My Story
My name is Maddy Marie. I am 17 years old. I was always the big girl, or at least I felt like it, and got teased my whole life. My first diet started in first grade. I then was almost always on yo-yo diets, sometimes unhealthy ones. The obsession really started in the begginning of 2011, I made it my resolution to be a certain weight and stopped eating to do it. I lost an exsessive amount of weight and was considered to have EDNOS. Soon my parents found out from concerned friends and took me to a therapist. I faked my way through therapy and made it my goal to one day be that weight anyway. After a particularly painful day I used restricting my food intake as a coping method for dealing with everything. In only a month I lost five times the amount of weight then before and was well beyond my "goal weight". You see the eating disorder's idea of a goal weight is 0, so my number just got lower and lower. I lost my hair, I lost my period, I had downy hair called lanugo all over my chest, I had the world's darkest circles under my eyes and I simply couldn't function. I was skin and bones. I started a treatment facility after the same friend luckily voiced her concerns. This facility was my only way of not being hospitalized for what had became Anorexia Nervosa. As I tried restoring my weight and eating normally I became rude, angry, and didn't cooperate, I would scream, cry and refuse my food. One day I fainted (one of the many days) and my heart rate was so low I was hospitalized, it was then my parents began looking for residential facilities to put me in. I refused to go though. I kicked and screamed and swore I would never talk to them again if I had to leave my beloved boyfriend. Looking back I wish I would have gone, because the only way I didn't have to go was to eat, and so I ate and ate and ate and threw up everything I took n. This cycle of binging and purging was the beginnings of Bulimia Nervosa. I gained weight and was eating normally which made my parents happy, until I got blood drawn that showed how on the brink of death I was because of my nutrient levels and orhtostatic heart, It was then decided I would go to Rady's Children's Hospital and be a part of UCSD's adolecent treatment program. After lots of hard work and blood, sweat, and tears, LOTS OF TEARS, I reached a point where I could be discharged. Now since then I can't say my recovery has been perfect, there's definitely bumps along the road, days where I go back to old behaviors, I even had a major relapse, where I was hospitalized then sent back to UCSD, but the second time's the charm I have a completely different mindset and message. I thought being thin was the equivalent of being beautiful, but I was wrong. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, all races, all genders, and it just took a long hard road to realize that. Now I put all my effort into activism for awareness of eating disorders, I run this club, and am a proud member of the National Eating Disorders Assosiation. I also have a recovery symbol, the monarch butterfly. Which is tattooed with the national eating disorder symbol for recovery as the antenna pictured below. Stay strong my little caterpillars! An eating disorder won't turn you into a buttefly, all you need for that is to output your inner beauty.