Eating Disorders and Body Image in general can be very difficult to talk about because they are very serious topics surrounded by stigma. At work, I stumbled upon an interesting BuzzFeed video entitled “I Didn’t Know I Had an Eating Disorder“. My point is that I know personally that it’s hard to figure out what’s going on with yourself at times. Eating disorders come in all sorts of types, shapes, and sizes- much like the human body. So this is my response to that video. My story of how I saw myself and what I did to my body. The things I didn’t know then but know now.

Okay, let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start- ugh Sound of Music shh).

Growing up I struggled a lot with my body image and food. The one thing that I knew about myself that is still true to this day is that I like to have control. Ideally I would be in control of everything that happens in my life but alas, that is not how this wonderful world works. When I was 10, doctors wanted to hospitalize me for anorexia but no matter who talked to me I was in a constant state of denial that I was underweight and mysteriously kept losing weight.

I hated food. I hated eating it, I hated looking at it and I hated thinking about it. I have fibromyalgia (a topic for another post) which is just a fancy word for sometimes my body forgets how to be a body. Digestive issues often accompany fibro but at a young age I didn’t know that. I was in a constant state of fear that I would get sick from eating and also, for other reasons, I feared that I would become morbidly obese. No just overweight; morbidly obese. So I didn’t want to eat. I would use things like simethicone drops and prune juice to stay in control of my life in a sense and all it did was damage, physically and mentally. It was a start to a dangerous relationship with food. Eventually I had to go on a special diet to put on weight and through counseling I started to eat more.

As I got older, my friends were very concerned about appearance, whether it was their own or mine. When I entered middle school I was a fairly thin girl. I hadn’t yet hit puberty and was athletic (the good old days before more fibro symptoms set in). It wasn’t until 8th grade that I felt pressure to change my appearance because I hated it so much.

I was friends with people who liked to make jokes. There’s nothing wrong with that; I myself love to crack a joke or two. Humor is great- but not when it’s at someone else’s expense. Looking back at it now I can’t believe how much I was bullied and this concerns me because it makes me second guess how I treated other people at that age. Anyway, at one point I was referred to as a “fat Demi Lovato”. Ironically enough, I admire Demi now for publicizing her struggles with eating disorders, but this was around the time of Camp Rock (you remember Camp Rock with Joe Jonas circa swoopy hair) when Demi was idolized for her “perfect” appearance. I despised her because I couldn’t look like her. When I look at pictures of my 13 year old self I see a very thin girl, but back then I felt unattractive and uncomfortable. It got worse as I entered high school.

To this day I am haunted by the comments made towards me as young teen. I know that they were meant as jokes, others laughed so they succeeded to some degree, but I took them to heart. A friend of mine made a remark about how I was fat for eating a little junk food. Everyone laughed. I took it out on myself. Weighing myself daily, counting calories like it was my job, exercising twice a day to workout DVDs, choosing my outfits carefully, and limiting what I ate, especially when I was around other people. Half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread. Six almonds. Two sips of milk. Throw the rest away. Repeat again tomorrow. I didn’t want to be a joke to my friends. I didn’t want my crush to ignore me. I didn’t want to be embarrassed when it came time for costumes for the shows I was in. I lost a lot of weight but hated what I saw in the mirror. I found myself disgusting, overweight, and inferior.

It’s crazy now because, again looking at old pictures, I see a scary thin girl. It worries me that I grew up with a distorted body image. Going back to the costumes for shows, I remember this one gown I got to wear for two musicals. It was beautiful. It was tight. I remember thinking that I had to lose weight to look good on stage like the other girls and would cry after rehearsals on days that the gown’s zipper didn’t zip as fast as I would like it to. It was a dress meant for a small build that I was just on the border of. At 5 foot 3 inches a weight of around 115 pounds is not obese, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t feel that way.

