LONG Story of a Short Body
Hoo-boy! Alright. Well first of all, I want to thank my tumblr-lovers @zerocarb and @hello-newman for encouraging me to share my body journey, and to @fatmaninalittlesuit for creating the promo that inspired sharing it. (I know I missed the promo!! Truly appreciate the idea, though. Writing out my story and eventually sharing it has meant a lot to me, it’s been really therapeutic!) I’ve been all over the board and my body’s changed a TON in the process of me finding peace with it, so I’m including pictures. It’ll probably end up being a little NSFW/underwear-y, and potentially triggering, so please peace out now if that aint cool.
I’ve been pretty average-sized most of my life, and fell hard into the hair dyeing/concert-going scene in highschool, and that look+lifestyle really stuck for a really long time. And that was great! Someone’s not attracted to me? It’s probably because I’m too badass! I’m feeling down about my appearance? I’ll just change my hair! In many ways, my “look” kept me from dealing with how uncomfortable I felt about my hips and thighs and square face: things I privately felt really, really uncomfortable about! But I was comfortably distracted. I come from a family of marathon running, carb-restrictive health junkies and convincing myself that my punk rock sensibilities were more significant than our HUGE differences in health allowed me to ignore our huge differences in health.
Q: Could I have possibly chosen a better picture to illustrate the difference between me and the rest of my super healthy, wholesome family?
It’s probably worth mentioning here that my first “serious” relationship began in High School, and while I hate giving significance to the opinions of some dumb 17-year old, my high school sweetheart DID tell me I was stocky and un-feminine, DID tell me my mom was hotter than I was, and DID encourage me to skip meals to lose weight. He also once implied that his sister was hotter than me, so he was obviously fucking nuts. Anyway. I was young, impressionable, stupid, and sadly those opinions REALLY stuck. Hell, here’s a telling picture of us at prom. As you’ll see I’ve always had a terrific sense of loyalty+humor. (also look at that poor little chick who totally wasn’t fat. ugh. what a jerk.)
I dumped him as soon as I got to college, where I promptly started singing in a punk band, and making bank performing burlesque with other tough-as-nails women. I gained the freshman 15, I wrote songs about how much he sucked, I hooked up with his best friend, I was killing it!! I didn’t think about my body. I was happy and strong. I could eat a burrito faster than most of the giant punk rock dudes I lived with. I shotgunned beer. It was a really good time in my life and probably the last point in my life where the size of my body wasn’t really an issue for me or the people around me. My body type was “fierce.”
I kept performing, and kept feeling a lot of pride about my femininity and my badassery, until I couldn’t afford (financially and time-wise) to continue doing burlesque. I “retired,” and decided to take some time for myself. Chill with the hair, confront the body stuff.
Five or six years ago, (halfway through my second stab at college and really not THAT long ago,) I started a Tumblr in an effort to lose 15 pounds. I had a wedding to attend in a few months, I was in a dying relationship, all signs pointed to lifestyle change. I struggled through the loss of the first pound and the second, I logged and weighed and blogged, I joined crossfit, I worked hard. Lost 15 pounds. Dyed my hair a “normal” “color.” And your girl looked GOOD.
And I felt great! Then one day I happened to skip all my meals and lost a shit ton and I guess the rest is history. The weight started melting off, and I became addicted to seeing those numbers drop faster than I could figure out how wrong that addiction was. In five months I went from 112 pounds to 80, I lost my period and my boyfriend and all my friends. I started drinking heavily. My hair fell out. I had one of those awful xXxbOnEsXxX tumblr accounts for thinspo. My friends stopped giving a shit. It went beyond vanity, beyond weight, it just became who I was. My parents and doctor pulled me out of the grad school program I had worked for years to get into. It was infantilizing and infuriating. I was placed in a weight gain facility that didn’t let you sit up or use stairs without a doctor’s express permission. This paragraph is a real cluster-fuck, but that’s how it felt. It all happened really fast. I have a lot of really glam pictures from this time in my life, but I have no interest in glamorizing this disease that Tumblr often glamorizes. I’m only gonna share this really unflattering progress gif from video that I took a few weeks before I hit weight rock-bottom, none of the attractive stuff. (trust me, without the giant wig i looked positively alien.) (hell WITH the giant wig i look positively alien.) I weigh 83 in these pictures and my lowest was 78, not that it really matters.
