How I healed Eating Disorders with Journaling

Love your body, so much, you set yourself free

At the age of 10, I started counting calories. It’s the age of starting to dream, but it was my age of starting to count. I still have all the journals since being 5 years old, and so I know what I was thinking when. The paper and ink captured it all.

So at 10, I started to find restriction and - seemingly - empowerment in food. Feeling strong when I didn’t eat. So, so strong. There was this one time we went out for barbecue with the family, I remember this so precisely. Everyone was eating chicken wings, I wasn’t. Only one, and then I went off to the playground, to run it off.

A girl this age should not be concerned about having play on the playground be the way to burn the calories off that she ate before.

Girls at this age have only recently started to count until 1000 in math class in primary school, but there I was, making calculations up to 2000, the number of calories I thought were normal, although I reduced it down to 1300, just because. I guess I have always been an over achiever aiming for perfection - until the pressure broke me.

The girl who started counting calories turns into the teenager that throws up intentionally hiding it in front of her family. She turns into the woman who wakes up at 5 am to force herself to go running on a treadmill, then swimming, all before classes start, then goes off to have half an apple a day. She turns into the young woman who eats her sadness, only to throw it up again.

A young woman at uni is supposed to have fun with friends. I barely went out, because I was scared of food, and the lack of sleep that would affect my weight.

She turns into a woman who lost the connection to what is most important: her intuition.

When her periods stops, she buys into the idea that periods are annoying anyways. Dating turns into the space of sacrifice, will he ever like my body? Am I thin enough? Attracting partners who care about that, more than a touch that reaches the heart.

There was one who was wise enough to - try to - change my mind and I will never forget this moment. I will never forget how he took my 19 year old self in front of the mirror, stood behind me, and said: “You are beautiful, please see it.”

Then, there are the friends who notice, but cannot really say a thing. They notice, when the parents cannot because you moved abroad. The friends who second guess when you’re tummy is hurting, or when you don’t order fries, just a salad please, because you already apparently had dinner.

There are the host moms who notice what is going on but cannot really interfere. They just cook a little bit more and leave it in a topper in the fridge with a post it with your name on top.

You know what’s the worst? How quickly it all happens. How one moment you are healthy, and the other moment everyone thinks you’re healthy but you are not. Your mind is playing tricks on you.

Thanks to struggling with eating, I developed the discipline of a high-performing athlete, or, that’s what I imagine it to be. There was no day I would skip running, there was no willpower stronger than not having eaten for days and snacking on a couple of peanuts, to then go for an hour long swim. I dont know where I got the strength from.

There were moments, when it could all have stopped, earlier, before I lost years of being joyful and free. But my parents didn’t know how to talk to a teenager who was hiding her sorrows behind a shell of perfect, popular amongst peers, respected, artistic, and with a circle of friends who cared about her. Class rep in school, scholarships, winning awards. What’s wrong to say about that?

There was the moment the doctor called me in immediately because my blood levels were reaching the danger zone. That is, the doctor called my mom and my mom called my friend’s mom, because I was at her place. We had just been running, she had offered me apple juice after, I took water to avoid the sugar that I had just ran off. That’s when the call came in from my mom to her mom, our moms being so worried, ruining what could have been a calm moment after running, I had to get ready immediately and I had never seen my mom drive so fast, we didn’t drive we raced to the doctor. My mom didn’t say How are you. My mom was angry at me.

“It’s because you never eat right!” It sounded like a reproach. Now I know better and I see, it was a reproach she said to herself, she was just speaking out loud, because she knew the fault of this and wished she had kept the diet books a secret to herself.

I love my mom, but we haven’t always been best friends, and we are both so sorry about that. But we got to accept the truth and don’t want to turn back time, we focus on the love we have for each other, and now, she really is one of my best friends. I tell her everything, she picks up the phone in the middle of the night, she is always there.

