Don Quixote

19

I had always been overweight.

I think momentarily when I was 4 I was average, but all the doctor appointments before and after that said differently.

I remember being in the room while the doctor talked to my mother about a healthy diet for a child my age and that I need to get regular exercise and eat more vegetables.

It definitely was no an exercise problem. I was a very active child.

My parents had always been very supportive in things I wanted to do. I wanted to do gymnastics? Okay. I want to quit gymnastics and do dance? Okay. I want to quit dance and do soccer? Okay. Ect ect.

And if I was not doing one of the many activities I had been involved in, I was playing outside in the cul-de-sac I lived on.

Food and genetics were the biggest issues.

I wouldn't say I ate too unhealthy. I ate my vegetables and protein and healthy fats and all of that, however I had a friend named Hee-Jin who's house I went to after school while my parents were at work. We ate snacks and ice cream and lunchables. Maybe that was the problem.

Or maybe it had something to do with my family. I'd say roughly 80% of my entire family on both sides are overweight or obese. More so on my dads side (I was around them more anyway). I assume they had installed some unhealthy genetics and eating habits into their children and passed it down through generations. Could be a slower metabolism as well.

I wouldn't say I was surprised to find out I was also overweight. I actually tried to take control of the steering wheel of it pretty quickly after I realized.

My first diet I had ever been on, I was 10 years old. I would skip breakfast (which was not unusual for me), but I would also skip lunch and eat whatever my parents had made for dinner.

If you think about it, the average dinner has about  600 calories, which is 1300 less than I should have been eating at that age.

I like to call it the early sign.

I even informed my parents about it, and instead of acting concerned and noticing everything wrong with the fact that their 10 year old daughter was starving herself and needed help, they told me "wow, good job!"

Of course it didn't last long, I hadn't had the slightest self discipline at that age. 3 days I'd say.

However when I was 11 I did the same thing.

And when I was 12.

When I was 13 I realized that it wasn't working for me to skip 2 out of 3 meals so instead I ate no breakfast, an apple for lunch, and a lower calorie dinner. It worked for longer than the previous plan had, but not quite consistent either.

When I started 8th grade (13-14 years old), I tried a healthy diet. I ate 1000 calories a day, and slowly began losing weight.

Seoyeon had broken up with me shortly after. Something I noticed was after the breakup I had slowly started decreasing my calories.

Instead of 1000 I tried 900. I thought "if I'm eating 900, why not 800?" So I ate 800.

So on and so forth the number got lower and lower until I was eating 200-400 calories a day.

I began losing weight rapidly. 4 pounds a week maybe. However it was no consistent weight loss because it is very hard to maintain a diet like that for a very long time. Sometimes your body just needs more food that day and if your starving, you need even more.

The cycle was pretty simple and regular. Starve a couple days, have a really bad cheat day, starve a couple more, have another really terrible cheat day.

As time went on my body had gotten weaker and weaker. I would feel lightheaded and got sick more often. My immune system had decreased by a lot and I was constantly home sick from school which lead to truancy.

That year I had missed about 170 hours of school. I was surprised to have passed the 8th grade. Even missing that much school though I had still maintained pretty good grades, my lowest being a C in math.

I would pass out in school which was very embarrassing. Having to have a teacher hold on to you as you get walked down to the nurse while your basically collapsing in their arms in next level embarrassment. I had been taken to the ER for it and they ran a bunch of tests on my heart for nothing abnormal to come back. My normal pediatrician had tested me for a bunch of things too like anemia and mono and deficiencies. Nothing but a simple vitamin D deficiency.

Not eating enough had made the dance classes I took very difficult. Drowning my stomach in water to keep me hydrated and less likely to pass out. A lot of the time I'd skip because my body just wasn't feeling up to it.

Going back to the topic of attendance, another reason for my constant truancy was low self esteem. I felt horrible about myself and the way I looked.

Something about eating disorders is no matter how skinny you get you'll always feel fat.

Id cry to my mother about how fat and ugly i was while getting dressed for school. She'd yell at me because if I started crying I was not going. It was distressing for the both of us so eventually she'd stop fighting me about it and let me stay home.

She backhanded me once because I had started crying. She said she tried to "slap me out of it" which did not work by the way. It only made me even more upset.

Believe it or not I had still gone to school that day. I went in a couple hours late though. I had taken a nap next to my mother on the floor of her office and she woke me up around the time I'd go to lunch at school and I got dressed and went in.

In the end I had lost 30 pounds by the end of 8th grade, losing even more afterwards.