This was originally going to be about my experience with Intermittent Fasting. As I started to write it up it kept getting longer and longer as I delved into my backstory with food, my weight, and how I have struggled to find balance. To be honest, I don’t know who wants to read all the backstory. Personally, I like to read about other women’s struggles with weight and healthy body image because it’s vulnerable and it reminds me that I’m not the only one who does the weird crazy things we do as females. As I was writing this, I kept thinking: “Who wants to read this Melissa? Why are you sharing so much of your painful past? What is your purpose and intention in sharing this story?”
My intention and hope is to help someone feel connected. It is to help someone feel less alone. What if someone who looks at me and thinks I have it all together, that I just eat donuts guilt-free, and that I wake up full of energy and exercise for the pure love of it, reads this and sees that I do not in fact have it all together. I do not eat donuts without thinking about all the sugar and fat that is surely heading straight to my tummy. And I most certainly do not exercise just because I love it (although I mostly do love to exercise, it’s therapy for me).
I have been told on more than one occasion by more than one person that I am the healthiest person they know.
Well I got news for ya: I struggle every. Damn. Day. I fight with food every day. I fight with my body every day. I fight with the idea that I am not perfect every day. Do I look healthy? Yes. Do I have loads of energy to burn? Yes. Do I wish I didn’t think about food and my belly every second of every day? Yes.
So here you go, because I can’t share the “now” without talking about the “then.” The “then” is letting you all glimpse into my personal hell that has plagued me since I was a little girl around 5 or 6:
Memory 1: I remember a friend’s mom showing everyone how skinny her daughter was by putting her hands around her waist. (I know the mom was not trying to hurt anyone or brag about her daughter. I don’t know WHY she did that, or what effect it might have had on her daughter even. I know the intention wasn’t to hurt or upset anyone, but the memory sticks in my head like an annoying song you can’t get rid of…) I went home that night (5 or 6 mind you) and tried to fit my hands around my waist. It was a no go. (Obviously my hands were smaller than a grown woman’s but my child brain didn’t make that connection). The lesson: hands didn’t fit around my waist so clearly something must be wrong.
Memory 2: I remember going to visit my cousins every summer. I always believed them to be prettier and thinner than me, even at a young age. But specifically, I remember finding out they were several sizes smaller than me in clothes. Before then I had never realized size was a thing. But I realized my size 7-9 in juniors was far greater than their size 0-2s. I became very, very aware of numbers. The lesson: The higher the number for your size the more fat you are.
Memory 3: (Mom, I know you’re reading and you know I love you to pieces and with all my heart). But memory 3 consists of lots of memories of my mom being very conscious of her weight and what she ate, and what we ate. Fat was bad. Cookies were bad. Ice cream was bad. I know she was only trying to be healthy, with diabetes and heart disease running in her family. She only wanted what was best for us. But I was impressionable, and already insecure because of my skinny friends and skinny cousins. The Lesson: Bad food makes you fat.
I was not an athletic kid. I couldn’t run a mile in 6th grade (don’t even get me started on P.E. in school), I couldn’t do sit-ups, I wasn’t into sports. It just wasn’t my thing! But I started working out in Junior High, I think maybe 8th grade. I would head to the gym at 5 in the morning with my mom or dad before school. It was pretty basic stuff: run a little on the treadmill, lift some weights, do some crunches. I would then eat ice cream at school, chips, fries, typical teenage food. I was very aware of the rolls in my stomach as I sat at my desk. I was very aware that my thighs touched when I sat down (who’s don’t??? OMG such a silly thing to worry about). I was very aware that my best friends were Asian and much smaller and more delicate than me. I never felt comfortable. I never felt beautiful. I felt awkward and fat, ALL. THE. TIME.
I kept working out through High School and after because it was a habit at that point. But I didn’t really look or feel different because ME + BREAD = LOVE. It wasn’t until I was around 20 or so that everything started to escalate. I don’t remember any one event setting me off. It’s always about control, right? There were some things going on in my life that I couldn’t control for sure. Friends getting married, still living at home, feeling lost and confused at the tender age of 20-ish.
I don’t remember the first time I threw up my food. But I do remember thinking: “Yea, I could do this again.”
And I did, again and again and again. If I wasn’t throwing up my food, I was just not eating food at all, or restricting my calories to a ridiculously low number. If I went over my calorie limit I had to workout even longer and harder. It was pretty standard for me to eat less than 1,000 calories a day while burning at least 1/2 that by exercising. To my 20-year-old body, I want to apologize for putting you through that. You carried me and healed nicely and I am grateful.
I lost my period pretty quick, which was some sort of status symbol among girls with eating disorders. Clothes were hanging off me. People were noticing. My parents were scared. Being the dutiful daughter that I am I agreed to go to a clinic to get help before things got worse. What sucked about that experience is our insurance only covered so much and after just 1 week I had to leave inpatient and just do an outpatient day program. I was not ready for that, and neither was my family. I believe that this was a huge contributor to my decade-long struggle to find balance. I cried when I found out I had to leave. As much as I hated the control the facility had, I knew I wasn’t anywhere close to being ready to face life yet. I had taken a leave from work. I had prepared myself mentally to be there for the long haul. And there I was, getting kicked out after 1 week.
For the next several years I would work out, eat well, feel ok, eat a cookie, cry, eat more, throw up, promise myself to never do it again, only to do it again. I will skip all the years of yo-yoing I did. You get the idea. It was unhealthy and I was pretty miserable.
I didn’t really know about true health and nutrition. I didn’t know WHAT I should be eating or WHEN I should be eating. I didn’t know how much I needed or what full, hungry, or satisfied was. I would punish myself. I never felt great. I just kind of lived from day to day wondering if there would ever be a time when I could just feel normal about food and about my body.
When my husband and I got engaged I stepped it up in preparation for our wedding. By the time our wedding rolled around I felt awesome. I was in a decent place mentally, I looked great in my dress, and I felt pretty OK about food and life in general.
After our wedding I started to lose interest in working out. I still did it, but not as often or as vigorous. I also struggled with food because I was a vegetarian my husband was a burger and fries kind of guy. It was rough. I caved pretty fast and started eating meat within the first year of our marriage. I’ve also never looked back! Bacon, I love you and I never want to be apart from you again.
Again, I found myself just lost about food and health. I had no direction. It was 2015, a couple years or so after getting married, that a friend asked me join her for a little thing called The Bikini Series by these two girls who started a company called Tone It Up. Tone It Up completely changed my life, for the good. I hope to have “Part 2: My Tone It Up Experience” ready by next week.
So, there you are. There is a brief history or my ups and downs with weight, body image, food, and exercise. I am just like so many other women when it comes to those issues. Some can pinpoint the day, time, and hour that some critical event happened in their lives that set them on a course of self-loathing. For some, like me, it’s just a series of events that all blends together into a painful and rather common history. This has been much harder for me to write about and share than talking about my mental health or my miscarriages. If you decide to comment, please don’t say something like “Oh but you look so beautiful” or “You have such a great body, you don’t need to worry about it!” If it were that easy don’t you think myself and the millions of women who fight with their bodies would do it? I’m not sharing this for sympathy or compliments. I am sharing it because it is a vital part of my story that has led me to where I am now: a kind of delicate balancing act between LOVING food and LOVING my body.