Being Hungry

My daughter was talking with me about crazy diet trends and photoshopping and I wanted to share this story, but since I'm trying not to unnecessarily traumatize her I remembered that I have this handy blog to share the story and she can be traumatized later. 

One of my therapists was working with me on my middle school years and when she asked what my memories were of the time I just thought, "hungry."

I was on a strict diet from the time I was 10 until I was 15. I was eating 1,000 calories a day and I was always hungry.

To say that this left me with a poor body image is laughable. When your mom starts telling you how fat you are when you're 9 and puts you on a strict diet when you're 10 you develop body issues. To this day this is one of the aspects of my tragic childhood that is the hardest to let go of. I still have no real idea what I look like to other people and the fact that I had an undiagnosed adrenal gland disease for 10 years that caused me to gain weight regardless of what I ate has really left me reeling in the body love department.

I think that one of my greatest accomplishments as a mother is that my daughter has a positive body image, unfortunately my son has a mediocre body image, which makes me sad.

Anyway, as I will mention so many, many times, my mom was a child star. She acted in lots of big movies and wasn't a big name child actor, but enough of a star to have the trauma. Her mom told her she was fat her whole life and she decided to share the dysfunction with me.

I was told I was fat and would have to count calories and watch what I ate. This was a common theme for so many years and based on the "fat is bad" insanity of the 70s-80s that damage was done to both my body as well as my self image.

I was constantly put on a scale and no matter what I weighed I was told I was "fat." The really weird part of it is that my sister was considered the "pretty one" while I was the "smart one" but I was looking through childhood photos with my sister a moth ago and we looked the same.

I mean actually honest to god, the same. There were photos where we weren't sure which one was which. So I spent much of my childhood being told I was a fat pig and I looked exactly like my pretty sister. What the hell, right?!

My sister is just as smart as I am, but our mom needed something else to separate us, so why not make the younger kid feel stupid while she made the older kid feel fat.

So now I'm an adult who's been through so much therapy and ditched the crappy mom, but I'm still working on the body love. It's my self project for the next few years until I start to feel the love. My body has brought me two beautiful children and a lot of strength, but it will take work.