One of our KnockOuts, Magda, wanted to share her story with you - she hopes it will help others struggling with similar issues.

Ever since I remember, I had issues with my body image. Even when in 1st grade, I just assumed I was heavier than the other girls. I wasn’t, but some how I held onto to this notion. I remember not wanting to do the body roll in P.E. class because I was afraid everyone would feel how much heavier I was. Being heavier was terrifying because it did not fit into my ideas of how girls were supposed to be: pretty, graceful, modest, and with a certain “airiness” about them. A girl was supposed to be feminine, and I equated that with frailness and lightness.

When I was nine years old, my family moved from Austin, Texas to Moscow, Russia for my father’s work. I had taken ballet in Austin since the age of three and my mother quickly enrolled me in a rigorous ballet academy in Moscow. In Russia, I was in class either alone the instructor and the pianist, or with a couple other girls in a huge room with mirrors all around. Back in Austin, I had been in an intimate room with a lot of other little girls and a friendly female teacher - all of whom I had known since level one. But the girls in Moscow were older, taller, more skilled, more focused, and… skinnier. And so at the age of nine I decided to go on my first diet. It wasn’t extreme. I simply did not eat any sweets for two weeks. I don’t think I lost weight, but that didn’t bother me. I wasn’t obsessed - yet. But I did quit ballet soon after (a decision I have come to regret) because it wasn’t “cool” anymore. And if anything, I wanted to be cool.

We returned to Texas when I was in the middle of fifth grade. Living in Moscow, I, along with all my friends there, had been completely oblivious to was “in” and what was “out” back in the States. I was shocked to see my female classmates wearing lip-gloss, heels, and trendy clothes, listening to the Spice Girls and swooning over Leonardo Dicaprio. I had been wearing corduroy pants and appliqué jumpers, listening Elvis Presley and Simon and Garfunkle, and swooning over the sixth grade boys in school plays. But these girls talked about shopping, dating, and looking hot for boys. I felt really insecure. My breasts hadn’t begun to grow yet, and I started looking at my body more critically. Things did not get better in middle school. I went to a Montessori school (an alternative school system where several grades are grouped together into one class) for sixth and seventh grades. In the Montessori system, middle school does not start till seventh grade, but my parents decided to put me in the middle school anyway. I was the youngest out of the 40-student middle school class - comprised primarily of classes seven to nine.

Then the boys, the make up, and the racy clothes started. And my obsession with my body and my looks. I had my first boyfriend when I was 12. I said yes when he asked me out because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. During school hours we would take break and sneak off to the woods behind the school and make out. I’d never done that before and I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I wasn’t in love with him, but I didn’t know how to say no. I was too shy and insecure to stand up for myself. For years afterward, intimacy was not something I enjoyed because it wasn’t something I felt I had any say in, and it took a summer romance in Germany when I was 18 for me to truly appreciate being intimate with someone.

Going to middle school with an older crowd certainly was not good for my self-image. Surrounded by mini skirts, thongs, see-through blouses, heavy make up, and sexual innuendos, I started focusing more and more on my looks. I wanted to be more like my older classmates. I started wearing make up, fought with my parents over heels, low-rise jeans and tube tops, and started noticing how boys reacted to my appearance. I soon started dieting, this time for real. I remember once when I was 13, my parents had promised my brother and me that we’d go to my favorite barbeque restaurant that Saturday. That Wednesday at school, it suddenly occurred me that all that barbeque and potato salad and sauce might have a fair amount of calories. I gave my sandwich to a friend and did not eat lunch for the rest of the week.

My family is Polish, and my mother always worried we weren’t eating enough. She always had a (very healthy, I might add) snack waiting for us after school. I refused to eat. And for dinner, I refused to eat after six o’clock. I also started running every day after school. That year, my grandmother died, and my teenage rebelliousness and angst increased as my relationship with my parents disintegrated further.

Back then, we’d visit Poland every year for the entire summer. That summer I went to a three week camp in Poland. I was not thrilled with camp fare offered. I saw fat and oil everywhere and refused to eat. Even though the camp activities consisted mainly of swimming, hiking, or kayaking, I did crunches in my sleeping bag at night, and subsisted on bananas and crackers I bought during our weekly trips into town.

After camp, my mother said I had lost weight, but I was convinced I had gained. I would lay in bed, feeling my stomach and crying because I felt fat. When my mother occasionally bought my brother and me candy bar he would eat his within ten minute while mine lasted a week. I decided I had to go on a three week diet to lose the weight gained at camp. I stopped eating all sweets, cut out all oils and fats from my diet, and completely skipped dinner. I would order periogi, traditional Polish dumplings, but without the traditional toppings of fried bacon. If I perceived the slightest bit of oil, I refused to eat or painstakingly wiped every bit of it off with a napkin. My family looked on speechless. I also followed a strict exercise regime. I had to do three types of abdominal exercises at 120 reps each before and after every meal. I could not eat until I had finished the requisite 360 reps, and I could not get on with my day without doing another set afterwards.

