draft 1: Kati Rusin

This one time at band camp...
I was 14, quickly falling for a blond hair, blue eyed upperclassman. In 7 days of band camp, I had lost 10 pounds. I wasn't even trying to, I just didn't want to eat the crappy band camp food and was on the field for 9 hours a day at the beginning of August. Many people approached me telling me that I needed to eat, but I just wasn't hungry. At the end of the week I saw my new body and I figured I could continue this new trend of not eating. That same blonde haired, blue eyed boy was noticing me, complimenting my weight loss and refusing to allow his friends to try to help me, because he was all I "needed" (While that's another story for another time, the point is this.. I was young, dumb, and desperate for affection from the men around me and acceptance from the women around me)

Looking back, I would have never considered myself hugely fat, but I was definitely never truly healthy and I was definitely never the image of a thin super model walking the runway that I had grown up seeing in the late ‘90’s and early 2000’s.

When I was fourteen I started a decade long journey in following popular culture regarding my body. I destroyed my body, destroyed it again, and again, and finally, with the new acceptance growing in culture, I’ve come to accept my body and love it and keep it well because I love it, not because I hate it.

Once the winter came, I started swimming competitively for my high school, I quickly realized that I could not make it through a 2 hours practice after spending a day starving myself. This is where my binging began. I started to realize that with dry-land practice every morning, 2 hours in the pool every evening, meets on Saturday, and an extra practice on Sunday that I could eat whatever I wanted and still be at peak physical shape. I went zero --> sixty in no time flat. I had traded in my weakness and starvation for the best biceps I've ever had and binging daily after practice on every carb I could get my hands on..  

It wasn't until swimming was over that I started purging. Looking back, my obsessive work out regime during swim season was a form of perging, but it was working out, so that's a good thing? Right? Wrong. 

"Remember that appearances can be deceiving. 

Just because a person might look fit doesn’t mean they’re healthy"
http://www.ulifeline.org/articles/401-exercise-bulimia

While my work-outs were coach approved, my mentality was complete chaos. I viewed food as a comfort to my total lack of respect for the man who was pushing the team to their physical and mental limits. Food was my comfort when I choked at sectionals and my coach refused to talk to me after the race. Food tasted amazing and numbed my exhaustion and general distaste for a life that revolved around swimming. And it was fine. It was all fine, until I stopped working out at the rate I was but continued to eat at the rate I had become accustomed to. I started gaining weight rapidly. It was absolutely terrifying. All I could think about when I watched TV, or got onto social media was

“How do I look like that? How ON EARTH can I look like that?”

Then one night, at my job at a busy restaurant as a hostess, I hadn't had time to eat all day, and was running on two red bulls, the combination of an empty stomach and way too much red bull caused me to get sick. The second the minimal contents of my stomach hit the water of the toilet bowl, I can remember immediately thinking "I could do this"

It's almost like I decided and I never looked back.

Most people will tell you they didn't "decide" to be bulimic, it just kind of happened.

But I can tell you, for me, personally, I chose to binge and purge.

It was the best of both worlds.

I got to eat WHATEVER I wanted.

and not fear getting fat, in fact, I looked forward to losing weight.

It was the ultimate experience of having my cake and eating it too. 

And people were noticing. I dropped the weight I'd gained (+more) quicker than I had packed it on. My collar bones were sticking out, I could see my ribs, I was wearing the smallest size pant I've ever been in, I looked the way I desired. I looked the way that women in magazine ads looked, and life was.. life was SHITTY.

While I looked thin, I never looked sickly. That's what's so terrifying about eating disorders. A person doesn't have to be purely skin and bones to be dangerously ill. 

“Just because my bone structure stopped me from being the size 00 everyone pictures, doesn’t mean that I wasn’t in an incredibly unsafe and unhealthy place,” Brittany Mills

http://www.thegreatfitnessexperiment.com/2014/06/the-rising-epidemic-of-hidden-eating-disorders-im-disordered-but-not-diseased.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------While I still maintained the stereotypical body shape of a swimmer (which, almost 10 years later, I've learned to embrace) I was killing myself, quite literally, from the inside out. 

I spent my days planning when I would binge, and when I would purge. It was a routine. I'd eat minimal to no breakfast, binge at lunch, wait until 6th period, where, somehow, I had the most lax teachers, and would go to the bathroom, purge, and walk back into class like nothing happened. I'd eat dinner with my family and then immediately excuse myself  to "take a shower"... using the sounds of the water to cover up the disgusting sounds of self hatred and desperation. 

ED (my sweetly, pet-named eating disorder, commonly compared to a controlling significant other) soon took over my life. I was unable to love those around me, I was unable to function properly.  BUT it was fine, because I was thin and pretty..

…and by pretty I mean not pretty at all. My hair was thinning, bags under my eyes started forming, and any “happiness that makes women beautiful” was drained from my body.

My life was scheduled around when I could binge and purge – or if I had just binged, and didn’t see an opportunity to purge, I became desperate. At first, getting sick only happened at home, and eventually I became the master of the “perfect time” to excuse myself, make sure no one was in the bathroom and purge. I even learned how to make myself sick as quickly as possible, because I couldn’t risk getting caught being totally controlled by ED.

ED destroyed my faith, my relationship with my family, my friends, and God forbid any man who tried to connect with me on a romantic level. Ed was first in my life, and destroyed any possible competition for my attention.

Ed never left a mark, but my body was falling apart from the inside out. Stomach acid eroding my esophegeous, my hair fell out, my cycle couldn’t regulate itself, and my mental state was beyond unstable.

Recovery came slowly. At first, it “wasn’t a problem” and “I could stop if I wanted to”.. Just as an abusive relationship, I wasn’t ready to admit that ED was destroying me. I loved ED, my bulimia comforted me, Ed gave me the body and attention I so deeply desired.

But, recovery came. Thanks to a lot of therapy, loving family and friends, a new found love for Jesus, and.. surprisingly popular culture.

Throughout recovery, (I consider myself constantly in recovery, because every day it’s a battle not to turn to food for comfort) I have lost drastic amounts of weight and gained dirastic amounts of weight, multiple times. Because every time I found a new “lifestyle” whether it be paleo, gluten/dairy free, minimal carbs, minimal fats, whatever it was, it worked.. but it never stuck, because these “diets” were just Ed coming at me dressed up in a suit, holding flowers, promising never to fail me, again.

FREEDOM

At the age of 23, just months away from the 10 year “anniversary” of when Ed started inching his way into my life. I am confident and strong enough to say that I am fine without him. Do I miss him? Sometimes. Do I think going back would be a good idea? No.

While recovery took help from many personal areas of my life; continued recovery has created a passion in me that the popular culture is starting to take notice of

Self love.

While I do promote fitness and health, I promote it because ultimately that is what is best for your body, and in turn, the individual. I promote fitness out of self love, not self hate. I promote accepting your body, being proud of your scars, stretch marks, rolls, and imperfections.

I believe in empowering women to embrace their bodies and not conform to a stereotype.  And amazingly, this belief, in part, been shaped by popular culture begging a revolution.

Don’t get me wrong. The majority of ads are still maintaining the  impossibly perfect body shape, but some companies are pushing super tiny, perfectly rounded lines of society.

I have never been so proud to say that I worked for Aerie when I was in high school than I am at this point in time. If you don’t know what Aerie is; know this.. It’s American Eagle’s less flashy, more casual version of PINK by Victoria’s Secret.

Naturally, due to its product, Aerie ads feature women in bras and undies, swimsuits, and sleepwear. And recently, Aerie has made a commitment that has, quite literally, brought me to tears.