My weight gain & loss journey

I’m going to tell you a part of my story that I rarely ever talk about… 

For my entire young teens and 20s I spent so much of my vital energy trying to be smaller in every way. More demure, more slender, more waif-like. Everything about me felt like it was too much. When I was 21 I decided I wanted to pursue modeling and acting so I began to restrict food more than I ever had before.

I was miserable, I was obsessed with it. It was all I thought about. What kind of food I was eating and whether or not I could/should be eating it. Food was “good” or it was “bad” and I was either “good” or “bad” in my eating.

One day I snapped. I binged... hard. And I didn’t stop. The binge period lasted for a year at least (it's a blur) and the recovery period was wayyy longer. My naturally 135-145 lb-ish frame was up to around 180-190. I think I reached 200 but I honestly can’t tell you for sure because I stopped weighing myself at that point. It was like a bad dream. Drifting through a dark fog of compulsion and misery. I was withdrawn, despairing and deeply depressed. And no I don’t have pics to prove it.

I was admitted to an eating disorder outpatient clinic to try to deal with my food behaviors, but I didn’t really fit in. These girls were primarily restricting and purging after binging. I didn’t binge and purge, I just binged.

I couldn't restrict for sh*t because I think deep down, my soul I rejected it. I was rebelling against the notion that I had to be different, “thinner/better” to be loved. Because the feminine, wants to be loved for exactly what she IS right now. Not what she COULD be, or SHOULD be. For what she IS.

And it also struck me - “why the f*ck is it only girls in here? What’s happening to us?”

I know that this binge period stemmed from a few things:

1: listening to the women in my family talk about bodies and weight in a harmful and self-judgmental way my whole life.

2: feeling fundamentally unsafe after leaving an abusive relationship, and like I needed to cushion myself from ever being hurt again.

3: restricting myself so much early on that my body and mind were pushed into survival and stress and trying their best to recalibrate from me trying to diet myself down under the weight my body is designed to be.

4: I completely lost touch with what my hunger and fullness cues even felt like, and I didn’t trust myself around food at all.

Eventually I found myself in a relationship and I was so full of butterflies I didn’t even need food. I dropped the weight, like literally all of the excess - poof.

Then he dumped me. And I started to eat again, to numb out. The weight came back, not all, but a lot.

I got into another relationship. He also dumped me. This time through email… and the cycle repeated…

I realized that when I was “in love” with someone or something, I didn’t think about food. I felt nourished and fulfilled and excited and flying high. But it didn’t fundamentally do ANYTHING to heal my relationship to food or my body. I was completely ruled by external forces and still deeply self-critical. It’s fragile.

I had enough. I didn’t want to live like this. I had hit my breaking point. And through this whole entire period, I had become a scholar on women and food issues.

I started to devour every resource and dig deep into why women attack, blame, and fixate on our bodies as “the problem” - to learn theories on why our bodies are the main source of our strife.

I broke the illusion that my weight had anything to do with my innate value or lovability or would give me my “dream life” - and challenged the idea that I was more worthy when I was thin.

I realized that in trying to be smaller and restrict food I would literally just become obsessed with it and go into a tailspin.

It was my relationship to MYSELF (and by extension: my relationship to food and pleasure and properly caring and nourishing myself) that needed work.

And the secret to change is LOVING yourself where you are RIGHT NOW. Being open for change, but also not needing it (I know it feels like a trick right? It kind of is)...

AND: IT'S NOT RESTRICTION, DEPRIVATION, CONTROL, HIIT CLASSES, OR FADS THAT CHANGE YOUR BODY… IT’S SELF LOVE, IT’S PLEASURE, IT’S EMBODIMENT, IT’S TREATING YOURSELF LIKE AN ABSOLUTE QUEEN IN THE BODY YOU HAVE RIGHT NOW that ALLOWS CHANGE TO HAPPEN.

This is a DAILY, minute by minute redirect. I’m not as thin as maybe my body could be or even wants to be, but I know what I need to keep myself balanced, and it's not food restriction, or telling myself I need to be different... That will backfire in two f*cking seconds.

And sometimes you will eat your feelings, you will feel compulsive, you will eat for comfort and that's ALSO okay. If you cut the shame out of it, it will feel rare, and you’ll continue to move into balance and harmony naturally. The shame is what makes us overeat and repeat. So start there.

Food for thought 

Love, Krista