The Journey of My Eight Year Long Eating Disorder

Hi to all my beautiful readers who happened to come across this post. A short little blip about me is that I am a 21 year old college student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. I’m working towards my Bachelor of Science in Chemistry currently, but my passions are shown within this blog. Today, I am fully recovered from all my eating disorders. I am health and wellness blogger with a vision of sharing my testimony of God’s healing power in my life to inspire others through this blog.

With that being said, let’s take a rewind back to the beginning of the vicious tornado of my eating disorders.

It started in 6th grade, when children become aware of their bodies and of others’ impressions of their body. I distinctly remember taking a look at mine and deciding to starve myself to be as thin as my then friends at the time. This is known as anorexia. It began innocently enough, trying to “eat healthy” and “workout” but it soon evolved into a full blown eating disorder by the time I entered 7th grade. I would weigh myself up to 10x a day and desire to be less than 100 pounds. I lost my period and I started to become a dry, lifeless person. I counted every calorie that entered my body through a fitness app (MyFitnessPal) and restricted myself to unhealthy numbers.

On the outside, I was a normal teenager. On the inside, I was miserable.

This continued as an up and down starving-myself weight battle until the beginning of high school. This is when I fell into the trap of binging and purging. My family was in the process of moving to a new town and I felt I had no control over anything in my life anymore, except my eating disorder. I was beginning to destroy my body slowly and discreetly. Once my family moved, I developed an exercise obsession. I would go to the gym for at least 2 hours a day, every day of the week while my weight remained stagnant at 130 lbs; none of my efforts were working to “get thinner.” All I was doing was killing myself. I was letting the eating disorder run my entire life.

Again, normal on the outside, dying on the inside.

As time passed and my eating disorder developed, I eventually landed myself in the hospital for multiple blood clots in my lungs and in my right arm and chest (thoracic outlet syndrome). I was a 17 year old girl who had come close to death all because of overexercising. I had literally almost KILLED myself to be thin.

After I was released from the hospital, I started the healing process during the summer of my junior year of high school.

Fast forward to freshman year of college, I gained about 10 pounds in the fall semester from stopping my unhealthy habits.  My body was at a healthier weight and I wasn’t starving myself or bingeing any longer, but I was still consumed mentally with my weight and what I ate. This continued for another year. I could not free myself from this obsession to be thin and perfect. I was distraught and lost with this struggle that no one knew about. It seemed as if to have no end point, no solution. Finally, I came to the conclusion that I was never going to be normal, I was never going to eat without having anxiety again, I was never going to BE FREE.

I joined a christian small group and God began to move mountains in my life. Women of God began to show me what it was like to be loved by others for simply being a creation of God. This is where God began to reveal his tender heart and strong power in my life. This is what gave me hope in finding freedom.

The next fall semester at college (the most recent), I began falling deeper in love with Jesus. I sought to surrender all of heart, soul and mind to him. However, I knew I was still idolizing my body and restricting God’s control over my weight/diet. I was still trapped mentally by counting calories and feeling the need to workout everyday. I longed to be free from this strong hold that the devil had on my life. I desired to finally find freedom.

Then I just broke…I had come to the end of my own strength. I had nothing left and no will power left to fight anymore. I realized I was fighting God’s control in my life, and I knew HE was the only way out of this mental disorder. So that night, I got on my knees and I prayed, giving every ounce of myself to Him. And once I completely surrendered my life to God, I was finally free from a stronghold in my life that had had control over me for eight years.

From that point forward, the transformation was drastic. I stopped feeling guilty for eating certain foods and for not getting my workout in that day. Once I let go of my human control over that area in my life, the Lord blessed every other area of my life in abundance. I began to develop strong friendships with people that I had pushed aside to maintain my “healthy lifestyle” and I began to enjoy food again. But aside from all of that, I found a deep relationship with the Lord that I wasn’t able to have prior.

God asks from us to surrender ALL. Not what we choose to give, but EVERYTHING. Once I gave up the clenched fist I had on my eating disorder, I saw God change my perspective on all aspects of my life. I was walking in his presence daily and he was showering me in his love. He transformed my heart and opened my eyes to his power in my life. My body was no longer a job to uphold, but a temple to worship him with.

1 Corinthians 6:19 “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own”

As christians, we try so hard to pursue God by fixing our faults/sins by changing parts of ourself. We focus so much on what we aren’t doing right, that we start to see it as an impossible mountain to climb. But what is amazing, is the Lord desires to see us healed and whole in him. That is the real key, is that it is only through him that we can find life. We cannot fight sin alone. We cannot defeat strongholds without the power of Jesus Christ. The beautiful part is that we can lay all our struggles at his feet and HE can and will heal us.

Acts 17:28 “For in him we live and move and have our being.”

My story is not one of uniqueness. A lot of women and men go through similar situations, but I do believe that this is my testimony. That God gave me to share with others so that I may glorify him in it. I know that the reason the Lord allowed me to live four years ago was so I could share my testimony. That’s what inspired me to begin this blog. It started as an Instagram, but I knew I needed to go forward with my story. My hope is that this story can reach every person who may feel unworthy or stuck in sin, and they can see that IT IS POSSIBLE to be healed. To be FREE. God loves each and every one of us and he is patient as we struggle. He is our Father in heaven and he desires to see us healed and whole in him.