I can't say i've always gave much importance to food, but the older i became the more i cared for it and most importantly the psicological things related to food. How people see food, how I see food and just things, you know. So I figured, as long as this post might turn out to be, that I would share with you my food story which covers my whole life cuz of course you need food your whole life.. So here we go..
This goes back, way back, to when I was a baby back..yep. When I was only 7 months old i got pretty ill, I got neumonia. I had to be hospitalized and the doctors were pretty unsure that I would make it out of it alive. But, little me decided to stick around, so I did. The illness left me pretty damn underweight (I was already a small baby, my mom told me) plus with future asthma issues I had to deal with till i hit puberty and still appear in occasion =/. Also for some reason, after being ill i became a picky eater baby, my mom tried every baby recipe and i was a pain to feed lol i refused all foods BUT bananas. So she talked to my doctor and he gave her the ok to feed me just bananas like i was a monkey so i would at least eat something and then little by little introduce other food (i guess yellow foods so i would believe it was bananas? lol no idea). So there is that, I've always been a very active kid and my metabolism made it such that I always ate whatever my parents gave me and still i was always a stick.
During childhood/primary school my parents weren't on a very good economic situation so sometimes I would stay over at my grandparents for dinner (this is kind of sad and personal to share, i didn't think i would but.. it's part of my life so) and then the trend began..
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| little me at around 7 |
For a period of time it was soy, soy was cheap at the time so my parents would buy a lot of soy beans and make burgers or whatever with it so it was like soy and whatever all month straight, same with pizza when my mom figured out she could make 5 pizzas with only a box of flour LOL and same with pasta when my mom was given a pasta maker and figured you can make a shitload of pasta with just one box of flour and a couple of eggs. So our diet got diverse but was mainly based on whatever was economically convinient. Also at a point we were renting a place that had a small shop-like room at the front yard so my parents made it into a fruits and vegetables business.. That's when i got my first hand of selling things, i used to help with the clients when i was about 8 and I would love to sneak on my t-shirt just one fruit of every kind they had, the sweeter the better, and eat that at nap time =). Still I was a stick, I've been a stick pretty much always. At age 8 I also started ballet and I was on the skinnier side of them all. My mom took me to the doctor a couple of times because i was underweight until they just realized i ate normally but just was active or had a great metabolism so they stopped worrying, as long as i didnt skip meals or anything, i was healthy.
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| me at my 15th bday party |
Then highschool started, I went to a highschool that had the regular subjects in the morning and the ballet school in the afternoon (it had a dance teaching degree). Highschool was 1 hour away from home by bus so I would take the bus and go, my mom bought me a HUGE and ABSOLUTELY NOT FASHIONABLE lunch thingy that kept my lunch warm (it was also hella heavy ¬¬) and it helped cuz that way I would always eat what now i can see was a pretty big, imponent, mostly carb based, lunch. Which was kinda great cuz it meant not expending money, not eating junk, homemade mom's food + it worked great with the fact that after lunch i had between 1 and 3 dance classes each day. So i was in shape, but, being that I was always a stick I was embarrased of how I looked when I wasn't on dancing clothes. Some people at school started picking on me for being too skinny, and other dancers talked behind my back creating rumors of me being anorexic eventhough i ate without any issue, just based on the fact that i was "too skinny to not be anorexic" . That was very tramautic for me and even when i didn't know any girl with an eating disorder yet, it made me feel bad for them and empathize with them already, because i was labeled as having an eating disorder too, by people that didn't even know me or talked to me. But yea, I ate my mom's food and if i snacked on whatever candy bar, i didn't care about what a calorie was or what was in food cuz i thought "hey! i could use some weight so the fattiest the better" but i guess i didn't snack enough cuz i never put on significant weight. I was the latest of my friends to kiss a boy or be one of those "holding hands" type of bf & gf, simply cuz i was introverted and according to male friends "too skinny" as in too skinny for boys to like me like that. Oh well that made me pretty sad but i focused on dancing and good grades. About when I was 15 or 16 I made a friend who ended up confessing she had bulimia, it just didn't fit in my head. I found it something too gross to do to yourself, I do still but I guess at that time i was way more impressed by it. Highschool ended.
I decided I needed a bigger town to pursue my dance dreams so I moved to the Capital (Buenos Aires) with my grandma, who was living here alone. I took classes with a teacher that was recommended to me,she trained the dancers of the most prestigious school in the country, school I was attempting to get into. And this is where my whole "eating disorders vs ballet dancers" view did like WHOOOOOO. Until then, I knew people said most dancers had eating disorders, but being that i honestly only met 1 person with a food issue in my whole -until then - dancer career, I thought it was just one of those things people say.. you know, without knowing what the fuck they're talking about.
