligraphy pens. Later that morning I sat against the wall in our living room using them to write in my notebook, trying them out for the first time. I pulled out my notebook just now to find that page. What I have written is: "Orange- 50 calories. Coffee- 150 calories." It was Christmas morning and I was obsessing over everything I had put in my mouth. This was around the peak of my food obsession. Oddly, it didn't start with someone fat shaming me. Instead, it started with me hearing people compliment other girls saying they looked skinny, and thus, I began to idealize a slimmer body as "the right" body.

At first, my eating habits were born from a genuine desire to be healthy. I wanted to be aware of what I was putting in my body, but very quickly that desire morphed into wanting to be skinny, or skinnier that I saw myself then. The tricky thing about my food addiction was that I never saw it as a negative thing. Instead, I perceived it as healthy restrictions I had put on my diet. But without even realizing it, these restrictions and rules I set for myself had begun to consume my thoughts. I'd be so frustrated with myself if I didn't have the self-control to not eat that extra handful of cheerios and just one bite of food had the power to tear down my self-confidence and convince me that I was fat and thus ugly. The days that I felt I ate too much, I would feel so horrible about myself that all I wanted to do was sit on the couch and hug a pillow to my stomach. Furthermore, the strict restrictions I had for myself were often followed by an uncontrollable binge on snacks and just carbs in general which was then followed by more shame. Eating out at restaurants stressed me out and I couldn't enjoy vacations because that meant eating out often. Even throughout all of this, I refused to recognize that I didn't have a healthy relationship with food. I refused to listen to my body when it told me it was hungry or when it said that I was full, and as a result, I stopped being able to hear what my body told me altogether. At one point, I forgot what it felt like to be hungry. Also, during this time, I was running track, going to practices 3 to 5 times a week. Because of my eating habits, I was constantly tired. I'd wake up in the morning for school and get ready only to fall asleep on the couch minutes before I had to leave. But I thought I was just tired because of school and staying up to do homework, and it never occurred to me that I was constantly exhausted because of my poor eating habits.

My desire to restrict my diet continued to be driven by a distorted body image. I would stand in front of my mirror at night and stare straight at my reflection saying in my head "bad." I felt hopeless, unable to control myself when it came to food yet also unable to overcome my distorted body image and desire to become thinner. Then, one night at dinner, my mom told me something that I had never even considered up to that point. She said, "I think you have an eating disorder." But to me the way she said it sounded like that was a bad thing, so of course I became defensive and brushed that comment away. However, it remained in my thoughts and I started to really see how unhealthy my relationship with food had become. For me, that comment was the turning point. It opened my eyes and allowed me to acknowledge the issue and therefore begin the healing process. But, even now, 2 years later, there'll still be times or even months that I struggle with body image. It's frustrating that after all this time I still struggle with it, but I've also learned to appreciate the amount of growth and progress I've made since that Christmas morning my sophomore year. Honestly, I'm so appreciative of how this experience has opened my eyes to the issue of body image. At any given time, 1 in 7 females has or is struggling with some form of an eating disorder, and in teenage girls, that number is even higher. This statistic hurts. It hurts because I've experienced what it means. It means 1 in 7 girls or women look in the mirror at themselves and say "bad" or "ugly." Many of them have an unhealthy relationship with food, and some can even develop life threatening conditions because of their eating disorder. My story and this frightening statistic are what led me to do this fundraiser. I've always wanted to do something to help, but I never knew what, so I started doing some research and found this organization. The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) raises awareness, creates supportive communities for those in recovery, and funds research. Please join me in making a difference, striving to change that 1 in 7 statistic, by buying some stickers I've made for this fundraiser. Besides the fact that I'm obsessed with flowers in general, I thought flowers would really fit this fundraiser because of an analogy. There are so many different kinds of flowers that are each beautiful in their own way, (and yes it's cheesy) but that applies to us too. We are all given unique bodies that may look different from everyone else's but they are all beautiful despite. So, I asked some of my friends what their favorite flowers were and designed stickers based on their replies. I'd really appreciate it if you would buy some, and all profits will be going to NEDA! Thank you in advance for your generosity, it means a lot!

xSam