My story starts way back. The first struggles with food and body image started when I was around 14 years old! I had a terrible relationship with food. I thought food would make me fat so I severely restricted my food intake. At 5’4, I managed to get myself down to around 105lbs. But it wasn’t good enough. I still didn’t think I looked good. Eventually, I managed to get back to a healthy weight (~125lbs) and while I was still self-conscious, I could function normally through the day. Later in high school I started taking the birth control pill and suddenly I found myself around 140lbs. The opposite of the spectrum. Which brought on a whole new set of insecurities. Suddenly, all of my pants didn’t fit. My shirts were too tight. I was self-conscious again, but in a completely different way.
This pattern semi-repeated itself in college. Freshman year I thought “healthy” meant eating salads. So that’s all I ate. I lost weight again and felt “better”, but I was so tired. Senior year, I found myself isolated from friends and fell into depression. This involved eating everything I could to comfort me. I was eating boxed mac ‘n cheese for dinner multiple times a week. I would eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s in one sitting, multiple times a week. And, again, I found my weight increasing to the highest it had ever been. As someone who wanted to meet a boyfriend, make new friends, and feel good about themselves in general, this was a huge crush to my self-esteem.
I managed to get myself somewhat under control when I started at my first job. There was a new routine to keep me “in check”. My coworkers were amazing and I started to enjoy life. And slowly, some of the excess weight I had gained came off. I loved the results. So I started learning more about nutrition. But I got a lot of information from Tumblr, which let me to a lot of Netflix documentaries, which left my nutrition knowledge skewed. Those documentaries provided very one-sided, opinionated, guilt-inducing information. I thought what I learned was “right”, which meant everything I was doing was wrong. I felt like a failure. My depression came again. For those who have suffered, you understand, I felt like a failure but I now I had no motivation or energy to make the necessary changes. So I felt even more like a failure. It was a whole cycle I couldn’t get out of. When it came to eating, I WANTED to eat healthy so badly. But I had in my head that I needed to make everything from scratch, it had to be a salad, which meant I needed to go buy ingredients, but I was self-conscious and didn’t want to go to the store, and I was too tired to stand there and prep everything, which made me feel horrible because why couldn’t I just do it? And the cycle continued. This happened multiple times and I would end up on the kitchen floor crying, frozen, because I felt guilty! I “knew” what I needed to do but I couldn’t physically do it! This went on for months, I was barely eating anything-I couldn’t buy organic foods, I wasn’t supposed to eat meat, fat was bad for me, carbs were bad for me-what was the point of even trying! All that information I learned and thought was true had me collapsed on the floor. I once again found myself losing weight, probably the lightest I’d been since high school.
I was now tired all the time. I could barely hold my body up to sit. My head hurt. My mom convinced me to go to the doctors and in 2016 found out I was deathly anemic. And that’s not an exaggeration. My hemoglobin level was at 7, when it should have been between 12-14. I was having heart palpitations that I chocked up to anxiety. This ended up landing me in the hospital for a day getting an iron infusion. 1L of liquid iron.
My weight, guilt, and depression cycled like this for years. During this time my energy levels got lower and lower despite my anemia being cured. I went to work and came home. Going out with friends or family felt like a chore. I didn’t have enough energy to do my hair or put on makeup. I made plans and canceled them because I was too tired. I knew people said life changes as you get older, you get tired quicker as you age but surely this couldn’t be what they meant! I was 25 years old, this couldn’t possibly get worse!
I felt so alone. People said they understood, but did they? They couldn’t possibly know how I was feeling. I wasn’t going out on weekends, I wasn’t hanging out with friends. It was incredibly frustrating, trying new things with no improvement. Why couldn’t I do it? Why was I the only one who seemed to be struggling so much?
Fast forward to recently. Right before I had surgery (for chiari malformation) I found out I weighed 160lbs. A weight I never imagined seeing. I was drinking alcohol more often, my diet was terrible, yet I was still shocked. I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. It was appalling. Luckily, I had some people who, little did I know, would provide me the solution. My chiropractor. She and her boyfriend introduced me to Primal Health Coaching. It took a little while before I signed up, but in the meantime I found some health books on amazon and started reading. I finished the first book, Deep Nutrition, in 1 week. My world had been turned upside down. Everything I thought I knew wasn’t necessarily true and so I tried out a few of the author’s suggestions. After a week of trying I felt a small improvement. I wasn’t having mood swings and I didn’t feel as depressed. Was there actually a light at the end of this tunnel? Was my current “normal” NOT my final sentence? I signed up for Primal Health Coach and started incorporating what I was learning.
My life has done a complete 180 since I started. My mood is getting better. The weight is slowly coming off. I feel I have the right tools to get my energy back, to get my body back, and to get my life back! I enjoy cooking these healthy meals, and they’re not difficult or expensive, like so many people often assume they are. Realizing that I can change my life for the better by adjusting what I’m eating and adding in some exercise has made me want to help others accomplish the same thing! Making changes is hard, doing it alone without any support is harder! So don’t go at it alone! Let me help you become the best version of yourself.
