24”, 28”, 37” are the measurement of a fat girl, who is unworthy of her own love. I started recording everything in a small black composition notebook. Open the pages and it would look like a personal trainer threw up in it. Every page replete with different workouts, measurements, diets, meal plans, critiques about what I could do better next week, and what I should work on for tomorrow. No one knew where it hid under my bed next to my measuring tape, and elementary school art projects. It still sits there, shroud in the dust, as a memorial of how bad it got.
I never forced myself throw up or starved myself for days on end. So it's ok, right? When I was 12 I was dancing 13 hours a week and working out for at least 30 minutes after that. I …show more content…
She was always ordering different diet cookbooks and doing twenty-one-day challenges. From a young age, I remember her crying to me about her weight, and I told her “there's more of you to love,” but she didn't want that extra ‘love’. So I grew up on the concept that extra ‘love’ is undesirable and ugly. An eight-year-old girl shouldn't be introduced to that concept so young, that concept can kill. My mom had always told me not to eat junk food, it would make me fat. I didn’t like the healthy foods. So when I ate, I ate foods I wasn't supposed to eat. When I didn't eat, I got told to eat more. I ate the foods I wasn't supposed to eat, then I got ridiculed for eating those foods, my confused impressionable mind decided not to eat at …show more content…
I knew what I was doing was bad for my body, but I didn’t feel like I needed to change. I let numbers and measurements decide my worth, and that’s something I couldn’t keep doing. One day I cracked, listening to a guest speaker who had come into my dance studio to talk about eating disorders because in that place they were as common as leaves on trees. She had told us to close our eyes and envision ourselves standing in front of our bedroom mirrors, an image I knew all too well. We were to look at every little part of our body. Feet callused from hours of dance, thighs too big for anyone to think they are beautiful, and a stomach that would never look how you wanted it to. That’s what changed for me. I know some people have to hit rock bottom and almost die, or others have to go to hospitals and get feeding tubes, to realize what they’re doing to themselves is bad. I didn’t have to do any of that, I realized this is the only body I have, and it's the only one I'll ever have. Nobody loves their body as it is. Everyone dislikes certain things and would make changes to how they look. But there are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to change those things. I was going down a path of self-destruction. I’m better now. Though I still have some not so good
I never forced myself throw up or starved myself for days on end. So it's ok, right? When I was 12 I was dancing 13 hours a week and working out for at least 30 minutes after that. I …show more content…
She was always ordering different diet cookbooks and doing twenty-one-day challenges. From a young age, I remember her crying to me about her weight, and I told her “there's more of you to love,” but she didn't want that extra ‘love’. So I grew up on the concept that extra ‘love’ is undesirable and ugly. An eight-year-old girl shouldn't be introduced to that concept so young, that concept can kill. My mom had always told me not to eat junk food, it would make me fat. I didn’t like the healthy foods. So when I ate, I ate foods I wasn't supposed to eat. When I didn't eat, I got told to eat more. I ate the foods I wasn't supposed to eat, then I got ridiculed for eating those foods, my confused impressionable mind decided not to eat at …show more content…
I knew what I was doing was bad for my body, but I didn’t feel like I needed to change. I let numbers and measurements decide my worth, and that’s something I couldn’t keep doing. One day I cracked, listening to a guest speaker who had come into my dance studio to talk about eating disorders because in that place they were as common as leaves on trees. She had told us to close our eyes and envision ourselves standing in front of our bedroom mirrors, an image I knew all too well. We were to look at every little part of our body. Feet callused from hours of dance, thighs too big for anyone to think they are beautiful, and a stomach that would never look how you wanted it to. That’s what changed for me. I know some people have to hit rock bottom and almost die, or others have to go to hospitals and get feeding tubes, to realize what they’re doing to themselves is bad. I didn’t have to do any of that, I realized this is the only body I have, and it's the only one I'll ever have. Nobody loves their body as it is. Everyone dislikes certain things and would make changes to how they look. But there are healthy ways and unhealthy ways to change those things. I was going down a path of self-destruction. I’m better now. Though I still have some not so good