TW (trigger warning): eating disorders, purging and extreme caloric restriction behaviors, excessive exercise
In hindsight, I was never a child with weight problems. I started becoming aware of my body in primary school, around 7-8 years old. When puberty kicked in and my breasts started to grow, I really went crazy. By the end of eighth grade, I had the biggest boobs in my class – a genetic inheritance that I despised all my adolescence. I was trying to hide myself in t-shirts as loose as possible and bras as tight as possible.
I don’t know if there was a mean-spirited comment or a specific event that triggered my obsession with my own body. I know that in 3rd or 4th grade, a classmate told me after seeing the pictures of a field trip that I looked pregnant (I was wearing a tight sweater) and I also remember a family friend who always called me fat “as a joke” when he saw me.
I’m not sure if these things affected me so much that they triggered the desire to be thinner, but at some point I decided that I had to do something to change my appearance, to become smaller. Instead of letting puberty do its job I decided I had to take matters into my own hands.
The first diet I remember was just before my 14th birthday. I had invited the whole class to the party. I had to look my best. So I tried to stick to the rules of a diet. I lost the few pounds that I thought were standing between me and happiness, but it didn’t last long. I still remember when the last guest left and I threw myself on a box of Merci chocolates. I ate them all, in haste. I didn’t even want them, but I couldn’t stop. This was probably my first episode of binge eating.
Dozens of diets followed because none of them helped me in the long term. Each time I ended up losing control of my eating and secretly eating all the chocolate in the house. I was ashamed of myself, I didn’t understand why my own body was betraying me in this way.
My parents didn’t see anything wrong with my diets, they thought they were helping me to be healthier. Then, when the chocolate disappeared from the house, I was occasionally criticized for overdoing it or that they wanted a piece. My mother also went on a week or two of dieting a couple of times a year, usually before a vacation or major event – but I don’t think I ever heard her agonizing or complaining about it. And if she had a craving for something, she ate without guilt. When I first started dieting, she told me I looked okay, but she also encouraged me because she knew that if I had put my mind to something, she couldn’t convince me to stop. And when the yo-yo effect hit me full force and I started to gain more and more weight, she encouraged me even more because my emotional breakdowns were also becoming bigger and bigger. She wanted to see me happy.
And for me happiness always meant being thin.
In 11th grade I went to Austria to study for a semester at an international high school in Linz and live with a host family. I was very excited about the idea, thinking that this semester would bring me opportunities and friends in an international academic environment. I didn’t realize that my introverted nature wouldn’t be able to bear this departure, that I wasn’t ready. I found myself in a new environment without my family and friends. I didn’t know how to react, so I started consoling myself with sweets. I would secretly eat all the cookies and chocolates in the house. I was buying muffins from the school cafeteria. Somehow, I ended up at the heaviest weight I had ever been. I didn’t feel good about myself, I was ashamed to go to school, to sports classes. I missed my family, a real hug, my colleagues in Romania. I blamed it on the pounds I had gained. I thought I couldn’t adapt to my new life because I wasn’t skinny. So I started dieting again, counting calories, watching what I ate. Then I’d come home and throw myself back into bingeing. The guilt was at one point so great that I needed a way to erase what had happened. So I decided to stick my fingers down my throat, thinking that would solve everything. It didn’t become a habit, I did it very rarely because it was uncomfortable, it hurt and I couldn’t do it when someone else was in the house for fear of being overheard. I felt dirty. I brushed my teeth, but I still had a horrible taste in my mouth. Afterwards I read on a pro-bulimia website that brushing your teeth immediately after vomiting destroys the enamel, so I decided to wait an hour or so before doing it. I also read how to tell if you’ve vomited everything, which foods are easier to vomit, etc. Yes, there are such sites on the internet, unfortunately.
I was still afraid to stand over the toilet for more than 10 minutes, I thought I was going to throw up my internal organs at how much it hurt. I tried not to eat anything afterwards, but the bingeing part was much stronger during that period and I often ended up eating sweets until the end of the day.
