Grit: A brief history

I really didn’t want to write this blog post.

And then once I wrote it, I really didn’t want to post it.

But I think it’s important to know where people come from and understand their journey. So below is a brief history of how I hit my rock bottom and what led me from my rock bottom to this blogiverse home that I reside in today.

Fitting in is not and never has been my forte. I was (and… hopefully still am…) a smart kid, so most of my classes were separate from my friends and classmates. I left high school early and started my college career as a 16-year-old living at home with her parents (sounds #COOL amirite?), graduated college early and started a graduate program for engineering.

Though I loved my program, I had a really hard time connecting with other engineers. I felt I was either downplaying my personality to get along with my classmates and labmates, or embodying it to an extreme as sort of a rebellion against the stigma projected upon me by others.

In the labs, I claimed to look down on the things that I loved to get along with judgemental people that I didn’t like. And outside of school, I felt dread and guilt whenever someone asked “and what do you do?”. The response is always the same– “oh wow… a woman in your field… that’s great… good for you.” My day job really puts a wall up between myself and other females.  There is no way around it. In the labs, I felt like an imposter engineer. Outside of the labs, I felt like an imposter female–sensing guilt for spending money on something as “pointless and purposeless” as Pradas and then feeling like a fraud wearing them to construction sites and technical conferences.

I felt uncomfortable with my existence in both worlds, which I think is what caused me to be uncomfortable with my existence in my physical body. I’m really not sure why. My mom never made any remarks about the way that I looked or the way she looked. And I can’t remember a single female role model discussing diet or weight loss. I had no trigger. I just wanted to fit in. I wanted to be cool. I wanted other girls to want to be like me. And the further and further I progressed into my adulthood, the further and further away that goal felt. As I let go of my hopes of fitting in with females, I grasped tighter and tighter to the ability to change my body and to make it smaller.

Things were at their worst during my first year of grad school. I really struggled through my last year of undergrad; I was bullied by one of my… louder (I selected this word VERY carefully)… roommates which impacted me more than I would like to admit. I also graduated a year early, so I didn’t get to celebrate with my friends, leaving the experience feeling regretful and lonely. Then starting graduate school was a culture shock. People naively said things like “you’re so lucky to be a woman” regarding my program acceptance and research funding. No, I wasn’t lucky. I worked hard and I was smart, just like everyone else there. But instead of telling them this, I would mindlessly mumble my agreements, subconsciously solidifying my impostor syndrome.

I became addicted to working out and I managed my calories on an obsessive level. I binged and I restricted. Instead of hearing the concern in the voices of friends of family, I heard compliments. I constantly compared myself to everyone else and watching the number on the scale go down brought me peace in my uncomfortable world.

• 

• 

• 

• 

I developed terrible acne on my face and body. Somewhere along the way, I lost my period and was diagnosed with PCOS. I struggled with keeping my blood pressure up and managing my blood sugar levels. But shockingly, the doctors told me I was doing great. That it was great that I wasn’t overweight with PCOS and that I was managing it with exercise and diet. That my abnormally low blood pressure was helping my heart and my brain. That my BMI was healthy. That my acne was from school induced stress. But I felt physically terrible and mentally I was emptier than my stomach.

During my second year of grad school, just before my thesis defense, my healthy-as-a-horse boyfriend (now husband, C) got very, very sick and was hospitalized. He had an out of control fever, was bleeding internally, and couldn’t keep anything in his stomach. I spent the entire first night at the hospital with him just watching his chest move up and down, making sure he was still breathing, wishing I could take his pain away. He was diagnosed with a severe Crohn’s flare up and after a week in the ER, he was stable enough to go home.

This experience shook me. I was prepared to do anything it took to prevent C from landing back in the hospital and began my education in nutrition and gut health. It was through this avenue that I came across the online world of health and wellness. One thing about me is that I don’t do anything halfheartedly. I didn’t read an article here and there, I consumed EVERYTHING-insert cookie monster gif here. Slowly, in my dedication to help heal C of his Crohn’s disease, I began to heal myself of years and years of disordered eating, self-attacking, and addiction to exercise. Life has a funny way of handing you a beautiful gift in the midst of it’s most frightening chapters, doesn’t it?

Of course, the change didn’t happen overnight. I learned how to cook healthy meals for myself and C. I gave up cutting calories and instead focused on food quality. I incorporated wellness techniques in our daily routine. I learned about lifting weights and starting following people on Instagram who promoted strong, healthy bodies. I gained weight back at a very slow rate, one that allowed me to embrace it with strength and positivity. Most importantly, I admitted to myself and to a select group of people close to me that this was something I was struggling with. Something I would probably always struggle with. Slowly I learned how to give myself grace.

The road to recovery isn’t linear and I am still trying to learn to embrace wellness, healthy eating, and health at every size into my daily mantras. And to this day, I still feel like when I say “engineer” out loud, I am hardcore humble bragging myself right out the door of waxing salons, nail studios, bar classes, you name it. But I no longer take those feelings of social anxiety and stress out on my own body. I am working with functional medicine doctors on regaining hormonal and gut health and instead of minimizing calories, I maximize nutrition, and *gasp* happiness (s/o 2u Eating Evolved cocobutter cups).

It’s been four years now since C had his Crohn’s flare and in that time, I have tripled my TSH number (thyroid measurement) without any medication or extreme diet changes. C has been managing his Crohn’s beautifully and despite the fact that he drinks designer (craft?) beer like a horse drinks water (okay maybe a wee bit dramatic) he hasn’t had a single flare up since his hospital visit in 2015.

So no, I really didn’t want to write this blog post. I am not proud of obsessing over my body. But guess what? I did. And it’s okay. Being a woman is hard. Living in today’s society is hard. But luckily we live in a time where we can connect a beautiful wellness community thriving on this world-wide web that makes things a little bit easier. This is a community that I leaned on heavily through my journey and hope to give back to through this blog. Whatever journey brought you to my page, I truly believe that together, we’ve got the grit to get through it.