Come a Little Closer

Hey you, yes you. I see you. Come here, lean in closer.. nope a little closer. There you go. I have a secret to tell you…

I have body dysmorphia.

I hate sounding like a fucking victim. If you know me, I am anything but a victim. I can’t stand my body.

I’ve yet to meet a girl who’s 100% satisfied with the way she looks. It’d be fine if I were just one of those girls who complains about it and then writes it off.

“Ugh, I’m SO fat,” while taking a swig from a beer bottle and scarfing down cookies.

But I’m not that girl.

Everyday my body haunts me; I let my body control my life. I see the beer and cookies and instantly want to go into fetal position. My figure has this strange, mystical power over my soul.

Body dysmorphia is a mental disorder. It can mean different things to different people, and I could supply you with the textbook definition, but it means more to me than just being unhappy with the way I look.

It’s about feeling like a stranger in my own body. I don’t see in me what other people see when they look at me. 

Sometimes, I look down at my toes, hoping a bird’s-eye view will give me a better sense of how I fit into my clothes, how big I am in relation to other people, how much space I take up on your average crowded train. That doesn’t help my cause.

Sitting in the library as I write this stupid paper, I’ve put off for literally weeks, I’m taking turns staring at the laptop screen and looking down at my legs. Those fucking legs. Thinking about the way I look hardly leaves room to think about anything else.

Despite spending nearly every minute of my day ruminating on what I used to look like, or what I want to look like, I have no idea what the hell I actually look like.

I know in the back of my mind I’m not fat. I’m healthy, sure I have a few extra pounds on where I shouldn’t but nobody would ever look at me coming down the street and say “she’s fat!”. 

The mirror is my worst enemy. Sometimes I’ll stand in front of it and scrutinize every little ounce of fat on my body. My reflection in the morning determines whether I’ll get to go out that night. Other times, I’ll go weeks without even looking in a mirror because I’m too ashamed of what I see.

There’s no winning. It’s either a staring contest with myself, or it’s an aversion to facing myself altogether.

When I look in a mirror, I don’t see a whole body. I see only parts — specifically, all the far-from-perfect parts. And those parts aren’t just parts. They’re defects. They’re everything that’s wrong about me, and they minimize everything that’s right about me. My contagious, bubbly personality, my ambition? None of that matters.

My body is flawed, so I am flawed. My entire self-worth revolves around what I look like. I know how sad that is.

Sometimes, I stay cooped up in my apartment an entire weekend, punishing myself for not looking the way I want to look. In fact, this very weekend, I’ve convinced myself I can’t “afford” to go out and gain any more weight.

I’ve lost a ton of people in my life from blowing off plans one too many times. They think I’m self-absorbed — and they aren’t wrong — but I’m also deathly afraid and wildly insecure. This stupid sickness has me strung by the heels and hanging upside down.

I turn down social invitations because I’m afraid of the food, the alcohol, the judge-y, up-and-down looks I imagine coming from everyone in the room.

Anxiety paralyzes me into sitting in my room by myself for days.

I know my friends and family will always love me. But living with body dysmorphia keeps me from letting people in. God forbid someone I like spends one day too long with me and realizes how fucked up I am about food, my body, the way I feel about myself.

One time, my ex called asking me to dinner. I said no. I’d finished my allotted calories for the day by 6 pm, leaving me with two options: I could go to dinner and make up some excuse not to eat, like having the stomach flu, or I could just stay home. Staying home was just easier.

Going to dinner and actually eating dinner wasn’t an option. He didn’t understand, and he never would, even though he was the one who made this demon return.

I hate this world I’ve created for myself. I want to break free. Frustration over it consumes me. Time spent dwelling over my self-imposed problems is time wasted. There are so many more important things happening in the world outside my body.

That Time You Broke Me

It was one of those cold rainy nights we sometimes get in September, the ones that are perfect for cuddling, you know the type of night I’m talking about. M and I were tucked away under the bedsheets. I was in heaven.

What M was about to say wouldn’t only forever change the way I felt about being in bed with him but It would forever change the way I feel about myself.

“Hmmm, interesting” he said, caressing the backs of my calves with his big, strong hands. “What do you mean?” I said, wide-eyed as a little girl on Christmas, bracing myself for his hand to make its way up to my lady parts.

“This.” He slapped my thighs, then gripped them so hard I screamed. “You could definitely tighten these up a bit.”

My body went from generating heat to growing completely cold. I was flushed.

“I think they’re fine,” I said, sinking deeper and deeper into the covers.

