My struggle with food and bulimia

First, I just want to say that this long winded post is not intended to inspire or motivate anybody. I know there are so many who have been through worse and still be a lot less dramatic than me. I guess I’m just writing for selfish reasons, since I never really tell my full story to anyone before. Sorry for the length, and if you feel the need to talk like me, I would love to hear your stories too!

I have always been a chubby kid, and in Vietnam, that kind of appearance brings immense judgment. I love my mom dearly, but her perception of fat and fitness is very twisted. She often makes "innocent" remarks about how I look, and sometimes I can still catch her eyes looking at my body disapprovingly.

Not long ago, I was very fortunate to be rewarded with a scholarship for a top high school in America. Being away from home, I went through quite a shock at this brand new environment: almost everybody in my school is white and ridiculously rich, all of the girls are size 0 with perfectly toned skins, and all of the guys have 6-pack abs. And here I was, a nerdy Asian girl who still wore thick glasses, preferred shorts to skirts, and had no idea how to use make-up.

I guess it wasn't until then that I became a true teenager. I thought I was immune to all of those "mundane" worries, but it turned out there was no exception to the insecure life of a teenage girl: juggling between study and social life, trying desparately to be accepted, developing crushes, getting heartbreaks, being bullied.

And so, without my family as an escape route, I turn to food for comfort. To us Vietnamese, comfort foods mean healthy produce being consumed in a morbidly enormous amount. In America, comfort foods are cupcakes and cinnabuns and deep-fried chickens and pizzas. My gosh, I'm quite convinced these stuffs, these fats and sugars, are like cocaine: addictive and destructive.

That summer I went back to Vietnam searching for some serenity after an emotionally exhaustive year. The first thing my mom said when she saw me at the airport after 9 long months was, "Wow, you gained a LOT of weight!" At with that, my supposedly relaxing summer went straight out of the window, and I engaged in a crazy diet/exercise routine. I tried all sorts of weight loss products on the market, and I worked out twice a day. I did lose a lot of weight, but when the summer ended, and having deprived my body of proper nutrition for 2 consecutive months, I remembered binge eating for 5 days in a row and undid all of my “efforts” in LESS. THAN. A. WEEK.

Afterwards, my life is consumed by a cycle of dieting and binge eating. I ate only salad for a month, then binging, switched to Atkins for another month, then binging. Another ****ty diet program. Another episode of binging. Loss and gain. Loss and gain. The vicious wheel finally came to an imminent point where I developed bulimia. One bout of purging became two, three, four... Once a month... Twice a month... Once every week... Twice every week…

But as cheesy as this sounds, life does have such a funny way of sneaking up on you. Ironically enough, my recovery journey began with the cooking shows I watched to quench my hunger at night. I developed this sort of fascination with ingredients and how they blend together. I am captivated by Gordon Ramsay, and love or hate the man, you have to admit he is a virtuoso when it comes to food. I started cooking things for my friends, first a few simple pasta dishes, then risotto, homemade pizzas, burgers, and deserts. I never dared to eat the stuff I made at first, and sometimes I even threw up because I was paranoid of all the tasting I did while cooking. But the more I cook, the more I start to fall in love with food. Purging became less and less frequent.

And so finally, one day, I stared at myself in the mirror after another painful episode of purging. My eyes were red with tears, my body just couldn't stop shaking, and I decided that this needs to stop. All of this needs to stop. I found myself at the gym that afternoon, not working out to the point of collapsing, not working out to "kill" all the foods I ate. I only spent 20 minutes on a stationary bike, and that night was the first peaceful sleep I had in a year.

Because Ramsay runs and because I start associating him with my recovery, I tried taking up running as well. I could barely jog at a 5-mile-per-hour pace at first, and I would hang on to the treadmill's handle for dear life. Sometimes I heard the boys making fun of how I "ran," but I couldn't care less. I was already switching one addiction for another, from sugar to endorphins (it's a metaphor. I know you can get endorphins from eating too, haha).

It's funny how I get all of my health inspiration from these foodies, but my new "diet" philosophy actually comes from Joe Bastianich. Most people who watch Masterchef often think he’s not exactly a pleasant guy, but regardless, for me, like Ramsay, he manages to find the perfect balance between enjoying life and staying healthy. Bastianich lost 60 lbs (and along with it sleep apnea, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes) by running regularly and eating in moderation. Screw the low-carbs and screw the all-fruits-and-vegetables diet, Bastianich still enjoys pasta and wine every day. The point is to reach that perfect BALANCE. Same with Ramsay; he used to be an overweight chef, but now he is in enough shape to compete in the next Ironman triathlon (Bastianich already had one under his belt). I keep telling myself that these are the people who practically EAT for a living, and if they can stay healthy, then I have no excuse to be the way I was.

So now, for the very first time in my life, I can honestly say I feel great. I have not had any relapse ever since, and food becomes the fuel for my athletic ambition since I run 7-10 miles everyday (I don’t need the treadmill anymore, yay!). I haven’t jumped on the scale for such a long time, nor do I give any care for what my mom, or anybody, has to say about my body. I eat nutritional food most of the time and indulge myself in craps once in a while (Occasional indulgences are wonderful to keep the binging at bay because they strip away your cravings).

I don’t think one can ever fully recovered from an eating disorder. The “voice” is still there, haunting me sometimes (especially during the long bout of bloating I have developed in the past few weeks). It still tells me to starve myself to make the bloat look less horrible, and it still reminds me of how easy it was to just binge and erase all of that guilt with a simple purge. But then I remember how great it feels to run with a fully functioned body, how wonderful it all seems when I and my sister share a dish I made, and how this life is so much better than the last. And slowly, the voice fades away.