Too hell & back. My battle with an eating disorder.

Well, in the beginning I was that lazy girl who sat on the couch & laid in front of the TV & just ate anything & everything she wanted. I put no limit on myself whatsoever, I ate what I wanted when I wanted & lots of it. I was never active, I would go to the gym with my Husband for a week & then lose interest or I would go to a fitness class & give up half way through because I thought it was too hard. Fitness & being healthy is just not something I cared about. I'm 5'4 & I think at my heaviest I was around 155 which isn't really overweight, but when I look back at pics of myself it wasn't a good look for me.

Then let's fast forward a few years. My marriage was going through a really rough patch, then my Mother passed away & my Grandfather a few months after. I was sad, depressed & had horrible anxiety. I lost my appetite & would go days without eating, some days I would survive on coffee & a piece of candy. So naturally I started losing a lot of weight very quickly. People starting complimenting me & I really started to like how I looked. So to lose even more weight I started doing lots of cardio, hours a day sometimes. At first I looked great, everyone was asking me what my secret was. My secret was that my life was in turmoil & the only thing I could control was my weight so I became obsessed with it. I would weigh myself several times a day. As disgusting as it is I even started taking laxatives daily to speed up my weight loss even more. Now I was getting too thin & the compliments were soon replaced with "Are you ok?" "Are you sick?" "You are too skinny!" Then my body started breaking down as well. I stopped getting my menstrual cycle, I was freezing cold all the time even in 90 degree Florida weather. I had no energy & I would go put my head down on the desk at work & pass out. My friends & family were so worried about me, but I swore I was ok. I think at my lowest weight I was 105. I look back at pictures of myself & I don't even know who that person is. I had loose skin & my face was so sunken in that it made my eyes, lips & nose look huge. I was in trouble.

My friends had an intervention with me & told me how worried they were. They told me not only had my weight changed, but my whole attitude was horrible & I was miserable to be around. They didn't know who I was anymore. Around that same time my Husband & I started to work things out & I had mourned the loss of my loved ones for several months & it was becoming easier to deal with the fact that they weren't here with me anymore. So I started to eat again & slowly I put back on weight. I learned about clean eating. And instead of doing hours of cardio a day, I started lifting heavy weights. At first it was really hard because I was just skin & bones. All my muscle was gone & areas where I used to hold a lot of weight like my butt & thighs literally just felt like a soft marshmallow. I had a lot of work to do to get myself back into a healthy strong state. But month after month I saw improvement & I got better & better.

These days I try to eat clean most of the time, I treat myself often too don't worry! I love to lift weights, the heavier the better! My body has gone through several transformations over the past 2-3 years & it's been a roller coaster physically & emotionally. But I made it through. I actually ate a little too good & I'm a bit heavier than I would like to be right now. But, I'm working on shedding fat & gaining more muscle. I'm about 133, I'd like to stay around 120. But I know when you lose fat & gain muscle you can't always count on a scale to measure progress. So I'll just say I'm working on leaning out & lowering my body fat.

That's my story, I hope that if anyone has been where I have that it helped in some way. You can get through it & overcome anything