To give everyone a brief background as to why I created this blog, this is a shortened story about my history with restrictive eating:
Going into freshman year, I moved from London, England to Connecticut. I’ve moved around plenty times before so I guess you could say it wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was still a blow to me. Anyways, I gained a lot of weight while over in London and moving to CT in this huuuuuuge school where there were literally hundreds of perfectly thin girls in the hallways got me thinking about my own body. I have to admit, my eating habits got out of control in London and with another move back to the states, I continued to eat out of comfort, and my choices weren’t the best. I loved all that junk that we all try to avoid. Processed crap, sugary and fat loaded. But moving to CT and seeing all these girls got me really self conscience and I wanted to change my body for the better.
I started off losing weight the healthy way. Although it took me a couple months admittedly to actually get off my ass and do something about it, it was a slow, yet healthy progress. Changing my eating habits took the longest as I first started to increase my exercise. Summer came along and my body still wasn’t the way i wanted it to be, still a little chunky. However, I actually lost a fair amount of weight due to the amount of exercise and constant walking around I did on the two week community service program I did, plus the 1 week in the bahamas with my cousins (where eating wasn’t a main priority of ours, only to have fun). I came back home, weighed myself, and loved the progress. I think i weighed about 110 or something (at the starting point, I think i might’ve been in the high 130s or even 140s).
I rediscovered tumblr (before summer, I had one where I would track down all these low cal recipes) with all these thinspos and healthy weight loss blogs. As a result, I got more into counting calorie. None of this had been something that I recognized before and I was totally new to it. I began researching healthy foods and got more into exercising, mainly running. Counting calories became an obsession and I joined the cross country team on top of that. I was depriving myself of nutrition and the right amount of calories, and the absence of my period never crossed my mind. I was over-exercising while not getting enough food in me. Hell, I was even proud on the days where my intake was left at 800.
Of course, this lead to binge eating some nights which later came with crying out of serious guilt and regret. I hated my body and I wanted to continue shrinking. I was stuck on the computer, constantly looking up tricks and tips to lose weight and various exercise guidelines. I restricted myself so much, even at dinner with my family I would refuse to eat anything that I thought in my head wasn’t healthy and would make me gain weight instantly. And my portions decreased quite noticeably. I didn’t become anorexic, because I never starved myself. I just restricted myself to foods I thought in my mind were healthy (it’s a little complicated actually and if you’re interested in really knowing the details, send me a message).
My parents began to notice how much weight I was losing and noted how unhealthy and pale and tired I was and continued to criticize my appearance and eating habits. Eventually, they forced me to go to a therapist. Of course I refused, but I was dragged. I hated being there and talking about why I lost weight and how much I hated my body, but it actually helped a little. I realized that I was slowly killing myself and that the fact that I hadn’t gotten my period for months was a serious problem. I was forced to stop exercising until I changed the way i was eating and got up to a healthy weight. It took me a while, being terrified of many foods and eating in larger quantities. But I got there. I honestly just couldn’t wait to start running again.
I discovered more ways to incorporate real, good for you foods into my diet while giving my body correct nutrition and discovered moderation and ‘cheat meals’. Running and exercise were still a big part of me, and still are, but I was supplying my body with food as needed.
Coming to present time, I’m obviously a whole lot more educating in terms of nutrition and exercise and I’ve been losing fat/maintaining because I’m still on my journey to attaining a fit body. I’m exercising regularly (i’m on the track team) but one thing I’m still struggling with is gaining a healthy mindset while obliterating as much as possible and closing off my past thoughts of obsession over counting calories and over all poor body image. I’m really actually very much recovered but there’s just little pieces of my past that sometimes cloud my mind and give me negative thoughts. And honestly, I’m still figuring out how much my body needs in order to be happy and healthy because I still do have those days where I just can’t control myself and eat a butt load of food. However, I’m not beating myself up about it to the point of where I’m crying because I know better and I’m not giving up or letting myself down :).
By the way, if you actually took the time to read this entire thing you are truly amazing and I really appreciate it <3
