Transcriber: Khanh Nguyen Reviewer: Annet Johnson
Have you ever felt guilty after eating something?
Have you ever eaten too much food compulsively without being able to stop?
Have you ever lost control over food
or, on the contrary, had complete control over it?
Well, I have a story for you.
I have a very good friend whom I’m very close with.
She’s my age.
She lives in Brussels.
We went to primary school together.
I've basically known her my entire life.
Let's call her Chloe so that we give her an identity and not expose who she is.
Chloe was a very happy girl, very active, hardworking,
and could be quite a perfectionist too sometimes.
She would always give 150 percent on everything she did.
And she was the kind of person who has always willing
to help others with their problems.
But when it came to her, she preferred to keep it to herself
and deal with it on her own.
She was more of a reserved person when it came to personal matters.
I am therefore very thankful that she decided to share her story with me.
And just so you know I have, of course,
her full permission to share her story with all of you.
Summer of 2017, Chloe had just started exercising more
and watching what she was eating, most likely to become more fit.
She saw some results which made her happy,
so she decided to continue like this and everything was going well.
She was feeling great.
In our lifetime, I’m sure that we’ve all tried to diet at least once,
whether it was for a week, a month, several months.
And we all know that having a goal in mind will help motivate us, right?
Well, Chloe took her upcoming medical revision as her short-term goal,
and it is then when things started to go the wrong way.
They weighed her at the medical revision,
and, of course, she had lost some weight but very little.
And she told me, “Hey, I’ve lost two kilos recently.
I’m very happy about that.”
And I replied with, “Okay, good for you.
I’m happy that makes you happy.”
Of course, I didn't know how to or what to reply to that.
Chloe continued being alert of what she ate.
She informed herself and learned about nutrients, ingredients, proportions,
energy, basically everything.
And when she cooked, she would replace meals with healthier equivalent options.
This kept going on for a couple of months.
However, there wasn’t much to worry about yet.
The moment where things started to go south was after the Christmas holidays.
We all know how Christmas can be;
various festivities, many family lunches and dinners where food is, of course,
a very important factor in these gatherings.
Chloe accumulated a huge feeling of guilt after each meal.
At this point, her fear for food was very high,
so she decided to restrict her food intake more severely.
Chloe started to lose weight rapidly.
Once she saw some results, it was very difficult for her to stop.
She was playing a game with her mind and she wasn’t the one winning.
By February 2018, she had lost five kilos.
Most people eat because they need food to survive.
However, Chloe wasn’t really one of those people.
She felt she didn't always deserve to eat and that she had to earn her food.
She later told me, when we were discussing this a couple of weeks ago,
that she loved having an immense feeling of control
over something as important as food.
And I remember that she also told me that when she felt stressed,
knowing in the back of her mind that she was doing a great job with restricting
gave her a very comfortable feeling.
Chloe could be in control of one area of her life and she absolutely loved that.
With time came the effects;
Chloe was feeling tired more often, she couldn’t sleep well,
she felt more stressed, was constantly cold, lost her period,
but, most importantly, she was hungry.
Well, not really hungry because she had learned to ignore that feeling.
In better words, she wasn’t sufficiently nourished.
Chloe also loved basketball and she was quite good at it.
One day she told me that she was afraid of not having enough energy
for the rest of the day, if she continued to waste it on training.
And at that moment, I didn’t understand where she was coming from,
I only realized that something serious was going on.
One afternoon after school,
we were in the changing room getting ready for basketball practice
and I saw Chloe staring at the wall, very focused.
I told her, “Chloe, what are you doing?
Wake up, we have to go to practice.”
And she looked at me very confused, as if she came from somewhere far away.
And at that moment, I don’t know how or why,
but I immediately knew what she was doing;
she was remembering what she had eaten that day and the previous days.
She was using the white wall to visualize and to calculate the amount of food
and the amount of calories left that she could consume that day.
Thinking back on it, I now realize that there were so many obvious moments
that showed how wrong her behavior with food was.
When we went out together to eat, she would ask if she could smell my food,
and I remember thinking to myself, why don’t you simply take a bite out of it?
And, if you like it, have some more.
Or, in class, when teachers and classmates gave out sweets,
she would keep it in her pencil case to eat them later.
One thing that really bothered me is that she wouldn’t eat if it was breakfast,
lunch or dinner time.
By March 2018, she had lost eight kilos, and I could see the tiredness on her face.
When we went out together,
she was often told by parents, family members, even neighbors,
that she had lost so much weight, that she looked skinnier,
that she looked great, much more than before.
And I really wanted them to stop talking,
because I knew that these words would motivate Chloe
to keep on doing what she was doing,
Because in a way, they were complimenting her effort in these past months.
Okay.
So can I please make a quick intervention
to ask you to please not comment on someone’s physical appearance
because you never know what might be behind it.
Comment on something else.
Compliment that person’s hair, eye color or even voice,
but, please, not their body.
Going back to this story.
At some point in March, I decided that I needed to sit down and talk to Chloe.
I felt like a bad friend because I had let her get away with her behavior.
I do regret not telling her parents or teachers or anyone who could help.
