Fighting with Food

Photo via Pexels, Karolina Grabowska

Complex and insidious, eating disorders are a difficult topic to discuss no matter what your condition, economic status, education, appearance, or health have to show for it. Eating disorders can affect anyone from any gender, race, or background, and it’s estimated that about 9% of the United States population, or nearly 29 million people will experience an eating disorder in their lifetime. With such high numbers, it’s strange to see eating disorders in the shadows or only being discussed on sensationalized programs focused on extraordinary cases of weight gain or loss, when usually a person with an eating disorder doesn’t present as alarmingly over or underweight. In fact, less than 6% of people with an eating disorder are considered medically underweight.

The three most commonly known eating disorders are anorexia nervosa (the restriction of food intake), bulimia nervosa (lack of control of eating and using purging or laxatives after food intake), and binge eating disorder, my diagnosis, where one eats large amounts of food several times a week with little to no control. My eating disorder was a slow journey surrounding family, culture, beauty, and an insatiable anxiety that eventually controlled my food. No one thing caused it, I’m not sure you could pinpoint it, but brick by brick the disorder built itself, and I’m here to share my journey, the symptoms I spotted along the way, and how I finally sought help after nearly two decades of disordered food consumption.

My mother is beautiful. My abuela, too, in that ethereal black and white portrait type of way grandparents always are. Slim with tan skin and long dark hair, their Latina genes made them stunning to my eyes, applying lipstick to my grandmother in wonder and having my mother brush my hair that I grew long to match how she wore it. I was a carbon copy of my mother but filtered through my father’s Caucasian genes. I had the same dark eyes and hair, but my nose was round, my cheeks too, I had alabaster skin and I wasn’t petite, I was growing and would end up just shy of six feet tall by the end of high school. My mother obsessed over my looks, beginning makeup on me when I was very young, elaborately doing my hair, updating my wardrobe, and creating skincare and fitness routines for me. I was active in my younger years like most were, I was in decent shape; soft but muscular. As I grew, I began to deal with the pains we all do as our bodies morph into adults, and soon my knees and hips had stretch marks marring my skin as I sprouted up, mortifying me. One morning I walked into my mother’s room wearing a nightgown, scars visible. She looked me over in the mirror as she applied her makeup and said without glancing back at me, “You have the stretch marks of a 40-year-old mother of three. How did you do this to yourself so early?”

I cried. I didn’t understand what it meant completely but I understood what it was to be told you look ugly. By the woman you idolize. I began to cover my stretch marks, wearing longer pants to cover my knees and hips, stopped walking around in open clothing, and began researching scar cream to see if I could fix myself. Nothing took, and I gave up on that battle—then the war over food began. Both of my parents grew up with food insecurity and a low-nutrition diet. Neither of them were from wealthy families and lived on the Wonder Bread, bologna, beans, and rice diet that was the standard for lower and middle-class Americans during their time. When they finally got married and had me, we struggled in a bad neighborhood, but I never starved. My father and mother did everything they could to get me what I wanted to eat, when I wanted to eat it, never depriving, always celebrating, and inviting me to enjoy. As I got older and puberty took over, the battle for my mother began between wanting her daughter to wear a size 6 prom dress, or watch me fill my plate at the dinner table without complaint.

It started with snacks. I would go down to the kitchen and soon hear footsteps behind me, my mother, doing some innocuous task observing what I was getting to eat or drink. When this started, I began more clandestine methods of sneaking downstairs and trying to get the snacks back to my room, but one creak of the floorboards or one darting shadow and I’d hear, “So what’s that you’re eating now?” I began to associate eating with embarrassment and began to take all of my meals in my room to avoid being seen eating as well as to avoid having my consumption criticized, a habit I still keep. I was an athlete and was proud of the strength and capacity my body had for greatness, and yet when I nourished it with the fuel it needed I felt sick, fat, and disgusted. My muscular back only highlighted my flabby arms, my strong legs only brought out my soft stomach, if I kept it up I would probably have a double chin in pictures, I thought to myself.

I started to binge before or after practice when my parents were away, waiting to pick me up. The pizza shop next door was perfectly quiet and I could sit on my phone and eat an entire pie without anyone saying a word. I’d then justify it by saying I was about to, or already had, burned the calories off and would repeat several times a week to make myself feel comfortable and to ease the anxiety I felt existing in my body in public, especially in form-fitting workout clothing. Prom season was coming soon too and I had no dress or any desire to buy one, I didn’t want to be a princess and I dreaded the number that would come attached to the label that no doubt my mother would be eyeing. I landed in an 8, not perfect, but I was acceptable for photos and my mother’s dreams of the evening. I would soon head off to college to continue athletics and competing, but my anxieties, rituals, and shame would meet me there.

