fat kid trauma
fat kid trauma a. d. anderson
cookbook | memoir | sketches
letter to the reader this is a zine that discusses eating disorders, body dysmorphia, food, trying times, joyous times, and everything that encompasses recovery from an eating disorder. i struggled with body image, my eating disorder, and self-esteem for 10 years before i reached the point i am now, and this zine includes art, writings, and recipes from various times along my journey. it has not been all happy, victorious times, nor has it all been in the trenches. as i start compiling the works that will comprise the zine before you, i am exactly six months into my full recovery, completely restriction and purge free for those 180 days. For the first time in my life, i have lived 180 days free of my fear from food, from weight, from life. when i recovered, i lost a piece of myself. i lost the piece that craved bodily perfection, the piece that simultaneously craved and repelled food, the piece that centered my life around my meals, or lackthereof. in losing this piece, i have been able to finally pick up all of the other pieces that had been left behind, and make room for the big picture that for so long i was unable to see. this is me attempting to assemble them.
dedicated to my family, for always standing beside me to my boyfriend and best friend, logan, for so much that i have yet to find the words for and to all the loved ones in my life who through their love for me, taught me how to love myself.
sincerely yours, a
i am a fat kid growing up i don’t think anyone knows what fat is. we know the word, we know that it’s impolite to call someone fat, we know that “fat” is a negative, but we don’t know how to use it as such until much later. i was a big kid from the fourth grade until my eating disorder showed up. i remember always having to buy the largest sizes in the store, my mom patiently handing me size after size of pants through the dressing room door until the biggest size still wasn’t going to cut it. i never cared apart from when they didn’t have the shirt design i wanted; i never knew my size was bad. that my size was not what everyone expected, or wanted my size to be. i didn’t care, until the sixth grade. leading up to the Day I Learned I Was Fat, i was growing more and more conscious of my body in comparison to my classmates and friends. i could never borrow my friend’s clothes at sleepovers because i was too big. my fashion thing was layering spandex-like tank tops under all my shirts. i think at first i liked the look, but then i liked how the extra layer hid how pronounced my stomach was. for me, this was my first make-shift bodycontrol suit. girls in my class who were much smaller than me started talking about their need for “diets” and how “fat” they were, despite seemingly no one of importance telling us this. but if you think about it, everyone was telling us this.
most eating disorder symptoms tend to show up in young girls between ages 9 and 12. here i was at 11, about to find out for the first time exactly what was wrong with the way i looked. a few months into the sixth grade and i had my first crush. i was confident, and although i was starting to feel the first instances of dislike towards my stomach rolls, my thick thighs, my calves that filled out my skinny jeans, i thought that this was going to be my first real chance at love. it’s lunchtime and i’m eating two entrees. i’m eating chocolate milk and tater tots and having dessert because i love food. i am 11 and it has never occurred to me that food makes you fat. through roundabout games, word got out about my crush and before i knew it, they had run over to their lunch table to “ask them out for me.” when my crush declined, my fierce friends persisted “why??” which was then embarassing, but now seems sweet. that’s when their friend chimed in to explain to us all why i would not be going out with my crush -“ew, she’s fat!” from that day forward, i knew i was fat. for every day after that, i didn’t forget it.
libby lu
i first noticed my body was different than my peers at my friend’s birthday party, probably when i was eight or nine. it was at Libby Lu’s, an old store where you could get a makeover and make your own bath products. it was a dream to get our hair and makeup done, get to dress up and parade around the store -- except for dressing up is not so easy when everything is a small except you. all my friends got to wear the sparkly silver tube-tops, but i couldn’t manage to squeeze into one. instead, i wore a wrinkly, stiff libby lu baseball tee. and yes, i was the only one in that tee. even though i wasn’t upset about it yet, i did start to question why my friends were smaller and could wear more things than me. i began to wonder why there weren’t as many cute shirts towards the back of the rack, in the large sections. i began to wonder why certain stores didn’t have clothes that fit me at all. maybe that’s why i still opt for the baggy tee to this day.
