Reflecting on Body Image and Sharing My Own Story

A body image post is different than my normal content but my body image story is something I’m now ready to share. Whether that be to help others or to simply document my thoughts for me, I’m not sure. Be kind with your comments.

I had an eating disorder in college known as orthorexia. At the time, it wasn’t officially acknowledged in the medical world but it’s something that is more commonly talked about and diagnosed now than it was 10-12 years ago.

Orthorexia, in my case, was an obsession with healthy foods.  Basically, I had a mental good and bad list of foods and could only eat the things on the good list.  Eating those on the bad list meant I had to make up for it with insane amounts of exercise.

However, orthorexia didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. 

My entire life I’ve had body image issues — stemming from grade school when kids would make a beeping sound on the bus when I backed up to find a seat because I was bigger than others.

I remember my grandmother telling me at 9 years old I had to lose weight and to be skinny like one of my friend’s Mom.

I remember my own Mom doing Slim-Fast shakes when I was in high school to lose weight and I used to sneak cans in the summer to also slim down. (Sorry Mom, if you’re reading this…maybe you knew?)

I was always the bigger girl.

I can draw a line from these incidents to the onset of my orthorexia.  In fact, I remember exactly when my orthorexia started. It was between my junior and senior year of college, I was taking summer classes and living off-campus and started eating melon and cottage cheese for lunch each day.  From there, my obsession just grew.

Over the course of a year, my 5-foot 9-inch frame dropped to a low 113 pounds with a lean 9% body fat. I lost my period, had the peach-fuzz hair common with eating disorders due to malnutrition, and was physically weak.

And while I loved my size 00 jeans at the time, I was miserable.  I was constantly thinking about food, counting calories, trying to find the purest thing to put in my body, or planning my next workout.  It was exhausting.

It also meant I wasn’t much fun to be around socially.  Each restaurant menu had to be thoroughly vetted before I agreed to eat there, ensuring I could find something on the menu to modify to fit my ‘good food’ criteria.

I would sometimes wander around the grocery store checking nutritional labels, hoping to discover new foods that fit my good list but mostly putting things back on the shelves.

I was emotional, probably because I was hungry and stressed by keeping my mental good/bad food list.  Eventually, my Mom put me in therapy.

But I’m not sure therapy helped. 

Honestly, dating <3M helped. He told me to love myself the way I am.  And he still tells me I’m beautiful and perfect just the way I am.  He is my constant as I wrangle my food issues, allowing me to change my mind on restaurants or cooking a million times, knowing I’m struggling but trying to improve.

Because even now, I still struggle….always comparing, critiquing, and self-talking myself into body positivity.

In all honestly, I don’t think an eating disorder is anything that’s ever truly gone.  It’s with you, always. Waiting for a stressful moment, a trigger to reappear, or morphing into something similar — for me, that’s an inability to truly relax and de-stress.  It’s a constant fight, pushing the thoughts away with an internal conversation of self-assurance.

So why am I sharing this now? 

It’s because through these past 6-months of social distancing I’ve been able to reflect, learn, and grow.  Pushing the negative thoughts deeper, learning to accept, live in the moment, appreciate, and listen to my body. And to just slow down.

Maybe it was tearing myself away from the rest of the world that allowed me the time and mental capacity to truly concentrate on myself. In all honesty, I’m not sure why this happened now or why it took so long…

But here’s what I’ve learned…

Carbs and desserts aren’t scary. Pasta and cupcakes were usually reserved for dining out (even though I bake a ton, I rarely ate more than a bite).  I now eat them throughout the week and enjoy it.  There’s still small parts of guilt or worry but I’m learning.

60-minutes of formal exercise 5 days a week is not required.  I don’t need a gym membership, a meticulously structured workout, or an exhaustive sweat session daily.  Listening to my body about what it wants each day, whether that’s lifting, cardio, or just stretching and a dog walk all count as physical fitness.

My body will tell me what it needs.  Does it need a big brownie, a crisp salad, or a gooey cheese? It knows. And I should trust it.  It will also tell me when it’s full and it’s had enough.  I was just too busy planning and counting in the past to hear it.

Taking 30-minutes to myself to decompress from the day is good for my mental health.  This means putting on pajamas, washing my face, and relaxing with a face mask or reading to help draw the line between work and ‘offline’ time. It also means setting my phone in the bedroom and leaving it there to stop the endless scrolling and comparing.

It’s all baby steps.  And maybe something most people have known all along.  But for me, I’m just grateful I’m learning it now.

Have you struggled with something similar?  If you’re looking for resources on body positivity or eating disorders check out this podcast which offers tips and provides additional resources.