I didn't know I had Anorexia pt. 1

"The mind and the body are not separate. What affects one, affects the other." 

Potential trigger warning: article may contain ED-related behaviors and mention of numbers. 

It started off as an innocent attempt to combat my depression. I committed myself to my boxing routine of at least three times a week. When I wasn't boxing, I would find other ways to stay active, to keep my mind busy: running, walking, biking, swimming, playing basketball, anything but stay still.

If I sat still for too long, the demons that have been living inside my brain for the past 12 years would catch up with me, forcing me to deal with real emotions, pain that I wasn't ready to confront. I thought if I kept moving, in time, I would be able to outrun the beast.

I've tried everything, but medicine to keep my depression at bay: yoga, meditation, tea, all the natural BS you read in those online articles. Nothing worked, except diet and exercise.

As time went on, I became more and more devout to my workout routine. I would skip plans with my friends and cancel dates, because I had to go to boxing. I would miss class or go in late to work in order to fit in my bodyweight circuits. I was going to school 18 hours and working over 40 hours a week. This was the one thing I did for me. I needed to workout. If I happened to miss a workout, because of prior obligations, or simply because my body was "too tired," I became very angry. I would snap at the people who were closest to me, and it seemed that I couldn't allow myself to do anything else until I completed a workout. Until I sweat off my bad mood.

Once I proved to myself that I was committed to fitness, I explored with diet. I wanted to have the cleanest diet, in order to perform my workouts better. I started by cutting out alcohol, something that quickly isolates you when you're in a college environment, then I said good-bye to processed foods. Everything the magazine told me to do.

For me, it was never about being "skinny," because I was never "fat." I just wanted to be fit and I wanted to feel well.

It wasn't until a night out with my best friend that I had noticed significant weight loss.

"You have lost a lot of weight," she said, "I think you've been working out too much, are you eating?" she asked.

Everyone who was close to me knew my quirks about food. I had a lot of rules about what I would and would not eat, when I would eat and who I would eat with.

I attributed the weight loss to my workout routine and insisted I was eating.

After uploading pictures we took to Facebook, my mom immediately demanded I take down the pictures.

"It's happening again," she cried. "You're too thin."

She was referring to freshman year when I had lost 20 lbs due to a combination of stress and depression and being away from home for the first time. She didn't want anyone to see me like this, so she told me to take the pictures down.

I didn't see it. Part of me felt really proud of my dedication to working out, and part of me felt relieved that my friends and family were concerned, maybe it would allow me to take a break, to loosen up a little bit.

But I was already trapped.

I continued my workouts as if it were part of my religion and regularly looked for ways I could fit in more exercise. If a friend wanted to meet to catch up, I wanted to hike or go biking. I didn't want to waste any time.

If a friend asked me to meet for drinks, or a professor wanted to catch up over lunch, I called my mom in tears. Suddenly I was afraid of extra calories, so I was left alone a lot.

I didn't mind, because it gave me more time to focus on the task at hand- getting fit.

The disorder led me to feel superior to those who would stop for McDonald's at 2 a.m. on the way home from the bar, or grab a bag of candy just because they felt like it. I felt proud of my will power every time I passed up curly fries or mac and cheese in the cafeteria, and instead bee-lined it for the salad bar. I felt proud of myself, but also I felt jealous of my friends who seemed to not put so much thought into when, where and what they were eating and who they would be eating with, friends who would roll out of bed in the late afternoon and swear they would workout tomorrow.

I was trapped. And I didn't know how to stop, or how to ask for help. The wheels kept turning, and my body was exhausted.

Story continued in part 2...