Woke up and made sure to drink a tall glass of water, by tall I mean a 32oz bottle of water. I must confess, when I was in high school, I had a ritual. It started right after freshman year ended. I wanted to lose weight and I didn’t know of a healthy way to do so. My parents didn’t exercise or show me a way to do so. I became desperate because everyone I knew from 8th grade had lost a lot of weight doing it. So, I also wanted to be “thin” and “beautiful”.

What I didn’t know is that I had just started an affair with malnutrition. I started starving myself and then binge eating because I was starving. I remember my stomach feeling empty. It wasn’t that hard to do because I knew if I craved something I could still taste it. I just couldn’t swallow it, but if I did, I’d throw up.

When I began I did it from the summer after freshman year, mid-June of 95 to September of that same year. When I began my sophomore year, I was 50 pounds lighter. I remember the looks everyone gave me, they were in shock! But, I couldn’t see it. I still saw myself as fat. Slowly I began to feel a bit more confident, especially when I got confirmation (from most boys) that I was better looking, and the rules to my diet changed again. At this point, I would allow myself to eat some junk food, I’d been surviving on hot Cheetos and Nacho cheese. I would drink the milk the lunch lady would give me, and sometimes I’d only eat the cheese pizza or a hotdog, but then if I did eat that, I wouldn’t allow myself to eat dinner at home.

Once I would get home, I’d do homework, help my mom around the house, and around 6:30pm head to the local park which was a block and a half away from home. There I would take a step aerobics class given by a woman my aunt knew. My aunt had introduced me to that class the summer after freshman year when I wanted to lose weight. She took the class for maybe a month and then stopped going. I kept going and sometimes my best friend would come with me. We were supposed to pay $20 a month for it, but I’d always managed to not pay. I know now that was shitty of me, but I was 16. I didn’t know better and I don’t know if my parents would have given me the money to pay on a monthly basis. I never asked either.

Anyway, my routine became the same. Wake up, go to school, eat junk, come home try to eat less and less. There were times when I wouldn’t eat and my dad would get mad if he was there. He had this thing that made him feel I was being disrespectful if I didn’t eat my mother’s food. So, I would eat it. Then throw up. He wouldn’t be okay if I served myself a little either. I had to EAT! He was a weirdo like that. He would make me eat the food until there was nothing on the plate. I hated it.

I would finish, get up wash my dish, and head to the bathroom.

Eventually, I joined a dance team at school that would practice from 330pm to 630pm every day during the week. I LOVED IT! It was hard keeping up with the schedule only because my parents would complain that I was never home. But I made it my point to not quit and do what I wanted to do, which was practice dance moves. Our teacher would have us do exercises and pick the songs and then create some choreographies for them. I used to love it so much that I didn’t have time for a boyfriend. By this time, all I would really eat was whatever nasty lunch our school might have offered (within my diet rules) and then pretend to eat at home. My eating routine was still the same. Depending on who was home, I’d eat and then throw up, or lie about eating at all.

This eating behavior continued the entire time I was in high school. I always told myself that I could quit it if I wanted to. In the process of all of this, I was always digging for information on what foods would be healthy and which I should stay from. I was obsessed with my weight. I had body dysmorphia. I still saw the 245 pounds 15-year-old girl when I stood in front of a mirror. By senior year, I was 180 pounds. I am 5’8 and my mother would always say I looked like a skeleton. Needless to say after high school and all the structured patterns I was able to live within, once I was out of high school it was time to readjust my eating habits again.

But that didn’t last long because by May of 1999 I was married to my first husband and pregnant. I was devastated because at the time I was at Columbia College and I had GOALS! One of them was to continue my dancing career and find a way to stay active and not GAIN WEIGHT! Of course, none of that happened. I had to drop out of Columbia, and I resented my husband, I hated knowing I was having a baby, but I couldn’t have an abortion. I didn’t want to do that to her. I wanted her, I just felt it was too soon. I needed more time to carry out my career and dancing plans. I wanted to graduate get a degree or two and THEN think about having babies. But plans don’t always go as you’d like them to go.

My mental health declined, I was not healthy and instead of gaining weight during my pregnancy, I lost weight. Due to that, I was in and out of the hospital. So I had to start eating for my baby and myself. It was a struggle to keep the food down. My body was so used to throwing up that my gag reflex wasn’t even forced. Eventually, my body adapted to food and I was eating like a normal human being. I had two additional kids (a total of 3) and I am still here.

Unlearning bad habits, working on my mental health, and making sure that if I eat it’s a nutritious meal. Now 42yrs old, I am still struggling with weight management and inner guilt when I eat. I’ve lost a lot of weight especially after having my children. All of the current weight I am trying to lose has nothing to do with me having kids 22 years ago. I lost ALL the weight after my last one. I was feeling good and stopped monitoring my food intake and activity levels.

So, I gained it all back and here I am writing about it. The only difference is that now I am equipt with the right tools to make better and healthier decisions. I am no longer 16 and desperate to lose weight. I know there is a method that has helped me in the past and that is activity. I need to continue working out, running, walking, weight lifting, anything really works if you are consistent and keep moving.

Now, I am trying to control it in a safer way. I am no longer allowing myself to binge eat and throw up, although sometimes the thought is there. I honestly hated doing that. I developed a lot of stomach issues due to that process. I am in healing mode now. It all starts in your mind. Once you have convinced your mind that you are certain, your mind will work with the rest of your body and send out the signals necessary to help you in this process.

There is a lot of trauma, self-inflicted as well as child trauma that I have been actively working on for the past 12 years. My methods are not perfect but I am always learning and I believe it is working for me. I just need to remember what the end goal is and work toward that.

I hope that if you or anyone you know has an eating disorder you can identify it. After all these years, I don’t think my parents ever knew. There are a lot of resources out there now. Search for them on the internet. Parents, this starts at a young age. I was 15 when I started, but I’ve known of kids in 6th through 8th grade who practice this because they feel fat. My youngest was 5 years old when he asked me if he was fat. I made it my mission to not allow him to self-harm in any way. So I had to start teaching him about nutrition. He is now a soon-to-be 17-year-old young man. He is active, aware of what is going into his body, and overall understands the importance of calories in vs calories out. We talk about eating healthy vs starving. I’d hate to not know had he had an eating disorder and I wasn’t aware of the signs. I will never know 100% but I will do my best to feed him the correct information and food.

-CP