My Story

At a 5k in December 2008

Hi Everyone!

After reading food and fitness blogs for about a year, I finally decided to create my own. Now that I’m home for the summer, I finally have the time! I have to say, coming up with a blog name was the hardest part!

So, a little about me…
I’m a 20 year old girl going to college as a harp performance major. I go to college in Arizona, but I am originally from Michigan. I’m 4’11 and ¾” tall and proud! And no, I’m not a midget ;)

Music

I’ve been playing the harp for about 8 years now. I often get asked how I started playing harp. When I was 7 years old, I started playing the violin.

One summer when I was about 10, I was at a summer camp for violin. The counselors took us to an orchestra concert one night, and I saw two women on stage playing the harp. I was awestruck, and spent the entire concert just watching them. I knew I wanted to play the harp.

Well, my parents weren’t as excited as I was! Earlier when watching double bass students go to their lessons, my mom said to me that she didn’t want me to play an instrument I couldn’t carry myself—well, that kind of excludes the harp! Now I’m able to move the harp around myself, but there were many years where it was a two (or three!) person job!

After quite a bit of pleading, my parents said that if I still wanted to play harp in a year, I could go back to the same summer camp for violin, and take a harp elective class. Sure enough, that’s what I did! I loved it, and we set about getting me harp lessons and renting a harp. Eventually, we bought a small pedal harp, then later upgraded to a full-size one.

My Senior Year of High School

During all this, I still played the violin. In fact, violin was my main instrument until my sophomore year of high school. At that time, I knew I wanted to go to music school, and had to choose my primary instrument. I chose the harp!

Fitness

Now, as to fitness… I’ve always loved to be active. I rode horses for years, and actually owned a horse before I had to sell him before I moved to college. I was on the track team in high school as a sprinter. I ran the 100M and 200M. Now, I like to run longer distances. I want to train for a half-marathon, but I’ve been having issues with my knees. I’ve been diagnosed with patella-femoral syndrome, and I’ve been working on strengthening exercises. I’ve also struggled with my IT band, and am currently using a foam roller.

I love running too much to give it up, so hopefully I can work with my bio-mechanics! I’m also a figure skater, and love skating. It’s harder to skate when I’m in Arizona, but when I’m back home in Michigan, I love to go.

Food

As to food and health… this is where things get slightly complicated. Like several other bloggers, I have had food issues in the past. I have always been very muscular—it’s just the way I was born. I build muscle very easily, and when I was a sprinter in high school, I got very bulky. I often got a lot of comments about my muscles, and I become uncomfortable.

Freshman Year of High School

I also went through an awkward stage where I dyed my blonde hair black and thought I was so dark and broody... haha! This was right before I started struggling with my weight/ED :

I must say, I like the blonde hair better ;)

I was never overweight-- just very muscular, with a normal amount of body fat. Maybe around a 23 BMI. I had a lot of fast-twitch (bulky) muscle fibers. But I felt too big, and uncomfortable. So in the summer before my Junior year of high school, I started restricting my calories. I also didn’t run that year, due to previous injuries. I started losing weight, but I still had a lot of bulky muscle. It wasn’t a good period of my life, that’s for sure. I was eating 700-1000 calories a day, and obsessed with (diet) food and exercising ONLY to lose weight. I was very unhappy and cranky all the time. I did lose weight, but I never got down to where I was clinically underweight. However, I was definitely hurting my body, and my days were consumed with food/exercise plans and disordered thoughts. I could barely concentrate on anything else.

Halfway through my senior year, I finally opened up to my mom about my eating disorder. I saw a therapist, and increased my calories, but I still suffered disordered thoughts (and actions, like mini binges and compulsive exercising). I was always trying to lose those “last few pounds.”

It wasn’t until recently that I decided to make peace with my body. During the Summer of 2008, I spent the entire time counting every calorie, and tracking all my exercise, and just trying to lose that “last bit of weight.” I was skating every day that summer, and feeling a lot of pressure to “look like a skater.” Of course, this was all pressure that I put on myself. Well, it wasn’t fun. And the weight wasn’t really coming off. The disordered thoughts were still there, even though I wasn’t starving my body.

Sporting the Sprinter Legs I used to Hate

Then I discovered food blogs. The first blog I found was the ever-popular Kath Eats Real Food. Through her, I discovered all the other food and fitness blogs. And I read them, and I wished I could be like those girls who didn’t fret about every single calorie. I wished I could be like those bloggers who enjoyed healthy food, and didn’t worry about treats once in a while. I wanted to be like the girls who worked out with a fitness goal—like running a 5k or marathon, or just because they felt better when they worked out. They didn’t work out with the sole purpose of burning off calories.

I wanted to be like them. But somehow, I thought that I couldn’t. Like somehow, I was different, and “had” to do what I was doing, or else I’d gain weight. But I kept reading the blogs, and kept wishing. I was getting more and more fed up and tired of hating my body.

After reading the blogs for several months, I started to emulate them. I was still struggling with some disordered thoughts and body-criticism, and I was just getting so tired of it. I saw how the bloggers had such a healthy relationship with food and fitness, and I wanted to have that, too.

And finally, I just decided that it just wasn’t worth it. It’s just not worth it to spend all your time hating your body, and hating yourself, and fighting food all the time! It’s not a good way to live your life! And you know what? People aren’t judging you by the size of your thighs. Really, they’re not. And if they are, they aren’t someone whose opinion should matter to you.

I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to finally reach peace with my body. But it’s okay—at least it happened some time. Reading the food/fitness blogs definitely helped shape my thoughts and slowly change my negative food thoughts to positive ones. I still struggle with “bad” food and body thoughts sometimes, but I think everyone does. The important thing is that I finally view and appreciate my body for what it is, and what it can do—not what it isn’t.

The funny thing was, once I accepted my body and stopped stressing out over food and exercise, I did lose some weight. Instead of the bulky sprinter build I carried for so long, I leaned out and started to look more like a middle-distance runner. I’m still very muscular, and I will always be—it’s just in my genes! But you know what? I’ve come to like my muscle definition and not be embarrassed about it! Why spend so much time worrying about something that will always be a part of you? Plus, now I think it’s kind of cool ;) And now I work out to get stronger and more fit—not to burn off what I had for breakfast.

Me at a recent race

Whew! So that covers a lot of the three main areas of my life—music, fitness, and health/food! I hope some of it was interesting, and that you enjoy my blog half as much as I’ve enjoyed all of yours!

Edited to say: I totally don't have time to update and redo this, but I just want to say that now I'm a kinesiology major but I'm still playing the harp :)