October 15, 2021

*Trigger warning: discussion of eating disorders

“I’m really really sick of looking at pictures and crying, and looking at food and wishing I didn’t have to eat it. Like I’m just so done with it all, but I can’t control it at all anymore and I am just so discouraged idk what to do anymore” 

This is a text I sent a little over a year ago. I was so restrictive, so controlling, so unhappy with who I was becoming. I couldn’t find a way to love myself, so I began focusing on things I could control: calories on a menu and the numbers on the scale. 

Before I knew it, I had lost 30 pounds. I was scared to eat more than a third of a banana, I looked at nutritional labels to never eat more than 100 calories at a time, I worked out to lose numbers on the scale. As time went on, I completely lost who I was. My personality slipped away.

Every smile felt forced. I didn’t listen to music anymore, I didn’t call my home friends, I didn’t let myself relax and watch a movie or read a book, I stopped writing, I stopped going out to have fun and dancing with my friends. 

I didn’t recover until I started understanding that food is happiness. Life wasn’t as joyful when food was just numbers. I began finding happiness when I realized that food is so much more than the nutrition label. Food is laughing with your best friends at the table of your favorite restaurant, late night snacking on the best cookies in Ann Arbor (Detroit Filling Station, obviously), cooking new recipes with your mom on Thanksgiving, going to the movie theatres and drowning your popcorn in butter, it’s fueling up for a day full of dancing on a long game day. 

Life is about doing what makes you happy, and finding the little moments to smile about. Life should not be wasted by calculating calories, worrying about how to stay full for longer, or stressing about what to eat on the menu if it’s not “healthy” enough. It’s way too short. This mindset is what pushed me through recovery. If I was losing happiness, relationships, and memories because of my obsession with being thin, why was I striving to achieve it in the first place? 

Today’s “diet culture” makes it seem as if being smaller is being more beautiful. It insinuates that having a smaller waist, eating less carbs, and losing weight on the scale will make you happier. That simply is not the case; the truth is that obsessing over your body will not lead to a fulfilling life, it will lead to regret.

I started seeing changes within myself when I decided to transform my mindset; I no longer wanted to conform to the unrealistic and unfulfilling expectations of the world. The person who sent that text was consumed by society’s standards, completely fooled by diet culture. Eat what makes you happy, not what society expects you to eat. Enjoy your favorite food without guilt, and savor both the taste and happiness that follows.