After both my three week diet and summer ended, I was finally content that I had lost the imaginary weight I had “gained” during camp. My mother claimed I had lost at least 13 pounds but as far as I was concerned, I was right where I started before that fateful camp. I started eighth grade at a new school. I had no intention of losing any more weight. I did, however, have an immense fear of gaining all that weight back. And so begin my path into a full-fledged eating disorder. I was so terrified of gaining weight and I started eating less and less, convinced each bite would pack on the pounds. It was easier to cut back a little more each time (“just to be safe”) than risk eating a little too much and gaining weight. I completely cut out all fat and anything containing it. I memorized the calorie values of dozens of foods. I even spent half of school mass each week calculating how many calories were in the communion wafer (I went to a Catholic school). Everyone commented on how lucky I was to be so naturally skinny. I tried to placate my parents, bragging about how much I’d eaten for breakfast: an orange, yogurt, and a spinach omelet. Little did they know that amounted to a mere 200 calories. I was down to 70-odd pounds by then. The funny thing is, I never saw myself as getting any skinnier. I thought I looked the same as I had back in seventh grade. I thought I was simply taking preventive measures against gaining weight.

After I collapsed in school, my parents sent me to a therapist. During my first visit, she showed me photographs of “real” women in a magazine and asked me if I thought they were fat. I said “no,” because I knew that was the “right” answer. But really, I would have rather died than look like them.

When I hit high school, something changed. I started eating. Not because I was cured, but because my body simply could not sustain the starvation mode it was in. I ate everything in sight, especially previously “forbidden” foods. I felt like the last piece of dirt on earth. I gained a lot of weight. People thought I looked normal - thin even - but I felt obese. One day freshman year I was watching an episode of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” where one of her teachers started gaining weight. The episode centered around ridiculing his ever-growing “bubble butt.” Later that evening I was trying on a skirt and much to my horror I noticed I suddenly had a butt too! It wasn’t the flat, non-existent butt I had been conditioned to believe was the only acceptable one to have- oh no, this one was definitely making its presence known. I had the same defect as Sabrina’s geeky and unattractive MALE teacher! Not only was my worst fear confirmed, it was also confirmed as a socially unacceptable condition. AND, now I felt like a man.

I remember one day my friend and I were studying for a World War II exam. There was a photograph of a shirtless Holocaust survivor in our text book. You could see his rib cage and hip bones. I turned to my friend and said that was what I ideally wanted to look like. I was completely serious. My friend stared at me in horror. While I agreed he was far too thin and sickly for a healthy adult male, I thought he looked perfect for a teen girl. In my sick and twisted state of mind, I truly thought that was beautiful, and the only acceptable way for me to look.

I struggled all through my freshman year, eating nothing during the day and then binging at night because I was starving. That feeling of failure, utter disgust, guilt, rage, and self-hatred was debilitating to my self-esteem. I would binge and purge, always on a constant cycle of losing and gaining weight. What hurt the most was my mother. She had noticed my weight gain and started saying I should go on a diet and lose weight. I could not understand why it was so hard to me to not eat all of a sudden. I went from having iron-clad will power, to having zero. I felt ashamed, and a disgrace. I’d stand in front of the mirror, squeeze my sides, and fight back tears of anger and disgust. My internal demons screamed at me, asking why I was so fat and ugly. I refused to wear shorts or swim suits all throughout high school. I thought everyone was laughing at me behind my back, talking about how fat I’d become. I was still popular with my male classmates, but I was convinced they would wake up one day and realize how unattractive I really was. Once time, my friends told me that my crush had commented on my insecurity with my weight. According to them, he said I’d look sick if I lost any weight. I thought they were lying. Because the truth was, all my binge-purging had taken it’s toll and I was in the heavier, albeit still healthy, weight range for my height.

That summer, I read a book that changed my life and how I approached food. It taught me to stopped counting calories and to forget about “guilty” vs. “good” foods. It taught me to just eat - without guilt or worry. I stopped worrying about food and ate whatever I felt like - whether it was a donut or a salad. It felt so good to not have to keep track of every calorie I was putting in my mouth or how that was going to affect my weight. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t spend my days gobbling cake and chips. Instead, my diet was fairly balanced and I ate only when I was hungry and stopped when I was full. I spent my days doing normal summer activities like hiking, riding bikes, and playing tennis. I lost ten pounds that summer, without even trying. I never felt more proud of myself.

Since then, my body image and eating have been incomparably better. I still have my ups and downs and I struggle with it everyday, but at least I no longer compare myself to Holocaust survivors. I accept and love my body more and more, and I’ve come to realize that what I see and what the world sees are two very different things. It is more important for me to be healthy and strong than a frail waif. They say that you can do much more with love than with hate, and that applies to self-love and self-hate.

KnockOut Magda