Something a lot of bullied kids have in common is that we spend a major chunk of our formative years completely hating ourselves.
I have had a tendency for anorexia for as long as I can recall. I first started showing signs in the eighth standard, and at that time, I believed I was doing myself a favour by not eating (or eating just one meal a day). I was never a very chubby kid, but bullies rarely ever see logic, and it was enough to make me feel insecure about my body from a very young age.
It took years of processing, and self-confrontation to get rid of several bad habits. It had been years since I skipped multiple meals a day, counted calories, or even guilted myself into eating to my heart’s (and stomach’s) content. And then there was this lockdown.
The biggest reason I was able to achieve these goals was that I lead a very active lifestyle. Travelling everyday to work and working out for upto two hours a day was enough to make me feel like I needed to keep eating. My body had a perfect system.
I’m not as active anymore
During the lockdown, I’m barely coping. I’m not as active anymore because I’m at home the entire time. At first, cleaning and mopping seemed like enough to make up for an entire day of exerting myself, but now it isn’t. Work hours have weirdly become longer, and I don’t find the time to work out anymore.
Everything is exhausting
The monotony has started getting to me. Even the most mundane tasks seem hard to achieve. The work that I would finish within five hours, now takes me much longer to complete. After a full day of work, I’m so mentally exhausted that I just don’t have it in me to work out after work.
The effect it has on my diet
I’m barely eating one proper meal a day. I’ve caught myself drinking a lot of water so that I don’t feel hungry (a trick I learned in school), and it’s become a vicious cycle of not having enough energy and not eating enough. I’ve tried to find support groups on the internet to see how other people are dealing with it, but everyone is so productive during this quarantine (or they seem to be at least), that spending time on the internet has started depressing me.
I’ve tried cooking healthy, or things that I enjoy guilt-free (or used to), but so far nothing seems to have worked. Until a few days ago, I was forcing myself to be productive, but now I don’t have the energy for that also.
The big fear
I’m not worried about gaining weight or anything of that sort. That’s the last thing on my mind. It’s just a default setting in my brain that I thought I had been successful in changing; turns out I was just hiding it really well. But I have worked extremely hard – on both my body and my mental health – over the past few years, and my biggest fear is that I will lose all my progress, and come back to square one. A self-hating, frail person with SO MANY issues.
For now, I have taken out the batteries of my weighing machine and locked it away. If there’s anyone who is feeling similarly or worse, know that you’re not alone. Many of us messed up folk are in the same boat, and hoping it stays afloat.
Lead Image Credit: iStock
