My ongoing battle with food

Growing up in a society where everyone is judged makes life a little hard. Plus, it doesn’t help being surrounded by toxic diets. That is what triggered me. All throughout my life, I struggled with my weight. I was really skinny at times, but I also had times where I was overweight. I was not one of those lucky girls who had an amazing metabolism and could eat whatever I wanted. I was one of those girls, where eating one thing with a little extra calories would make you fat. Not literally because that is not possible, but you get the idea. I never realized when I was fat or when I was skinny until the end of middle school. At this point, my doctor and mom made me go on a diet to see if I was “ lactose intolerant.” This triggered my spiral and I now call it an excuse that I used to stop eating. From there, my mental state went down and I started eating wrong. Yes, I was healthy and three months later, I lost 20 pounds, but that was not where it stopped. I started to binge eat and starve myself until I felt nauseous. That was my reward and competition (let’s see how long I can go without eating). The sad thing is that nobody noticed, but to me it was constantly on my mind. I started staring at myself 24/7 and comparing myself to models and others. Being a dancer, I was always aware of the stereotypes. You are there for people to stare at your body and critiqueit. With all of these factors affecting me, I was gone.

Going into life and especially high school with this mindset, only made things worse. I was not the only one judging my body, so was my mom. She kept this dysmorphic life on. I tried every diet and evey “magical” drink there was. After a while, my mind changed. The thought of food became less horrible and scary. I still loved food, so the binging became worse, and for that I actually started to eat again. Except after a while I realized this was not how life was supposed to be. I started to love myself and realized “food is fuel”. Food is there for a reason and binging is always going to be an issue for me, but I am willing to fight it because life is supposed to be amazing and beautiful. If I am going to live the life I want, then I will have to be careful, but also careless. We are all different, but there is no reason why you have to hurt your body for other people. Eating disorders are no joke, and they will get better. But one thing to remember is there is always a healthy way to do things. For me, yes I had a long journey but now I am at the end of the tunnel and let me say… It is amazing!