“You’re so close,” he continued. The man wouldn’t stop incriminating himself. “You’re nearly there. You just need to spend more time in the gym… let me help you transform your body.”

In an attempt to not succumb to my vulnerability — and instead fight back with wit — I grabbed at the thin layer of flesh on his thigh, hoping to make a look-you-have-fat-too!-point. But the truth was, he hardly had any fat on his leg, so I just looked stupid.

Hearing put-downs from the man who was supposed to love wasn’t exactly how I envisioned that particular night going. Had I missed something? Why did I need to be “transformed?” 

Dating M was great when it was good. But when it was bad, it was awful! As with anything in life, there are pros and cons to dating a guy who spends day and night in the gym. Good sex in the bedroom, beautiful man candy on your arm and having a boyfriend who’s skilled in manual labor are just some of the pros. He’d assemble pieces of furniture for me, so I’d overlook his general douchebaggery.

But the cons were some of the biggest points of contention in our relationship. He had this insatiable affinity for the gym — both for feeling his best, but also for looking his best — while I was never too crazy about it after I quit swimming. He was obsessed with maintaining his “perfect” body.

He’d often send me “inspirational” photos, like ones of fitness model and whom I would never look like because frankly I enjoy pizza and popcorn way too much. 

He once told me I was the laziest, flabbiest, most undetermined human on the planet, and I’d nod in acquiescence, like a bobblehead doll incapable of independent thinking. Except I wasn’t, I’ve run marathons, I’m a former swimmer but he had me so diluted that I thought so low of myself. 

I’ve never been uber confident about my body like any girl who’s ever existed, I have insecurities. One day in the life of Tiara could mean feeling fantabulous in a tight white dress, but another day could mean a refusal to leave my apartment because the pair of jeans I’m wearing make me feel too fat to be seen by the world. I’ve always had body dysmorphia but M made this escalate. I once was able to look at pictures of myself and not tear myself apart but when I look at it now, I see the six-pack I don’t have. I see a nonexistent thigh gap. And I don’t see the sculpted-to-a-T arms I worship on Women’s Health magazine covers. I see tree-trunk thighs.

At the time we were dating, I didn’t take his remarks to be demeaning. I took them as constructive criticism. I wanted them to uplift me, make me want to strive to be better, not just when it came to looks, but also when it came to other facets of life. I figured that maybe, if I had a gym regimen to stick to, I wouldn’t be haphazard in things of great significance, like starting work projects and balancing my friendships.

Bettering myself meant going to the gym. And so I went, creating a sort of obsession of my own out of it. I wasn’t going to feel good or look good for myself; I was going to look good for him. 

In order to build muscle, though, I needed to lose fat. So in conjunction with working out, I started eating less and less, that is never a good rollercoaster for anyone to get on. 

My arms got skinnier, my tree-trunk thighs got smaller, and I lost 40 pounds.

M’s unwillingness to take me as I was — the jiggly butt, thick-thighed, trim-but-not-toned me — broke me.

There’s something about a man telling you you aren’t good enough that sticks with you long after the man is gone (as if there weren’t enough pressure on women, from women, to look a certain way). Being with him roused something in me, something I wish had stayed sound asleep: my insecurities. It confirmed that those trivial imperfections on my body weren’t trivial at all. They were worth changing. He made me feel like I wasn’t good enough, and that I’d never be good enough. I still don’t feel like I’m good enough.

For a long time after M and I broke up I felt different I felt separate from my body and it turned me into sort of a recluse. I struggle with trusting men, and I struggle with accepting I can’t fight the natural development of my figure. I’m still trying to get back on track.

These days, I “take care” of myself (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean) as best I can. I eat healthily. I run on the regular and I’ve move forward from my verbally destructive relationship with each passing day, as much as I still carry around my personal piece of hell.

But I also try to remember that no one is “perfect”: not even my chiseled, Ken doll ex, because what he possessed in body confidence, he severely lacked in character.

Love Yourself

I used to be the girl who looked at her reflection with an unhappy frown. I think most females have been that girl at some point in their life, but I spent a good majority of my life like this!

If you find yourself doing this please stop!

I’ve been you, you’re looking at your body in the mirror, telling yourself you are not good enough, that you will never be good enough. You've probably heard this from people in your life over and over again. A mom, a friend, a boyfriend. Yourself. You've heard it so much you've began to believe it. 

Maybe you think your nose is too big, or your skin isn’t the right colour or your hair just isn’t straight enough, or you're not thin enough, your legs are too long.. the list is endless...

