I leaned out throughout the rest of the year but I let myself go that summer when I was away. When I came home from summer I weighed 127 pounds at 5'3. When I saw this number I was mortified. At competitions judges said I was a beautiful dancer but I was "ruining my chances of a career" with my weight. I decided to lose weight for real.
As most of the stories go, I started with just cutting back on junk, and making a few rules for myself - like no soda, no eating after 7. When this started to work I got really excited and pumped and I thought... why not go a step further? It will just make me a better dancer. I began cutting out any foods that had fat, and counting calories. No nuts, no bread, no rice, no potatoes, and no eating after three. I started to eat things that sound so odd, but I was compensating for the lack of nutrients I was taking in. I would eat things like packets of diet hot cocoa, fat free powder creamer, tomato paste, and frozen sugar free jelly.
By the end of that school year I managed to get down to about 112 pounds. I was feeling so much better about myself but I still needed to lose weight. That summer I stayed on a strict diet so that I could lose more. Breakfast was a fiber muffin, with a coffee with 2 tsp of fat free creamer. Lunch was 50 calories of deli meat, 35 calories of carrots, and 50 calories of apple. No dinner. If I was really hungry I would have either some orange juice, or carrot juice. But no food. I didn't eat after three. That summer I had decided that I wanted to stay year-round at the program I was attending. But my parent disagreed. I'm not very strong-minded and at 15 years old they thought that I would get chewed up and spit out.
When I got home the first thing I did was step on the scale. I was so happy, I weighed 102 pounds! But then that day I ate t00 much dried fruit and the next day too. When I stepped on the scale I was 106. "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?!?!" I freaked out. I started crying in the bathroom and I was afraid to look in the mirror. How was is that I was skinnier than I was last year, but I felt SO much fatter. I began to get extremely depressed. I ended up skipping all of my classes that day and I just laid in bed. I told my parents that I felt sick. But when this depression continued for a week, my mom got worried. Before this depression, my mom and I had argued about my diet. She wanted me to eat things like nuts, and whole wheat bread. I told her that I had everything under control and that if I ate those things I would get fat again. But my stay in bed streak made her put her foot down. She signed me up for a therapist and a nutritionist. I went twice a week and I was required to write food logs to keep me in check.
If anyone out there has ever had to write logs before, you know how easy it is to lie about what you've eaten. I had two logs. One online, and one that I wrote out specifically for my nutritionist. I did start eating things like nuts and low carb bread, but in specific amounts that still added up to a very low calorie diet. But aside from food, ballet this year was amazing. I entered about 6 competitions and I won every one of them. This just solidified my concern that I was nothing unless I was skinny.
For some reason that summer I began eating more. Maybe it was stress of what was to come (I was going to join a second company starting september), or maybe it was that the whole year I was being told that I could eat more and stay skinny. I don't really know what, but I started eating things like granola, and cereal. But I wouldn't have just one serving, I would end up bingeing on that stuff! If it wasn't for dancing all day, I'm sure I would've gained about 50 pounds! I ended up starving myself during the day because I felt fat, and bingeing at night because I was so hungry. When I came home from summer I had gained about 25 pounds. Anyone who has ever gained that much weight can imagine how devastated I was. In a mere three months I had gone from a beautiful skinny ballerina, to a fat lard. I called the school that I was going to attend and I told them that my parents wanted me to finish school before I moved away from home. I told myself that I would starve myself again, so that I could go join the second company.
But I couldn't do it. I kept bingeing. It was hard for me to get into the studio, because I was so heavy. I couldn't lift my leg as high because there were rolls of fat in the way. So I started skipping more and more. And since I wasn't exercising and I kept bingeing, the weight kept piling on. By March I was 145 pounds. And I'm still there.
This is me now. I haven't been on Facebook for 5 months because I'm embarrassed of what I've become. I don't go out because I look gross and I have no clothes that fit anymore. I'm lost because I have spent my entire life striving to become a ballet dancer and even though I don't want to admit it, I think that maybe ballet will never work out for me because of my body.
Last night my parents talked to me about my future. They say that I should go to college at the end of this year and take dance as a minor. I was depressed and shocked. My whole life, all I've wanted to do was dance. How did I get myself into this situation, how did this happen?
I honestly have no idea how my life will pan out. I just want this hell of a year to come to an end.
But I do know that if anyone out there has a friend or child with anorexia, or bulimia. Please keep an eye on them even after they gain the weight back. Being heavier does not mean that they are better. In fact, the eating disorder could have an even tighter grip on them than before...
