Hey y’all, Murphy here! I’m so pumped to be collaborating with Jam by Lawson to shed some light on National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (which was just officially proclaimed by the president a few days ago!). Let me introduce myself, my story, and my company before we dive into the specifics this week:
My first diagnosis of an eating disorder was when I was just 13-years-old, and it was a long battle of ups and downs until I was about 20-years-old. If you know me personally, you know I’m a competitive person. Weighing less than my peers became my newest competition. If I win that competition, I thought, everyone will like me. This, of course, was the farthest thing from the truth.
Toward the end of eighth grade, one of my teachers pulled me aside one day to tell me they noticed I’d lost a lot of weight and were concerned about me. In my mind, I took that as a compliment. The concerned “you look skinny” comments were twisted by my brain into being the fuel to keep going.
In reality, I had lost a lot more than just weight. I lost my personality and ability to see joy in life. I lost my menstruation cycle. I lost my ability to play soccer, something that I loved so much. I lost the enjoyment of food. I lost my ability to concentrate. I lost so many experiences with my friends.
The summer after eighth grade, I started to gain the weight back because I was away from school. I thought that the weight gain meant I was recovered. But, it didn’t fix how I felt about myself. As a reaction, my body, which was so used to being starved for almost a year, began to overcompensate and I began to binge on large amounts of food in a short period of time in secrecy. The whole day after a binge, I felt immense guilt and restricted my food intake.
This awful cycle continued for a couple of years, and then eventually turned back into my old ways of restricting all the time. It was actually during this time that I started an Instagram blog account but under a different name: “Cut the C.R.A.P”, which stood for chemicals, refined sugars and flours, additives, and preservatives. I watched several fear-mongering documentaries about the food industry and followed unqualified “nutrition” influencers on Instagram. I thought that’s what nutrition was: being “healthy” and eating only low-calorie foods and little carbs. In reality, this was extremely unhealthy; no one should ever feel like they have to cut something out of their diet.
My sophomore year of college is when the purging began. I lived on one hallway with 55 other girls, which meant that we all saw what each other ate, how much we exercised, and tried on each other's clothes to borrow. The internal competition–that I’m pretty sure no one else knew they were a part of– elevated to a whole new level. I worked out every single day, and I didn’t care if that meant I missed out on spending time with my friends. At night, I purged all the food that I had eaten that day. I was so out of touch with the cues from my body: when to hold off on exercising, when I was hungry or full, or even when I needed to use the bathroom. At that point, it got a little too real. My roommate and that same P.E. teacher from middle school (yes, we still talk all the time) had been telling me I need to fix my relationship with food, but for some reason, I felt like I had to come to that realization on my own.
So, I did something that took a lot of guts: I signed myself up for treatment. I’ll talk in a later blog post about how this experience was actually quite discouraging at times and took many tries to get right, but I kept going. I finally realized that I was sick and tired of letting food and body image run my life. I wanted to be done with this eating disorder for good this time. I finally got an evaluation done and ended up enrolling in Intense Outpatient Treatment at the Renfrew Center in Charlotte in the summer of 2019. I was about to study abroad and live with a host family, so I wanted to get as much done as I could, and fast.
Anyone you ask about their experience at an eating disorder treatment center will say “it sucked”. Well yeah, it’s not fun to face your fears for hours on end every day! While it definitely wasn’t fun, I learned so much and broke free of the chains that were a fear of food. I finally saw food for its beauty for the nutrients it provides us. Since then, I continue to go to therapy, take my antidepressant medications, and educate myself about what a real healthy relationship with food looks like.
…That’s how Mindfully Murphy came to be! After going through IOP treatment, I revamped my Instagram blog and changed my logo, name, and mantra. I truly never knew life could be this fun and free without being tied down by disordered eating, so I wanted to share that joy with others. I made a website (www.mindfullymurphy.com) to expand upon my Instagram page to post recipes, mental health blog posts, and sell organic energy bites. To say that my energy bites changed my life is definitely an exaggeration, but they really did help me repair my relationship with food. I didn’t look at them for the calories or grams of fat or whatever, I looked at them as something that provides me energy (hence the name). Now, I’m hopefully going to school to get my Master in Nutrition and Registered Dietetics certification this Fall to finally make helping others with eating disorders a profession. I’m obviously not perfect–nobody is!-- and I have my good days and bad days in terms of my relationship with food, so I want to let others know that that’s okay and it’s a part of being human. We can be stronger together.
Takeaways:
- Someone said this to me before I started treatment: “When you’re old and wrinkly, don’t you think that you’ll look back and regret all the time you wasted worrying about a stupid number on a scale?!”
- People won’t like or dislike you based on your weight. If they do, those aren’t good people to be around anyway!
- Look at food as something you are in a relationship with: if it’s toxic, break up with it and start over! Having a healthy relationship with food is the goal. This means enjoying each other’s presence, recognizing each other’s beauty, and not letting it be controlling over you.
- Recovery takes a lot of strength and probably isn’t going to be easy the first time around, but it’s always worth it. You are stronger than you think. Find a support system (friends, family members, teachers, etc.) to hold you accountable.
- Fill your social media feed with body-positive/body-neutral influencers. Unfollow anyone that tells you to diet or lose weight to feel better. Here are some I like to follow (besides my own ;):
- *NOTE: the term nutritionist does not require any qualifications…you’re much better off listening to dietitians who went to 3+ years of graduate school
- @evelyntribole– author of Intuitive Eating which everyone should also read!
- @dietitiandeanna
- the #IntuitiveEating hashtag
- @nadiafelsch
- @victoriagarrick
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A note from JAM:
Hey jammers and followers of Murphy! If you don’t know me, my name is Lawson, and I am the designer and founder of JAM by Lawson. My whole mission for JAM is to create designs that inspire and spread sweet vibes. With that being said, Murphy and I wanted to combine our experiences, creativity, and (mostly Murphy’s) knowledge in this area to make a lasting impact for National Eating Disorder Week.
Likewise to my soft spot for mental health, I felt particularly inspired to create designs around eating disorders because of my own journey with food, exercise, and society’s unrealistic beauty standards. Through my own struggle with body image and countless conversations with friends who similarly battle these thoughts daily, I turned to Murphy’s experience and knowledge for inspiration.
Through a collaboration, Murphy and I wanted to create a collection of designs and content that would start a conversation, raise awareness, and, or provoke you to think in new ways about body image, body positivity, and eating disorders. It can be difficult and intimidating as a young woman (or man) to balance a healthy relationship with food and exercise with hearing and seeing what other friends or people do on social media. We wanted to create a safe space and share our resources and knowledge through fun and whimsical designs so that together we can start to change how society defines what “healthy” and “beautiful” look and feel like.
Look out for the cherry emoji in the product title to shop our collaboration, and for each JAM you buy from this collection we will donate $2 to The Renfrew Center (an eating disorder treatment center with several locations in the U.S.)!
Stay tuned for more, and as always, have a jammin’ sweet day!