By Kelsey Smith
I remember it so vividly, like it was only yesterday. I sat with my parents in the car, outside of a residential treatment center for eating disorders. I looked out the window, tears streaming down my face, and I thought to myself “what’s the point in living anymore? I will never be happy anyways.”
I wanted to live life, but I was paralyzed by constant fear and hid by using my eating disorder. I believed that my life would be hell if I took a bite of anything that wasn’t low calorie, or if my stomach ever felt full.
As I walked into the treatment center and toured the facility, I felt hopeless and scared, yet I resigned to the fact that this would be the rest of my life, always living in constant fear and never feeling that I was “enough”. I had not only ruined my life, but also made my parents’ lives miserable because of their fear that I would starve myself to death. And I’m not exaggerating: starve myself to death.
I grew up in a Christian home, and had a loving and nurturing upbringing. I really grew in my relationship with the Lord when I was young, and was a child who loved to experience adventures and to explore. I was also an extremely sensitive and compassionate girl. My sensitivity morphed into “people pleasing”, where I always tried to do what others thought I should do in order to win their approval.
Being able to pick up sports easily, I received praise for my athletic abilities, and therefore devoted myself to sports, especially basketball. Also, I was able to excel academically, and through the approval of others and my competitive nature, I made school and sports my identity.
For years I tried to please people through my performance, yet I always felt like I fell short.
I became distraught and after 9 years of year round basketball training, I finally gave up the sport because I was burned out. This was where fixation about my body began, for I also struggled with feeling analyzed by my basketball coaches who would weigh me and my team and measure our body fat percentages on a weekly basis to monitor how “fit” we were. If any player was not fit enough, they would call them “sasquatches” (their nick name for fat people). I will never forget my coaches telling me that the reason why I had chronic back pain was because I was overweight, and if I lost 10-15 pounds then I would be healthy (I had scoliosis at the time, but I did not know and completely believed what they told me).
My coach put me on a “raw diet”, where I ate only raw food items throughout the day, and on an intense 2-3hr daily exercise routine, emphasizing to me that I needed to lose weight in order to perform well. For me, that meant that I could only be valuable and worthy if I lost weight. I felt completely worthless at that point, feeling like basketball and my body were the only things that defined me. Yet I recognized that I only pursued things out of obligation to fulfill other people’s expectations of me (especially with basketball), and when I realized I no longer loved the sport, I decided to quit.
I went through a time of great anxiety of depression my freshmen and sophomore year and a lot of scrutiny from my coaches who continued to critique my body even after I quit the sport.
But through that the Lord showed me that I needed to rest on His strength and find my identity in Him.
Starting my junior year of high school, I began to feel especially self-conscious of my body type. I had always been the tall girl, the first one who went through puberty and got her period when she was only 11 years old.
Throughout all of middle school and junior high I struggled with feeling self-conscious about how I looked. Not having a sport to find my worth in, I turned to food (or controlling food) instead of finding fulfillment in the Lord, for I still believed that my value and worth came through my appearance.
I began running a lot more, and trained to do a half marathon, thinking I would lose weight as a result. When I ended up gaining more weight after training was over, I felt like a failure that I couldn’t control my looks. I compared myself to the other girls in high school, thinking that if I was skinny enough maybe I would be in a relationship, or maybe I would get the star role in the musical.
While on the outside I was a high achiever and excelled, on the inside I felt completely worthless and undesirable.
Having not dated in high school, I also told myself no guy would ever like me because of my body type. These feelings of poor self-esteem continued to intensify throughout my high school career.
Winter of my senior year, I went on a trip with my school to Greece and Italy. I ate lots of international food and enjoyed the culture, but also gained some “typical travel weight”. At that point, I had had enough of feeling overweight. Even though I was an average size and body type for my height, I convinced myself I needed to lose weight. On the way home from the trip, I read a people magazine and happened to come across diet success stories. One girl was exactly my height, had been what I weighed at that time, and had lost 20 pounds by eating on the South Beach Diet. I thought I would try it, believing it would solve all feelings of insecurity of my body and self.
