My Story of Eating

I love how its Friday, yet each day I’m getting more and more stressed out. Ugh. I’m still not feeling well after my visit to the Volturi and I had to leave class early.

A post on Happiness is Within recently inspired me to think about my own eating habits. My story of eating, if you will.

The Younger Years

So lets think back to the third grade. Oh yes, you will find me sitting on the computer with my best friend playing the Sims for about 4-5 hours every day after school and consuming 2-3 Mountain Dews in the meantime. I would have fun chugging these Mountain Dews and I was very proud of this fact. “Cheese ‘n Noodles” AKA Macaroni and Cheese, cheetos and goldfish were commonly found in my stomach.

Early High School

I felt that middle school was more of a time where people fought about who was friends with whom (can’t we just all get along) but high school was about how you looked. During my freshman and sophomore year of high school I remember two of my really good friends constantly telling their comparisons of their bodies to mine. Mainly the fact that my mid section was flabby and theirs were skinny, tight and toned. Not to mention that I had (and still have) cellulite covering this part of the body (no thanks to those previously mentioned Mountain Dews I am guessing). I took these comparisons really hard.  What person wouldn’t? I have always noticed that I carry my fat on my stomach (and I still do) but pointing it out to me while I am already insecure enough did not do me any good. I remember I would go to the pantry, pinch my fat, and turn away. I would essentially try to starve myself.

Later in the year I sort of got over this belly flab thing because I started to notice that if I ate any sort of food, I would immediately get sick. It felt as if my body was constantly telling me to throw up what ever I put into my mouth. The thought of throwing up on purpose I couldn’t mentally or physically deal with and at this time I felt that if I started the habit of purging after eating I would be bulimic. So eventually I started to eat less and less food every day because I would rather deal with the hunger pains than feed my body food that would make me sick.

This lead to the breaking point Winter Break of Sophomore year. I had lost 5 pounds in a week and all I could eat was the crust of a pizza. That was all my stomach could handle for one day since it instantly filled me up. I was constantly tired and weak.

I started to force myself to eat food. Even though I still felt sick, I would just shove more food into my mouth and deal with it. Sometime early Junior year this sickness stopped and I ate fairly normally.

Summer of Junior Year

Fast forwarding about a year I junior counseled at an outdoor adventure camp. Our chef for one of the weeks happened to also be a nutritionist. As we sat by the camp fire I explained to him what happened my sophomore year of high school with the constant nauseous feeling after eating food. His response changed my way of thinking about food the reverberated later in college: the “food” that I had been feeding myself was like poison. It was full of chemicals made in a lab, not nutrients. I needed to start eating a healthier diet filled with plants and nutrients instead. He suggested I go and get a wheatgrass shot for a couple of days in a row once we got back into the real world and go into a bit of a detox. The next morning he made me my own breakfast: a chopped banana with coconut milk poured overtop and a sprinkling of cinnamon. He also handed me fish oil and another natural supplement which I can’t remember what it was, but I remember feeling alive for the rest of the day. I was smily and bright and everyone noticed.

I followed his plan and went to the local health food grocery store and got my daily wheatgrass shot. I did feel a little woozy during the detox, but afterwards I felt great. I started to eat the banana and coconut milk breakfast every morning.

Soon enough though, I returned to my regular eating habits. Lots of white bread, pasta and rice. Not very many veggies.

Fall Sophomore Year of College

Fast forwarding even more to last fall. In my about me page I touch on this subject a bit. My diet consisted of cup-o-noodles, pastaroni, PB&J’s and white rice. Not very big on the veggies here. Not surprisingly I got the swine flu, seasonal flu, a sinus infection and I passed out all in a time span of three months with my oh-so-healthy-diet (I’m hoping you’re catching the sarcasm here). My mom brought to my attention that my diet was awful, and was probably the reason behind my sickness. This finally made me connect the dots and think back to my talk with the nutritionist from adventure camp. I started looking up recipes online and eventually found Gina and her amazing blog. This was my transition into the blog world.

Now

Now I need to reflect on my relationship with food. I try to eat as natural of food as possible. I look at the food labels and try to make sure I am buying a product with out 1000 ingredients and with ingredients that I can pronounce (aka not chemical-y stuff).

I feel that I do still struggle with my body image. I still carry my fat around my midsection, but my limbs are very slender. Some days I feel like I should be gaining weight, while other days I feel like I should be losing it. Once I am happy with my body, I feel like I will suddenly gain weight and my muscles won’t be very defined, or I will start losing weight and I look very sick. That is the struggle I am dealing with currently.

I hope this inspires you to think about your own story of eating. Have your insecurities stayed the same or have the evolved over time? Do you now have a better outlook on food than you had prior?