My story part 4

I enjoyed running when I had the energy but with school it was harder to actually have the energy to run but I did it anyway. I was so afraid of losing my ability to run (I hate the term getting out of shape) that I became addicted to running 2 miles everyday. This doesn't sound like a lot and it isn't in comparison to what some people do but I've learned not to compare myself to others. For me running 2 miles every single day when not good physically or emotionally. I would come home from school and dread running but knew that I had to do it. If I didn't do it I'd become anxious, depressed, and feel like a failure. Running was one thing that made me feel good about myself. I was self conscious in every other area of my life and the more I relied on running to give me confidence, the less competent I felt in other parts of my life. I don't really know how it happened but slowly my eating decreased as well. I tended to get depressed in the fall/winter and for me depression leads to lack of appetite. Life just kinda went in a cycle. low self esteem, depression, lowered caloric intake, feeling incompetent. Also during this year my dad worked with me to help me get better at tennis so I could actually play on the team the next year. 

Well by the time summer came around I knew I needed to modify my eating/exercise habits but I didn't know how to do that. With the freedom that I felt from school I was able to eat more frequently so that's what I did. I set a number in my head and counted calories to get there. At times it was fun but at times it was difficult because I was forcing myself to eat when I wasn't hungry. I didn't have much else going on at that time so it was easy to make my primary focus on eating but this also left me with feeling badly about myself because I knew I should have more in my life than just eating food but I really didn't have any other interests or things to occupy my time with. I managed to gain enough weight to give me energy to play tennis for the second yr in row. The work had paid off and everyone on the team said I'd improved (which is pretty easy to do when you go from not being able to hit the ball to actually being able to hit it). But the same thing happened in which I was addicted to run during the school year. It became a source of stress release and my only "enjoyment" after school. I was also struggling with negative body image but at that time I didn't really know what that was. I knew I had a picture in my mind of the way my stomach was supposed to look and when it didn't look that way I believed there was something wrong with me, that I was doing something wrong and needed to eat less and exercise more. My BMI always tottered on the edge of normally low to slightly underweight, but my mind was worst than my weight. I was just very unhappy and when I tried to eat more to gain weight it just caused more distress and anxiety. 

I wanted to go back to see a nutritionist but my mom wanted me to see a counselor. So that what we did. Again I didn't really like it. I didn't know what to talk with her about. We ended up talking about my feeling of insecurity and my perceive inability to have friends. This helped a little as I'd never been able to openly discuss these feeling with anyone other than my mom. One thing I remember learning from her was that the way I feel about myself is my choice, no one else can make me feel a certain way. However my eating problems did not get much better. During the summer I did the same thing where I ate more than normal and increased my weight a little. My goal was to keep this up over the school year but that didn't happen. Also this year I and/or my mom decided it was best for me to not join the tennis team so I didn't. I continued to exercise the same amount (running 1 or 2 miles) but once again my food intake decreased and I became really confused as to what normal eating was. I distinctly remember one day the lunch that I packed was pretty calorie dense. It had a lot of protein and fat. I remember making myself eat all of it and feeling so full and uncomfortable and angry at myself for not listening to my body. Why am I doing this? I wondered. Why do I torture myself by forcing myself to eat when I don't want to. So I began a new tactic which was what I thought was intuitive eating. If I wasn't hungry then I wouldn't eat. Yeah that didn't work so well either. Especially when I was at home and easily became depressed, I wouldn't ever be hungry and the low food intake made the depression worst. 

During Christmas break especially I was having a rough time. Sometimes I would get really hungry and eat a lot and feel really full. So because I was afraid of being full I would eat smaller portions. I also had a hard time knowing what to eat at this point. I lost a sense for what a normal meal was like. For example if I ate a pretty small lunch and I knew I needed more calories I'd eat a pretty large snack in the afternoon but then be stressed out because I didn't know what/how much I should be eating for dinner. I remember reading this book and it had a rough meal plan so I decided maybe if I made my own meal plan like I'd been on before that would be helpful. Well it was a good idea in theory but just caused me to be more obsessed with specific times and amounts of food I had to eat. I won't go into details of what my plan consisted of but it produced a lot of anxiety. I also grew very fatigued that year which I think may have to do with not eating enough protein but I'm not completely sure.   

I didn't know what to do anymore. This silly disorder was now affecting my schoolwork and I didn't have enough energy to make it through days normally anymore. In June of 2014 (I'd finished Junior yr of high school), I went back to see my dietitian who I'd seen when this all started.  I met with her for about a year. She was a talker. We talked a lot mainly about thoughts and feelings around food and challenging the rules I'd put in place. She gave me a better perspective on what normal eating was and what a normal meal looked like. During this time my eating habits and weight didn't change all that much but I absorbed everything she said even when it didn't make sense at the time. 

My senior year of high school was a little bit better but I was still having a really hard time eating intuitively. At times I would experience the effects of low energy even though I thought I was eating enough. Senior year I had less depression than previous years I think partly because I had the hope of graduating and going off to college which I was so ready for. I knew I wanted to study nutrition even though I also knew I was in the midst of struggling to eat normally. I figured one way or another I'd have to learn how to deal with my eating issues and rather than avoid studying nutrition because of it, I might as well keep going trusting God would heal me along the journey. That summer was spent mostly getting ready for college and attempting to learn how to eat normally. However rather than gain weight that summer like I had in past summers, I actually lost weight and it came with devastating consequences which threatened my future. We'll get to that next time.