When I first started taking care of my body in college was the moment I realized I was obese. Surrounded by the healthy runners and the girls who ate only half a salad for lunch to reach their caloric deficit, I was suddenly overly aware of every piece of clothing I owned that wasn’t a size 0 or 2. And despite the fact that I had friends who never pointed out that I was larger, and never having been bullied about my weight, it was seemingly the only thing I could think about. Evenings were spent at the gym, and my usage of the app My Fitness Pal skyrocketed as every single calorie had to be recorded, no matter whether it was a single carrot or a 2.5 tablespoons of peanut butter.
Was it healthy? Certainly not.
But did it work?
That is a more complicated question.
If you just consider the question of weight, then college was a huge factor in shifting my lifestyle. I weighed around 220 pounds in my last year of high school, and ended college weighing around 160. That’s an eighty pound decrease.
In short? It worked.
The social pressure and the internal drive to change happened in tandem, and I found myself more motivated than I had ever been in my life to lose weight.
But where did that drive come from?
On one hand, I blame the social pressure of college. When you go out with friends to parties and feel too uncomfortable to talk to people because of how you look and feel, it leaves an impact. How could I not expect to want to change when every second in college was spent obsessing about the dynamics of whether I was skinny enough to wear shorts or if it mattered whether I weighed myself in the mornings or evenings?
On the other hand, I don’t feel able to dismiss the other very real factor of fear. Movies and TV shows all talk about the Freshman 15 (i.e. the 15 pounds that you are expected to gain your first year of college). As someone who was already obese, I was terrified to gain that and more.
What kind of social life could I be expected to have if I was morbidly obese? What kind of love life would I have?
Negativity is, however, only one side of it. Having gym friends who motivate you is exceedingly helpful. So too is having a college where healthy food was available. And honestly, the combination of negative pressure and positive opportunities was effective.
Now I look back at the four years spent at college, I’m incredibly happy that I chose to take control of my life and my weight. I feel more comfortable with myself than I ever have before.
But I often find myself asking whether I went about it in a healthy way and if the way I choose to think about myself now is still healthy.
Many of the unhealthy habits I had in college, I have since lost. I no longer count calories. I don’t think that for every meal, I have to make up the food with exercise. I allow myself to eat unhealthily every once in a while. But as someone who used to be obese, I do still have those thoughts every so often — that my worth is conditional upon my weight.
There’s no question that linking your image to your self-worth is unhealthy. But unfortunately, it’s not as simple as deciding that is untrue. These mental habits form over years of reinforcement and by recognizing patterns that we learn to be true.
Does it then take an equal amount of years to unlearn some of the unhealthy thought patterns that I learned in college while losing weight?
I’ll give you an example. During college, I taught myself through repetition that no boys would ever want to date me unless I looked the same as everyone else, namely extremely skinny and fit. And even though I know that is untrue, my brain still goes through the pattern of wondering whether any relationship will last unless I consistently stay skinny and never allow myself a chance to breathe.
Unfortunately, these things take time to change. There’s no immediate fix for telling your brain one thing for years and then suddenly telling it another and expecting it to process that change without delay. It’s been almost four years since I graduated college and I’m slowly teaching myself that my worth in a relationship is not equal to how much I weigh or how skinny I am.
But it takes work. And I’m constantly fearful that the second I allow myself not to believe that statement, I will revert to my old habits and become obese again. Ridiculous, you cry. And I know that you’re right, but the lingering doubts and worries can be convincing.
So I ask myself again how did college make me skinny?
And the answer? The answer is that I changed the way I thought, putting health and skinniness higher on my priority list than that extra pint of ice cream. The social pressure of college made me confront my own obesity and decide that it was worth putting aside. When I think back to the unhealthy mental habits that I formed instead, it often gives me pause for thought. I would never want to change the way that I lost weight, but the mental patterns that I now must regularly challenge certainly remind me that the journey and the destination are equally as important.