Loving the Body I Live Inside

I started seeing a new therapist. I said something that led him to ask if I had any concerns about my relationship with food. Confidently, I said, "No." It wasn't a false confidence. I really believed my relationship with food was fine; I had never examined this area of my life closely enough to think it needed to be worked on. In fact, he wasn't even the first health professional to ask something along these lines, but I had been certain this was one area where I didn't have a problem. But for some reason, this time I couldn't get it out of my head. "Should I be concerned?" I thought. "What if I do have a problematic relationship with food? Maybe I do need to work on this." So I went back the next week, telling him that I think I was wrong about what I had said, that maybe there was a problem. I told him how much weight I had lost in the previous couple of months. See, at that time, I wasn't particularly concerned with my weight or my body overall, but I had basically stopped eating. Something about eating brought me anxiety. I only ate small amounts of food and only once or twice a day. Like a smoothie in the morning and a few chicken wings at some later point in the day- and that was a good day. Even the food I liked most didn't entice me. I even began puking when I didn't like that I ate something in particular; it made me feel gross, gave me anxiety after eating it. I was lucky enough to have a great therapist, who knew what resources were available to me, who got me connected with the resources I needed. It was a long process, several months long, learning to eat again. For the whole first semester of my senior year of college, I would have hot chocolate for dinner. I would make Mexican hot chocolate on the stove, with milk because it was one thing I knew I could tolerate and get some of the nutrients I knew I needed. This was the start of my healing journey, though not the beginning of my troubles with food or my body image.

I began struggling with my body image when I was in middle school, common I know. But what may be less common is that I started to have disordered eating at that point too. I had stretch marks, and I was one of few girls at my school who weren't basically a size 0. Girls talked garbage about other girls' bodies. My sister talked about my big butt a lot, which wasn't necessarily a positive or negative; it wasn't something a 12 or 13 year old needed to be told constantly. One of my brothers would say that every woman should be a size zero, and most of the girls he dated were at least close to that. I didn't think I was pretty. I didn't believe I could be. But I knew I could go hours without eating, and the way my life was structured at that time, I worked out three times a day, about 4-5 hours in total. Sometimes I'd skip meals, other times I'd cut out certain foods. Either way, I was constantly undernourished. But I still always felt a little overweight. I felt out of place in my small private school, and somehow no one ever noticed the pain I was in most days. This behavior stopped for a while, but resurfaced in my senior year of high school. I lost 11 lbs in about 2 months, working out most every day and limiting myself to 1300 calories. I thought I was just being healthy, getting back in shape or whatever. It wasn't until a few years later, after I started therapy and my journey to repair my eating, and was deep in studying psychology (my major), that I realized I had had an eating disorder all those times. I had had no idea. But now I do. Now, I forgive myself for all the harm this did to me. It's time for me to move on and so I am letting go, braving a new day in the skin I am finally learning to love.

I have loved and hated myself throughout the years of my life. But I'm working hard these days to love, always and only love myself, body and soul. There are still days that I wish I didn't have the stomach I have or that I want to weigh what I did when I was in middle school. But the reality? I'm a woman in a woman's body. I have curves and angles. I have a body that is meant to carry babies and be strong. I have a body that is able to take on the hurdles of life. And honestly, I need to be able to accept that. I want to be able to accept that. I want to see myself as my husband does. I want to see the most beautiful girl in the room, every time I look in the mirror, no matter who is around me. I want to know my own strength. Don't you want that too? Ladies, we are in this together, whether you're 16, 26 or 63. We all need a reminder, sometimes, that we are beautiful. So here is your reminder: You are beautiful. You are lovely. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are loved. You are important.