I struggle with accepting my body.
It started in elementary school when I had to stand in the back with all the boys in every class photo because I was as tall, if not taller than the majority of them.
In 2nd grade, we had a play about gardens where everyone played a role of something you would find in a garden. I was assigned the role of a “talking flower”. A parent who was helping run the show picked every single blonde little girl in my class to be a dancing flower except for me. I was so confused and hurt and, when I asked if I could switch, I was told I was “too good at memorizing lines” to be a dancing flower. Even at that age, I was able to tell it was due to my body being different.
A few years later, I started swimming competitively and that only made things worse. Every practice, I would put on my super tight swimsuit that left nothing to the imagination and compare my body to the other girls in my lane. As I continued swimming, I started to believe that the thinner I was, the faster I could be and unfortunately, I was not the only one thinking this. I had teammates that believed this as well.
Swimming was the first place I met someone with an eating disorder. I had heard about them before, but it was a teammate that opened my eyes to this cruel disorder in 7th grade. My eating disorder issues started around this time too, but because everyone around me was also acting this way about eating and diets, it seemed normal to me.
When I was in high school, there was a tradition that thankfully no longer exists, but it caused a lot of body insecurities for me. As a female junior class member, we were required to wear a sparkly sports bra with sweatpants to the senior girls' Thanksgiving powderpuff game - a flag football game against our rival school. To make matters worse, we had to paint a letter on our stomachs that together would spell out a sentence like "Go 2012 Seniors!" The anxiety I had around the fear of being told I had to put the letter O or the number 0 on my stomach should have been concerning. I remember losing sleep over this and the sense of relief that came over me when I was told I was assigned a ! should have been a key indicator I was struggling with some serious body issues.
Even before my junior year started, classmates were discussing their diets and gym routines they were doing to prepare for this tradition. I remember spending more time in the gym, swimming two practices a day, and intentionally eating less because I was so worried about how my body would look in that damn sports bra on game day. Some of my classmates started taking diet pills, and almost every conversation among the girls in my grade was centered around how their bodies would look in that sports bra. The worst part was, despite making many efforts to shrink my body, I still hated my body and how I looked on that day.
In college, I gained lots of weight my freshman year and when summer rolled around, I immediately enrolled in Weight Watchers with my parents to lose it all. I was weekly attending in-person meetings that started with me getting weighed by a member of the WW team. With every week the scale would read a lower number and the lower the number got the more I was praised.
If you haven't ever been to a WW meeting, they give you charms as they do at AA meetings (the AA ones are way more impressive if you ask me). You lose 5 pounds - you get a charm, you lose 10 pounds - you get another... you gain weight - better luck next time! Looking back, this tactic is such a dangerous one for someone who has ADHD and is driven by dopamine. The charms gave me dopamine so each week I was so eager to weigh less and less to be rewarded with a little charm after stepping off the scale.
I worked so hard to gain those stupid charms and in doing so, I destroyed my relationship with food. When I returned to school in the fall, I was met with so much praise from my colleagues and teammates about how good my body looked! This only fueled my negative relationship with food more, but it became so hard to keep up my diet as the dining hall didn't have many options that were in my "zero point" range. I quickly put back all the weight and more, and in doing so I started to hate myself. I was mad at myself for lacking what I thought was "self-control" and letting myself go.
Today, I am 28 and still struggle with my body's size so I asked ChatGPT "Is being fat bad?" because that is what society has been screaming at me for my whole life and I was shocked with the reply...
Sure there are some things in this answer that I don't fully love, but there's a lot of good in this response that I do like. The fact that even CHATGPT knows that body weight is a complex and nuanced issue is a great start! ChatGPT also seems to understand that weight doesn't determine health and that we should consider so much more than just weight when it comes to overall health and that gives me, a human in recovery, hope!
If you are struggling with your body, know that you are not alone and that there are so many incredible resources out there! This year has been a big one for me in my recovery journey and while I am slightly sad it has taken me this long to finally ask for help, I am happy I am finally on the path to recovery! ❤️
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