You are likely standing with the latest issue of Vogue in hand, wondering what you can do to make yourself look like the model on the cover – even though your logical brain knows the model doesn’t look like the model on the cover!

You’re likely thinking of how you can eat less without anyone noticing, or how to go entire days without feeling hungry.  Or how you can purge without your friends hearing.

You don’t have an eating disorder… yet. But you’re on the fast track to one or you do and are in denial. I was about mine, for years, admitting is hard. 

You want to know a small truth, many of us do this. Scrutinize, judge, misunderstand our bodies on such a superficial, skin deep level, that we forget our bodies are collections of amazingness! 

You are made of seven octillion atoms? That’s enough to create a small universe inside you. Your bones are four times stronger than concrete because they are made from the marrow of the stars themselves. Your eyes are the most incredible camera lens man will ever know and your brain works ninety nine percent faster than the most powerful supercomputer on this planet.

The connected neutrons of your brain, are a direct reflection of the universe.

Your body is an incredible cosmic vessel afloat in darkness, though you do not feel at home inside your skin your body has always been your home – a place that has sheltered you and loved you no matter what it has gone through.

Be gentle with your body. It loves you more than anyone or anything in this world. It fixes every cut, every wound, every broken bone, and fights off so many illnesses, sometimes without you even knowing about it. 

Even when you punish it, it is still there for you, struggling to keep you alive, keep you breathing.

Be kind to yourself, love yourself. 

National Eating Disorder Week

It is National Eating Disorder week and as much as it makes me happy that we have a national eating disorder week it also saddens me that so many people have to go through having this horrible disease.

I remember being younger and thinking to myself “why do people have eating disorders, it is easy to eat” until I developed an eating disorder than I realized how hard eating could be.

I remember the first time I really started to hate my body it was the year that the Britney Spears video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time” came out and there was this tall, skinny blonde girl who all the guys loved and all the girls wanted to be and there I was short, tanned skin and dark hair but most of all I had muscle from being a swimmer. 

All of a sudden out of nowhere I was having thoughts of inadequacy I wasn't good enough, pretty enough, smart enough to be considered pretty. The guys would make fun of me and say stuff like “You look like the Terminator” a few of them even nicknamed me The Tiaraator because I had what they called crazy muscles. I wanted nothing more but for these to be gone. 

This is when my life started to spiral out of control.

Anorexia later turned into binge eating and soon my small frame of 120 pounds turned into a large frame of 250 pounds. Once again an eating disorder caught me but this time it was bulimia. I would become so depressed for being overweight that I would eat everything in the house and purge it out. This was a cycle for me for years.

One day I found the gym and in the beginning the gym was an enemy. I would eat and eat and eat than feel bad about what I eat so I would go to the gym for hours on end and spin and run and stair climb and swim until I felt better about myself and than do it again the next day. I remember my roommate asked me once if I was ok. To me I was no longer starving myself or binging and purging so I didn’t have a disorder. I was not skinny so there was no way this was an eating disorder, so I kind of fell through the cracks. I could fake that everything was fine around my parents.

These days I am healthy. I still exhibit signs of the Eating Disorder lurking in the corners and that will always be there but more often than not I can force those feeling out.

 I have found a better way to cope. I found a true friend in running. The road is always there and willing to listen to my problems. I have gone out on a run to have a good cry and flush out the feelings of not being enough. 

Running has embraced me and I have embraced running. When I finish a run I feel like I am more than enough I feel good enough.

I believe that my feelings of inadequacy are the reasons I have been able to gain so much speed in a short period of time. I take the negative feelings that the eating disorder brings me and I take them out in my run. This inspires me to be a better run.

Sometimes  I wish I could go back and talk to my 14 year old self I would say:

Dear Tiara,

You are beautiful exactly the way you are. Though the boys may make fun of you now it is only because they are jealous of you and maybe a little envious of your amazing muscles. Don't let people and the media get you down because it isn't real and one day you are going to be happy with being fit, you will work hard for it. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow but there will come a day when you are happy to have muscles. Love your body for what it can do because it can do amazing things, don't hate on yourself. You are strong and beautiful and talented and you will make it through this.

Day 20 - 30 Day Challenge

Define your relationship with running.

My relationship with running these days is AMAZING!! I love it and live for running; however it has taken me years to get to this point.

Running is my best friend, my therapist and my ass kicker. When I have had bad day or need to vent I love lacing up my shoes and hitting the pavement. Running gives me clarity that I can’t find anywhere else.

