ANONYMOUS
Trigger Warning: The following article discusses eating disorders. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to the Counseling Center at (716) 673-3424 or visit fredonia.edu/student-life/counseling for more information.
I’ve always been fascinated by drastic weight loss and weight gain.
I remember waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store with my mom, looking at the sensationalized magazines shaming celebrities over unflattering pictures in bikinis. I remember reading headlines with celebrities’ weights in the title — as if they had stepped on a scale in front of swarming paparazzi.
I remember seeing so many thin, thin women glorified. When I was little it didn’t matter so much to me — people were just people. It took me a while to realize the people in the movies were more attractive than the people in the real world. I mean, sure, I wanted to have blonde hair and blue eyes like Barbie, but I figured I could just dye my hair and wear contacts when I got older.
When I got older, I became self-conscious about my body. I got a bit chubby before my freshman year from too much food and not enough exercise. Then I joined the swim team and the track team and that took care of that.
Every summer I’d gain a bit of weight. And I was never happy about it. Come the dawn of my junior summer, I decided I wasn’t going to let that happen. I limited what I ate. I went to bed hungry, staring at the ceiling until I fell asleep. Then I’d wake up in the middle of the night because of hunger and eat something so I could fall back asleep. Then I’d wake up in the morning and squish my abdomen to see if there was more or less fat, examining myself in the mirror, my eyes more critical than any comment I’d ever heard.
I started going on really long walks. Started running more stairs. Began to memorize the amount of calories in different foods and ate lots of vegetables — because vegetables make you feel full without giving you fat. I started chewing food and spitting it out, just so I could get the taste of the food without the fat.
I could convince myself and others I was doing it in the name of health. But I wasn’t.
I was excited when my shorts began to get loose. I wasn’t excited when people mentioned I was thinner. Because I knew it wasn’t healthy.
It wasn’t healthy to lose your period for over a year. It wasn’t healthy to feel light headed so often. It wasn’t healthy to be afraid of any event with food — which is most events and all holidays. The idea of eating around other people. Of observing how much food they were putting on their plates. Of purposely not eating so I could muster enough hunger and eat something like a normal meal around others. Then all the food would get clogged in my lower right digestive track for hours. At least it felt like it did. It was as if I had shrunk my stomach and couldn’t eat as much in one sitting as I used to be able to.
It was fascinating, who would say something to me. My grandparents noticed; they grew up during WWII and couldn’t fathom the notion of purposely starving yourself; they learned to appreciate every bit of food available. My phys ed teacher noticed, because she had also dealt with an eating disorder. Told me her post-pregnancy body had triggered her eating disorder thoughts, and how her disorder hadn’t disappeared entirely.
Many didn’t notice. Or worse, noticed and pretended not to. Because talking about someone’s body weight in front of them is not polite.
My mother didn’t notice until others pointed it out to her. Part of it was because she saw me everyday and couldn’t notice my thinning frame. Part of it because she was busy with work. Busy with work, because she was appreciated at work and had chosen her spouse poorly. I was angry with her for staying in an emotionally-depleting relationship. Except I don’t get angry — it’s not my personality. I couldn’t control her marriage, but I could control my body.
The mind’s a powerful thing. Especially when your thoughts start to eat away at your life and you realize you’ve got an eating disorder.
I told very few people. It was difficult to come to terms with it — I didn’t have bulimia, wasn’t anorexic. I just limited my food intake and exercised because I was terrified of gaining weight. I looked skinny, but so did other girls who’s natural body mass was much lower than my healthy body mass. A healthy weight for me is between 125 and 130. Throughout the two years of my eating disorder, I weighed 120 lbs, excluding the end of a summer spent hiking mountain ranges where I got down to 113. That summer was the best summer of my life, inarguably. Yet, I was thinking about food, struggling internally, all the time.
I remember working as a cashier, my head throbbing in hunger, waiting for my break so I could eat a small salad. Or not. If you wait long enough, the burn of hunger subdues. Temporarily.
I didn’t tell people because people didn’t know how to react. My grandmother was so worried, and I hated hearing the concern in her voice. My stepdad was the worst, telling me I didn’t look good and to just eat more. My mom tried to understand. Put me in therapy — which is where I realized how my displayed anger played into it all.
People my own age were better at taking the news. Some could cite other friends who had similar experiences. I blame the brightened spotlight on mental health for the generational difference.
At some point in my college junior year I just started eating more and caring less and got back to a healthy weight. And then a little over, because a pandemic was storming the world and food could be of comfort. And I didn’t want to feel the dreaded lightheadedness. Then I lost some weight. I fluctuated.
I still don’t have the best relationship with food. I usually eat alone because I feel self-conscious eating in front of others. I still play mind games: eating food out of a bag rather than on a plate, because seeing how much I am eating still scares me.
I still judge my body too harshly. But that’s normal.
Mainstream culture has a main role in the problem: how women are often displayed in sexy outfits nibbling on doughnuts, the juxtaposition message of we should be thin and fit on a junk food diet. Why can’t kale be sexy? Why aren’t tomatoes cool? During high school, why couldn’t I go to a restaurant with the team without hearing underhanded remarks and seeing odd glances about me choosing the healthy option?
But mainstream culture isn’t streaming away anytime soon. Popular opinion has to be eroded by particles — little pieces of opinions.
This article is anonymous because I’m not ready to pick up a megaphone and announce I struggle with food. But I felt the need to write about it, to share my experience as empathy or enlightenment to a reader.
Hopefully, I did just that. I’ve always been fascinated by words and their impact.