Running For The Wrong Reasons

[Applause]

there are 50 calories in an apple

75 calories in one egg and

just over 100 calories for one cup of

milk

to many these knowing these facts may

seem absurd

but to me and countless others they’re

second hand

for those people we think of food as

numbers which quickly destroy your

appearance

this is a disordered mindset that has

caused a strain on my relationship with

food

i always saw anorexia as this glorified

disease which would truly give me the

confirmation that i was skinny

i had rather starved to death than gain

a pound because gaining weight to me

felt just as painful

at the age of seven one in four children

have been reported to start dying

by the time a child is five they’ve

already experienced self-conscious

thoughts about their appearance

ever since i learned to feed myself i’d

been controlling

what i ate as a 13 year old girl i fell

into the pattern of

i fell into the pattern of restricting

my food and working out

i was eating enough to sustain an

average weight but i never felt joy when

i was eating

i was constantly restricting my food and

this would result in binging

or fainting

i had never been able to lose weight

until february of 2020 where i really

did commit to a very toxic lifestyle

where working out became a means of

massing the calories i’d consumed

i recognized the efficiency of running

for only 20 minutes of exercise i was

burning upwards of 200 calories

i’m human i like that idea of doing less

and gaining more

so i so i slowly started to run

two kilometers turned into three and

three kilometers turned into four

and it just became a part of my daily

routine

i ran five kilometers every day

rain or shine busy or not on top of that

i did 20 minutes of muscle building

exercises

and let me tell you those were the worst

but i knew i wouldn’t be able to sleep

until i completed them along with this i

started restricting my calories to 1500

then to only a thousand to put this into

context a toddler is meant to eat a

minimum of a thousand calories a day

essentially i was eating as much as a

toddler

the scary part is with every pound i

lost i still felt i looked the same

and it wasn’t until it wasn’t until i

really had to reflect on myself did i

realize how much weight i was actually

losing

i had lost almost 25 pounds i was

my lowest weight was 102 pounds and this

is when my

body mass index fell below that of an

average person

from my height

i kept telling myself five more pounds

and you’ll be beautiful

i had this goal of 105 pounds but when i

got there i still wasn’t satisfied with

what i looked like

i was constantly fixated on my weight

when losing weight you only hear about

the good stuff what you don’t hear about

is how tired weak nauseous

anxious and irritable you become

when you’re so obsessed with your weight

you are

constantly thinking about food from when

i’d wake up to when i’d go to bed

wishing i could just eat a big mac

my body was exhausted and i was starving

myself

everyone has a bad hair day everyone has

something they feel self-conscious about

i am just one of many teams who

struggles to appeal to society’s high

expectations

and it wasn’t until i started talking

about it did i realize

most teenagers don’t like how they look

running i started running for the wrong

reasons

i started running to become thin but as

i became

so fixated on this idea i became too

unhealthy that i wasn’t able to complete

my runs

to me running was a time where i got to

think of myself

it was just me the pavement

and a playlist i’m slightly embarrassed

of

it was very difficult to just start

eating

and it took me a long time i was

fortunate enough to have my friends and

family there to support me

it’s kind of ironic because running the

activity which made me once so fixated

about my weight was also the reason that

i had to start

eating it was simple if i wanted to run

i had to fuel my body

eating what i loved wasn’t difficult it

was the thoughts afterwards which were

i was i was constantly consumed by what

i was putting into my body

and i was very mean to myself we’re

almost always our worst enemies

there’s no one way to stop disordered

eating and on top of that

there’s no one way to change a

disordered mindset

i might always have a difficult

relationship with my body

but that doesn’t mean to need to impact

my relationship with food

when i look at this picture i’m reminded

of how much time i spent fixated

on running how much time i spent

restricting my food

and how much time i couldn’t spend with

my friends

i started running for all the wrong

reasons

i thought that if i were thin i would

feel beautiful

but as i became thin i realized

something

what is the point in looking thin if

your life

is so consumed by this one idea that you

can’t even live

the truth is food fuels your body

it tastes amazing and at least for me

can often coincide with some of my

greatest memories

when you have disordered eating you’re

constantly fixated on this one idea

and you neglect to realize that the

world around you

is still moving thank you