The Journey of a Mindset
Diets? Yep. I’ve been there, done that, and collected every “t-shirt” along the way.
I have been battling with eating disorders from my childhood until — well, let’s be honest, I still battle from time to time. I’m here to share my journey.
There are so many phases and facets in the spectrum of eating disorders, and I hope my experiences will help anyone on a similar journey — those with the same “t-shirts” collection as me. I know hope is not a strategy, but I offer this:
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and don’t always pessimistically assume it’s a train…
I was that kid whose meals consisted of Spaghetti-O’s, Wonder Bread with an inch-thick layer of Parkay butter, Kid Cuisine (for the brownie with the sprinkles, duh), Hostess Cupcakes (always peeling the icing off and eating that first, of course!), and, lest we forget, McDonalds Chicken Nuggets and French fries. I have such vivid memories of dipping those nuggets in honey while sitting on the floor in front of the Magnavox big screen TV, watching Family Ties.
Those were the ’80s. The Atkins Diet hadn’t trended to our bubble of a town, and no one in my small family of three really cared about exercise or nutrition. Yes, it’s true: all we had in the ’80s were thong leotards, Aqua Net bangs (because what is sweat?), and the warped illusion that a Thigh Master and Jazzercise was the winning combination to get “toned” or — the cringe-worthy term of the decade — “slim and trim.”
When I was very young I started having severe digestive problems and it wasn’t from all the Pudding Pops, Ecto-Coolers, or Mr. T cereal. I didn’t know at the time, but the stomach pains I felt were due to anxiety and depression. Those were also terms and concepts unknown to my young mind. I was excruciatingly uncomfortable, and I didn’t know how to soothe myself — except by eating. Looking back, I try to find that “Big Bang” moment when the eating disorder started to take over. What seemed like “silly” child-like behavior at that time is deeply disturbing to me now. I would walk around the neighborhood, looking for friends to play with, and eat an entire box of Teddy Grahams along the way. I would make nachos with the Family Size bag of Tostitos to share but would end up eating them by myself in my room. I’d sneak food at a friend’s house and binge on treats at babysitting jobs. This was all before the ripe old age of 12.
Once the teenage years hit, I continued to pave my path, eating whole pizzas, drinking liters of Coke, and binging on bagels and cream cheese and Grandy’s yeast rolls (total gateway drug) along the way. I never thought anything was wrong with this behavior. I was never told it was wrong. It soothed what was aching. Problem solved, right? Well, that’s what was wrong. I was never taught serving sizes. I didn’t even know nutrition facts were part of the packaging. I was feeding an insatiable emotional hunger and completely lost contact with my physical hunger cues.
They’d been tied up, duct-taped, and held hostage somewhere in the cellar of my mind.
If you’ve known someone with an eating disorder, you know there’s always the question of, “When did it start?”
For me, I thought it started in high school. To put it bluntly, I had no business being on the basketball team my freshman year. I hated the sport, but, at the time, I was the tallest girl in 9th grade — the BIG girl — so I was expected to play. Being the people-pleaser that I am, there were no negotiations… I had to play. It was that year that I heard someone in the stands call me “Thunder Thighs.” Nowadays, this is often a term of endearment or compliment. Damn, how I wish I could go back and offer this mindset to my younger self. I became hyper-aware of my height and the size of my arms and legs… and my weight. I started to purposefully get in trouble during basketball, so I could start running laps instead. I had read in an issue of one of those teen magazines about running and calorie burning. I’d also read that carbs were “bad” and I started demonizing certain foods and taking diet pills to try to reverse the “damage” done by those pesky carbs.
In the ’90s, People Magazine (get ready to cringe) published the heights and weights of celebrities! I read the height and weight of models and I latched onto the idea of trying to attain the body of Claudia Schiffer. She was tall, thin, and she definitely did not have thunder thighs. I bought her workout VHS tapes and scotch-taped magazine photos of her around my full-length mirror. It was around this time that Kate Moss and the waif-like models entered the runway as well. My sophomore year, I had my last bite of pizza and proclaimed to a group of friends that I would never have pizza again. I also realized at this time that, when I was anxious and didn’t eat, my stomach didn’t seem to be in so many knots. Not a good combo.
For the remainder of high school, things got dark, blurry, and cold. Unbearably cold. Life was methodical, and behaviors were obsessive: Get up at 4 a.m. Weigh-in. Run 4 miles. Count every step. Try to eat something. Weigh-in again. Complete a workout video. Go to school. Try to eat something. Go home. Run 4 miles. Weigh-in again. Study. Try to eat something. Teach a cardio kickboxing class for work. Go to sleep, shivering under layers of blankets and awaken to the deafening sound of a heart that wouldn’t beat much longer…
Once the Anorexia was an inch away from taking my life, I transitioned into Bulimia. Those behaviors ebbed and flowed in and out of my life for over a decade before I had, once again, found myself peering into the bottomless Well of No Return.
This time, I had my husband and my three children to think about, and the guilt and feelings of selfishness were overwhelming. I was the burden of the family, where I should have been the rock. I couldn’t carry around the shame for much longer.
I had two choices and I had to make one quick: temporarily feel the guilt, shame, fear, selfishness, hate, and rage while fighting this disease; or die because I continued utilizing destructive and disordered behaviors to cope with difficult emotions and past traumas. Make no mistake — I wasn’t sick because someone in high school called me “thunder thighs.” The amount of hate one feels toward oneself to deprive the body of a necessity to live stems from an illness, not a choice in mindset. Mine, particularly, had thrived in the midst of depression and anxiety.
I fought. I still fight. And I am winning. After a plethora of therapy, treatment, and lots of fear-facing and emotional/physical healing, I made it back on the “outside” and into a slightly changed mindset. I gained back the power to make choices to recover, not as deeply enveloped in the disorder as I once was. It was the hardest thing I have ever done.
I was on a meal plan from a Registered Dietician. I still hadn’t fully grasped the concept of serving sizes and was struggling being home and cooking again for my family — sharing the experience and same meals instead of making a separate one for me all the time. I yearned to learn more and kept fighting the thoughts of labeling foods as “clean” or “good.” I still avoided certain foods and never enjoyed cake with my kids.
In 2016, I stumbled upon some hilarious memes on Instagram. The account poked fun at “clean eating” and the falsities projected by many “fitness gurus” on the Web. This account totally went against typical diet dogma and culture and I instantly felt the need to learn more about what they were all about. Needless to say, the master behind the memes was none other than Mark Springer, Founder of Avatar Nutrition. I learned more about the science behind each macronutrient. I learned about serving sizes and how to read a nutrition label without judgment or fear. This started to hammer in that final nail in the coffin of the “clean eating” mindset.
My mantra, which coincides with Avatar Nutrition’s core beliefs, is that Food has no Moral Value. Tracking macronutrients for a few years has helped me learn more about my body, performance, and my metabolism. It has been a crucial part of my recovery and my journey. Although I no longer strictly measure or track, I know serving sizes and I know the importance of each macronutrient. I teach my kids to eyeball servings and to make sure they eat a good balance of all three, along with their fruits and veggies for micronutrients. What I have learned from Avatar Nutrition over the years has added to my freedom with food. I am proactively teaching my kids the importance of all the nutrients — and to make sure they do not follow the dark path I wandered.
This is my recovery. This is living. This is a revolution in thought that I am honored to be a part of.