What’s worse is that a couple of years later someone found the dress and was making comments about how whoever had to wear it must have been huge (they had a very thin body frame themselves). The comments and laughs stopped once they noticed that my name was on the tag as its previous “owner”. I felt ashamed.

I wanted control and I wanted to punish myself for not being in control. I am in no way proud of my actions during this period of my life but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t learned from it. I sicken myself with what I did to my body and my mind, but to spare the details of this already long post I’ll just mention a few examples. I found myself going on bouts of extreme dieting and exercise. This created a whole new set of health issues. I fainted. A lot. At school, at soccer practice, at home, you name it. It was embarrassing. After that I found myself not caring about it anymore, binge eating and gaining 40 pounds in a short amount of time. That only worsened my body image. My weight fluctuated more than insert witty simile of something that fluctuates a lot here and it took a huge toll on my relationship with food, with myself, and with others. I didn’t know what I was doing.

I have grown a lot since then, but I have good days and bad days just like anyone else. There is no definite kumbaya rainbows and butterflies waiting for you at the end of the tunnel unless you decide to walk on through. Yes, things do get better, but you have to first acknowledge that things need to get better.

After high school I decided to improve my body image and my relationship with food. This meant becoming healthier; physically and mentally. I became a licensed Zumba instructor and a Wellness Peer Educator. While Zumba alone has caused me to shed a few pounds, I refuse to weigh myself unless I’m at a doctor’s appointment. I don’t want to obsess over numbers again.

I get very concerned when I see others promoting a fitness or nutritional method that helps you lose a lot of weight very fast because I did a lot of damage to myself doing things like that. Try this diet, you’ll lose those pounds in two weeks. You have to work out like this, it’s the only way to lose weight by insert special occasion here. But if all else fails, use this photo-editing app that sucks your body in so you get more Instagram likes.

I think it sucks that we’re programmed to base acceptable lifestyle choices on that criteria, and a lot of that has to do with the word “lose”. Lose this lose that lose lose lose. So much negative pressure. Focusing on positive terms has helped me a lot on my journey and I can only hope that it helps others. Instead of focusing on what to “lose”, why not focus on what to “gain” like strength and confidence? Corny, I know; whatever.

You get one life. You get one body. I don’t feel like wasting whatever time I have left with mine hating it anymore, but I didn’t always think this way. I didn’t know then what I know now.

So I’m a big advocate of positive body image. It’s easy to tell someone to love themselves, their body, to not be ashamed of what they look like no matter what and to accept and embrace what they have. What’s harder, in my opinion, is going beyond that to face another issue with body image. Of course body image starts with yourself, but I feel that a lot of the self-loathing and hatred of your body is a direct result of how others see and accept your body. Body image doesn’t stop at yourself.

Fat-shaming is a thing. Skinny-shaming is a thing. Any other type of body type-shaming is a thing. We as a society are conditioned to react to someone’s appearance; nobody is perfect, myself included. But that’s just the thing: no body is perfect. That is okay. What isn’t okay is instilling the belief that there is this attainable perfection when it comes to appearance and that you need to alter yourself in order to be good enough. Telling someone that they need to lose weight or that they could really use a cheeseburger is like telling yourself that you and your own appearance are not good enough.

If you ask me (which no one did but that’s okay) the way you treat others can have a major impact on how they view themselves because not everyone is at the point where the opinions of others don’t affect who they are as a person. Accepting yourself is amazing. Accepting others is amazing too.

I can’t tell anyone how to live their life and I can’t expect anyone to listen to me or agree with me. Just the same as how no one can tell me how to live my life or expect me to agree with them. That’s the beauty of this world. The beauty. It’s everywhere and in everyone. What I can do is put myself out there (err, here) as a resource. If you are struggling, and I know this is very difficult, try to reach out to someone. It helped me. Even if it is just to figure out what is going on with yourself. To figure out things you didn’t know. There are resources everywhere, whether it be a professional or a college student writing a blog post. I am here. I can listen.