Guest Writer: My disordered eating story

Writer Jane Doe, Trent Student

I never really thought my weight was a problem until the 2nd grade. In kindergarten, when my mom enrolled me in ballet, I knew I was a little chubbier than the other kids, but nobody treated me any different. As I started getting older, I became a target for bullying from grades 1to 3. Everyone seemed skinny and confident, but I didn’t have any of that. Regardless of whether it was my bullies, some of my family members, or some people at church, I always heard the same thing. “You need to lose weight,” “you’re putting on too much weight,” ‘You’re fat!”. I tried to brush it off and use food to deal with my weight insecurities without thinking about the consequences. I even remember one day in grade 3 when I was eating junk food to cope (as I normally did), I realized that if I had made myself throw up, I would eventually become skinny, and people would like me. The first time I purged, I felt in control. I had no idea that this was the start of something so destructive to my body and sanity. Over the next few days, I purged at least 2 more times to make myself feel better.

That same year I had become more interested in eating disorders the more we learned about them in class. At this point, I was so used to my bullies telling me that I needed to go on Weight Watchers that I had staged a formula for weight loss, food = calories = weight gain. It had seemed so simple! If I only ate small meals and purged when I ate too much, I would have no problem losing weight! I think even visiting my family doctor through the years and hearing ” is everything okay at home? You’re in grade 5 and weigh 150 pounds… that’s not healthy.” It just motivated my unhealthy relationship with food even more. I was never an athletic kid as I didn’t enjoy sports, so starving myself and denying my body the nutrients it needed made me feel like I was doing something. The older I got, the harder I was on myself. I started believing what people were telling me and began telling myself that “I’m ugly and fat” until I started hating myself.

I counted my calories and tried to live off of 500 calories a day. If I had breakfast (as I usually didn’t), After lunch, I refused to eat for hours. I just kept telling myself I had already eaten too much and that I wasn’t hungry even when my stomach was growling. The only snack I’d have was rice cakes after calculating how many calories were in them. These habits went off and on through my childhood. I even still remember when my childhood crush told me that my class name would be “whale.” I started researching all sorts of diets, anything that would help me lose weight. If the adults in my life thought I should starve myself or that I should ONLY eat foods that were approved of from a certain website, I’d do it. I felt terrible and constantly had mental breakdowns and bad headaches because I was unhappy with my weight. I often daydreamed about getting liposuction so that I would be skinny.

 I continued to restrict my calories on and off in high school as I thought people wouldn’t accept me. A friend of mine reached out to me, and I told her that I was starving myself as she used to suffer from an eating disorder. She told me I had the symptoms and should stop them before they got worse. I had talked to my mom, and she offered me the support I needed, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about these unhealthy habits. In grade 10, I fell sick, and my parents decided that I should see a naturopath. Everything seemed harmless until she too thought, “I’d be happier if I lost some weight.” I stuck to a consistent diet for that entire month and tried my best not to cheat, even if that meant starving myself again. When I went back a month later, and I stepped on the scale, I felt accomplished by my weight loss as she was too, but then she said, “I think you’d be happier if you lost some more weight.” as I looked at the new guidelines, I couldn’t do it. I ended up stress eating for a couple of days until my mom told me I couldn’t go back to her as I was driving myself crazy.

 I slowly started to build a healthy relationship with food until I became self-conscious again in grade 12, my mom and I went to see the lion king, and I refused to get popcorn. I just had a water bottle as I thought that was the only thing I could consume without gaining weight. After the movie, I researched a new naturopath, and I remember thinking I would develop an eating disorder again if it’d make him happy. After meeting him in person, he’d changed my perspective of eating, and I focused more on getting food into my body as opposed to counting calories. Eventually, I stopped caring what people thought and realized that I didn’t have to be a size 2 to be liked and that bodies come in all shapes and sizes. I started to realize I was never the problem. Society was.