stretch in the sixth grade i weighed 180 pounds. i was at my largest, and fully aware of it. i hated clothes shopping. i hated my body. i hated how my friends could wear shorts and tank tops, while i opted for underamour under all my clothes to secure my fat as tightly to my body as possible. after the summer of sixth grade, which i spent in swimsuit tops and swim trunks so as to cover my stretch-marked thighs, middle school posed the next big threat. kids were getting meaner, and instead of getting picked on for being weird or a nerd, i was now the token fat girl with a target on my back, open season. my mom, sensitive and kind to how insecure i was and how mean kids were, bought me my first body shaper before my first day of middle school. i had never felt more confident than i did when that beige tight fabric was hugging every part of my body that i wanted so badly to cut off. i loved the way my shirts layed flat over the shaper, the way i didn’t have to fight to button my jeans, the way i felt /skinny/ when i wore it, as if i was just another girl in class. the body shaper was many things to me. it was the unconditional love of my mother, who i know cried after she bought it, heartbroken that her daughter felt so disgusted with the body she helped create.
it was fake confidence. when i didn’t have it in me, the shaper gave me at least a little glimmer of self-love, be it for my altered body or not. it was a security blanket. the body shaper was small. it held me tight. the compression was comforting, all my most vulnerable pieces comfortably supported, safely hidden away from everyone else. body shapers are marketed at older women, but at twelve i had already created a dependancy on it. i would wash it nightly just to ensure it would be clean to wear every day if i could. i dreaded the day that someone saw i looked fatter because i left my shaper at home. it never came, and it probably would have never come, but at the time it was dire. everyone had a bodyshaper. maybe yours wasn’t an actual body shaper, but we have all had a band-aid fix that we held close to ourselves, allowing it to absorb the punches we were not strong enough to take, gloss over the bigger issue we were not ready to face, an armour of sorts. while 11 year old me will always be grateful for that shaper, i am glad i live my life unrestricted now.
breakfast tacos served me and logan ingredients - 4 eggs - 4 corn tortillas - 1/2 tsp paprika - 1/2 tsp cumin - 1/2 tsp black pepper - 1/2 tsp garlic salt - 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper - splash of milk directions: 1. preheat medium skillet over medium heat, add tablespoon of cooking oil 2. whisk eggs, spices, and milk with fork until frothy. add to hot skillet and stir eggs around 3. stir frequently to avoid browned burnt bits 4. cook until desire consistency & set aside 5. cook tortillas over open flame if possible, 13 seconds each side over a low-medium flame 6. assemble tacos. use guacamole salsa. eat. enjoy. repeat.
for the longest time after entering recovery, eating was a chore. cooking was more obligatory than it was for enjoyment. college is hard and food is expensive and it is hardly possible to go to the grocery store when you have an eating disorder and not want to walk out leaving your cart half-full, just to say fuck the whole thing all together. when i started eating breakfast again i knew i was changing. and it was scary. it is scary to let go of a piece of you, no matter how malignant, and trade a familiar feeling in your stomach for a meal to start your day. cooking these tacos with logan helped me find my love for cooking again and helped me find a relationship with food again. logan has been a rock in my life and my recovery and these will always take me back to our place at 309.
disordered
i don’t remember the day my eating disorder came. i remember the day i got caught, and i remember the day i realized i was no longer in a physical sense, a fat kid. eighth grade was the year that my eating disorder ravaged my body and my life, visibly to others, for the first time. i never remember why i started, only that i couldn’t stop. first it was benign, the cafeteria made me anxious so i started eating my lunches in the orchestra room which gave me extra time to play music, which was my entire schtick at this point in my life. eventually i realized that this could replace lunch alltogether, and i would be killing two birds with one stone -- antoher missed meal with an aliby and more practice time. it became mroe about missing the meals than the practice and it went from breakfast and lunch going uneaten into restricting dinner. i lost 60 pounds over the course of four months. finally my parents had enough and after the school counsellor confirming their suspicious, i earned myself a one-way ticket to the closest treatment facility and a year of therapy, intensive outpatient programs, and dieticians. this, what should have been the end, was the beginning.
i hated every part of treatment. i hated my dietician, who patiently every week put one more food group that i wouldn’t touch onto my meal plan. i hated my doctor, who never let me see the scale when i was weighed, sending my anxiety into utter chaos. i hated my therapist, who asked me the same questions every week. but despite all of that, a year later i was weight restored and out of therapy, doing considerably well for a 15 year old girl subjected to the impossible pressures of society. i was recovered for a while. i don’t think my first round was a complete waste. but unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep me afloat forever. i was never truly in love with my body, i just never acted on my disordered impulses. the thoughts remained even when the habits did not. i thought recovery was supposed to be the fast-track to the kind of body love you saw on social media, the kind of body love that they have hanging on posters at the therapist’s office, the kind of “this is my body and i love its imperfections” body love. turns out recovery is just the option to find body love, not the certificate that grants it.
