I remember exactly when my obsession with health started. I was in the 9th grade, sitting in French class while the teacher was handing out cups of red fruit punch, and the girl sitting next to me refused because it had "too many grams of sugar." Before that exact moment, I had never given a second thought to what I ate based on how many calories it had or how many grams of sugar it contained per serving. These thoughts just never crossed my mind. I don't remember the exact occasion that merited this red fruit punch, but if we hadn't had punch that day, I can't help but feel that things might have turned out differently for me.
After seeing how disgusted she was with the amount of sugar that was in 8 ounces of fruit punch, I put my cup down and my desire to drink the red punch dissipated. If something repulsed someone else so much, why would I want it? That day, when I went home, I remember that the first thing that I did was download a calorie-counting app. I downloaded MyFitnessPal and started tracking what I ate. I ate an unhealthily low amount of calories every day and I became obsessed with logging every single morsel that passed my lips. It was inconvenient and time consuming, but I couldn't help myself. It became a habit. If I ate something, I had to log it. I just had to.
My friends started to notice what I was doing because I would always have perfectly portioned out snacks. Four crackers is one serving and one serving is exactly 75 calories. Each serving has 4 grams of fat and 18 grams of carbs. I ate pretty much the same range of food everyday and I could tell you the exact macros of each food that I ate. This was a curse because instead of viewing food as something that would nourish me and give me the energy to achieve my goals, I viewed them as numbers that I would later track. I loved seeing that positive green number of how many calories I had left because that meant that I under-ate that day. I saw this as an accomplishment.
Slowly, but surely, I noticed that I was getting skinnier and skinnier. I had been a figure skater for 10 years and I had recently had to quit during my freshman year of high school because of tendonitis in both knees. My body definitely reacted to the sudden decrease in exercise and controlling what I ate was the only thing that kept me sane because I had the power to eat (or to not eat) whatever I wanted. Everyone commented on how "skinny my legs looked" and I could just hear the vaguely disturbed and worried tone in their voices. Nonetheless, I took every comment in stride and accepted them as progress. I just thought that what I was doing was working. Skipping that meal was worth it. The feedback from other people gave me validation.
This cycle continued on for sometime until I realized that I was slowly dying. I was never actually diagnosed with an eating disorder because I thought that I didn't have one. After a year or so of obsessive restrictions, I moved on to become a raw vegan (which I am no longer), which is a whole other story in itself.
