Two Months Ago… and Why Another Round of Whole30

Two months ago I was headed back to Raleigh from Christmas break excited to see the awesome guy I was dating. Well I was tested to my core that day. I still remember reading the word on my phone… “I can’t do this anymore…”  Seriously this amazing guy just ended it with me via text??!!!  Not only is that just completely unacceptable it was 100% not the person I knew. Regardless of how it happened, I was at a crossroads. I immediately did what I always did when I got news that knocked me off my feet. I sank down right where I was in my house sat on the floor and burst into tears.    Then it started… I started to feel it in the pit of my stomach… that’s when I knew I had a choice to make was I going to be strong or was I going to let my inner demons win? Two months ago I had a choice. I went to the bathroom sat, in the floor, removed my Meredith ring and stared down into that toilet bowl like I have so many times before. But something was different. I thought to myself “not this time!!” I hadn’t come as far as I had to let someone or some single event in my life to take me back to that point. I had not worked as hard as I have the past few years to let this one experience to take be back to that dark place. I am not that scared little girl anymore that defined herself by a relationship or a guy. I am a strong woman that knows herself, her support network what she needs. Two months ago I had a choice and I chose to be strong. So I scooped myself up, wiped away the mascara, put my Meredith ring back on prouder than ever and called my “person” and dealt with my shit! 
In the days and weeks to follow I went to the gym when I got pissed off, stressed or sad.  I probably cried on the treadmill, elliptical, in the bathroom or with my trainer 10 times over the next two week, but I was okay with that. I was allowing myself to feel instead of controlling everything in front of the toilet. I didn’t look at food as a way to feel and process my emotions.   Instead I turned to Whole30, to remind myself of what food can do for my body and slowly began to feel amazing again!! 
Fast forward a month… I was in my LAST 24 hours of Whole30. I made it! I survived a break up, New Years and another round of Whole30 and was feeling stronger than ever. Then BAM– I get a call from home. It’s my nephew and all he delivers some scary news from home! Someone I love dearly was in the emergency room and they were not entirely sure what was going on. I was driving at the time and my stomach sank down. I couldn’t fall in the floor or burst into tears this time. I had to stay strong for Wilson who was scared on the other end of the phone. I immediately turned around went home walked into my house and into the bathroom. This time I didn’t even allow myself to sit on the floor or remove my ring. I took one look at that toilet and said “What the fuck Kathryn… you are not that person anymore.” I got myself together, packed a bag and went home. And I damn well finished my last 24 hours on Whole30!! Thank you Melissa Hartwig for creating Whole30. It has 100% changed my relationship with food, made me stronger and helped me learn how to cope with stress.  
So why another round so fast? Well I can’t share the reason just yet, but I know change is coming and it is going to rock my world. I want to make sure I am the best version of myself, strong, energize and full of tiger blood! I feel so much better when I am on Whole30 and shortly after I need that strength come the end of the month. So here goes another round…. and biggest non scale victory yet… NO STARTING WEIGHT or measurements! This time it isn’t about numbers at all!  It’s about what my body can do and my inner strength!! 
** In regards to people that are reading this and know me and my family. Everyone is doing well. They are still running a lot of test and trying to figure out exactly what is going on and what is wrong but as a family we are all strong and working through this all together.   

Dating and Whole30

Alright single ladies I am curious how you handle dating while on Whole30 or even just living a Whole30 lifestyle. I have never done a round of Whole30 and dated. I didn’t plan to do that in January. I thought I was going to have a partner by my side that already knew all my weird shit and I could just cruise through my 30 days. Well insert plot twist– that didn’t happen. I know myself well enough that I needed to just get back out there but wasn’t willing to postpone Whole30. So Whole30 dating it is! Dating is hard enough but throwing something like Whole30 into the mix really made things interesting.  