i am not a fat kid even after not weighing what i did in the sixth grade, even after not being eleven and insecure, even after being 18 and going to college, i still feel like a fat kid. i hate the way my butt touches the desks in the lecture hall, i hate the way my thighs hang over my chair more than the girl next to me, i hate all the pretty skinny girls at college. there is something to be said for body dysmorphia and how it makes you see your own worst fears. i see myself always at my heaviest, be it a good day or bad. i see myself as the fat kid wearing a tshirt to my friend’s pool party, i see myself as the girl wearing spandex under her dress to her first school dance i see myself as the girl in the dressing room crying because i can’t even get the biggest size of pants they have over my thighs. i am not a fat kid anymore, i am a young woman, in college, who happens to be a perfectly healthy size for her height so why do i want a body shaper so bad in this moment?
fissure i relapsed in college.
college is tricky because it is incredibly lucrative to mistreat yourself completely under the radar. no parents to watch you, friends are just as busy as you are. at first it was for good. i started working out and eating cleaner because i played rugby, and i wanted to be an athlete. i wanted bigger muscles and faster sprint times, i wanted to be on the starting team. but as i became more insecure of my body, as i spent more an more time at the gym, i became increasingly aware of the scale in the women’s locker room. i became aware of my need to know. i don’t remember what the scale said. i just knew it wasn’t good enough. following that, calorie deficits weren’t good enough. time spent working out wasn’t good enough. when i did eat the guilt pushed me to reverse my decision immediately. it wasn’t rugby that i wanted anymore -- it was the number on the scale, and i would stop at nothing to get it. my disorder seeped in through the cracks and overflowed once again.
stovetop mac n cheese serves me in a depressive episode ingredients - 1 box of macaroni noodles - 2 small bags of shredded cheese - about a cup of milk (i use oat milk) - 1 tbsp black pepper - 1 tbsp parsley flakes - 1 tbsp red pepper flakes - salt to taste directions 1. cook pasta according to directions & strain; set aside 2. in medium saucepan add butter or oil, spices, and bloom for 2-3 minutes 3. add in two handfuls of cheese along with a splash of your milk. eyeball how much milk for how thick you like your cheese sauce. 4. continue adding cheese and milk until mixture is at desired consistency. 5. add in noodles and stir 6. eat all in one sitting for max comfort
my grammy and i are very close and one of my favorite meals is her mac & cheese. even though she has given me the recipe for hers, it never comes out right unless she makes it. so, here is my take on my beloved grammy’s mac n cheese. while mac n cheese was a fear food for me for a long time, i have only good memories of my grandma and her cooking, and this makes me think of home. my grammy and her food will always be a comfort to me, and this meal is easy to eat because it comes with the countless beautiful memories i have with her. plus, food is food. this meal does the same thing that a salad would -- fuels your body, and that’s what’s important.
redemption
i sought help for myself, genuinely, for the first time the summer before my junior year. i had just come back from israel, and while i made beautiful memories there, they are punctuated with my disorder. i see a photo of myself at the top of masada and i can remember tracking the calories i burned during the hike, just to make sure lunch wasn’t out of the question. i watch a video of my travel group dancing in the square, and i remember smoking pack after pack of cigarettes off to the side to keep my appetite down. i wanted my memories to be mine. i was so tired of sharing my life, my precious moments, my loved ones with my disorder. something so vile that infiltrated every part of my life and crumpled it deserves none of my joy, none of my mental real estate. i am angry. i am 20 and angry that in a few months i will be turning 21 and i will be counting the calories in every birthday shot of tequila i take. i am angry that when i go to mcdonalds my eyes immediately dart to the part of the menu that displays the calorie content. i am angry, and ready for change, no matter how hard.
the last time i was in therapy for an eating disorder my parents tricked me into going. this time i called and made the appointment. this time i continued to go, even when i hated it, without my parent forcing me. this time i wanted to recover. wanting to recover is only half of the hard part. the other part is following through. i truly believe that my entire time spent in the coils of my disorder was spent wanting recovery. i wanted to feel good about my body. i wanted to eat a meal without undoing it after. i wanted to be able to eat chocolate, and snowcones, and homecooked meals without stressing about not knowing the calories. i wanted to live free. those things are easy to want. those things are not easy to do. once you want recovery, you’re halfway there. now you have to want to recover. this is a struggle.
