The Untold Story: Anorexia (Pt. 2)

You hear about the children starving in third world countries. People do food drives and fundraisers, take mission trips, donate money...

You don't hear as much about the people starving in America--people who are starving by choice.

While I, myself, have not been diagnosed as anorexic, I was certainly very dangerously close, teetering on the edge. I obsessed about every single thing I ate or drank, and was doing an unhealthy amount of exercise.

It's a recipie for disaster, let me tell you. My body constantly felt weak due to the large amounts of intense HIIT and cardio I was doing, and added to the fact that I ate very little for breakfast--if I ate breakfast--wasn't helping.

There's also the amount of mental strain, from counting and re-counting calories, figuring out ways to get rid of food without people noticing, finding time to fit in long workouts...

Self-loathing and guilt would set in whenever I missed a workout, ate "too much" or something that was "bad", or the clothes I thought by now would fit.

The entire time, I wanted to quit. I just wanted to be like those genetically blessed people who could eat whatever they wanted and never gain a pound, never had to workout or buy bigger sized clothes.

And at first, I convinced myself that it was fine, I wasn't doing anything unhealthy...I could only ignore that little warning voice in the back of my head for so long, before I finally just had to face that fact that my obsession with calories wasn't healthy. Or that my fitness regime was wearing ym body down, not building it up and making it stronger.

It was hard to stop counting calories, to cut down my exercise to thirty to forty five minutes of cardio, instead of an hour and a half, six days a week. I was so scared to eat more than 1,200 calories, convinced it would make me fat.

I did gain weight back, and that scared me even more. But I just couldn't shove away the fact that what I had been doing was slowling destroying me. And even though I wasn't to the point of anorexia, I still feel such immense shame about what I did. I feel shame abotu my body still, and about how it looks. But I'm done going to extremes to get it. What's the point of being skinny if I'm miserable, weak, and tired?

I don't have abs, a thigh gap, or a big butt. But if that's what it takes to be beautiful...then I don't want to be beautiful.