It wasn’t until I started to look back at my relationship with food that I realised how dysfunctional it had been in the past.
I’d heard of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and knew I didn’t have either of those.
So it never occurred to me that my relationship with food was problematic. But, looking back I can pinpoint exactly when I stepped onto the slippery slope of diet dysfunction.
I would have been about 15 years old. I’d discovered boys and began to question what I had to do or be in order to attract them. It seems pretty obvious looking back that I must have been very influenced by magazines and TV.
My sexuality was something I was becoming aware of, and beginning to explore, and I remember the boys at school bringing in top shelf stuff like Playboy and other soft porn. Of course at that age we were all fascinated by the images but what struck me was that all the women in these magazines were skinny and overly made up. And all the boys were drooling over them!
Probably without even realising it I’d already started the process of comparing myself to others. When I look back now with the benefit of hindsight, I realise that I didn’t ever want to be like the centrefolds, but I was convinced that since I didn’t look like that, then I was somehow lacking.
This led to years and years of insecurity. An intense sense of embarrassment about being seen naked – even by my own husband. A feeling of inadequacy because my belly wasn’t flat and my boobs weren’t perfectly pert!
It also led to years and years of fighting against nature, trying to turn my body into something it wasn’t and could never be. Never acknowledging the positives such as the fact that I’ve always been strong and reasonably athletic in build. The fact that I have great shoulders! The fact that I was fit and healthy and thankfully never had to deal with any major illnesses or disorders.
Instead, I focused on everything I felt I was lacking. A flat stomach. A natural tan (can you believe I honestly thought people would judge me because my skin colour is pale!!). Long, slender legs. Naturally curly hair. Almond eyes. High cheek bones. Oh my word, the list goes on and on.
I remember going on my first diet at the age of 18. Did I need to? I very much doubt it.
I’d started taking the contraceptive pill and probably gained half a stone or so. At five foot seven I think I’d had to go up to a size 12 jeans. I genuinely can’t remember what I weighed but I doubt it was much more than about 10 stones.
With the benefit of youth, the weight quickly dropped off me and when I got married at the age of 20 I weighed just under 9 stones.
As often happens after marriage, I settled down into married life and slowly my weight started to creep back up.
It wasn’t long after I married that I realised that I’d made a big mistake. My ‘loving’ husband became increasingly aggressive and turned out to be an emotional bully. A combination of physical and emotional abuse, coupled with the struggle of coping with the news that my mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, 7 years after battling breast cancer, left me physically and metaphorically battered and bruised.
I found my release in food. It was the one thing that I had control over and that no one could take off me.
My weight continued to rise. My then husband kept telling me how hideous I was. We discussed divorce (at my volition) – he reminded me that no one would be interested in a ‘fat bitch’ like me and I’d be on my own forever.
In a last ditch attempt to save my marriage I crash dieted ready for a holiday to Spain. This was going to be the turning point where we would fall in love again, he’d stop resolving every disagreement with his hands and we’d live happily ever after!
I came back pregnant.
He told me to terminate the pregnancy. He didn’t want kids. I’d finally got myself into ‘decent’ shape, he didn’t want to have to go back to being married to a fat wife.
I refused.
My gorgeous daughter arrived in Jun 1990. By August 1991 I’d left him. I walked away from the house we owned and pretty much all our other belongings and moved into a rented house, with my little girl.
I’d love to say this was an easy time but in reality it was bloody hard work. I was a single mum, with very low self-esteem. I’d lost my mum in Sep 88 and didn’t feel I had anyone to turn to. I had a couple of very good friends who gave me amazing practical and emotional support and I am eternally grateful to them, but it was still incredibly tough.
I was 25 years old. Skint. My confidence had been hammered. I was lonely and scared that I was going to be on my own forever. I was about 13 stone and felt ugly and unwanted.
Probably due to not having lots of money to buy food, ironically my weight started to come down and as it did so I started to attract a bit of attention from the opposite sex.
The correlation between losing weight and getting some attention re-confirmed and reinforced my belief that I could only be attractive if I was thin.
It didn’t once occur to me that what they may have been attracted to was a strong woman, coping remarkably well with a whole load of challenges and feeling empowered having broken the constraints of a domineering and bullying relationship.
About a year later I met my current husband. He was a total contrast to the first one. He made me feel beautiful.
He was, and still is, one of the fittest people I’ve ever known. A competitive runner, his level of all round fitness is inspiring.
Through his influence I started to exercise. I got into running and circuit training. I somehow found the confidence to train to be an exercise instructor – gaining my Exercise to Music qualification in 1994.
I got thin.
I got fit.
I looked good.
I didn’t know it.
I still felt fat.
I still felt lacking.
I still hadn’t learned to love me!
I was 9 stone 2 pounds when Mark and I got married. This was after hitting a high of 14 stones when I was pregnant with my daughter. If being thin was supposed to be the panacea for happiness I should, at this point, have been ecstatic about being me!
Instead, all I did was shift the focus of who I compared myself to. Now I was looking at other fitness instructors who were skinnier, more tanned (still had the pale hang up!!) more sporty, faster, fitter……
I compared myself to photos of Mark’s ex-girlfriends. All slim and pretty and younger than me. None of them had the ‘baggage’ I had. I resigned to the fact that before long he’d get bored and go off and find a slimmer, younger, prettier, single girl instead.
In fact nothing much had changed other than the number on the scales.
My diet was poor. I maintained my weight through exercise – an almost obsessive need for it. I recall feeling irrationally angry and frustrated if anyone or anything ever interrupted my planned exercise times.
