The Birth of My Disordered Eating Journey

I was only 15 years old when I decided I was fat. It was history class. The beginning of my sophomore year at high school. For us, that was our first year in high school. Only later did they start high school in 9th grade. Anyway, back to me. I walked into class nervous as hell. I was already insecure and super shy as a person. Always had been. I don't know where that came from. My mom said she was shy as a kid also so maybe I got it from her.

So I sat in the desk, put my things away and looked around at all these strangers I would now be surrounded by for the next 9 months or so. I had on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts. When I sat down, my thighs spread out on the seat. Immediately I was horrified. I looked at my legs and thought, wow, when did I get so fat? I had always been a slim kid. I look back on my pictures and I was very slim. Not an ounce of fat on me. So imagine my surprise when my thighs expanded on the seat. When did this happen?

It must have happened when I was sleeping last night because I swear yesterday I was feeling good about myself. I realized if I could see how fat my thighs were, so could the rest of the class. What was I to do? How could I cover this up? The only thing I could think to do was to slide down in the chair so that my thighs were not on the seat anymore. Whew! That solved it. Now it was just my butt on the seat and my shorts covered that pretty well so I was good.

I never sat in a chair the same from that day forward. In fact, I still catch myself sliding down the chair so my thighs aren’t on the seat spreading out. Or, If I know I am going to be sitting for a while, or hell, even for just a little bit, I refuse to wear shorts. It's just who I am now. It became part of me. Most of the time I don't even think about it. It just happens.

So there I was, slumped down in the desk chair, becoming even more insecure than I already was. How was I going to get through high school if I was fat? I was on the cheerleading squad for goodness sakes! Cheerleaders aren't supposed to be fat. They're the pretty ones. The most popular ones. I had to figure this out immediately. So, what's a 15 year old girl to do? Well, what else but starve herself. After all, it's food that makes you fat right? So, that's what I did. From that day forward, I was obsessed with food. Every time I had to eat, I hated it. I regretted every morsel that went into my mouth. Food was now the enemy. The devil. I had to avoid it at all cost. BUT... no one could know! Because if anyone found out then it would be brought to their attention that I was fat and I didn't want that. 

I hadn't yet realized that starving myself was a horrible thing to do. So not telling anyone wasn't out of hiding my disordered eating habits I had now adopted. It was the fear of if anyone knew I was fat then they wouldn't like me anymore. I might get kicked off the cheerleading squad even. If I told anyone I was starving myself because I was fat, then they would then realize that oh my gosh you ARE fat! Crazy how messed up our minds can be. 

That was it for me. That was all it took for me to think that I was fat and for my disordered eating journey to begin which eventually morphed into bulimia. Crazy right? Sitting in a desk at 15 years old in high school became the worst decision of my life. I wasted my entire youth worrying about what other people thought of me. I didn't yet know that food wasn't the enemy. I didn't yet know that working out would give me the body I so desired. I didn't yet know that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of you. It only matters what you think of yourself. 

This is me in 9th grade. I was a cheerleader. I didn't yet know what the following year in high school had in store for me. But as you can see here, I was not fat. My thighs were not fat. 

This is my sophomore year as a cheerleader. Look at my tiny little legs. How in the hell did they possibly spread out on the seat so much as to make me think they were fat? Well, news flash. They didn't. It's called body dysmorphia and it was all in my head.