It Begins

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April 1, 2011

Rachael,

Normally I don’t have too much to say about what you are doing. Radically changing your diet doesn’t sound good to me. Why fix what isn’t broke? You are mentally and physically super. You are a college champion in your freshman year running. Did you accomplish all the things you have on a poor diet? One of your emails mentioned how much you like and how well you run on banana, peanut butter, & oatmeal. You have been very successful as a student, musician, and athlete.

I have been strong & healthy all my life. I am not going to make such a radical change in what I fuel my body and mind. I just would like you to try the diet this summer or after graduation or never. Give it some thought. Do you want to fix what is not broken? You are so special. I hope you don’t mind me giving you my opinion. And that is all it is – my opinion. Have a good, healthy, productive day.

-Dave

This was no April Fools joke. I was about to start a diet of only raw food.

I felt as if I had come to my breaking point. How could I continue eating the way I was eating for the past year? Everyone seemed to admire my speed and the way I ate. I was racing the best times of my life. But I was sick of what I was doing to my body. I hated the strict food routine I was in.

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Rachael Before Rawchael

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Trigger warning: eating disorder behaviors mentioned.

Eating disorders don’t just include losing hair, feeling hungry, or suffering dizzy spells. Eating disorders–the obsession with food, with perfecting the day with food–consumes all of your mental space, making it difficult to engage in LIFE.

This was a typical day for me when my restrictive eating disorder took over:

7am: Wake up—you must wake up early so that your food schedule is correct, so that you are tired enough to fall asleep early later tonight to avoid eating at night.
Weigh yourself after going to the bathroom. The scale is hidden and since everyone is still asleep you are able to weigh yourself without anyone seeing you. If they found you doing this—or even found your scale—you would feel ashamed. You pretend weight doesn’t matter, but you know that the number determines your mood for the day.

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On Your Mark . . .

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I cannot say starting this blog is easy, but something within prompts me to share what I’ve been hiding for too long. Something tells me I need to look back at my food log from more than a year ago when I began a raw food diet. By doing this, perhaps I will discover what happened along the way that led me to where I am now. Maybe I can see why I was in denial about my poor relationship with food.

I did not start the raw food diet just for better “health.” I wanted weight loss. After a year of restricting calories, I wanted to continue to lose weight. After dropping X pounds in a matter of months during my senior year of high school, I was satisfied at first. But once I correlated the low weight to success in my first year of college racing track and cross country, I wanted more. I was determined to drop more weight each year to run faster.

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