Trigger Warning: This post may contain any triggers regarding eating disorders, mental health, depression, and anxiety.
“Just make sure you aren’t going to get the Freshman 15!”
This was something I seemed to hear more than, “What’s your major?” While this seems like an exaggeration, I got this question A LOT before moving into college. Whether it was from a nosy family friend or a slip out of someone’s mouth, I started to notice the pattern. I would get asked where I was going to college, and immediately after, the conversation became about me gaining weight. After a while, I would ask myself: Is it because I am a curvier girl? Is it because I have bigger breasts? Is it because I have stomach rolls? These questions of self-doubt would soon overwhelm my thoughts, and suddenly, they became all that I thought about.
When I started college, I became more focused on these thoughts and realized it was a problem. Finally, I had to ask myself, “How the heck do I get my body confidence back?” As I have stated in past articles, the image that I have had on my body was rough to say the least. There always seem to be outside factors that would cause me to emphasize “losing weight” and “being skinny.” Whether it was the pressures of ballet, family members, or society in general, weight was an underlying factor. In high school, I tended to focus on it the most, which would make me eat less at lunch and push my food around so my friends wouldn’t worry. I would use toxic apps like MyFitnessPal, which had me counting every calorie that went into my to the point where water became a supplement for meals.
On top of it all, I was forcing myself to follow photoshopped fitness gurus who would shove misinformation in my brain about what it means to be healthy. From what I saw, I believed that if I drank water and did a thousand ab work-outs a day, I would look just like them! False. It wasn’t until I eliminated certain societal factors that I realized how dangerous these standards were. Not only was I losing nutrients that help our bodies going, but I could have been slowly created long-term problems due to the lack of food that I was consuming.
When society wants to make you believe that you are healthy, it takes a lot to step away and analyze that what you are doing is actually wrong. I never considered how everything I was doing would affect my mental, physical, or emotional state. I knew that there was a problem when I would be overly exhausted, emotional, and deprived of confidence. This was just the beginning.
When going into college, I was so obsessed with losing weight that during my first quarter I ate less and overworked myself on the treadmill. My body was working, but I was not listening to my heart. When it finally hit me that my main goal should be to be healthy but also happy. In the New Year, my main goal was no longer focusing on “losing weight,” but appreciating my body. What does this truly mean?
My first step was deleting MyFitnessPal, unfollowing toxic “body influencers,” and looking at myself every day in the mirror to appreciate how beautiful I am. I know that last part sounds condescending, but it can change your mental perspective on yourself. Every stretch mark is an art, and every body roll protects you from breaking your bones. It is allowing yourself to have that chocolate-chip cookie, go out to dinner with friends who support you, and make eating food an enjoyable experience. It is wearing that dress that you look gorgeous in or the crop top that shows the stomach that keeps you nourished.
By incorporating these tactics in my life, I have started to see the baby steps towards loving who I truly am. I will be the first to admit that there are still hard days when I cringe in disgust at photos of myself, or I get angry at myself for eating that ice cream. There are days when all I can think about is the Freshman 15 or if I should pull out the scale and weigh myself. I had to come to terms with the fact that I mistreated my body for years, and it takes time to heal. In all honesty, loving yourself inside and out is a long journey, but it is one that we all should be willing to take. As a woman who used to hate my breasts, stomach, and thighs, I have come to terms with the beauty that they hold. It is up to you to depict the art that is you, and embrace yourself to the fullest.