My Story

Age 30 / Age 31 - Up, then down.

Whatever FOOD HELL you're in, I've been there.

- If you’ve ever picked food out of the trash shortly after throwing it out because you’ve sworn that you will never eat that food again but then immediately regretted it, raise your hand.

*Raises hand*

- If you’ve ever covered food in dish soap in order to make it inedible to keep yourself from picking it out of said trash, raise your hand.

*Raises hand*

- If you’ve ever thrown out / donated / given away large amounts of “bad foods” only to immediately turn around and re-purchase them, raise your hand.

*Raises hand*

- If you’ve ever tried to make yourself throw up after eating, only to realize that you somehow can’t manage but wish you could, raise your hand.

*Raises hand*

- If you’ve ever felt as though you would rather die than wake up one more day obsessing about food but were unable to stop because you felt like you’re just too damn fat, raise your hand.

*Raises hand*

I get you because I’ve been there.

I have the education – a diploma in nutrition – but I also have the real-life experience of someone who’s struggled with binge-eating for most of her life. That’s the platform I’m speaking to you from: EDUCATION + EXPERIENCE.

I spent my whole life waiting to have a smaller body so that I could finally start living life.

I’m 43-years-old and I don’t want to wait anymore.

I don’t want you to wait anymore either.

Age 34 / Age 35 - Down, then up.

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MY STORY

My appearance was never been something I was happy with because I didn't feel I had a right to be.

My mom looked like the human version of Barbie (people used to stop her on the street to tell her that). She was petite, with blonde hair and blue eyes.

My mom in her late 20's

I grew up in the 80's and 90's when girl-next-door (read: North American girl-next-door - aka the human version of apple pie) was the only way you could be considered pretty. Certainly not as a tall foreign child with an overbite and frizzy hair like me.

Me and Mom; circa 1993. I was 12 and mom was 47.

I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I didn’t look like my mom or like most of the other girls, but I didn’t think too much about it.

But the year I was 11, everything changed.

I went from being a child who was innocent and unselfconscious in her body, to suddenly becoming aware of myself; the world let me know in no uncertain terms that the way I presented physically was entirely unacceptable.

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YOUR BODY IS UNACCEPTABLE

That year, when I in the 6th grade, I was invited to a birthday party that included all the kids in my class.

The prettiest girl in the school was there. Her name was Anna and she was exceptionally pretty and perfect. She had straight blond hair and blue eyes and perfect skin and a perfect face and a perfect figure (as much as one can have a figure at age 11). I admired her from afar, wishing I could be even half of everything that she was.

During the party we played the telephone game, where you sit in a circle and someone starts by whispering something silly into another person's ear, and then they whisper it to the next person, and what's supposed to happen is that the sentence changes to utter nonsense and everyone giggles and it's hilarious.

When we played, it was Anna who started the telephone line. And when it got to me, someone whispered in my ear "Jasmin is round and fat." I flushed with embarrassment and felt as though I wanted the ground to open and swallow me whole.

The year I got called "round and fat"

I was so upset that I stopped the game to ask Anna what her starting sentence had been. Again I heard "Jasmin is round and fat." Everyone giggled gleefully like the cruel little assholes school children can be, and I started to cry. I felt sick to my stomach, both because of what she said, and because my belly was indeed round and fat in that moment because it was so full of cake.

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YOU ARE UNACCEPTABLE

That same year, there was a day when I was sitting in front of the TV eating a chocolate bar and my dad walked into the room. He took one look at me sitting there and said “You need to go outside and exercise. If you keep sitting in front of the TV without moving and eating chocolate, you’re going to get fat and then no man’s going to want you because men don’t like fat women.”

I’m not even going to unpack all the different levels of *fucked-up* it is for a father to tell his 11-year-old daughter that unless she’s appealing to men, she has no value. But that’s what I heard in that moment: that my greatest value as a woman was what I looked like. That who I was as a person didn’t matter because - as a woman - it’s what I looked like that mattered most.

(And let’s be honest folks, society as a whole agrees with my father.)

My dad and I never got along at the best of times, but I think from that moment on, every time I was angry at him (often multiple times a day), I would eat chocolate in defiance.

I literally started eating my anger.

And then over time, it became a habit.

To the point where any time I needed to deal with any emotion, I would eat because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to cope with my feelings.

And so, I became an Emotional Eater and started using food to avoid my feelings.

Signs of Emotional Eating

Using food to:

• Fill a void in your life 
• Feel better or cheer yourself up 
• Calm down or soothe your nerves 
• Escape from problems 
• Cope with stress and worries 
• Reward yourself

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SUBSTANCE ABUSE

I used food to stuff down my anger, to SILENCE myself.