When I came back home over Christmas break I had a mental breakdown. The thought of not seeing my parents again for a few months was unbearable. So I decided to stay in the country, go back to my family and colleagues. I went back on a diet and got back into the zone I thought was ok. Then I gained weight again, just before my 18th birthday. For 10 days I didn’t eat anything solid, I only drank natural juices, made by me or my mom at the juicer in the kitchen.
My mom helped me stick to this diet because she knew I wanted to look good for my birthday and that if I didn’t, I would probably go into a depressive episode. Also, when I was starting a new diet, including this one, I seemed to have a different energy, I was more optimistic, more confident. Kalsey Miller calls this phenomenon ‘The Diet Buzz’ – a short period of time when you’re not really hungry and you can diet without much effort. You’re beaming with happiness because you know that this time it’s going to be ok and this time you’re going to be slimmer and happier than ever.
Obviously, until you get hungry.
This was also the case with my 18th birthday diet. The first few days were bearable, especially since I was consuming about 600-700 liquid calories a day, the results came right away and I felt it was worth all the effort. Then I became irritable, I couldn’t concentrate at school, I couldn’t wait to get home to sleep. It made me angry that I had to go through that. Why can’t I be skinny from mother nature? Why do I have tobe on a diet my whole life? After 10 days of beet juice, I looked great in birthday dress. It was a beautiful evening.
Then I gained weight again.
I had gotten to a point where I was afraid of food, disgusted with myself and didn’t understand what I needed to do to get over it. I weighed myself every day, my whole day being affected by the number on the scale, I scrutinized myself in every mirror and shop window, I compared myself with every woman on the street.
Before going to a restaurant, I used to look up the menu online so I knew in advance which option had the least calories. I was as scared of saucy food as I was of a low grade on my Baccalaureate Exam.
However, the more I controlled what I ate during the day, the more sweets I ate in the evening. I ate them secretly, ashamed. I ate them quickly, in a rush, as if they were the last pieces of chocolate on the planet. I ate like I was in a trance, and when I woke up I felt too full, bloated, guilty. And I was already planning a new diet to save me. All the negative consequences appeared gradually, but became more pronounced after the age of 19-20.
The peak of my dieting story happened last year when I was 23. I had already been living with my boyfriend for almost two years and it was really hard for me to eat okay because he always wanted fries and all sorts of other high calorie dishes, and I would get frustrated if I had to cook something and couldn’t eat it afterwards. I also didn’t want to eat salad while he was eating burgers or other dishes in front of me that I wasn ‘t allowed toeat. I had gained weight, I felt unattractive, so my obsession with losing weight was back in full swing.
My boyfriend had to move to another city for a couple of months because of his job. I seized the opportunity and went on a 1200 calorie a day diet (a 4 year old needs 1400 calories, as an idea). I went to the gym every day for high-intensity workouts and then did another workout at home. I forced myself harder than ever, I wanted to reach that weight I had been dreaming of for so long. I printed out pictures of flat-bellied girls and motivational quotes and stuck them on the mirror. I started to measure my arms, breasts, stomach, butt and thighs. I was writing all the measurements down in the back of a notebook. I was getting into a rhythm, trying to be extra-focused. But then came, of course, the fateful day of the binge. I had no sweets in the house because I was trying to stop buying, so my binge was almonds and dates. I ate until I got sick. I panicked instantly, I couldn’t ruin everything I had worked on in the gym. So I went to the bathroom and threw up. That was on a Tuesday. I remember because it became a habit. On Tuesdays I had a harder workout at the gym and I was really proud of myself for seeing it through. Then in the evening, of course, the binge. Then the guilt and panic, and the moment when I had to put my fingers down my throat. Then I’d go to bed and cry because I couldn’t understand how it was possible and how I dared to be hungry after all that.
