All my life everyone has always complimented me on being so skinny and tiny, yet things are not that way now. While in college the Freshman 15 didn't occur right away for me, it crept up starting my junior and throughout my senior year, so with the stress of graduation and figuring out my future came the extra weight.
Not all of the weight was ill received, though, the addition of breasts and a larger butt was highly celebrated by myself and few others. I was happy to finally feel womanly and have some curves on my body and not be so thin as before, but with the boobs and butt came other curves that weren't as welcomed, the dreaded tummy.
My belly started growing and I learned to despise it. I avoided anything that would draw any attention to that region of my body. I avoided the beach and bathing suits for a full year, this is coming from the girl that lives and breathes the beach. I changed my lifestyle and not for the better, the more I despised my stomach the more I made it suffer by either eating unhealthy comfort foods or not eating at all. There was no balance or an in between.
Comments from my mother about how I had to worry about my stomach and learn to eat better and exercise to get back to the way I looked before added on more stress to the situation. Stress became a constant companion, it was there and supported me through all the bad moments but mostly just making those moments worse than they already were.
Food and I shared a strange relationship where we weren't going steady in a good way. It was one of those rocky relationships where one minute it was all fine and dandy and the next a small fight would break out over any little thing and we would go on a break or sometimes even "break up.” You may be wondering, how does one "break up" with food? Simple, you stop eating.
Of course, I don't recommend anyone to do that, eating and finding a balance in your life of all things is extremely important. I won't say that I don't run into stress every once in a while, but we are not as close as before. Talking to someone about how you feel when it pertains to food and just different situations, in general, tends to help. Don't break up with food but do break up with stress, have a healthy relationship with food because in the end, your body will thank you.
