Well, it has started to become one, at least.
When I first decided to share my experience with holistic wellness as my Capstone project, I knew that I was going to have to share a story that’s difficult for me to write down. I’ve shared it openly with people before but only verbally. I’ve never actually written it, nor even allowed the thought of posting it online to ever cross my mind. But, here I am. Whether or not I'm ready to share, here it goes.
If you’ve read my story, you know that I ended up in a pretty bad place after I found out I tore my ACL. On top of the physical and mental toll the injury took on my body, I also started to gain weight for the first time in my life (I was 17, by the way). I had always been so active, going to at least one practice a day and supplementing those practices with weight-training every other day, and all of a sudden, it was nothing. Not only was I incapable of moving, but I started to give up on everything. I wasn’t playing sports, so I really didn’t care about anything else. My grades dipped, and so did all my motivation. I didn’t care what I was putting in my body. So that, coupled with my lack of movement, led me to put a little - okay, more than just a little - bit of weight on my tall frame.
Post physical therapy, i.e. the time I was able to start moving again, I made a conscious effort to get my body back on track. Everyone around me thought that just meant getting my physique back to what was necessary for basketball and track, but I had another idea. I wanted to be my strongest ever, and, as a lot of 18-year-old girls would think, that also meant my thinnest ever. I wanted my body composition to be nothing but muscle, but I also wanted to have a thin frame. I had that image of those Instagram influencers, you know the ones that have such perfect frames but can out lift any of the guys at the gym, stuck in my head. I wanted nothing more than to be that, and that obsession led to a very, very bad relationship to food.
I started to eat clean, which I still enjoy doing, but to the point where I couldn’t even look at a piece of chocolate without feeling disgusting about it. I never wanted to go out to eat because I didn’t want the excess butter that I knew restaurants cooked their food with. I hated the thought of going to a baby shower or graduation party because I would be so hungry, but I wouldn’t even think about touching the food there. Don’t get me wrong, I was still eating, but I was only eating things that I deemed “healthy enough” for this unattainable image I was trying so desperately to achieve.
To this day, I’m still struggling to pinpoint the day that I snapped out of this mentality. I know it was around the time I started to read about holistic health and medicine, and I remember vividly watching this video about how your relationship to food is just as important as the food you’re eating itself. Food should be fulfilling and nourishing, but, for me, I was viewing it as a fuel source that I couldn’t have too much of. I was a high performance car, and my body deserved nothing but the best. But, this relationship became so consuming that I forgot that food can be fun, fulfilling, and even bring people together. I let it be the most isolating thing in the entire world, and I truly feel like I missed out on years of enjoyment because of it.
So, I worked on changing my ways. I started integrating more nights out with my friends into my daily schedule, and I even told my mom that I wanted to start eating chocolate again. You should’ve seen her face light up when she heard that I was finally going to indulge in a little bit of my favorite food. She didn’t say it, but I knew she was proud of me, and I was proud of myself.
I’m still proud to say that my relationship with food is healthier than it was. While I’ve learned about various food allergies and intolerances that I have (bye bye dairy, gluten, and eggs), I’ve learned that food doesn’t have to be restricting. I’m very fortunate to have the means to provide myself with the food that my body craves (and, well, can crave), and I try not to forget that. I’ve gone through ups and downs, of course. There’s been days where I have too much sugar, and weeks where I don’t have enough. I know that when I give my body the nutrients that it wants, I feel better; but, I also know that sometimes my body needs that pint of dairy-free ice cream too.
While I’m not trying to tell you how to eat or the best way to eat for your body, I hope that this post sheds a little bit of light on food and the relationships we all have to it. Food and the nutrients we give our body are at the core of holistic well-being, but it’s so much more than that. Food isn’t just a fuel source, it can bring people together, make you feel full, and make you feel more fulfilled. Food is different for everyone, but I hope you take a moment to think about what it is for you.