Brittany - Overcoming Difficult Obstacles

Brittany, my amazing sister, has overcome a lot when it comes to eating and body image. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Here's a look at her story:

Hey ladies! I am super excited to begin this adventure with all of you.  Just a heads up, I will be taking a slightly different approach than Robyn because of an eating disorder I have struggled with in the past.  For the majority of my college career I struggled with bulimia.  Not the purging kind, but starvation.  

It all started my freshman year.  I felt like I lost control on my food intake.  I would start eating and felt like I couldn’t stop.   The addition of alcohol to my diet also contributed to unhealthy eating.   I had definitely gained the “freshmen 15.”  I realized that I was gaining weight mid season and decided that I needed to do something about it, especially since I was redshirting and wouldn’t be getting in as much exercise as the rest of the girls on my team.   For the first time in my life, I started running.  I loved it! My butt was finally perky and I was loosing a little bit of weight.  I would only run a couple of miles a day, but it was my “Me time” and at this point, I think it was healthy.

My sophomore year (redshirt freshman), it was finally my chance to show everyone what I had.  I was still running on a daily basis, even after practice, and I was getting a little bit stronger in the weight room.  I earned the M2 position my team.  Here is where a new insecurity set in, playing volleyball 2-3 times a week in spandex in from of 5000+ people.  Towards the middle of season, one of the older girls (the other middle) started to lose a lot of weight.  She showed me this new app she had just got “Lose it.”  I had seen how obsessed she had become with calorie counting, but I thought, “why not try.”  Let me tell you guys, this was the dumbest thing I could have done!  And here is where my issues really started.  I started calorie counting like my life depended on it.  By spring I had really “figured it out.”   

Living on a college budget, there were few things I could buy that would keep me satisfied, and not leave me broke.   My diet consisted of oatmeal, egg whites, lunch meat and rice cake. Then one morning I walked out of my dorm suite and my suitemates pointed out that my stomach looked really flat.  I took this as encouragement.  I had only been consuming 1500 calories a day (maybe) while doing spring workouts and volleyball individuals.  I probably weighed 185-190 pounds when I first started this in January, and by Valentines Day I was down to 168.  I would weigh myself in the training room on a daily basis and the number kept going down.  Even one of the reporter from the newspaper noticed how thin I had become and interviewed me about earning the starting position and how good I looked. 

Little side note:  during season, after playing a not so good team in Louisiana, I decided that I wanted to run when we got back to the hotel.  Unfortunately for me my coach Dave walked by the hotel weight room at that time.  The next morning at the airport in front of everyone he called me out “Britt, why were you running at 10:30 last night after dinner?” I was mortified.  At that very moment our assistant coach turns to our trainer and asked about bulimia athletica. 

But I couldn’t have an issue like this, its not a problem, I was in control.  Or so I thought.  This is the point in my eating disorder that I have seen in many younger girls on my team and others that absolutely breaks my heart.  If someone is in denial, there is no way of helping her. 

I was feeling so confident with my self for the first time in my life.  But I was dropping weight way too fast and at this point it started to scare me but I didn’t tell anyone.  I just started pounding fatty foods.  Then when I noticed that I was putting weight on I would go back to eating less.  At this point rather than eating nasty fat free foods, I just made sure that I was eating every 2 hours (on the dot) and in very small portions.  I would chug a bottle of water before eating ANYTHING and chug one immediately after.  At this point it started to get a little stressful.  

Over the summer at home, I wasn’t as anal about what I would eat, I actually went back to my old eating habits.  

The minute I got back to Hawaii my junior year, I started up again.  My first things first, double days.  This is when I started to notice a problem in my self.  During double days we had to eat the cafeteria food, and was anything but healthy.  And what’s worse, Dave refused to let me run in between practices (during season I would always go on a 2 mile run after a 2 hour practice). And so anxiety set in.  By the second week of double days I called my mom panicking because I couldn’t look at any type of food without seeing a number.  I started having terrible mood swings and panic attack like symptoms. 

My close friends always expressed concern about my eating habits but I was in denial.  The spring of my junior year, while studying for an abnormal psychology class I finally accepted that I had a problem.  I was reading about different types of eating disorders, when I hit the section of bulimia.  A light bulb went off I my head.  I grabbed Alex, one of my closest friends and also roommates.  I said, “Alex, I think I have a problem.” His response “ No sh** Britt, I’ve been trying to tell you that for two years. “

I’d like to say that right at the moment, I was fine, but it wasn’t until I started dating Kenny that it really got better.  He would get mad at me when I would go back into my poor eating habits, and helped me map out a healthy way to eat and still lose weight.   I can thank him for that!

I have not tried to starve my self after eating for a long time now, although, while stressed or in situations where I feel out of control, I sometimes have to fight off the urges.

Now that you all know about all of my issues, I want to point out that I have to be really careful with trying to lose weight.  I will be doing a modified version of what Robyn is doing but I will be incorporating a lot from Women’s Heath Diet Book.  It’s not  diet at all, its just a simple break down of what you should be eating on a daily basis and for me its less about numbers and more about how I feel.  I will do my best to explain to the rest of you what I am learning and share fun tips.  Please ask if you have any questions, sometimes I forget to explain because like I said earlier, I can look at food and pretty accurately estimated the nutrition facts, it’s a curse.