I begged her at least to get some help.
However, she was so stubborn about the fact that she would get better
when she felt it was time.
She was very persuasive.
She convinced me that she had everything under control
and that she would stop after reaching a certain weight.
And I now realize how dumb and ignorant I was.
Of course, she would not stop until it was enough.
Someone who tends to be a perfectionist is rarely satisfied.
On top of that, if you struggled with disordered eating habits,
it’s simply never enough.
Then came the turning point.
I remember the day perfectly, April 6th, 2018.
We had gone out with some friends to have lunch
at one of Chloe’s favorite restaurants on Avenue Louise.
She chose a wrap with a side salad.
When she was done, she told me in the ear, “I’m done with this.
I don’t want to do it anymore, I’m too tired of it.”
And I felt so extremely happy to hear that, I felt so much joy.
And because she had taken the initiative herself
and wasn’t forced or told by anyone to do so.
I knew it was true and it was.
Chloe also wanted me to let you know that she is actually ...
me.
I am Chloe.
I am my friend, and I am the one who was dealing with a constant battle
between my mind and my body.
At that specific moment, I knew that I needed to change.
And though I had the full intention to regain healthy eating habits,
overcoming my fear for food was definitely not easy.
I had been restricting throughout so many months
that it was difficult for me to eat normally again.
What even was normal?
I didn’t really have that concept anymore.
The most difficult thing was breaking the habits and habitual thoughts I had.
I couldn’t just go from only eating apples as a snack
to also eating biscuits and nuts.
I couldn’t just ignore the calories a meal had
because I was used to estimating and calculating the amount of those.
I couldn’t just not check the back of the nutrition label
at the back of a food package.
Nonetheless, I kept fighting my adverse thoughts and unhealthy habits.
I had to accept and understand that it is normal to feed oneself
in order to function properly.
As I’ve said before, it was no longer about physical appearance.
It was purely about control at this time.
To get over my restrictive mindset, I had to learn to let go of control,
let go of rules and restrictions that I myself had created,
and stop separating foods into categories by labeling them as good or bad.
It was a process that lasted a few months where two parts of my mind were opposed.
However, with time, the good, healthy, and reasonable part
became stronger and stronger.
Over the months, I saw a change:
my body felt much healthier, my mind was much happier,
and I felt more at peace with myself.
Of course, I still struggle sometimes, but I was slowly reaching my objective.
Then occurred a difficult moment or a rock in the road,
which happened in September that same year.
I went to the doctor for the annual medical revision
and following the typical process of a checkup, they weighed me
and, to my surprise, I weighed even less.
At that point, I had lost 10 kilos.
I didn’t understand how or why,
because I had been eating well over the summer.
And this was somewhat triggering for me because it placed me physically,
not mentally, in the same position as during the beginning of April.
It made me a little bit anxious, because it felt as if all of my hard work
to get into a better mindset could easily be undone.
However, I understood that this is quite normal
when overcoming disordered eating habits.
The process isn’t a simple straight line.
With that in mind, I continued on the right road.
My old way of thinking was gone for good.
A new beginning was what I needed.
A new beginning where I could feel free again
and where my thoughts could finally be about something else than food.
I managed to build a loving relationship with my body.
I listened to it.
I decided when it was hungry and I took care of it.
And the best part is that my mind was always supportive.
So why am I telling you this?
I’m sharing my story because I want to talk about mental health,
disordered eating and eating disorders.
I want to show people the unpleasant effects of how dieting can go wrong.
I want people to be careful.
I want to motivate people when seeking help.
I want to motivate people to seek help if needed, even if it’s a small problem,
before it becomes too big.
It makes me very happy to know that the present generations
are more and more open and vocal about mental health,
more understanding and more willing to help.
It’s a great beginning, however, it’s not enough.
We can do more.
We should hold the media accountable each time it romanticizes eating disorders
or any other mental illness.
We should not fall and be consumed by the diet culture,
where weight loss is glorified and prioritized over mental health,
where weight loss is glorified and prioritized over well-being.
We should understand and accept that all bodies are truly beautiful.
And, most importantly, create a welcoming ambience
where people struggling can speak out without fearing to be judged,
as mental illnesses are not a choice one makes.
It has taken me four years to finally be okay with sharing my story
and to not feel ashamed.
If I had talked to someone sooner, it could have saved me months of struggle.
But I didn’t, I made that mistake,
and with it I’m asking you that if you do struggle with something similar,
to please talk to anyone.
If I, someone who does not like at all to talk about her problems,
am capable of speaking in front of an audience,
then you can make an effort to speak to anyone who can help you get better.
And if you do not struggle with something like this,
you are leaving this room better informed and can now be aware
in case people surrounding you do behave weirdly around food.
I want to finish by saying that, as obvious as it may sound,
you have to know that you will be with yourself your whole life.
You are the only person who will be there with you through good and bad times,
as cliche as it may sound, but it’s true.
So you better learn to be kind to yourself,
you better take care of yourself and you better learn to love yourself.
You better be your best friend.
And while you’re at it,
make sure you always make your head a nice place to be in.
Thank you.