In order to talk about fitness and promote it in this blogs , I may have to get personal with you. I remember when Liz came to me about this topic, I was in full support and I knew that it was time to open up about my mental health, how it developed and how i overcame years of anorexia and bulimia. I know I will be sharing a lot of personal details here but I think my story will bring light on the subject matter and my hope is that this blog can help those struggling with this illness.
When did it start?
I started being concerned about my body weight at a very young age. Maybe when I was around ten years old after my father passed away. I was going through a lot and around that time, I started to notice changes in my body and so did people in my community. ( every African community, I would hear my aunts say things like " Stefanie you are getting too big, watch out or you will never get married. Or somethings in the line of, "you eat too much, if you don't watch out you would never fit nice clothes." Though I was young, those comments always left a sour taste in my mouth and as a child, I felt like something was wrong with me.
Later as a teenager in the United States, my heavy accent and inability to adequately comprehend English exacerbated my insecurities. Additionally, being in a middle school environment where everyone wanted to "fit in" and where bullying was the popular kid's chosen career made me afraid what they thought about me. This sounds crazy but I remember making all kinds of excuses because of my shape LOL! I would say things like.. "if I was skinnier, I would have passed that exam" or "people would like me more if i was tall, slim and light skinned." - I am not kidding
I was at the peak of self hatred and I blamed my body for everything. To be honest, part of the verbal bullying was in my head. Looking back, I think that I verbally bullied myself by programming my mind to weed out every positive thing about me and I somehow found a way to turn my strengths into weaknesses.
Continuing...as I was getting older, I never felt beautiful in any way, shape or form. I often compared myself to run way models, actresses and I didn't see many people that that looked like me on TV and because I am a fixer, (I like to solve problems) I decided to take the plunge and find out how to fix me. I learned about athletics in high school and knowing that I could lose a tremendous amount of weight if I just exercised made me so excited. I was so excited that I remember walking in to a wrestling club room and asking the coach if he could allow me to a part of the team. The confusion on his face was undimmed but I was so determined to lose this weight that the kind of sport did not matter. It did not matter if I was a girl or boy, I just wanted the fat off my body and I would do whatever it takes to get there. For a year or so, worked very hard and ate very little and the days that I over ate, I made sure that I ran at least three miles to make up for it. That was just phase one of my eating disorder.
Like Liz mentioned, bulimia is not just eating and purging, some people with bulimia eat and then workout excessively to compensate for the calories. Also like she said, the weight never goes away completely when you are bulimic. This is because you actually never solve the problem. Being bulimic is not a solution and here is how I learned that truth...
I did loose a lot of weight at the beginning but as you probably figured, my new weight did not last forever. My first year in college was rough! Man, I don't know what happened because the weight came back faster than it left. The crazy part is that I had made so many rules and emergency plans for my diets. I planned out what I would do when I ate carbs, what I could and what I would never eat.. I had restricted my self so much that I could not even enjoy a meal without thinking about my weight. I became vegetarian, dieted hard, took a lot of weight loss pills, cheated on my diet plans, and endlessly beat myself up for every pound gained. There were times, many times, when I felt defeated and I was convinced that that would be my life and I could never be free from the struggle if I wanted to look pretty like the runway stars. At one point in college, I rejoined the wrestling team in my school thinking I was going to get my weight in control (and I did for three months.) I also became a body builder, which was an amazing experience but my insecurities never went away. I was in a battle. The battle was against myself and I was losing badly!
The ultimate twist to my becoming...
It wasn't until when I graduated from college that I came to a deep realization. I realized that my problem was bigger and deeper than how I looked in the mirror or my shape. I realized that my problem was never with the scale, the problem was with my mind. Because my mind controls what I see and how I see things... Has someone ever complimented you on your worst day, when you did not feel good about yourself or a hair style that you didn't really like? Exactly! That what how you know there is a difference between what goes on in your mind and reality. The truth is your mind playing tricks on you and that's exactly what was going on with me. My mind was unhealthy and it needed some serious conditioning...
“Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.” William James
The mind is the driving force of everything that we do. I believe that an eating disorder has so much to do with our minds which controls how we perceive ourselves. I may not know what you have been through in your life but I know that how we see ourselves affects the way we eat, treat our loves one, and what we do. At this time in my life and with the feedback from FMC supporters, I am more than convinced that I am not the only person who has been through this kind of struggle and I am more than convinced that we, collectively need to do more about out mental health; which is why I started the 5 AM challenge for mental health and also the FMC 24/7 community group. (Click here to get access to this group.)
I will leave you with the quotes below....
“Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that–thoughts.” --Alan Lokos
“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” --Buddha
xoxo
Stef
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