roasted sweet potato serves me and logan ingredients - 1 large sweet potato - seasonings of your choice (i recommend garlic salt, oregano, basil, and pepper) - olive oil - dipping sauce (you want remoulade) directions 1. preheat oven to 425 degrees fahrenheit. 2. spread olive oil on baking sheet and set aside. 3. slice sweet potato according to your preference, we like round slices but fries are dank too. 4. spread potato slices evenly onto baking sheet. season and stir around, coating evenly with spices and olive oil. 5. bake for 15-25 minutes until crispy 6. dip in that remoulade and blast off this planet
your eating habits can change over time and that’s okay. at first in recovery i was on a very strict 3-meal 2-snack per day meal plan, and that made me feel very confined in how i thought i was supposed to eat. over time my body has changed and now it’s easier for me to eat smaller portions over multiple times of the day. at first this scared me, i thought that maybe i was restricting or leaning back into old habits. but the more i got comfortable with listening to my body and eating when it tells me is right, the more i felt comfortable in breaking away from a traditional meal model. when i’m having a bad day or am overwhelmed with tasks, logan always makes these for me and it really just changes my whole mood. when you make this recipe, that’s the love you taste in those potatoes.
designated driver my closest friends in the world are predominantly men. i didn’t do it on purpose, i just found the people i loved to be with and they all happened to be boys. boys don’t talk about their feelings. i mean, they do with me. sometimes when we all get drunk we get lovey and tell each other how grateful we are for one another, but usually that’s the extent of spoken confirmations of friendship and love. i had never told them about how i was feeling, let alone about my disorder. i have one friend who for a while had a habit of calling me around 2 or 3 in the morning, drunk as hell, telling me of some emergency and to come to their house quick. obviously i drive over there, expecting the worst, but there’s my friends in perfect health aside from their livers needing serious recovery time. turns out every time this happens, there is no real emergency, my friend just wants mcdonald’s and can’t drive on account of being drunk. this would happen every other weekend or so, or pretty much any time that they were partying and knew i was sober.
i didn’t mind because my friend is my friend and i was always down for a diet coke. but what i thought was always just a drunk tummy turned out to mean something a little more. this year the same friend admitted to me that the reason he was always trying to go to food places was because he knew i wasn’t eating on my own. i don’t know if it was the fact that my most reserved friend was telling me this, or because the person who i least expected to notice actually noticed, but the end result was the same -- it broke my heart. i was not invisible and neither was my disorder. my friends could now see exactly what i was doing and for what reason. eating disorders thrive in secrecy. they desintegrate in the light. i’m not saying that i recovered because people were noticing but i recovered because that was something i never wanted people to have to notice about me. if the least likely to see could see, it meant the act i was putting on needed to come to a close.
blueberry milk serves as much as you can fit in a reusable bottle ingredients - 2 cups blueberries (or more for stronger flavor) - 3 1/2 cups of milk of your choice (i used vanilla almond) - 1/2 cup of sugar - vanilla extract |make sure you have a fine strainer or cheesecloth| directions: 1. in medium saucepan heat sugar and blueberries on low-medium heat until thick syrup forms. stir constantly to prevent burning the sugar/berries. 2. remove from heat and let cool. strain blueberry & sugar mix through strainer or cheesecloth, twice to be safe. 3. add berry mixture to milk and mix throroughly by either shaking or using blender. at this point you can strain again if you prefer an extra-smooth consistency 4. refrigerate & guzzle to your heart’s content
i remember growing up my favorite part about lunchtime was the milk cartons. since my milk carton days i have figured out that i am lactose intolerant, but a girl still wants her flavored milk. i love all things blueberry and when i noticed i had some about to be past their due as well as a surplus of almond milk, i took it as a sign from god to get crafty in the kitchen. this is a super sweet milk but you can definitely customize the sweetness by changing the sugar added. lunchtime in school with an eating disorder can be a terrible, terrible experience, but focusing on getting my milk saved me from a lot of skipped meals.