If I have a tough decision to make I hit the pavement and think it through. I used to make pro/con list and they always helped me make decision but I can get very anxious in my decision making so being able to hit the pavement and run helps with my anxiety. I call it sweating out the anxiety. 

Running has helped me develop confidence in myself that I thought I lost with my eating disorder. Each time I come back from a run I gain the part of me back that I thought was lost forever. There are times when I feel like I am losing control of my life again and like the world is spinning out of control all I have to do is reach for my running shoes and I gain control again.

Running is my drug, my lifesaver. 

A Constant Struggle

Once upon a time ago someone told me that you never ever really beat an eating disorder. I thought they were wrong or at least I hoped they were wrong. However, I have been finding out that maybe they were right.

This week has been really hard for me. I live to workout. I love the endorphin's that I get in my body when I workout and I love knowing that I am doing something good for my body. Not being able to run or do NTC this week has been really hard for me. I have thought about lifting weights with just my arms however, I am at a loss of what to do in the gym when it comes to just weight lifting and I think going to the gym just to life weights with no cardio is a waste of my time.

When I lifted in the past when I swam I had a trainer coaching me on what to do and helping me with form and this made it easy on me. Now I would be walking into the weights section of the gym and looking like a lost little girl, something I DO NOT want to do. I also struggle with my shoulders and I am scared to injure them again. That is all I need is an injured knee and injured shoulders.

Last night I had a doctor’s appointment and when we left I wasn’t really in the mood to make supper. Meho and I went to Co-op to pick up supper but as I walked around the grocery store looking for something quick and easy I got overwhelmed by all the food in the grocery store and I panicked. All I could think about was how this food was going to affect my body, was it going to turn to fat because I am not working out at the moment. I literally had a break down in the grocery store. Something I haven’t done in a very long time.

When things like this happen I realize that I am not over this issue and I may never be over this. I worry about having too much muscle on me. When I was in high school I built muscle pretty quick and the guys I hung out with would call me Arnold, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, by no means was I that big but hearing it from peers made me very self conscious. Sometimes when I think about how I want to look I think of looking like Allie Crandall rather than Hope Solo even though I know what body type is better I don’t want to be made fun of because I have muscle rather than looking feminine and dainty. Other times I want to strong, it is always such a constant internal struggle with myself.

I can’t wait to get back in the gym and hopefully I will hear a definite date today when I go in to the physio again.

Finally Learning to Love My Body

I haven't always loved my body. I have suffered from body dysmorphia.

There would be days when I looked into the mirror and I would see huge calves, massive thighs and jumbo arms. I would often make the comment to my family that I had "Tree Trunk Legs". This was only a few months ago.

When I first decided to run the Nike Women's Marathon I was a little worried. My boyfriend asked me the question "Do you feel that you can put your body through this" I have a very supportive boyfriend and he only wants what is best for me. I can be very competitive and this aspect of my life can control me, it can literally throw me back into a rabbit hole of eating disorder and body dysmorphia.

I decided that training for this marathon was something I needed to do. It has been a goal of mine this year to run a marathon and this is my opportunity.

Training for the Nike Women's Marathon has helped me to love my body. That is something I have been waiting 14 years to say. I love what my body can do. When I look back and think about my "sample size body" I realize that it could not run 10km let alone 16.49 miles, like I completed last weekend. It could not do 2 push-ups now I can do TRX push-ups, push-up with feet on a medicine ball and push-ups with a medicine ball.

Training for this marathon has been the best thing I could have ever done for me. It has been therapeutic in a way I didn't know running could be.

I once read "Sometimes I run because I am hurt and other times I hurt because I run". Running has been a body out for me. Times when I feel like not eating I remember that if I don't properly fuel my body I won't get through my mileage and what is more important to me, not eating that yummy quinoa with chicken breast or getting through my mileage. Mileage always comes out on top.

I feel like for the first time in my entire life I am finally beating this. I feel I am gaining control of my own life and it feels amazing. My eating disorder no longer controls me.

Training for and running a marathon isn't for everyone. I know that. I am not telling you all to go out there and train for one. If you do suffer from body dysmorphia or an eating disorder find help and than find an out. Your out might be sewing, knitting, painting, drawing. Whatever it is I am sure it will bring you happiness and joy just like running has brought to me.

I am excited to see how strong my body will become in the next two months, I am excited to start loving my body more and more. 

Thank you Marie Purvis and Nike Women for helping me realize my true potential and helping me realize that this is something I can control rather than have the eating disorder control me.

Happy Training.