But, then, I grew up around a woman - my point of reference - who criticized herself, and it hurts to write this. She would not wear pieces of clothing if they made her look “fat”, that’s the word she would say to herself. Until I said it to myself. Until I did the same.

I am the oldest. My sister was born skinny, she could eat Nutella whenever she wanted. Sometimes I made breakfast just to say I had made breakfast, but it was like a game of willpower practiced - I didn’t eat a thing of the amazing waffles and fruit bowls I prepared, I passed them on to my sister. I just wanted to be as skinny as her, but my relationship to food was so broken and Ididnt know how to get out of it.

I remember the days when my biggest wish was eating spaghetti. Just, spaghetti, you know, without second-guessing if pasta was bad. I cry for the time and the freedom and the joy, taken away for 16 years, because all you think about is the calories, the weight, you are never in the moment. You miss moments with friends, cancelled due to the fear of gaining too much weight. Gaining 200 grams ruins a week.

That’s 5840 days of lost connection to your body, more than half of my life.

After the blood results getting into the danger zone, my mom took extreme good care of my nutrition for about three months, then another test showed some improvement and I was free enough to return to my diet of eating an apple a day. It didn’t really keep the doctor away, because that was all I ate.

When I moved out, it got worse. When I had a little budget at uni, it got as bad as it gets. That one time I lived with a partner in the beginning of my twenties, it brought a little bit more stability into it all, he took care of his nutrition down to the T, took me to the nutritionist at the gym he paid for me, and eating became less lonely, more of a place of enjoying the time. When the relationship broke apart, it all got worse, needless to say.

But I remember the day I walked out the door and said … enough. I was 26, and I think I really just had enough. Of drama, of chaos, of hurting myself. Of hating myself. Of the nights with a stomach ache that hurts so bad and you know it’s because you haven’t eaten well. It was time to act and yes, it can really all change so fast.

One day you wake up and you change your Life.

I had started journaling more strategically - less free writing, but with a method I developed to check where I was holding myself back. To discover my thought patterns and wounds, my behavior stemming from trauma. I wanted to heal it all and set myself free. I wanted to reflect on everything I said and thought, did and did not, and I had goals I knew I couldn’t reach if I was acting from trauma and limiting beliefs.

I was more aware of my emotions. I noticed the pattern that brought me to binge eating. I noticed the triggers and the wounds ending up in forcing myself not to touch food. It all becomes much more evident. And I had enough of it.

One morning, I woke up, put my jogging shoes on, and wanted to run for my happiness. Not for loosing weight, or “correcting a mistake” from the day before. And I did just that.

I kept it up, of course, and gave everything I had to not fall back. Of course there were moments I was close, or even weeks when it was really hard. Tough times always brought an additional challenge but never took away the will to be better and do better.

Four years ago, I stopped counting calories. Entirely.

I discovered I don’t really like spaghetti. I prefer having rice or couscous, or pizza, even burgers; I have come to love burgers for real, and that feels amazing, to say that.

My mom started running, for her mind. She is now training so amazingly hard and rides her bicycles for such long trails, I could never do it and I am cheering her on. We healed. And I am sure by us healing, we healed a family line, and the women our ancestors, are all cheering us on. And the ones who come, they will have less weight to worry about, in its literal meaning.

Without any effort, just by listening to my body, I dropped 16 pounds. It just happened and it felt really good to me. That’s when I noticed that everything is related to how you feel.

The keys lie in you feeling good about yourself, not hiding who you are, not constraining you, not leaving your Soul hungry, but feeding your Being with the best moments, choosing joy, returning to self, being grounded, you and love.

Nutrition is still the number one area that looses its anchor, when times get tough or many challenges come in. I allow myself to let it be, but ask my body, always, how I can do better. The relationship I have to my intuition is so strong. And my period has been regular for years now, always falls on the same time around the moon, and I love to welcome the cycle of it all, of what it truly means to be a woman. Free.