I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
January 5, 2011
>I was in my early twenties when one offhand remark changed everything.
Unable to attend a bridesmaid dress fitting for a wedding halfway across the country, I ended up calling in my measurements to the bridal shop’s manager. She wrote them down, then said, “Okay. I’m going to order you a size 14.”
I laughed. “Oh no, that can’t be right,” I said. “I’ve never worn anything over a size eight.”
She read my measurements back to me flatly. “Did I get the numbers right?” she asked.
“Yes,”
“Then you’re a size 14.” There was a moment of silence on the phone. “The dresses run small,” she said shortly, as if she dealt with deluded young women like me all the time.
“Okay,” I said feebly and hung up the phone.
Size fourteen, I heard in my mind over and over again. Size fourteen. Size fourteen. Size fourteen.
And don’t get hung up on numbers here. If you’re a size 14, imagine someone telling you that you’d need a size 20 dress. If you’re a size two (you lucky betch), imagine someone telling you that you were actually an eight.
I resolved at that very moment that when I attended the wedding six months later, I’d be the skinniest girl there.
And I was.
By the time I walked ahead of the bride down the aisle, I had starved my way down to a size zero, and that freaking dress was swimming on me. “I kept trying to tell the woman she was wrong about the size,” I remember telling everyone, “but she just wouldn’t listen!”
How did I achieve my stunning, 30-pound weight loss?
I starved myself, of course.
I kept meticulous records of the calories in everything I ate and made every effort to keep my intake under 800 calories a day. I was very proud of myself at the time, but looking back, I was out of control. I had absolutely no energy, for one thing- I was working as a morning news anchor at the time and remember being very happy that I could eat my biggest meal in the morning before my newscast, then go home afterward and spend the rest of my day quietly, reading, writing, watching movies… and starving myself.
Within months, my digestive system was a mess. I had constant stomach aches and going to the bathroom was a nightmare. My skin was sallow. My hair was dull.
And the strangest thing was that every time I got to my “ideal” weight, I’d look at myself in the mirror and realize I still had another five pounds to go. Even at a size zero, I could definitely still see some flab on my belly. And I still had chipmunk cheeks. Five more pounds and maybe I could get rid of those, too.
Catching the flu is what finally put an end to the madness. What should have been an ordinary illness on my frame quickly became a 105 degree fever and hospitalization. It took me more than a month to fully recover, and through all of that I realized that I had become so thin that my body had no reserves when the flu virus struck. I couldn’t fight back. And it scared the hell out of me.
I deliberately put an end to my starvation diet and since then have maintained a healthy weight. I learned from that experience that no matter what we do, most of us will never, ever look in the mirror and be completely, 100% happy, whether we’ve dieted down to a size zero or had plastic surgery or worked out at the gym two hours a day for six months. We will always find wrong with our bodies. Having this knowledge has helped me maintain perspective.
It’s also made me realize just how easy it can be to fall victim to an eating disorder.
When the news came out last week that French model Isabelle Caro had died of anorexia, I wrote a post about it on my style blog, briefly mentioning my own experience and the fact that it had only taken one comment from one person to set me off on a six-month path of personal destruction.
I didn’t expect the post to get much response- It was written on New Year’s Eve, not a high traffic day by any means. But unexpectedly, the floodgates opened. Here are just a few of the comments left:
“It took me getting pregnant and my very blunt doctor telling me that if I kept starving myself it was possible neither of us was going to make it out of my pregnancy. My daughter’s father was abusive, and as soon as I gave birth, I lost all fifty pounds i’d gained carefully under doctor’s supervision- in four weeks. He still said I was fat.”
“I’m normal, not thin, not fat, but in my mind I’m a morbidly obese cow. I hate that it consumes my thoughts. I hate that I think about every bite of food I take. I wish I could just relax, and live, and enjoy my dinner. I can’t, and wonder if I ever will. “
“I will never be “recovered.” Many with an eating disorder continue there lives on a tight-rope… not dying, but not living fully. That is where I am. There are days when I eat like a normal person and days when I slip back to barely eating. Some days I go without breakfast or lunch because my body has lost the ability to tell me when I am hungry. I have to consciously think, “Have I eaten anything today?” Most days, it is a battle. Now I hover between 95 and 100 pounds. I am 5’4″ tall. I struggle. But I will do everything in my power to make sure my daughter does not go the same path I went. While they are few and far between, I look forward to the days when I don’t think about what I am eating… I wish there were more of them. Maybe, someday, there will be.”
“About five years ago my father in law looked me right in the eye and said “wow, you’re fat!” I was about 140 pounds and I’m 5’3″. I was already walking a fine line, thinking I was looking chubby and that one comment was all it took. I’m now 105 and a size 0. I struggle daily with my eating and exercising. Oh, and I’m 50 years old.”
“I got a new coach my sophomore year. We had to have our fat percentage taken…and mine was 22%. And she told me I was too fat. And I started to lose weight soon thereafter. Two years later, the only other senior left on the team who was also the captain came up to me and told me that the coach had words with her about the fact that I was getting too thin. FFS. First too fat, then too skinny. I hated that coach. And I struggled with eating and weight for years after that.”
Most of the comments came from regular readers, women whose comments I’d been reading for months without having any idea of the struggles they’ve had with their weight. It made me want to cry, because I realized that there are so many of us out there who’ve dealt with this at one point or another in our lives. And it’s sick. And it’s wrong. And I don’t really know where it’s coming from.
What I do know is that I don’t want my daughter to grow up with this mentality. I don’t want her to find beauty in a size zero. I want her to strive instead to eat healthy foods and to lead an active life.
But it has to start with me. I can’t convince my daughter that being thin is actually not the key to happiness until I can truly convince myself. And frankly, for all my talk and all my history, I’ve still got some work to do.
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