Let’s be honest for a minute, Whole30 is weird! Sorry Melissa Hartwig, I love your program and will probably follow it for the rest of my life, but it is weird to people that don’t understand it. I have a hard enough time explaining it to people that know me. Most of the time I get blank stares or “why on earth would you give up cheese and alcohol?” But having this conversation with someone that you are just meeting and doesn’t know your story it is just downright bizarre. Half the time I felt like they looked at me like I was an alien with two heads. Either that or they thought I was in a cult.   
Passing on chips and salsa at the Mexican restaurant blew one dudes mind! Other dates, drinks and listening to music– I was a real cheep date for that dude. Lunch– “I’ll have a salad with grilled chicken and no dressing please. Oh and can you hold the cheese and croutons too, thanks.” Italian restaurant (in hindsight I should have made another suggestion) but– I got the grilled chicken and sub the pasta for veggies and passed on bread. Then one dude suggested going for a walk. Well I though this was weird, but was like “hell yeah I don’t have to tell him anything about Whole30 works for me.” Well damned if he didn’t suggest drinks after our walk ended (that lasted all of eleven minutes).  
Honestly I wasn’t expecting a love connection so I really didn’t care what these gentlemen thought about me. It made for a good experiment and some pretty good stories. I tried my hardest to explain that Whole30 isn’t a diet but I am just not sure I ever got that point across. No one can fully understand tiger blood unless you have lived it… I get it, I accept it.  
But moving forward how does one handle this? Do you just eat like a weirdo… “yes I would like the cheeseburger, hold the cheese and the bun and can I get some guacamole on that? Oh and instead of fries can I will have a side salad with just oil and vinegar if you have it and if not I will pass on the dressing all together. And to drink I would like a sparking water with lime please, thank you.”  

Or do you try and explain it to a date and hope that they understand? I guess in the long run the right person isn’t going to care if you order like a freak, don’t eat cheese or pass on the drinks from time to time… so maybe I should just look at this as a lesson in self confidence building and continue to rack up the amazing stories!   

My Eating Disorder

Gosh– it is really hard to say when my eating disorder started and why it started. I think the biggest reason it is so hard to know when it started is because I think for so long I didn’t even consider myself as having an eating disorder. How could I? I was never the smallest of my friends, I never wore below an 8, I always have had hips and a butt, I can’t remember a time I weighed less than 150lbs and I never had enough “self control” to stick with it long enough for it to really make me skinny! I have so many reasons why what I had wasn’t an eating disorder.   
I remember being in 6th grade and having to weigh ourselves and take height measurements. I remember so many girls being concerned about what they weighed and being guarding that number. I remember my guy friends asking us all and I happily shared my weight and height. Why not! It seemed so silly– it is just a number. I clearly remember 8th grade doing the same thing. I know I stated sixth grade at 4’11” and wearing clothes from the juniors dept. By 8th grade I was 5’8″ and wearing a women’s 10. I clearly remember being so ashamed of that number on the scale. It was no longer just a number that I could speak freely about. It was a number that defined me. It was a number that caused me to think less of myself. It was a number that represented every negative thought I had.  

I continued through high school as the shy cheerleader who always wanted a longer skirt to hide herself. I strived to be as thin as others. I longed for the days of my chicken legs and prayed to not have hips and would have given anything to have a chest bigger than the A cup that I had.   

I never did anything other than workout with cheerleading and occasionally workout alone. I never once thought of not eating, taking diet pills or throwing up. I knew this was wrong and never would I do that. I had a dear friend at the time struggle with an eating disorder and I watched her. Not a single part of me could comprehend how someone could do that to themselves. I didn’t like what I looked like and I had zero self confidence but never me!   

Enter freshman year second semester extreme depression. My self hatred had reached a new low. I was extremely unhappy, drank constantly, began taking diet pills to help me lose some of the beer weight which didn’t work. Sometime during this timeframe something changed in me. I gave up on myself and threw up my food for the first time. I have no concept of when it was, what caused it or why I did it. All I know is how it made me feel. In my crazy depressed state I felt like for the first time in a long time I had control over something in my life. I felt amazing after, but this was followed by extreme guilt! The high in the moment that I took control of my life and made the decision to stick my fingers down my throat and watch everything come up gave me a feeling that I can’t explain. But the immediate low right after of sitting there with tears coming down my cheeks, food all over my fingers and hands and staring into a toilet bowl of my half digested lunch was a new low I hadn’t experienced.   

This trend continued throughout the semester. It wasn’t every day or even every week I don’t think but more in phases. I learned what foods to eat and throw up. What hurt and what was easy. TMI- I know, but that’s where I was. I no longer thought about food that tasted good. I thought about my food in terms of how it would feel coming back up. 