The cafeterias were endless, the restaurants were on every corner, and every convenience store was stocked with snacks. College in the city meant eating out, even though you were poor; cheap Chinese, and piles of pizza on a late night, and I got this experience. My larger consumption of food began in college as I compared myself to the waif-thin girls from private schools or the tiny, muscular bodies of the gymnasts that practiced next to my lumbering, long self. Binges came after the party, when the food was no longer wanted and everyone was passed out. I would eat old pizza, old noodles, dig through the fridge, and walk blocks just for a soda to wash down the secret with. I knew I wasn’t the prettiest or most popular girl on the team, but I did my job, I was decorated, and I knew at least one way to make myself feel full emotionally and physically that always worked. Then when I graduated, I tore my ACL, and I found myself sedentary, depressed without my athletic love, and gaining weight on opiates and comfort food.

I tore my ACL and broke my ankle on the same leg within two years, destroying my athletic career and shaking my identity. Once I had healed, I had gained too much weight to fit back into my uniform and couldn’t bring myself to show my face at practice. When I finally mustered the courage to put on my knee brace and get back in the game I was slow, but I was still in love with what I did. Later that night, my former coach would pull me over saying he had some advice for me. “The only exercise you need to do now, Gabby, is ‘push away.’ You need to push away your plate,” he said, a small smile on his face at how witty he found the remark, the stunned and embarrassed faces of my teammates visible behind him as they tried to ignore the direct attack on my weight gain post-injury. I held in tears until I went outside and never returned to my passion, now almost 10 years later. It was stolen by another voice controlling my body, demeaning it, and reminding me that food was the only thing that could comfort me since people couldn’t hit the spot. This cruelty would be followed by a summer barbecue where I was pulled aside by my mother who said she needed to talk to me about my dress. Excited as it was a new purchase, I went over. “You look five months pregnant. Never wear that again.” She walked away, and I obliged her, thrifting the dress within a few weeks to avoid the humiliation. I was officially ruined in my eyes, soon buying hundreds of dollars in food to binge, sometimes even eating out of the trash.

I kept the weight on and began to receive complaints from my partners about my appearance, wishing for me to keep the slender body I had subsisting on alcohol and stimulants in years past. When I couldn’t satisfy their demands to change my shape that’s when the desperation to please began, and it was everywhere. As a fat person in the world, I tried to hide in plain sight, bulking up my clothing, tightening my undergarments, and repurchasing a wardrobe to suit my new frame, tucking me in anywhere convenient when I was outside. I was now leered at for different features by even more unsavory suitors (followed once by a man that said he “never wanted to come out from behind me” due to my “big bones”) than the ones that told me I was too fat to begin with. Every step felt hulking and clumsy, an embarrassment to be in motion. Over time, a long time mind you, I began to fine-tune my diet with intermittent fasting and a medication change to Topiramate to help suppress the cravings that binge eating was forcing on me at random intervals as the stress levels rose. I remained, and still remain, heavier than my college weight but now I feel healthier, happier, and more beautiful in my skin no matter how many stretch marks tattoo my skin’s surface with silver scars.

I still struggle with binging all these years later. Though it’s far less frequent, I’ve found food never looked at me funny no matter how much I was eating and those around me saw it as a less destructive way to cope when my substance abuse came to light. With aid from my therapist, I am now diagnosed and in treatment to reclaim my body, my appetite, and my anxiety from a condition that has distorted my relationship with nutrition for nearly two decades. Eating disorders are incredibly difficult to face, and the anxiety and body dysmorphia that come with it can be debilitating to the point you avoid any reflective surface. This damage will persist without help and eating disorders can be fatal without treatment depending on severity.

As someone still struggling but stubborn in their fight against how the world, my community, and myself warped my perspective of how to love myself versus how to soothe my pain, I urge you if you are suffering in silence to reach out to a loved one or professional and discuss beginning a way to regain your life from the cycle of food denial or overindulgence. The resources for eating disorders are plentiful online, as well with organizations like Project HEAL Fund, the Eating Recovery Center, and the National Eating Disorders Association heading the top of the list for online resources you can access from the comfort of your home. I felt and sometimes still feel alone in my condition, however, with an informed support network and a qualified medical professional, I feel more prepared than ever to take on this body and mind-altering battle to its determined, healthy, regulated end. You don’t have to feel alone, and if you do, know someone sat here for many hours to tell you this humiliating tale of defeat so I could bring you hope that this warrior is now set up for success.

Keep fighting.