I reached the weight I wanted. I had a flat stomach and bought a whole range of clothes because the others were baggy. I was happy. For a week. Then it wasn’t enough, I wanted to be thinner, to eat even less, to train even more. According to previous experiences, now that I had lost weight, I was going to gain weight. I had a painful craving for sweets and pastries and fast food and anything but chicken breast and salad. I knew the binges were coming and didn’t know what to do to stop. I was scared. I was alone. As much as I tried to explain it to anyone, I was embarrassed to mention the bulimia part. When the next binge came it was no longer Tuesday. But still I quickly ran to the bathroom to make up for my mistake. Then this became my new normal for a while.
When my boyfriend came back, I couldn’t keep doing this, because he was always home when I was, and the house is small and he would hear me if I went to the bathroom to throw up. So I slowly started to gain weight. I looked at the scales and I was terrified. Not again. I couldn’t go through this again.
I decided that I had to tell someone what I was going through, I couldn’t carry the burden alone.
So I told him. I deeply regretted the moment, because the reaction was not what I wanted. He somehow turned the whole story on himself, asking me how my eating disorder would affect him. “Well, does that mean we can never eat together anymore? No more cooking?” I didn’t have the energy to explain to him that all I wanted was for him to tell me that it would be okay, that we would be okay.
Although his initial reaction was not empathetic, with time he began to understand my suffering and encouraged me to get involved in projects where I could help other women who have gone through what I have gone through. That’s how Foreign Body, a photo project about women who have gone through extreme diets and thus an alienation from their own bodies, came about.
In the meantime, I also discovered the concept of intuitive eating, launched in 1995 by nutritionists Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. Intuitive eating reminded me of my childhood, of that time when I didn’t divide food into good and bad, but just ate when I was hungry and stopped when I was full, without any emotional impact on me. I did a bit of research on intuitive eating in Romania and was disappointed to see that the results in Romanian associate this concept with dieting. “Intuitive eating is the new diet trend to help you lose weight”. No, intuitive eating is not a diet, nor does it necessarily help you lose weight. Intuitive eating recalibrates you to make peace with food, to eat when you are hungry (not at set times, not in set amounts, not in a calculated mix of micro/macro nutrients) and to stop feeling guilty when you eat.
As Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch say, guilt is a feeling you must have if you’ve committed a crime, it has no place in your relationship with food.
I recently created a Facebook group called Body Positivity & Anti-Diet Club for women who are tired of restrictive diets that put their physical and mental health at risk. In Romania there are not enough resources highlighting the harmfulness of diet culture and its link with eating disorders. A multi-billion dollar industry takes advantage of our innocence and obsessive desire to look like the women in magazines (mostly digitally manipulated in Photoshop). Advertisements and influencers promoting laxative teas, corsets, sweat suits, diets upon diets, appetite-suppressing gummy bears are shoved down our throats. We have to try to look beyond these promises made by the diet culture, because most of them are not realizable. 95% of diets fail. This is no longer about “motivation” and “discipline”, you end up fighting against yourself. Naturally, when you don’t eat properly, your body gives you alarm signals, headaches and fainting. Of course you can’t complete a hard workout when all you’ve eaten all day is a banana. Of course, if you drink teas with a list of ingredients longer than the packaging, you’ll have stomach problems.
What if we stopped fighting this war? What if we let go of the idea that we will be better, more beautiful, more desirable if we lose “those 2 kilos around the waist”? What if we live our lives in the here and now, not in the future when we’ll look better?
There are still days when I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see, and then I automatically get the idea to go on a diet again. But I remind myself that this is not the solution, that diets have only made me feel worse in the end, and put on more weight. I know I may never love my body again, but I know that I respect it now and would never do anything to harm it. And I also know that I don’t have to wait to lose weight to live my life and that I will never again turn down experiences for fear of being judged for how I look.
„Worthy now. Not if. Not when. We are worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is.” – Brene Brown
.
.
For more details on how eating disorders manifest and are treated, see our factsheet.
