i have to confront myself about my looks

The past 3.5 weeks, I’ve been losing weight a steady rate. Part of it is because of the nausea from medications and part of it is from me just… making myself throw up. I’ve always struggled with the ideal of being a “skinny” girl, or even being the “too tan” girl. Personally, I think it is deeply rooted in the way that I was raised.

ang itim mo - you’re so dark

In the Filipino culture, you’re constantly criticized by your family and friends. “Ay Jakki, tumaba ka yata?” (Jakki, I think you got fatter?) “Jak, ang itim mo naman!” (Jakki, you’re so dark!) That was the normal conversation when greeted by family you haven’t seen in awhile. It’s almost engrained into your brain that you need to be thin and white to be considered beautiful. Morena (tanned skin girl) was never something I heard be considered beautiful. You wanted to be Mestiza or Chinita, a fair skinned girl.

Originally living in Hawaii, I was as dark as the red dirt that surrounded me. I was always out in the sun playing with my friends and having fun. Until one of my cousins introduced me to what Likas was. It was the infamous whitening soap widely used by everyone in the Philippines. They’d use it on their face and on their bodies, almost giving them an ill-appearance. Drowning in long sleeves, hiding under shade, applying copious amounts of sunscreen. It took me a long time to become comfortable being tan. Even now, I still hide from the sun if I can because I don’t want to be tan. I get anxious when my skin tone changes darker than my BB cream. It’s sad.

ang taba mo - you’re so fat

And with my weight, it’s always been something I’ve struggled with. I remember the jabs my family would throw at me, even if they were “playful”. Taba. (Fat) I hated that. I hated being called that, even when I was wearing a Size 0 pair of jeans. Taba, because my stomach hung over my shorts a little. Taba, because my cheeks were a little puffy. I hated it so much.

So when I moved to Japan, in my opinion, it got worse. I was surrounded by small Asian girls with fair skin and beautiful long hair. I was a American Size 2, but I wanted to be a Japanese Size S. Which surprisingly, are extremely different depending on where you shop. I wanted to be small. I wanted to move to Washington as the petite Asian girl who just came from Japan. And I was. If I had any photos of me back then, you could just see that my body was so much smaller. My collarbones stuck out. The gap between my thighs, Maverick could walk through if I just stood there. I was small, and I liked it.

In Germany I kept myself small by running an incessant amount for races. In Korea, I finally started to let myself grow. I ate much more, I lifted, I drank protein, I felt… healthy. I felt fit. This pregnancy though, really messed with my head. Watching myself grow was hard for me even though I knew that who I was growing inside was absolutely worth every pound. I didn’t eat much during my pregnancy. I ate a lot of salad and I ate a lot of fruits and veggies.

the problem now

9 months postpartum and I’m still struggling really hard. I lowkey enjoy that the medications make me nauseous so I don’t eat. It’s curbed my appetite, and I kind of like losing the weight. Even though I’m extremely weak and the way I’m losing weight isn’t ideal at all… Like Sean said, “it’s like opening the gates back up to an eating disorder.” I used to starve myself in Japan. I’d tell my family I ate while I was cooking for them and that they could go ahead and eat. If I did eat somewhere, I’d come back home and throw up. That’s when I learned how to apply foundation to hide the red dots on my face from the blood vessels bursting.

I am scared that I’m going back down that road, but in my head, I’m okay with it - and that’s the problem. I always said, “I can control it, so it’s fine.” Right now I’m not losing that much weight, so it’s fine. No, it’s not… I’m tracking my calories and activity to show myself that I NEED to eat, but sometimes it backfires and I get anxious when I see how much I’ve eaten. I’m getting help from it. I’m trying. I’m trying not to go back down that road, but right now, it’s what feels comfortable.

Guest Post: An ongoing battle with an eating disorder in today's world

  I remember it vividly.  I was at my friend’s birthday party and decided I wasn’t going to eat meat anymore. A small decision that would have a huge impact on my life. Most of my childhood, I was the bigger kid in class and so one day I decided to change. It started with cutting out meat, then that led to cutting out chocolate and then anything that wasn’t too sugary or didn’t have a nutrition label. At the time I was 14 and food seemed like the one thing I could control in my life. I stopped letting my mom make me breakfast, used smaller utensils and dishes to eat less and kept up with my exercise routine. My eighth grade year was awful, I remember bringing a yogurt and pineapple to school everyday and isolating myself at lunch so people wouldn’t see me eat.

