Trigger warning: disordered eating
“I hate PE,” I said, staring down at my thighs. We were sitting on the curb where the pavilion met the track, trying to avoid the love bugs covering the walls while also avoiding the heat of the sun. “And I hate love bugs!”
“They’re gonna be all over the playground!” Justine groaned beside me. I nodded in commiseration. What would we do at recess then? Digging in the dirt was always an option.
I was still staring down at my thighs, exposed by my shorts. Did they always bulge out like that? I looked at my friend’s legs. Were hers doing the same thing? I couldn’t tell—she was wearing jeans.
“I think my legs are fat,” I blurted out. Was it happening already? Did everyone else think so? Were they talking about my fat thighs behind my back?
Justine glanced over. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think they just do that when you’re sitting down.”
She might be right, I thought. But what if she’s just being nice? Justine is really nice, she wouldn’t tell me if I was fat. Oh my gosh, do I need to go on a diet? Maybe I shouldn’t eat my brownie at lunch today. Mama’s always on diets. Maybe she can help me so I won’t be fat.
That is the first time I remember thinking I was fat. I was 9 years old, in third grade, and as my grandpa liked to remind me, I was almost too bony to sit in his lap.
I was not fat.
But I was terrified of it, all the same. And the terror didn’t let up, not for an instant, for at least 15 years. It plagued me everywhere.
At 11, I was embarrassed that my stomach got in the way of me seeing my toes at dance class.
At 12, my mom bought me minimizer bras so my boobs wouldn’t look so big.
At 14, my Russian ballet teacher was telling me weekly that I needed to lose 10 pounds. (I was dancing 20 hours a week. I wasn’t fat, I just wasn’t ballerina thin. But I was supposed to be.)
At 17, I didn’t eat any cookies at the high school choir party.
Then I started tracking my calories. 1750 seemed good, I thought after a lot of Googling.
A few weeks later, I hadn’t lost much weight. (I was weighing myself daily—first thing in the morning, after going to the bathroom, and before having any breakfast or water.) I complained to my mom.
“Well, what’s your calorie limit?” she asked.
“1750,” I told her.
“Well, there’s your issue,” she said. “You’re not going to lose anything if you’re eating that much. You need to go lower.”
Lower? I thought, walking away. Really? Well, I guess she’s been doing this longer than I have. She knows what works.
I lowered my calorie limit to 1200 calories a day. Google said that was the lowest anyone should go, so I did it.
It was working! I was dropping weight! I was marking it in my journal during church one day, coloring in a box for each pound I’d lost so far—155 down to 142. My mother glanced down and saw what I was doing.
“Is that how much weight you’ve lost?” she asked, her eyes sparkling with pride.
“Yeah,” I answered, proud of myself because she was proud of me. She smiled and squeezed my hand.
Soon after that, the scale wasn’t budging. I’d been sticking to my 1200 calories, what else could I do?
Well, there’s always exercise, I thought. It may have been peak summer in Florida, but I was tough. I could beat the heat. I threw on some old sneakers and hit the pavement. I hated it, but it was working.
Another plateau. Running wasn’t enough anymore. Dang it, I needed to get down to 120! Then I’d be happy. But what else can I do? Back to Google.
“Carbs are bad,” some Google searches reported. Sure, there were plenty that said carbs were good and necessary, too, but I was looking for something I could cut out. Carbs would do.
What else? “Try intermittent fasting,” said Google.
I was hungry all the time, but that was good. That meant it was working.
In my first year of college, I was terrified of the Freshman 15. My latest tactic was an intermittent fasting method called “72 off, 24 on,” meaning “go 72 hours without eating, then let yourself eat whatever for 24 hours.” And then do it all over again.
I’d done it a few times. Sure, I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed, much less go to class, but sleeping made it easier to avoid the temptation of food.
It was finally time to eat!!! I was ravenous. I made my way to a dining option on campus, and then … the world felt funny. Why couldn’t I talk? Why was I stumbling? Oh no, it’s going dark, I’m gonna fain—
Pandemonium. Strangers helping me up, employees calling an ambulance, tests on tests on tests. My roommate Ubered to the hospital. My dad drove four hours from home.
“You’re emaciated,” my dad said when he saw me.
No I wasn’t, I argued. How could I be? I was still fat. I had at least 20 more pounds to lose.
The hospital didn’t find anything wrong (and I wasn’t about to admit that I fainted because I was hungry). My dad was worried, my roommate was worried, my friends were worried, so I quietly stopped the 72:24.
I watched myself gain back the weight I’d killed myself to lose, and I hated myself.
The story didn’t end there. The next several years featured more diets, Amazon diet pills, and constantly wishing I wasn’t me. I was in therapy, but I never could bring myself to talk about my weight and my struggles with eating. Anything else, sure, but never that.
This isn’t just my story; it’s our story. It’s the story we keep handing down, generation after generation, through the subtle comments, the quiet comparisons, and the well-meaning but harmful advice. It’s a pattern so ingrained in our culture that we barely recognize it, let alone question it. But here’s the thing: we don’t have to keep passing it down.
For me, it’s been a long, painful process to unlearn the messages I was given, to stop carrying insecurities that were never mine to begin with. And I’m not here to say I’ve figured it all out. I still have days when I look in the mirror and wish for a body that feels easier to love. But what I know now is this: it starts with awareness. It starts with saying, ‘This stops with me.’
The most revolutionary thing we can do—for ourselves and for the people around us—is to stop treating bodies as projects to perfect. To stop measuring health by the size of someone’s jeans. To stop dismissing the weight of these struggles as vanity or self-obsession. These insecurities are not ours; they’re inherited. But that means they’re not inevitable.
If insecurities are handed down like heirlooms, then maybe it’s time we stop passing them on. And maybe, just maybe, it starts by giving ourselves the permission to exist, as we are, without apology.
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