When my Body Started Feeling Safe Again
By Project REDs Ambassador Maria Neale
Growing up I never felt like enough. At home I compared myself to my siblings, I wasn’t good enough at sports and I wasn’t academic like them, and I didn’t fit in at school either. I played football with the boys and was reluctant to wear a skirt, and I never understood the excitement around make-up. I felt like I didn’t have a place and I couldn’t control that.
Then I discovered I could control how much I exercised and how much food I ate.
I began to restrict my intake, then I would binge and gain weight, comparing myself to my brother who was into body building at the time. I was insecure and struggling with my body image.
A girl commented:
You go to the gym most days, don’t you? Then why don’t you look like you go to the gym”
This comment has stuck with me ever since and I am still trying to remove it from my thoughts.
Fast forward to the first year of university, I picked up running with a friend and instantly fell in love with it. Suddenly I was running miles without getting out of breath and it felt great.
Over time the miles increased, the weight was coming off, and I was suddenly living a life I had only dreamed about. I was going to the gym and walking everywhere on top of the running and I finally felt in control of my happiness and what I had to do to live on this constant high. But my periods were still irregular and they were getting further apart.
Throughout all the pressures and stress of university life, exercising, and particularly running, was my outlet. I did and still do believe (within boundaries of health) that exercise is a great form of therapy, of release, of helping a whirring brain.
Then my periods disappeared altogether for 10 months and subsequently I was diagnosed with PCOS and REDs.
I didn’t know what REDs was when I first heard the name. PCOS, I knew quite a lot about and the doctor said that chances were I have had it my entire life, but it has taken the stress to bring it to the surface, but I knew nothing about REDs.
I knew I had to change something, but I didn’t want to give up running, which was the one thing which gave me purpose and I didn’t want to eat more because I was worried about gaining weight.
So, I looked to reduce my stress, but my stress kept increasing.
I stopped running and going to the gym and doing the thing that keeps me sane because I realised I needed to prioritise my health right now, and that means not exercising.
I am still learning how to navigate recovery from REDs. I don’t have all the answers, and this is probably the hardest period of my life so far. I have had to let go of the version of me I thought would make me enough for people and finally listen to my hunger cues for the safety of my body.
I have had to eat more and challenge myself when I start thinking that a certain food will make me fat and that I make it a non-negotiable to eat that food that day.
While this is the hardest period I have ever gone through, I am finally healing and I know that I deserve to give myself that. I am also proud to say that when I lessened my steps and stopped exercising so regularly and intensely that my period came back in June and it was a full one, so what I am doing is working.