Some excerpts
Written by Cindy Wang
Edited by Dominique Cao
TW: This article discusses topics regarding eating disorders.
Her mom posted a photo of her with an MVP award, and the comments said: “Damn, Canada’s been feeding your kid well!” “I see her getting rounder… good nutrition I see!”
She started to drape her hair over the sides of her face like a curtain. Not because of specific fashion trends, but because she wanted to conceal that she’s gotten “chubbier”. She was ashamed to show her friends and relatives how she looked.
As a kid, she was always praised for being pretty and skinny. She was regarded as the kid who could eat a ton and never gain a pound. People would look at her and applaud her physique, some would even try to squeeze her arm and tell her it’s just bones. Then she would proudly claim that she has a big appetite and wow everyone.
She strived that one day, she would become that kid again and until that day, she would have her hair draped around her face.
She was seeing a friend in a few days and she wanted to look good.
At the moment though, she felt horrible, as though she was carrying a boulder and there were pebbles bursting out of her brain. She couldn’t think clearly and wanted to collapse at any moment and fall into eternal sleep. But she still dragged herself off her desk and started a 45-minute home cardio session and immediately went to weigh herself.
That day happened to be her birthday. Her friends decided to surprise her and brought her a birthday cake to her apartment. Internally, she was horrified, for she felt that any food would make her physique bloat and waste her efforts. She couldn’t think of any excuses to tell her friend why she shouldn’t eat cake on her birthday, so she ate a morsel of it.
It was the only thing she ate in three days.
She was obsessed with a content creator on Youtube. The creator was very slim, and she seemed to always promote a positive mindset regarding body image and dieting. The creator also posted many videos giving diet and weight loss advice, such as “how I eat a lot and stay skinny”, “the secret to having abs”, et cetera. The channel also promoted intermittent fasting and intense daily workouts in her fitness videos.
However, there is a whole other section to the channel dedicated to woke feminist commentary, stating that “no diets are superior”, “no food is bad food”, and “modern body standards are too strict and you should love your body and let it go however you see fit”. The creator did this all while being restrictive with her dietary routines and pursuing a potentially underweight physique, and on the other, she’s promoting a message of letting go of one’s body and wholeheartedly loving yourself as who you are.
She followed the Youtube Channel and their words as though they were the ultimate authority. And she started to think she could eat as much as possible and “work” everything off.
She got up this morning to go to school and was determined not to eat anything for five days in a row.
At school, she passed by the cafeteria and the smell of the pastries and muffins made her stop in her tracks. It’s like something invisible is pulling her inside the cafeteria and she’s battling against that force with all her willpower.
Finally, she gives in and walks into the caf scolding herself, thinking this is the last time that she would ever eat in this entire week and she’ll not allow herself to eat again. She slowly savored a cookie, but suddenly, she started hungrily wolfing the whole cookie down her throat, as though she had not eaten for centuries. She returned to the pastries and swooped up two pastries, one muffin, a cookie and a drink. She munched on them in class without tasting them, and all she could focus on was how during recess, she was going to return to the caf for more. It’s ok, she told herself, I’m not going to eat for the next 6 days. It’s ok to eat more.
When she went home, food was piling up all the way towards her chest and she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. However, her parents made her dinner and she felt bad to decline it and didn’t want to hide the fact that she ate so much at school.
She had a full dinner and as she sat at her desk, all she felt was the dreadful grumbling in her stomach and a dense brain fog that lingered from the sugar and fat she consumed earlier in the day. She kept scolding herself and she thought, this is the last day I’m eating this much. I’ll stop eating for a week and then start eating normally. I will not eat tomorrow.
This was the fifth day in a row she told herself that.
There was an assembly at school and it talked about topics regarding eating disorders. As she sat down, the girls in front of her were giggling and talking about how pointless the whole assembly is. “Why would anyone care about eating? This is so useless. Why would we not know how to eat LOL”
She listened to them at the back. She was furious that those people have no idea what others are going through and thought how can such inconsiderate people exist in this world? On the other hand, she kept telling herself that she does not have anything related to an eating disorder. Of course she doesn’t, she was always a happy positive girl and anything that has the word “disorder” in it is not associated with her. No she doesn’t. (Ew.)
Her school posted another photo of her with her hair draped around her face.
She saw it, and was disgusted by her double chin, her cheeks, and the way her skin surrounded her eyes.
What made her feel even more horrible was she felt as though she was carrying a boulder and there were pebbles bursting out of her brain. She couldn’t think clearly and wanted to collapse at any moment and fall into eternal sleep. But she still dragged herself off her desk and started a 45-minute home cardio session and immediately went to weigh herself.
She started counting her calories and eating way below what she needed every day. Her body got slimmer and slimmer, and she finally reached her desired weight. Every time she felt her bones as she ran her hand on her chest, she felt proud of herself and that she needed to keep it this way. Finally, her stomach was void of the junk she used to fill it with.
All she thought about was food. She would spend hours calculating what she should eat and what she should cook for herself. She would weigh out every ingredient in her food and the nutella she put on her toast. She would calculate how much time she spent on the treadmill and elliptical machines and how that deducts from what she ate.
Her period hadn’t come in months. Her hands and feet were also always cold, as long as there was air conditioning around her. Her hands were always shaking and her face looked sallow. She didn’t care, until her hair started falling out. At first only her parents noticed, then she started to pull out chunks of her hair as she showered. She noticed her hairline receding and when she had her hair up, she felt her hair getting thinner and thinner until she had to find tighter hair ties to keep them together.
She cried, for her hair, and for having to forego her slim physique because she needed to eat more for her hair.
When she ate out with people, they told her she was very tense when she ate. They wished she would be more attentive to what they were saying and not zone out. They wondered why she would always stare longingly at the table but not pick up anything to eat. They told her she’s become so different now from the outgoing confident girl they remembered and wished she would act more friendly towards them. She didn’t know why she bothered caring or why she should bother to stop caring. She always felt like falling down a never-ending hole.
She was sitting at lunch one day with her friends, zoning out as usual, looking at her plate with morsels of food trying to figure out how much they weigh. She grabbed her phone again to look up all the information regarding the caloric contents of the dish and the ingredients that went into it. When she looked up she had lost track of the conversation yet again.
She was retreating into the darkness when her friends started talking to her, and for a tiny second she forgot about the food on her plate and laughed. Then she remembered her food again and looked down, but something had changed.
She thought she was still falling, but at least there was a cushion beneath her.
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