Then I did a workshop at this school i wanted to enter. The teacher was an old very prestigius russian woman. There was a girl that was so skinny and letargic i thought her legs would break, or she would faint. Her skin was yellow, it was scary really. And then the teacher used her to show an exercise, the girl had good technique, and the teacher said at the end of the exercise "see, this is how a dancer should look like". I'll never forget that. It was eye opening and yea all sorts of mixed feelings. I was 18 by then and i was very strong on the thought that one needs fuel to dance. My teacher in my hometown taught us all well on that, he compared us with athletes and told us we should eat like an athlete and I believed it strongly (Even if i would eat my mom's food without caring what was in it), but that just shocked me. Most of the girls in the class where 14-17. I was the oldest one, so I thought "oh then it's not something people say, of course if your dance teacher says something like this when you're at a vulnerable age and being a prima ballerina is your biggest dream, of course you'll do anything to get it. Even not eat" It shocked me and it made me happy that eventhough i ended up not getting into that school that I went there at an older age where I wouldn't be so vulnerable and possibly manipulated, that i could think for myself to know better, that's where I sort of developed this idea of me being Strong in the sense that I wouldn't let anything or anybody play with my head, that i had a strong character/temper/mind/principles.. something. Still, I shared around a year with these girls (they were in school and i was just training for the admission so i shared classes with them) and they wouldn't socialize with me much cuz everyone kept to themselves, but the ones that were friends or shared a dorm you could hear them talk about just basically ludacris things like having a carrot for lunch. I dunno I turned off my ears at a point. They didn't want to be healthy, they wanted to do whatever to make it to the top and they wouldnt let me in the conversation so i would just hear and just i dunno, a big "how could someone do that to him/herself??" sign popped in my head everytime. The teacher that was training me to enter this school, told me right upfront that she could train me but just by looking at me she knew I didn't have the body to make it. I was suddenly on the "heavier" side of the ballerinas, because my legs were too big a.k.a too muscular. So I would have to be exceptionally good to get in, just good wouldn't cut it because i didnt have their desired body. I was 49kgs, 1.60cms tall (that's 5'2'') and 108lbs. I still saw myself as too skinny. I said ok, train me anyway (it was my ultimate dream to get into that school), if i enter good. If not, i'll be technically on their dancing level so it's fine (of cours in my head all i thought was I WILL MAKE IT), I'll have great ballet technique, I'll enter some other school with less strict body requirements. So she trained me and I did a small effort to not get cut off just by weight. I put myself on my idea of a "Diet". I thought i was being healthy about it, now thinking about it I'm sure i under ate but i didn't really stick to it so much so i guess it didn't do much damage. My grandma's thing is to skip lunch, always. So i used to end up at mc donalds or cook whatever i found, instead i cut out mc donalds completely and had things like granola bars and cereal with yogurt and fruits. That was my "diet" change. The rest was the same. I was determined to not be unhealthy and to not be hungry. I went from 49kgs to 46.5 in one year. Solely for the audition, I hated how skinny i was. I never wore black because of that reason, my arms looked like ugh yea a black line... NO. The day the audition was over i went back to mc donalds LOL. In the end, I didn't make it because i was the oldest and they decided to give the opportunity to a younger girl but at least they told me my technique was on point. I was super sad but hey! I survived.
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| that was me enjoying life like a boss. |
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Life happened, I put on a couple of kgs, I was i think at around 50/51 kgs, was bouncing from one independent ballet company to the other, trying to find my place in the world. I was happy with my abs (yes i had a 6 pack HA!) and the fact that i had a bit of a butt so i was starting to get noticed. I was learning english on my own with just a dictionary and tv shows and such, so I started going into any english chat i found, just to practice. There I met this girl, we chatted a lot cuz she was pretty funny and bubbly and we had similar music taste. She then told me she was anorexic, she survived on coffee pretty much. But she wanted to recover, or so I thought, I was already fond of her so I researched and tried to talk her into eating as much as i could. Soon I became too involved, she was dragging me in. I found myself comparing me to her, not to see who was skinnier, it was just something that would happen in a conversation and then i said "WOW WAIT, she's encouraging you to do the same things she's doing". So being that she wasn't seeking recovery and just talking about her tricks to not eat so i would try them.. I stepped back and i cut contact with this person before something snapped in me. I was fond of her, she was my internet friend (lol as silly as that sounds) so that one hurt, i felt like i was abandoning her but i thought it was the best thing i could do as i feared i could get into the same thing she was into.