 Getting through high school and learning how to binge

  Flash forward to the middle of ninth grade, I had lost probably 20 pounds, but I still wasn’t happy. During soccer practice one day, I made myself throw up so I could go home. Everyone thought I was sick but in reality my brain was the only part of me that was sick. Once I realized that I could make myself throw up, the year and a half of starving myself caught up with me in a big way. I started binging on anything and everything I could, waiting until my parents went to sleep to begin devouring everything in sight. After stuffing myself so full, the only thing I wanted to do was make that feeling go away.  So I would make myself sick. This went on most of high school, and I continuously lost more and more weight, but it was never enough. By sophomore year in college, I was 113 pounds, binging daily on anything that I wouldn’t normally eat and running 5+ miles a day to ensure I didn’t gain weight (mind you, I started my “weight loss” at 168 pounds).

 Finally reaching out for help

  That year I finally opened up to my mom and told her that I had a problem, my family gave me the ultimatum to go get help or to be cut off. I chose to go to therapy and worked with a therapist throughout the next two years of college. By the end of college I had gotten my shit somewhat together, however I was still so unhappy with my body. I had gained weight (approximately 20 pounds) and was trying to navigate how to eat normally again. For so long, I had no hunger cues and felt perpetually hungry.  

 How it has effected my adult life

In 2016, I had just started my career in the Army and told myself, yet again that I would be this disease once and for all. I got up to my highest weight but was still so disgusted by the body in the mirror. For 9 months in 2017, I had my longest streak of sobriety, but as soon as life felt out of control again I was right back where I started.  The last three years have felt like a flash, and I’m still here fighting but each day I get a little stronger.

  Having an eating disorder is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Unlike other addictions, you have to eat to live, it’s not just something you can avoid. During every social event, holiday, night out, breakfast, lunch and dinner I have to make the decision to eat, to not restrict and no matter how guilty I feel after, I have to make the decision to not make myself sick.  Getting help is something I wish I had done sooner because even now at 26, I struggle daily to make healthy decisions for myself. The control and the pain I cause myself are the addictive parts of this disorder, it’s never just about the food. Throughout the last 13 years, I was never “sick enough.” I didn’t fit the stereotypical look of the skinny girl that looked like the wind could blow her over.

 Taking the steps to a “normal”, healthy life

  I have had to take my recovery day by day for over 3 years and I have slipped up more times than I care to admit.  But my experience goes to show that no matter how someone appears, they might be hiding behind a mask distracting the world from ever really knowing what mental struggles they battle in their head on a daily basis. I am complicated, emotional, and generally all over the place, but every day I’m working towards getting my life back. I don’t know if I will ever be completely free, but I do know that I will continue to fight this war inside my mind every day. Deciding to cut out meat, turned into anorexia, which turned into bulimia and changed the course of my life forever.

  For 13 years bulimia has plagued my life, and although it is a big part of me, it is not who I am or who I want to be. My eating disorder took some many things from me and continues to do so today. Isolation, anger, depression, anxiety, and a forever sinking feeling consumed me. I lost my menstrual cycle for 7 years, causing who knows how much damage to my reproductive system. Knowing that you may never have children because of what you did to yourself is probably the hardest pill to swallow. With that being said, each New Years I tell myself that I’m done with bulimia and every birthday I start over again.

 Eating disorders in today’s society

  In today’s world, getting help is something that most people struggle to do because of the stigma surrounding mental illnesses and eating disorders. Those people who desperately need help suffer in silence because they’ve been conditioned to believe that asking for help makes a person weak. The symptoms listed in the DSM that allow doctors to make diagnoses for patients are incredibly outdated and only chip away at the tip of the iceberg. There are so many types of eating disorders: bulimia, orthorexia, anorexia, binge eating disorder and many others that I don’t know off the top of my head but the worst part is this disease not discriminate based on gender, age or weight.

Notes from Okami & Co.

It’s difficult struggling with something as important as food. As Sara stated, you need food to live, so it’s not something you can just fix overnight. Having struggled with body image dysmorphia, I can relate to Sara’s journey of long nights of starvation, binging and purging, and excessively working out. It’s tough on your mental game, and it does require therapy to get through it. Just because someone looks “normal,” doesn’t mean they aren’t struggling. The biggest hurdle people may have that look normal is convincing someone they have a problem that they need help with. If you have any concern with your eating patterns and nutrition, please reach out for help.

About our Guest Author

Sara C. is a friend from high school, whom I’ve had the opportunity of attending military training with back in college. We reconnected through Facebook, and I reached out to her to share her story. She advocates for mental health through her Instagram showing her mental health journey and fitness journey. She is an officer in the United States Military. She is continuously striving to find balance in her mental and physical health while cheering on others to do the same. Follow her journey on her blog www.saraswayforward.com.