carnal
they say it doesn’t happen overnight but in a way, it does. i was in therapy for months before it happened. i was going through the motions, going to appointments, being honest about how no, i was not practicing my healthy coping mechanisms. no, i was not abstaining from purging. no, i was not following my meal plan. no, i was not drinking my ensure. and then one day, i woke up and decided i didn’t want to do this anymore. i was so tired of this, so sick of the food logs and secret bathroom trips and lying to everyone around me that i was getting better -- lying to myself that i was getting better. i remember the day so clearly. i think that was the day i started to live my life. i woke up so hungry and for the first time i ate. i drank my coffee and i checked off the food groups on my meal plan, and for the first time since entering treatment, i was making moves. i was making big moves. those moves included yogurt. lots.
it wasn’t always as easy as it was that morning. i still struggled to get down all the food my body so desparately needed. i still skipped snacks on occasion. but after being so fed up, so tired, so worn down from listening to the constant shit my disorder was telling me in my head, it seemed almost easier to just eat. for a long time it is just eating. despite all the recovery accounts on social media making it look like all us eating disorder survivors are all of a sudden ecstatic about food -for a long time, you are anything but. the best way to describe my recovery is that it was a lot of just eating until it wasn’t. i think one day i cooked a meal for fun, i ate it for fun, and i didn’t feel one ounce of guilt about it. from there i kept going. along the way it got into my head that food is never something to be earned, but a need -- a carnal, human function. i still feel a twinge when i eat too much or i eat a food that long ago i deemed forbidden for myself, but i still eat. and now, i think it’s safe to say that i eat -- and i enjoy.
khalua & coffee serves whoever you want honestly ingredients - 1 cup black coffee - 2 (i put 3) shots khalua coffee liqueur - dash of creamer - dash of sugar directions 1. make a pot of coffee 2. pour your alcohol into your coffee 3. add cream & sugar to your liking 4. bottoms up
i have always loved coffee, everything about it. the smell, the taste, the familiarity. if i didn’t get my coffee love from my grammy, i got it from my dad. before he passed away we would always share a coffee with milk and a hershey’s bar. it’s one of my most cherished memories with him. coffee has always brought me back to those moments, the moments we wish we’d soaked in more of while we were there if we had only known. as i’ve grown older, i’ve learned to cherish the small things. i mean, the really small things. now i love how the sun comes in my window at the perfect angle in the mornings. i love how my laundry smells right after it gets done drying, how my house smells after i come home from a trip, my favorite mug and my favorite couch spot. coffee reminds me to have tangible moments. moments where i slow down and feel everything, acknowledge every detail about my timing, where i am right now in my life. i like where i’m at.
rest i have been living without my eating disorder for six months. i put sugar in my coffee now, i buy real full-fat butter at the grocery, i eat pizza and i am not afraid. sometimes i eat seconds even after my boyfriend does not, and i feel fine. my journals and sketchbooks are now filled with my life as i see it every day, the people i wake up with, the strangers i draw in class, the way my cat curls up right next to me in bed instead of food logs and numbers and measurements. i show off my journals and sketchbooks now, instead of hiding them, afraid for anyone to open them and see a terrifying picture of what was raging in my mind. my life, like my journals, is filled with laughter and the smell of fresh laundry and coffee brewing and the smiles of my loved ones. my life now deserves to be shown off, to be appreciated, to be enjoyed. i am ready.
revival i might never love every single stretch mark that canvasses the mass of my thighs i may never adore the way being twenty-one sits on my stomach, poking out of my pants i may never scream to the rooftops about my “perfect” body or my “okay” body or my body at all but my body will carry me there my thighs carry me through the dances i’ve come to love my stomach enjoys the food i deprived it of for so long the spots on my face match the same stars i see every night and when i see those stars i am overcome by just how beautiful this world can be, and how much we have yet to know, and how far we have yet to go and i believe i can feel the same way when i look myself how beautiful this body can be, how much i have yet to know, and how far i have yet to go.
at the end of the day all i can hope is that all my girls who have ever fought with their shape or size make peace with the body in which their soul resides even when you doubt your physical self narrow hips or thick thighs arms that dance when you do a tummy that doesn’t lie flat to all my girls that wear a large, or extra large, or the sizes hard to come by i hope you embrace what makes you walk and talk and laugh and live because your body is your own it is your home your safe haven you are allowed to love yourself boldly at the very least you owe it to yourself to be kind.