Whenever that unit of health class approached that talked about eating disorders, I used to cringe. I would see girls who had no fat on their bodies. With sunken in cheek bones, hair falling out, and looking like they were about to break, these girls, to be perfectly honest, seemed so distant from me. I thought, “I could never just stop eating. I love food too much. I will never have an eating disorder.” Boy… was I wrong.
When I was young, I never thought about how much food I was eating or what I was eating. I had always been a skinny string bean, as my uncle used to call me, due to my high level of physical activity. I swam, danced, played soccer and softball, and was always running around outside. It wasn’t until a few months after I went to college that I even thought about my body.
It wasn’t until then that I realized that I had gained about twenty pounds since the beginning of the year. Twenty. Pounds. Even thinking about it now disgusts me. I thought, “How could I have let myself go?” I had vowed to never gain the freshmen fifteen, yet here I was. And that’s when it all began.
For my 2013 New Years’ resolution, I made a commitment to lose all the weight and to get back down to the weight I was in high school. I started it off with a bang. I decided to do a 17 day detox where I cut out all carbs. No bread, no pasta, no rice. I even cut out red meats, only ate low-fat dairy products, and stopped eating bananas and pineapple because they had high sugar content. I lost 10 pounds in those two and a half weeks. I looked in the mirror and was thrilled at how flat my stomach had become. I had gone from 160 pounds to 150. Life was good. However, I still saw my thunder thighs and my love handles that seemed to be overflowing in my jeans and was still extremely unsatisfied with how I looked.
When I went back to school in the spring, I was praised on my weight loss. All my friends told me I had an amazing body, but it still wasn’t enough for me. I was still a larger pant size and not a small shirt size. I was determined to wear size 6 jeans. So, I continued my detox. I also began to over exercise. I would work out seven days a week and sometimes, if I had the time, I would work out twice in the same day doing intense activities such as spinning, cardio kickboxing, and Zumba. When the weekends came though, I began to binge. My brain just wanted to eat and eat and eat. Sometimes I couldn’t stop myself. As a result, I would feel extremely guilty the next morning.
When I would go to take a shower in the morning, I would just be looking at my stomach and my thighs the entire time. I would pinch every inch of fat on my body and feel the cellulite on my thighs. I hated myself. I hated my body. Who would ever want to be with someone who wasn’t skinny? I wanted my collar bones to stick out. I wanted my hip bones to protrude. I would have loved for my rib cage to show. All I wanted was people to tell me, “Wow, you are so skinny.”
The semester passed and I stayed the same weight. I decided to see a nutritionist to see what the problem was. She explained to me that I was only eating about 800 calories a day so my body was in starvation mode. She gave me advice on how to incorporate healthy carbs, and so I began again. Then, when I went home, I saw another nutritionist to help me with my weight loss. She told me that I needed to take in 1400 calories to reach my goal weight. I could do that. So, I did. That summer I had gone from 152 to 135 pounds. I lost 17 pounds in only 3 months.
I had finally been at the weight I wanted. It was my goal. I did it. But then… why did I still have huge love-handles? Why don’t I have a thigh gap yet? I didn’t feel as good as I did when I used to be this weight. So, what was my solution? I just needed to lose more weight. However, it became harder and harder to do so. I was no longer trying to restrict myself as much, and I wasn’t over exercising, but I wanted to lose it so badly. But instead of cutting my calories, I just began to eat everything in sight. My body wanted everything. I ate healthy, but it was just so much food. I would get up and grab multiple plates of food. I couldn’t control myself. What was happening to me?
By the end of my third semester at UMass, it hit me while I was Skyping with my parents at home. I had an eating disorder. I broke down. Never before I had thought I had a problem with eating because I wasn’t trying to completely starve myself or I wasn’t making myself throw up. It took me an entire year to realize that just because I wasn’t necessarily classified as anorexic or bulimic, doesn’t mean I was okay. I had become obsessed with food in every single way. Looking at every single little detail about how many calories and how much fat was all that I thought about. Every day, I would think about what I was going to eat that day and how I was going to burn it all so I could lose weight. The disorder consumed me. I was no longer the girl I used to be. I was no longer the girl who could make people laugh just by my own ridiculously sounding laugh. I began to take my frustration from not losing weight out on the people I cared about. That’s when I knew that I needed help.
I knew I needed to see a professional. I was going to study abroad at the end of January and knew that I didn’t want to have a problem with eating while being surrounded by cheese, pasta, bread, gelato, and pastries galore. I was set up with a nutritionist as well as an art therapist. To this day, I believe it was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I spilled my heart out to them. Everything I had been holding in about losing my first boyfriend back in high school to feeling like no one was ever going to love me like he did to problems with an alcoholic parent to feeling like the uglier sister. I completely broke in front of them. I had never felt so vulnerable in my life. But every time I left their offices, I had felt like someone was literally cutting the ties to everything that made me miserable over the past year.
I stopped binge eating. I felt so relieved. It was a miracle that I finally found a voice in my head that told me that I deserved more than this.
It is still a constant struggle though. I’m not perfect. I try to eat healthily, but living in Italy right now, it’s extremely hard. I’m surrounded by girls who seem to have never felt like their bodies are inadequate. They are beautiful and confident. For me, every day is a struggle. Some days are easier than others, but it’s still hard. I am much happier than I used to be, but I still feel disgusting sometimes when I look in the mirror.
As difficult as it may be sometimes, there is nothing better than having an amazing support system. My parents have helped me through everything by providing the services of the therapist and the nutritionist, as well as my best friends who I know will always be there to listen.
I know other girls are going through this. I am not the only one. It’s just kept quiet. Girls don’t want people to know they have an eating disorder. The media has pushed the idea of the “perfect body” through advertisements such as Victoria’s Secret that make young women feel fat, insecure, and determined to become that girl on the cover of Cosmo, yet no one talks about the fact that a lot of these “perfect” models have eating disorders or that a lot of these photos are altered.
So why did I choose to tell my story? Because I know that there was one thing I felt when I was suffering that seemed to be constant. I felt completely alone. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about my issues because they would think I was stupid for thinking I was ever overweight and would eventually become annoyed with my obsession. So my message is for girls at UMass as well as others who are suffering from an eating disorder to know that they are not alone. Reach out to people. Your friends will listen to you and give you the help you need to push past it all.
No matter who you are, I want girls who were in my situation to know that beauty is not just skinny. Beauty is everything. Beauty is curvy and skinny. Beauty is tall and short. Beauty is dark and light hair. Beauty encompasses all aspects of a person. Every single inch of your being is perfect. You are unique, and there will never be another person exactly like you in every aspect.
Embrace every part of you, and remember that you are not alone.