So I Can Say This is the Way That I Used to Be

I used to read magazines…

When I was in middle school and high school, I began a tradition every August. When my family spent a week at the beach, I would buy all the teen magazines I could find and study them like a guide while I sat on a beach towel hoping to get even a little tan.

Back then, I went to a very poor religious private school and was used to khaki and navy pleated skirts and white polos. This was not the cute sexy uniform that most people imagine on private schoolers. It was unflattering, and the rules regarding accessories were so strict, you were lucky if the hoop earrings you wore were allowed (big ones were banned because a girl had ripped her earlobe on the playground one year, or so they told us).

Because of this, I had absolutely no knowledge of fashion, or even much of a wardrobe of my own, besides ugly long skirts which I wore on Fridays, which were “dress up” days at school.

So when August rolled around, I would sit on the beach, memorizing every page of Seventeen and Teen Vogue and Cosmo Girl and dreaming about the day when I would be stylish and confident and popular. The pages of those magazines held another world, the world of public school, a world without uniforms. Every year I would read those magazines and promise myself that THIS year would be different. That THIS year I would fit the personality profile outlined in Elle Girl, the “How to Be Friends with Everyone” or “How to Get the Guy.” But every year I would fall just short and repeat the cycle the next year.

Now I look back on my sheltered mindset and laugh. I guess those fantasies were wonderful while they lasted, but I would never be like one of the girls in those magazines. Mostly because they don’t really exist. Everyone is insecure, and most girls look past the editorials of Teen Vogue and settle for Northface jackets, ugg boots, and messy buns.

But I would never even reach that point. And today, I look back and smile a bit, thinking about how crazy I was to not embrace myself for who I was. Because it was fun to pretend, but I wouldn’t really want to be that girl. I’d much rather be the unique and quirky person I am today.

The magazine industry is beginning to fail, and I don’t wonder why. Of course the internet age has ushered in some serious competition, but also maybe girls of the most impressionable age are getting wise and realizing that magazines are nothing but one long ad, dedicated to making you feel like you need to consume more and look prettier to be worth anything. And that’s something I think we’re all tired of.

Cheers,

<3Elle

(Of course I can’t discount magazines in their entirety. After all, they DID teach me to use baby powder for greasy hair, and that pantyhose gets out deodorant stains, and that eyeshadow primer is absolutely necessary…but all the same, I think I’m done for good. There’s only so many times that you can read about the dangers of too much tanning.)

My eating disorder was actually…

a case of candida.

It amazes me now how I used to wonder if maybe something was actually physically wrong with me, when all I could ever think about was food. And I felt as though I couldn’t stop myself from eating. I couldn’t just do one cookie or one little bowl of ice cream, it would become a binge and I wouldn’t even feel satisfied after. I was always craving, always wanting more. I didn’t understand how other people could have such restraint, could eat one cookie and have it be enough.

Little did I know those cravings were a symptom.

How horrible it was spending my entire day thinking about food and my next meal and never feeling full until I was bloated and felt ill and even then I still wanted to eat sweet sugary things.

And now that I’ve stopped eating the sugary things and begun to get this yeast infection under control, boom, the cravings are gone. I don’t think about food all day. I get full so much more easily. I enjoy food again.

Please please get yourself checked out.

If you find that you eat and then within an hour or so you’re hungry again.
If you wake up in the morning and rush to the kitchen to eat, irritable until you’ve had that bowl of cereal
If you eat one bowl of ice cream and then go back for a second or third and then curse yourself and swear that you won’t eat like that again but you do it again anyway
If you are sitting around food and you can’t stop thinking about what’s in front of you and after you finish your food you think about everyone else’s food
If you force yourself to eat weird low calorie foods throughout the day because you know you have to eat a shit ton of whatever to be satisfied…

Then you may be hypoglycemic and have a candida overgrowth like I do.

Look into it. There may be a reason for your obsession over food and it may be biological.

The evils of cupcakes

A sure way to make yourself obsessive? Label foods bad.

I haven’t had a cupcake in almost a year. For the last 3 months it’s been because of food sensitivities, but before that it was because I was so scared of the calories.

The restaurant I worked at sold mini cupcakes. I always desperately wanted one, but I wasn’t willing to spend the 300 calories that one was. I thought eating one was weakness. And I was SHOCKED when coworkers would eat TWO. It seemed like this crazy overindulgence that would lead to obesity.

Now I look back and roll my eyes at myself. I lived with this black cloud over my head when it came to food, because I wasn’t allowed to ever eat the things I liked and if I did I would condemn myself for a week.

I remember one night when I sobbed in the bathroom to my mom. I remember telling her how all I could ever think about was food: when my next meal was, what it was, how much I would have to work out to lose weight, how much of a pig I was because all I could think about was food. And I could never enjoy food when I ate it because the entire time I focused on the calories in it or how much everyone around me was judging me for eating. 

Now I realize that one of the most detrimental things you can do to yourself is cut out foods completely. You HAVE to allow yourself the things you like, or you will set yourself up for a binge, for obsessiveness, for self-hatred.

Cupcakes aren’t evil. And if you want one, enjoy it. 

I for one can’t wait til I can eat them again.

<3elle

The Problem with Using Thinspo

This is coming from a girl who used to have a very successful thinspo tumblr. I was a full supporter of it for a long time, and I looked down my nose at people who said “Thinspo is unhealthy!” thinking they just didn’t get it.

Yeah there’s the argument that thinspo is pretty warped, because it creates a world of unnatural people to compare with, people shot in the best light on their best day, after working day in and day out to look their best. But that’s not the argument I’m gonna address now.

The main problem with using thinspo to lose weight is that losing weight takes time. And every time you look at a picture of a thin person, it reinforces to you that you are not that person and that your body is unacceptable. 

And if you tell yourself that every day, then every day you will be checking and re-checking to see if your body makes the cut.

And every day you will be disappointed. Because (I repeat), losing weight takes time.

But we are a society of people who want results and want them NOW. Without the hassle, without the patience it takes to get results.

If you were to show a child practicing an instrument a professional musician and say “This is where you need to be” and every day make them watch that musician and ask “Are you there yet? Why aren’t you there? You lazy bastard,” that child would eventually hate the instrument, find no joy in music, and think themselves incapable of the talent it takes to learn an instrument.

This is what we do to ourselves with thinspo.

You know how I finally lost weight? I ended up not giving a shit how I looked. I ignored my body. I ignored obsessing over calories and working out and crying after I ate an ice cream cone because “my whole week is ruined.”

Yeah, there’s the argument that thinspo creates low self-esteem by making an inattainable body image the standard. There’s that.

But there’s also the fact that thinspo just doesn’t really work. It makes you crazy. It makes you obsessive. And it keeps you from losing weight the correct way, because every day you don’t meet the “standard” is a day that you spend figuring out what more you can do to get there (starve more, work out more, obsess more).

I say, fuck this. 

Make a stand. For yourself, for your body. Stop looking at it, stop comparing yourself to it. If you want to lose weight, fine, lose weight. 

But for God’s sake, don’t do yourself the disservice of using thinspo as a weight loss method.

Revolutionary thinking? Probably not. But it could make a big difference in your life. I know, because it did in mine.

<3elle