And when there was a lot of anger, there was a lot of food: enter BINGE-EATING.

I had to stuff down my anger because any time I spoke up in opposition to my father (often), he went into a rage-spiral and would hit me while screaming horrible things at me.

Slowly over time, I learned to stay silent. Food helped.

I didn't come up with the "eat to cope" strategy on my own; it was my mother that helped me start that destructive cycle.

Every time my father screamed at me, every time he hit me, I would go to my mom for comfort. (Where was she amidst all of the screaming and hitting? Generally looking away; she learned early on that if she tried to intervene, the anger would be directed at her, so she eventually stopped trying.)

She couldn't protect herself, so didn't know how to protect me, and she clearly wasn't able to deal with her own feelings. Every time I would go to her for guidance and comfort, the only thing she would offer in those moments was a hug and a chocolate bar.

Need comfort?

EAT.

Have a feeling you don't know what to do with?

EAT.

Just EAT.

When all I wanted to do was scream, I ate.

When I wanted to speak out against unfairness and injustice (because my brother and I were never treated the same), I ate.

When I felt any feeling that I didn't know how to deal with, I ATE.

Families: You can never tell from the outside the level of dysfunction on the inside.

My father hit me until I was 23-years old, and it’s taken me a lifetime to learn how to speak up for myself without experiencing intense fear that I'm going to be verbally and/or physically attacked as soon as I say something that someone doesn't like. I’m still working on that.

Over the years, the problem I faced again and again was that I tried to get a handle on my emotions by dieting and losing weight.

Because my feelings were manifesting themselves through food and weight gain, I thought that if I could control my food intake and lose weight, then somehow my feelings would follow.

Fix the weight, fix the feelings... right???

For any of you out there trying to do this right now, let me tell you from personal experience: I tried it that way for 30 years and it doesn’t work.

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THE FIRST DIET

I was told by my father, my family, my peers, and society that both who I was and what I looked like was unacceptable.

CONCLUSION: I thought I could become acceptable as a person by changing my weight.

So that year, when I was 11, I went on my first diet.

It was a diet I made up: pineapple and pretzels. I don’t remember how long I put myself through that particular insanity, but it was long enough that I lost about eight-pounds of puppy fat.

But then I subconsciously realized something that had me on a DIET & lose weight / BINGE & gain weight roller coaster for the better part of my life: losing weight never solved any of my problems.

- My father didn’t stop hitting me or stop screaming at me when I was thinner.

- The kids at school didn’t like me more or treat me any differently when I was thinner.

- I didn’t suddenly love and accept myself when I was thinner.

I was trying to feel worthy via the numbers on the scale and to my great disappointment, it never worked.

Inevitably all of those things, coupled with the effort of whatever diet I was on, would feel overwhelming. (Because - duh - vigilant restriction never feels effortless.)

So, I would stop the diet, eat to comfort myself, gain the weight back, and then start a new diet again.

I lost 30 years – three-quarters of my life – to my struggle with food / weight / body image, and I don’t want to waste another moment.

I also don’t want YOU to waste another moment, if you're struggling.

That’s why I’m here – I need this website to remind myself of what does and doesn’t work for me in all aspects of life. And I hope that by reminding myself, I get to remind you too.

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"Don’t ever let anyone tell you that food doesn’t work. Anyone who tells you that food doesn’t work is either stupid or a liar or has never had food before. You can tell them I said so. It works. Putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn’t work its slutty, gluttonous, more-is-more magic, everyone in America would be Angelina Jolie thin...

No.

Food does work. Food feels so good when you put it on top of all the stuff you don’t want to deal with or know how to deal with. It even works on stuff you don’t even recognize as worthy of dealing with.

Food is magic. It makes you feel better. It numbs you. Beautiful magical food deadens your soul just enough so you can’t think too hard about anything other than cake or sleep. Putting food on top of it casts a spell to make the feelings go away. You don’t have to face yourself or think or be anything other than your brain—no body necessary.

Food works.

There’s the rub.

There’s the trouble.

It works.

I would be eating a whole bucket of fried chicken right this very minute if I thought I could still fit into these pants afterward.

If I was still okay with being dead inside.

The thing is? I’m not.

I’m not okay with being dead inside at all.

Being numb no longer suits me. It’s ill-fitting and I’m antsy about it. I find myself snapping back at people more... I don’t want to be numb. I want to tell someone who has upset me to take their attitude and shove it right up their—

Well, let’s just say that I am starting to prefer it to shoving some food in my mouth on top of my hurt feelings."

- Shonda Rhimes: The Year of Yes

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