7.5.21 // food is not my enemy [part I]

Part 1 [Trigger Warning: Eating Disorder]
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Food is not my enemy.
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I have to remind myself of this constantly.
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My relationship with food has been complicated and difficult over the years. Technically, I don't qualify as having a "standard" eating disorder, but my relationship with food is not normal, not until this last year.
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Growing up, I was always cognizant of my mom and my female role models talking about diets, my mom trying things like Jenny Craig, drinking Slimfast, and cutting back on her food intake. She was a product of a diet culture that permeated through American culture and as a child I took note.
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But, it wasn't until I was in university that my relationship with food took a turn for the worse...
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When I arrived at Appalachian State University in North Carolina (I went there for one semester before I transferred to Rhodes College in Memphis, TN- that's another story altogether), I started to obsess over food.
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I actively used My Fitness Pal, a calorie tracking app, and wrote down every single thing I ate in a seafoam green spiral notebook. I also included what workouts I did each day.
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I found myself turning down fun freshman activities, bonding moments with potential friends that semester because of my disorder. I would opt to spend my evenings on the indoor track when not doing homework. I would eat lunch by myself so I didn't have to explain my weird eating habits and I almost never went out to eat because I was "saving money", but in reality I was trying to avoid binging while eating out.
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The moment things really started getting out of hand was when I started to take NyQuil in the evenings to suppress my appetite and eat a bowl of cereal in my room…
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Once I left Appalachian State I stopped slipping into NyQuil stupors to avoid eating. But, my seafoam notebook and My Fitness Pal remained chains that kept me tied to a relationship with food that was altogether broken.
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Chains I carried for years, hidden under the guise of a “normal” body and the poison of American diet culture.