Counting calories, over exercising, using the terms “good” and “bad” foods, fat shaming, skipping meals, constant fitness tracking, weighing food, daily/frequent weighing, avoiding entire food groups, eating less and feeling hungry, trying to find ways other than food to suppress your appetite, constantly striving for weight loss. All of these are not normal. However, Diet culture, now carefully masked as wellness culture, normalizes ALL OF THIS. All of this behavior starts off very innocently, and is often praised and applauded. But then they become obsessive, harmful and sometimes can lead to death.
I would know, because ten years ago, I woke up to my loved ones crying & staring at me from a hospital bed. No one knew if I was going to wake up. I was lucky. Anorexia is no joke. Out of all the mental illnesses, it is the leading cause of death.
My story starts off innocently as well. I started dieting when I was about 12. It was easy to skip meals when I had scheduled athletic training at lunch and was caught up in my studies. That habit lingered on towards adulthood, where I’d overschedule to skip meals. Then I got caught up in numerous restrictive diets. Each time, I’d look for other people’s approval of my food choices, instead of listening to my own body. I gradually became more and more afraid of food to the point where it took me hours to drink just one glass of juice, while crying. Severely over exercising and under eating in correlation meant my brain didn’t have enough energy to even be aware, of the fact that what I was doing was disordered. Consequently, I remained trapped.
Here I am today though. I’m at a healthy weight, *yay* but that doesn’t mean too much when it comes to eating disorders. (E.g when I first started recovering, I was 77lbs/35kg and because I experienced “extreme hunger,” I put on weight fast, so when I jumped on the scales at the hospital, I was deemed as not underweight enough to have inpatient treatment.) When someone asks me to eat out, I’ll still be terrified, but considering anorexia has been with me most of my life, that’s normal. I just don’t feed those lies anymore. I feed myself now and defeat those thoughts with love. Love wins each time. Each time, anorexia wants to tell me lies, I think of my loved ones. I think of how many times I’ve broken their hearts from my eating disorder and swear I’d never do it again. To those that told me I was getting “too thin” and “too obsessed,” you’re with me always. Your love is what wins each time and keeps me brave.
I’ve realized it’s normal to want to know what is healthy, but it’s not normal to let that control you – your food and exercise choices, shouldn’t be governed by which one has the least calories/carbs or will burn the most. And no amount of control will make you happy. You’ll still have the same problems when you reach your target, cause diets don’t solve problems, let alone cure low self-esteem. Diet culture tells us to “restrict your energy intake, your appetite is to be feared, destroy yourself at the gym, and forget about your social life.” Yet this isn’t health. Health is connection, good sleep, stress management, joyful movement, enough food, preventative medical care, therapy and access to respectful care free of stigma. Health also comes from treating ourselves with kindness, and we can’t do that if we are constantly punishing our bodies.
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