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Life went on, I started uni and met who now is my roommate. She would never eat in front of me, everytime we would meet at lunch time she had already had lunch, we would dance together in the same ballet company and then go to the same classes in university lol so it was like living together. I was around 22 i think, she was barely 18. So one day i told her, "I'm worried cuz i think you're not eating" and then she told me what i suspected was correct. To make it worse, the director of the ballet company told her in front of everybody that she couldn't dance an specific number cuz she would have to wear a tutu and she was too fat to be wearing that. YEAP- THAT TYPE OF BULLSHIT she had to stand, and me witness. I've watched her deal with her eating issues, i encouraged her to get help. She did it and little by little she recovered. It was hard and witnessing it just made me be even more about of the importance of eating and not letting the "too skinny/too fat" thoughts in your head. She said then and still says to this day that she'll always have a distorted image of her body but she tries to not get affected by it. I'm incredibly proud of her and how she's about food now versus me having to make up excuses or eat an specific type of food just so she would agree to eat with me. I still worry if she skips a meal now but we have like our own code, she knows i care and she tells me when she's feeling like going back to the old habits, and i do my best to talk her out of it and she usually comes around.
Fast forward 6 years and we're roommates, with her sister, who had an even more serious case of eating disorder and had to go inpatient to recover. I find she deals with it much better than my friend as she can talk about it more openly and eventhough she sometimes eats way less than she should or counts calories, whenever she finds herself doing that, she says it and goes eat something big to compensate.
Now I also find me not too far from being on the limit line between "normal weight" and "overweight" which anyway.. "normal" is considered overweight by dancing standards. I feel the need to lose a couple kgs, like 5 more than a couple. I don't want to ever be 46kgs ever again, but more like 55.. I never saw me and saw someone big, and I still don't until I'm put in front of a mirror for 2 hours on leotards and tights. It's so new to me, i get some of the things i never understood. Age made me wiser and I go about it the healthiest way i can, I also am a nerd at researching so that helps. But I count calories, I average 2.000 calories intake each day so i don't feel hungry, ever. I refuse to be hungry. If losing weight means i'm gonna suffer high hunger, then i wont do it.
Somedays, like today, I find me thinking on what i'll have for dinner based not on what i would *want* to eat but on whatever calories i have left. And that's fine i mean, ever since i started living alone i overindulged on mc donalds and fries and pre packed things, that's how i put on weight..So i have to re-train me to make healthier choices but just sometimes I wonder, given the surroundings, the enviroment I'm in and the stories i just told you.. if that bug will bite me. If i'll wake up one day and be obsessed about calories and develop a bad relationship with food. I trust not, I trust im stronger than to let something like that rule my life. But it still worries me, so in moments when it does. I stop counting calories, i eat whatever and don't care about what is in it. Just to prove to myself that it's alright, the world doesn't end and i dont have an obsession. I don't know, it's just interesting to me (and that's the reason of this post) how someone can be in a pretty sick enviroment when it comes to relationship with food and not act the same as others, just be concerned of other's safety and how some people just get suck into it like nothing, simply as me clapping my hands. I don't understand it. It's a horrible disease to develop and it's all in the mind, like everything, I empathize with people that have it to a point where If i could i would make it dissapear. And yes, I know there are ton of horrible diseases in the world but i guess out of them all, this is the one that touches me the most. It's amazing how the mind plays with us sometimes. I guess sometimes we have to remember that WE, afterall, have control over our minds. We can tell it to cut out the bullshit whenever we have a bullshit thought flying around (pardon my french :P)
We can push idiotic thoughts away the same way when we don't want to think about someone anymore we just brush it off and get distracted with another thought whenever that person pops in your head (at least that's what i do).
So that's it, that's my food/life story. From not knowing what a calorie was to reading anything I can on body composition, healthy eating, recommended intake on not only food in general but of MACROS (hell if i ever knew what that was before), landing me with having protein powder in my kitchen jajajaja in my attempts to eat more protein. Funny how life is, i guess.
If there's anyone reading, THANK YOU!!! for making it this far. This was waaay longer than i thought it would be. Sorry I bore you to death :P. If there's anyone reading this who currently suffers from an eating disorder.. YOU CAN BEAT IT. I know people who did it, it's possible, and you deserve to beat it. Because life is worth living and whatever you're going through, there are better ways to deal with it than starvation, or any other self harming ways. I wish i could say something more uplifting, inspiring and elocuent but my brain is half sleeping already. This post took me ages. Anyways, if you have an eating disorder, I hope you recover from it, so that you can truly enjoy life and not have to be worried about numbers. I wish you all the best and i hope you seek help within the people around you so that you're never alone, there's always someone that cares for you and that is willing to help, all you need to do is reach out. And everything will be fine.
And without any other brain cell awake left in my brain, I proceed to my bed routine. An episode of "whose line is it anyway" and coffee before bed so i go to sleep in a good mood and don't dream any weird stuff. Thanks again, for making it this far.