It wasn’t until I waded far into the deep end of controlling food that I saw the grave danger I brought upon myself.
At the time, one of my guy friends began to like me. Losing several pounds in the first two weeks of my diet, I immediately correlated his interest to my success in losing weight. I therefore continued the “extreme version” of the diet, eating only raw foods in limited quantities and not realizing how much of an addiction it would become.
My interest in this guy continued to grow, and his interest in me, until one day he decided to pursue another girl from the summer camp that we worked at together. This guy had crushed my heart saying phrases like “I believe God brought us together”, yet then moved on when someone “more interesting” and more petite came along, and I immediately concluded his loss of interest was because of the way my body looked. This caused me to work harder at losing weight, running several times and day and trying to eliminate most of my food intake.
I became obsessed with this game, thinking if I could lose just a couple more pounds life would be more fulfilling.
When I went to college, things only got worse, yet I was unaware. The eating disorder was not only depriving my body of nutrients, but also robbed my mind of sound thinking. I had lost touch with who I was and with my intimate relationship with the Lord.
My parents were the first ones to notice something was wrong when they came to visit; my clothes were sagging on me because of the weight I had lost. Yet I denied it was an issue, claiming I would simply eat more and gain a couple pounds back. But I continued to lose weight and eliminated more and more food, and at the end of the semester, my parents asked me to stay home the month of January and get help.
I went through counseling and met with a nutritionist, which helped me realize I needed to find healing in the Lord. But it would be a long process before I healed.
I was able to find some healing when I went to therapy in January, but upon returning to school I still struggled with battling the thoughts of my eating disorder.
That summer I tried to work at a summer camp in Alaska, yet I fell back into the same pit in my ED disorder. I remember working with the village children in the outback, but not having the energy to play with the kids, and would have to sit for significant periods of the day. Even still, I continued to limit my food intake and over exercise, despite the exhaustion I was feeling.
When I came back home from camp, my psychologist strongly advised my parents to send me to a residential treatment program for eating disorders because I was too far into the anorexia for her counseling to help any longer.
I cried aloud to the Lord, wondering why such a sin pervaded my life when I was trying to seek His will.
My desire to counsel teenage girls remained, but I knew I could not help any girl when I was struggling myself. Giving up hope, I decided to visit one of the residential treatment programs. While they proclaimed to be Christian, I felt oppressed visiting the place, feeling utterly defeated in this battle that had infiltrated my soul. Giving up hope, I began to prepare myself to leaving for treatment. It was in that moment that I surrendered myself to the Lord, knowing nowhere else to turn, and He saved my life.
God immediately spoke to my heart, assuring me that He would provide the help to bring restoration.
Immediately He brought forth Living in Truth Ministries. I learned that healing is only found through the Lord and by renewing our minds through His word. The ministry was incredibly supportive in providing community, prayer, worship, and Truth to understand and believe that I am a precious daughter of the King! Through this support group and a Christian nutritionist, I found healing. Hallelujah!
Having been freed from an eating disorder, God has further confirmed that he wants me to minister to girls struggling with similar issues tied to self-image, encouraging them to replace their self-image with a God-centered image. Having a collegiate degree in psychology and a masters in social work with a specialty in eating disorders, I am on the track to obtain with LCSW (licensed clinical social work credentials) for the sole purpose of working with women with eating disorders, as well as other life controlling issues.
I currently work as a Lead Clinician at a treatment center for Eating Disorders, thankful that I can use my story to enhance the Kingdom of the Lord!
Thank you, Living in Truth Ministries, for proclaiming that freedom is found only in CHRIST and not any other sort of behavior modification or reinforcement. These attempts to modify my own behaviors always put me back where I started: in utter sin. But John 8:32 proclaims, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Through this experience I learned that healing and ultimate joy lies in Christ and Christ alone.
In His Love,
Kelsey
