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