Coming Clean, By: Zayle

I sat down this morning, expecting to write about my meals yesterday, working out, and waist training--but when I sat down at the computer, I decided it was time to come clean. The story I'm about to tell is not one many know about--it has been a dark secret of mine and something that I still struggle with daily. You would think something from over ten years ago, would be gone and buried--but this ghost haunts me everyday. My fiancé knows nothing about this, most of my friends don't...it embarrasses me and honestly it shouldn't. This is something that to others may not seem like a big deal, and many may look down upon me for thinking the way I do...but if you're going to read my blog and I'm going to tell you what I'm doing to "look fab" and to "be fit", then I'm going to be honest about my background.

In high school I was a lot like the girl I am now, I took fashion risks and wore heels almost everyday to school. I was a cheerleader and lettered in powerlifting my freshman year. I worked out and I looked, what I thought, fabulous. My first two years of high school, I was tiny. I never got close to weighing over 100 pounds. My freshman year I weighed around 87 pounds, and my sophomore year it was around 95 pounds. I'm 5'1", so it's natural to be that little...but then something changed. I decided to focus just on cheerleading and theatre after my sophomore year...and when I came back to school after summer break, I was no longer the little girl who was underdeveloped, I was a "butterball". Or so this is what I was called. I had gained up to 115 pounds. It doesn't sound like a lot, but all my friends seemed to think so. I lost almost all of them. They were suddenly "too cool" to hang out with me. At cheerleading games I stood alone, because the two girls who had been my best friends since elementary, didn't want to be seen with the "fat ass". I still hung with a lot of the same crowd, and still was considered by some people's standards as "popular", but I also dealt with constant scrutiny daily. As I would walk across the cafeteria, my old friends, would yell at me calling me names.  When we would do plays in front of the school, I would hear those same friends, yelling up at the stage--"BUTTERBALL!". As a young girl, this did some major damage.

I ended up becoming bulimic. I would binge on food and then throw it up and when that didn't work, I turned to eating only strawberries. I finally lost a little weight with that and got down to 110. I felt better about myself, and when I went to acting school that fall in NYC, I almost felt confident. Nobody knew about my "fat" days, I could start over anew. This only lasted for a while, because like so many college kids, I packed on the pounds. Once I came back to Texas, after deciding living with mice and never having any money, wasn't for me--I weighed in at 122 pounds. I was devastated. I was back to being the butterball. I refused to go anywhere or be seen by anyone. I was the girl who couldn't make it in New York and was back to her old "fatty" days. I finally found a diet program at a center that seemed feasible. I weighed in three times a week and was very strict. I never cheated once on this plan. When I started back at a junior college that fall, I was a tiny 102 pounds. I stayed this weight for a few years; however, I was back to my old bulimia and anorexia ways. This way of life finally got the better of me, and by the time I got married (for the first time) in 2009 I was 119 pounds. 

I tried diet after diet, but nothing worked because I couldn't stop binging and purging...and the weight--it kept creeping up. I think a lot of this had to do with how miserable I was in this marriage--I grew up around people who stayed married and were happy--but I was always alone and incredibly unhappy. Bulimia seemed to be the only thing that made me feel better. I saw counselors and nutritionists, but they didn't help, because I guess I wasn't ready for that yet--I wasn't ready to change myself. I wanted out of my marriage and out of the body I had. In 2011 after finding my husband in the midst of something no married man should be doing, I finally saw my way out. I was ecstatic to finally be back home with my family and no longer spending my entire days and nights alone. BUT I was now over 130 pounds. For a short girl this is a heavy burden on a little body, plus the past still haunted me. It wasn't until a bad breakup that I went from 127 to 112...AND then I finally learned how to love myself and how to be as healthy as possible...AND it wasn't until I met my fiancé and found true love, that I let the reigns of the scale let go of me. 

I am now 110 pounds and will always struggle with an eating disorder, because that is a sort of addiction that never goes away--it's just being able to ignore those bad thoughts and knowing I'm worth it, that keeps me going. Now that I'm getting married, I want to set a good example for my future children. I want them to know what it is like to look and feel healthy--and that is the true reason why I am on this journey to get healthy and fit. I wish more than anything I had pictures to share from the 'dark days' but the only pics I could find were from my friend's facebook pages (all after pics are recent pictures compared to photos from years past--after my divorce and before the breakup, all are around 130-127ish) Any pictures I had before, I destroyed, so that I could hide and pretend like those "butterball" days never happened...but they did, and it is something that will never go away--it is something that has shaped me and made me who I am today.