I was teaching diet and fitness classes – based around low fat, high carb diet protocols. I was obsessed with avoiding fats at all costs. I somehow didn’t question the fact that I was drinking far too much alcohol, and I would excuse chocolate binges as ‘deserved treats’ because I’d trained hard.
I had my son in Sep 1995. He was a big baby. I was a very big pregnant person!
I was 9 and a half stone when I got pregnant and I was 14 and a half stone when I went into labour.
Within 12 weeks of having him I was back down to 10 stone and back to teaching.
I was working for a friend who had a well-known diet and exercise franchise. I had to go to a training event at the company’s headquarters in Leicestershire. I stood on the scales, terrified, as one of the big names in the company weighed me. I was just over 10 stone. I remember clearly being told I would need to lose at least half a stone in order to portray the right ‘image’ that the company required of me! This was just 8 weeks after I’d given birth.
Yet more confirmation that only thin people were worthy.
I remained around 10 and a half stone for about the next 8 years. I continued to teach and I continued to exercise although the obsessiveness diminished.
In about 2003 I gave up teaching. My weight gradually began to creep up. The more weight I put on the more down I felt and the more I turned to food to feel better.
Over the years I jumped from diet to diet – going through alternating stages of feast or famine!
In my head I was always a big girl. In reality I was totally average. I hovered around a size 12 to 14 and somehow managed to carry the gradual weight increase pretty well.
But it definitely held me back from enjoying the things I should have enjoyed doing.
I hated wearing a swimsuit on holiday. Would avoid playing on the beach in case people looked at me and judged my wobbly tummy or white legs (maybe it’s time to get over the pale issue!).
I think on the outside people saw a confident person, but we hide our insecurities well and instead let them dictate our happiness.
I joined various slimming clubs – mainly the big names that we’re all familiar with. In all honesty, I believe they simply reinforced all my own insecurities and perpetuated the problem for me.
There was this ridiculous mentality that on weigh-in day calories didn’t count, because you had a whole week to put it right. So I’d leave the meeting, jump in the car and drive to the fish and chip shop. I’d buy chips and curry sauce and eat them in the car. Then I’d throw the wrapper away before I got home so that my husband wouldn’t know I’d had them. Then I’d eat the dinner he’d prepared for me and never mention the curry and chips.
I’d grab handfuls of food – biscuits, chocolates, crisps, salted peanuts, cheese – it didn’t really matter what it was – and I’d take it into the bathroom to eat so that Mark wouldn’t know I’d had it.
In my head it was almost like, if he didn’t know I’d eaten it, then somehow I hadn’t eaten it. It hadn’t really happened.
Then I’d feel stupid and guilty and weak because I couldn’t control myself.
I’d even find myself provoking Mark into a row, goading him to admit that he thought I was too fat, picking away at any throw-away comment he may have inadvertently made in the past in order prove to myself that I was worthless as charged!
Have you heard the term confirmation bias? Finding all the evidence that supports your theory and disregarding anything that doesn’t. That was me.
The sad thing is this self-loathing plagued almost all of my adult life.
Thankfully, in the last couple of years I’ve somehow managed to turn things around. It’s been a gradual process and it started with a willingness to want to change.
It started with being absolutely fed up with feeling fed up.
It started with yet another diet plan, but this one triggered a change in my eating patterns, that subsequently triggered a change in my mindset.
I started to read. I read lots. I read everything I could find. I listened to podcasts. I read articles. I started to question what I was being told. I began studying fitness and nutrition again. I began learning about current science. I started to surround myself with positive people.
I began to understand.
I began to feel better.
I began to relax around food.
I began to actually enjoy eating food without judging it as inherently good or bad.
I began to look at myself differently.
I began to think mindfully about what I ate and found that I intuitively ate well.
I began a quest to help other people feel more like I do now and less like I did for too many years.
I finally made friends with food.
PS: I’d still love a tan.
PPS: Mark and I will have been married 24 years this year so I think my fears were unfounded J
Final Note:
Eating disorders are a physical and mental illness that require diagnosis and treatment. The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders states that approximately 3% of the total population of the USA suffer from an eating disorder.
However, there is a much newer condition known as Orthorexia, which includes symptoms of obsessive behaviour around food, including anxiety about what we eat. Specifically an obsession with ‘healthy eating’ or ‘clean eating’. Whilst it is not currently recognised as a clinical disorder it is becoming more recognised as a real condition. However, Orthorexia is different to simply making a choice to generally improve the health of our diet.
Most people’s relationship with food will sit somewhere on a spectrum between intuitive eating at one end and obsessive, compulsive eating regimens at the other. Many of us fall into the middle ground which we can term as disordered eating (as opposed to a clinical eating disorder).
This is where I believe I was for many years.
If you feel guilt around what you eat or judge foods to be inherently good or bad, then you may well fall into the disordered eating category.
Yoyo dieting, extreme dieting protocols such as omitting whole food groups from the diet (unless for medical reasons such as allergies etc), a constant sense of being on or off the latest diet ‘bandwagon’ or anxiety when your usual eating regimen is disturbed, may indicate that disordered eating is present.
It can be reversed. In my opinion it takes time, but more importantly it takes a willingness to want to change.
If you believe you are suffering from an eating disorder such as Anorexia or Bulimia you should seek medical help from a certified dietician or GP.
If you would like help and support with getting disordered eating patterns under control, you can contact me at bev@florescofitness.co.uk or by calling 07824 819060.
Fifty, Fit and Fabulous 