Recovery

I want to preface this post with some trigger warnings: I will be talking about eating disorders, including conversations surrounding food, counting calories, body image, etc. If you think any of this will trigger you, please refrain from reading!

Being vulnerable is never something I feared, yet it’s something that I’ve continuously struggled with. As someone who has dealt with mental health struggles and still continues to battle through them every day, I was never one to shy away from having open conversations about mental health. However, it has always been very difficult for me to be completely honest with my friends and family, and sometimes even myself, about my inner conflicts. Frankly, there are many topics regarding my own mental health that I may dive deeper into in later articles, but the focus of this one is my eating disorder recovery.

My Food Journey

I’m not gonna lie, it’s really disheartening to see how common eating disorders are nowadays. Actually, taking it one step back from that — how common it is to see people who struggle with eating and food guilt. It started for me in the winter of 2021. At first, it was one innocent glance at the nutrition facts on the snack I was eating. Then, it was noticing how many calories were in one slice of bread counting how many calories I was eating in a day, then to how many calories I could burn in one day. It snowballed into something I couldn’t control anymore, which is ironic because I thought that I was finally in control of something — food.

Every day, my calculator app would sit open on my phone, factoring in every single grape and slice of cheese I would consume, making sure it fits snugly into my caloric intake. My one-mile workout suddenly turned into a three-mile run, followed by a three-mile walk in the afternoon. Every mirror I walked by turned into a body check, making sure that the bowl of strawberries I just ate didn’t suddenly alter my appearance. After every meal, it was like I could feel the material of my pants grow 3x smaller as they clung to my legs, the waistband suddenly digging into my stomach as if they had shrunk three sizes. It hit a point where I wasn’t consuming food anymore; it was all about the numbers. It was probably the most math I’ve done since I’ve graduated high school.

Pretty soon, I had dug myself into a deeper hole. At first, it was a thought. then, it was just me trying it out once — a hot date with my toothbrush and the toilet bowl. Let me just say: as soon as I did it once, I was a goner. It was almost every day after dinner. My bulimic tendencies worsened to the point where I felt nauseous after every meal because I had gotten used to that feeling. I was expending more calories than I was taking in every day. Standing up made me dizzy and the thought of my next meal was constantly out of my mind. My definition of a “good day” changed drastically — if I could go the whole day eating as little as possible, then it was a good day. I felt good. I felt skinny.

Body Image

That was my main driving factor. I had become extremely unhappy with the way I looked. I thought if my arms were thinner, my legs were skinnier, and my stomach was flatter, then I would truly be happy. It would be beautiful. And girl, that was not the case. at all.

If I were, to be honest, it worked for me in the beginning. I saw the changes in my body that I wanted to see. This gave me temporary confidence until it plateaued. My eating disorder had “stopped working”. So, my solution was to take it further. Eat less. Exercise more. That’s how the math works, right? The harsh truth is that I was slowly killing myself. My body was running on fumes, but I didn’t care. as long as I thought I looked pretty.

This cycle went on for months. Overexercising and undereating. Never being truly happy with how I looked or how I felt. You could find me frantically googling the menu of every restaurant I went to or hysterically shouting at my mom if she bought me the wrong type of bread. If only I had known that true confidence and contentment with my own body and myself wouldn’t be derived from my physical appearance.

The Battle for Recovery

I’m genuinely not sure when or how I began my journey to recovery. It was like one day, I snapped out of it and thought to myself: how stupid is it that you fear white bread over dying? What happens when you’re older and can’t even bring yourself to enjoy a glass of wine or a slice of cheese pizza? It seemed like all along I knew that the lifestyle I was living was unsustainable, but I had finally decided to come to terms with it. Something needed to change. I needed to change.

Recovery is hard. It’s so fucking hard. There’s still not a day where I’m not plagued with planning my next meal or subconsciously counting the calories in my dinner. I still have days where I fall back into restrictive habits, but the difference now is my mindset. Good days aren’t defined by how much I’m eating or if I worked out or not — they’re the days that I feel the most confident: strong, healthy, happy. I don’t run because it burns the most calories in the shortest span of time; I run because it makes me happy, because it makes me feel unstoppable. I exercise because I want to build up my endurance and grow stronger. And let me fucking tell you — this is the most progress I’ve ever seen in my physical and mental state.

Recovery isn’t to say that I’m suddenly perfect. Most definitely not. I still have the habit of body-checking. I’m still afraid of liquid calories and taking rest days. If I know I’m going to spend my weekend with friends drinking, it’s all I think about all week. But I’ll give credit where credit is due; slow progress is still progress. I wouldn’t say I’m confident in my body, or how I feel. Some days, I hate looking in the mirror. Recovery isn’t linear. It’s a fucking rollercoaster through the depths of hell, but having that shift from food being the enemy to food being fuel to live a better life is one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. Finding and reaching body neutrality is more than I could have ever said for myself one year ago. I’m definitely still on my journey to recovery, and it’s one hell of a mental battle. But I’m ready for it. I’ve been ready for it.

- Originally published April 21, 2022