This continued on and for the duration of my college experience. Sometimes for months at a time then other times I wouldn’t have a single episode in what seemed like forever. I was treated during this time for depression but never once did I admit to anyone what I was doing. Control continued to drive the majority of the spontaneous binges while the continuous months in a row were brought on by the hopes that this would allow me to lose weight and finally be skinny.    

I think the biggest I was in college was a size 12-14 and the smallest was a size 6-8. I still hated my body. I had hips, I had a butt and no chest. Why couldn’t I just be a stick like the rest of my friends? I still do not think I classified myself as having an eating disorder. I never stuck with it for longer than 4-5 months at a time and I never ever got to the place that other people expressed concern. If i wasn’t super skinny then it wasn’t an eating disorder right? 

After college not much changed I still phased in and out of good and bad times. The only thing that did change was my lifestyle and metabolism. I gradually began gaining weight. I had a series of bad relationships and I found comfort in the control that I gained from purging after fighting or purging when I felt like I was unloveable. It is amazing how self hatred in the form of purging could make a person feel better from the self hatred and dysfunctional relationship but it did just that for me. During this time my purging became just as much if not more about having control over myself than it was about weight loss.   

Then the turning point! I was finally in a better spot. I didn’t feel the need to control every little thing. I met a guy that I thought was a good one. I was happy and didn’t need the control anymore. I let a guy define my happiness and place in life which was a huge mistake. Because when this one crashed and burned it went down with a bigger blaze of fire than any other relationship. It tested me to my core and back and changed the corse of my life. I shut down after.  

I turned myself off. I gave up. I unconsciously decided that I was unloveable and what better way to ensure that this was true but to completely destroy my body. I no longer sought control in the form of throwing up but now I just kept it all down. I ate when I was happy. I ate when I was sad. I ate when I was mad, when I was stressed and depressed. Any feeling I had I ate it and I ate a shit ton of it all! I want to stress this was not a conscious decision. It wasn’t until years later that I even connected the two.  

I shifted my eating disorder (although I still hadn’t admitted to myself that I had one) to a new and just as destructive one. I gained over 100 lbs! I finally got that chest I wanted but I also got a giant ass, thunder thighs, arms that should have never seen daylight and a gut that I still can’t get rid of.   

I did this to myself without even realizing it! There were occasional times when I still felt like throwing up but they were so few and far between I knew I had finally done it. I had shaken my nonexistent eating disorder. I cured myself (of something I never had) without help. I succeeded! I did it on my own!  

I don’t know why or how but Something clicked in my brain sometime at the end of 2013. I woke up one morning and thought I am done with this… enough is enough! I think for the first time I actually recognized that I had a problem. What I had was an eating disorder that morphed into another eating disorder. Just because it wasn’t defined by societies version of an eating disorder it was mine. I owned it. I accepted it and I finally was ready to do something about it.  

Over the corse if the next three years I decided to fix me for me. I decided that yes I wanted to lose weight but more than anything I wanted to be healthy and let go of the demons that I had been fighting my whole adult life. I wanted to love me for me. I wanted confidence. I wanted muscle. I wanted to be strong and and be a fighter and shine like I knew that i could. I fought like hell. I found people in my life to help me along the way. I struggled and cried and celebrated and cried some more. I found out exercise can be fun and the best stress release there was for me. I discovered Whole30 and learned to look at food in a whole new way. And I began to have confidence and like who I was becoming.  

It took a really long, but I finally reached a point in May of 2016 that I could look in the mirror and say to myself with confidence that I liked the woman looking back at me. This was HUGE success. But it also came with a giant weight on my shoulders. Since I reached that place in May I have struggled with not sharing my story. Finally liking the woman I am and not being honest about how I got there began to eat away at me. I felt like I was being dishonest and the eating disorder was still defining me in a sense. My eating disorder is a part of who I am. It doesn’t define me and I am sick of letting it! So I share this not for sympathy, not for a reaction, not for attention but because without sharing it I am still hiding… And my eating disorder still has control over me. When I push post on this blog… I finally will tell the world (my family included, because I have never shared this with them) that I am strong and confident and flawed all at the same time. I still struggle, sometimes daily, with urges and control issues but luckily through the help of an amazing trainer I have learned to trust again. And with the help of a recently added therapist I am tackling the deep rooted control issues. And oddly enough during my first meeting with my therapist in January as I was telling her my story I still had to ask her, so is this an eating disorder or not? Well I officially got my diagnosis… yes Kathryn, your eating history is quite disordered!