In the same way that I became determined to lose the weight, one day I just woke up determined to get better. I quit the outpatient treatment I’d been attending for 8 months, I was just sick of people watching me eat/telling me how to eat/making me feel like the anorexia haunted me even as I slowly gained the weight back. I had my last awful meal in treatment on a Thursday, and that Friday I went to a party and met a cute boy. Poor dude unwittingly entered into some crazy that night, but I learned to eat food and gain weight with him in a way that was more impossibly joyful than…well, than it was with three therapists staring me down. I started birth control, reckless-lover doses of pizza and wine, and more -ahem- body appreciation than I’d had in weeks, in years. I stopped exercising. I was introduced to the joys of fried seafood on the beach. I gained all my weight back and then some, though I never ever stepped on a scale. I met him at around 120 pounds and when I got an open container ticket from a cop outside his house 3 months later, that cop estimated me at 135. Higher than I’d ever been.
Anyway, so I forced myself to sit at that weight for awhile. Be chill. Breathe. Get drunk, eat food, not care. And I succeeded in those things! But believe you me the weight gain took its toll. I stopped letting people take pictures of me and post them online, I never made eye contact with my reflection. I just WASN’T HAPPY in my body. And people really freak out when you tell them that after anorexia! But you’re still a person after recovery, and I just felt like I was drinking too much and eating too much and gaining too much to be comfortable in my own skin. It wasn’t what I wanted, it isn’t what I want. It’s hard for me to even look at that picture above because even my face looks wrong. Bloated, hungover, unhappy. I wasn’t feeling strong, so I slowly started taking steps to eat better and take better care of myself. It wasn’t easy, for the last few years I’ve cycled through restricting/bingeing, drinking too much, crash dieting. It wasn’t until recently that the weight loss finally started to stick, that I finally learned to treat my body better.
(Also I ended up marrying that cute boy!)
Anyway, so here I am. I’m 8 weeks into a really HEALTHY, challenging, SLOW AND STEADY weight loss attempt. Every day I am careful to stay in the sweet spot, to stay safe but still maintain a deficit. I have lost about 11 pounds from starting, but I’m trying to avoid the scale. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin this summer, and I want to turn 30 at a lower weight than I was when I turned 20. (I’ll be 30 in November, where does the TIME? GO?!) I feel bad that I spent so much of this description talking about my ED, but that’s life. Miraculously, I don’t really feel like it’s affecting my weightloss in a negative or dangerous way this time. They say addicts are super good at losing weight (well, they said it on revenge body ONCE) and I believe my old obsessive anorexia traits DO help me stay super focused and disciplined, (like I will never ever lie on my food logs, I will weigh every morsel of food for better or for worse,) but my goals have remained really realistic and I haven’t been restricting or wanting to. I’m doing my best not to shy away from muscles and gainz, doing my best not to freak out over how necessarily slowly the scale is moving. Anyway if you read this far you’re a real GEM and I appreciate it. I will reward you with my official BEFORE picture, taken January 1st 2017, wearing THE most unflattering shorts I own, next to me this morning. This is not a fair comparison because those shorts+pose would make anyone look bad, but woooo 8 weeks of progress. @zerocarb I know you have been waiting for this day for a long time. THIS IS FOR YOU.
God those shorts. What was I thinking?
Anyway I wanna hear about your journey, too!!!!! <3 Thanks for indulging me, this was really motivating therapy. My husband’s gonna read this tonight too, we don’t talk about the anorexia much, and I’m happy for him to know his important role in my recovery. ANYHOW sorry it was so long, hope it was interesting!
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