As a badminton player who represented school, I was very muscular, especially in my lower limbs – the result of much physical training.
I was not affected by comments on how big my legs were because I was proud of them. Those legs enabled me to be physically stronger than others in many sporting situations. I was honestly happy with my body.
However, this changed in university when a particularly straightforward acquaintance randomly told me I had “thunder thighs”. Somehow his words stayed in my mind, and I was disturbed.
I hated how I looked.
It’s true, I had put on weight in university due to unhealthy habits – eating McDonald’s almost every other day, snacking through the night.
I decided to do something about it and explore having a healthier lifestyle.
So I started exercising and eating better. However, people were still making comments about my body, and making fun of my attempts to get healthy. I became very conscious of my body shape and size.
It came to a point when I saw myself as fat and ugly, and I hated how I looked.
As a science student, I knew the most logical way to slim down was to cut calories. But I took it to the extreme and cut calories drastically, and in a short period of time. I also started doing high-intensity exercises that were efficient for fat loss.
I never have imagined that I would fall prey to anorexia nervosa.
After five months of extreme exercising and dieting, my weight dropped drastically and I finally became very skinny. That same person who had called me out for my “thunder thighs” actually came to tell me that I looked better.
I was happy that I had lost weight, but I was feeling terrible most of the time, no thanks to the side effects of anorexia.
Thinking that what I was doing was in the name of good health, I was obsessed with counting every single calorie I consumed, to the point of avoiding social gatherings. My mood was constantly low due to the low amount of glucose in my body, and I was losing a lot of hair. My period had also stopped.
I’m thankful that God was still very much in the midst of this, even as I was getting sucked into the black hole of the mental disorder. When I picked up running as another form of exercise, I noticed that when I ate more, I could run faster. I felt stronger.
I still felt guilty when I ate. But as I focused on getting fitter and not just thinner, anorexia’s hold on me slowly loosened.
However, the internal tension remained. I had been on a calorie deficit so long that it took time for my weight to return to a healthy level. People were now commenting on how emaciated I looked, and even called me anorexic to my face.
They probably never meant malice, but I still felt judged. And it didn’t help my self-hatred.
Some would force me to eat junk food in front of them or just eat more even after I had completed a meal – just to prove I was normal.
After some time, coupled with the stress of starting work, I swung to the other extreme. Food became a source of comfort. Whenever I felt frustrated, angry or sad, I would eat. I wouldn’t stop even if I was full. This wasn’t just overeating – I ate until my stomach hurt.
This binge eating disorder lasted for over three years. My mind was so distorted. I would binge, regret, cry. But the cycle would continue day after day. I was crying myself to sleep at night, afraid of going through the same thing the next day.
I was in a dark place.
There was so much shame that surrounded me through this long struggle.
My husband was the only person who knew what was going on. We had gotten married when I was still going through anorexia. He had been trying to help me for a long time, but did not know how to.
Then when I tried to purge for the first time after bingeing, he insisted I seek professional help at the Singapore General Hospital’s eating disorder programme.
This was a turning point for me.
I gradually found the courage to share what I had been going through with my mentor and small group in church.
It was so scary being vulnerable. However, it was also liberating to be transparent about my struggles to people who love and genuinely care for me.
Four years after the start of my mental health journey, I finally was recovering. Honestly, I still looked at food in terms of calories. There were still moments of guilt when I ate certain types of food.
But I was also bingeing much less, as I learnt to take captive thoughts on self-image and worth that I knew ran contrary to how God sees me – His precious child.
It was a long journey of renewing my mind.
However, my menstrual cycle was still missing. It had been absent for years because of the eating disorders. Due to the lack of hormones in my body, I was diagnosed with osteopenia. And even with the strongest hormone pills, my menstruation was not returning.
I always wanted a child, and I knew this was impossible without a menstruation cycle. I was angry – with myself because it was a consequence of my own doing.
Once again, I struggled with hating myself. I felt helpless, unable to will my cycle to resume. I felt guilty towards my husband; I felt worthless as a woman. The list of emotions was endless.
But it was also during this period when God removed my negative thoughts directed at myself.
My identity as a woman did not lie in being able to conceive, but in Him. I’m always His daughter and just for that, I’m always loved by Him.
Around this time, I met a very assuring doctor who told me to stop the hormone pills for a few months to see if my body would decide to “restart” on its own. And true enough, it did – four years after it had disappeared!
I briefly shared this breakthrough with my father and it prompted him to share a vision he had received from God two months before. In it, I was giving birth. He had not shared it with me as he was unsure and knew I was still emotional about the inability to conceive.
My identity as a woman did not lie in being able to conceive.
I told my father it was impossible that I was pregnant, as my menstruation had only just come back. However, I kept that vision in my heart, believing that one day it would come true for me.
Fourth month after my cycle resumed, I had pre-menstrual symptoms. But as the weeks passed, my period did not come. I was also feeling very sickly and was down with a bad bout of stomach flu.
Then I decided to get a pregnancy test kit. I was pregnant! That was the month of my fourth wedding anniversary!
Five years since my period stopped and a year after it returned, to the exact month, I held my newborn son in my arms.
God is so, so good.
It has been a long journey through shame, redemption and healing – but God saw me and my family through it all.
This article was first published on Thir.st.
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