The Weight Obsession

Healthy does not equal thin.

As a woman who feels she must meet the ideal concept of what healthy is, I am growing a little tired. I've crash dieted, I'm trying to get over an eating disorder, and I don't know if my head will ever be right again as far as how I really look.

But how does it all start? For me, I think it was a variety of things. Growing up with a single mother, my typical meals where high-fat pop tarts in the morning, a greasy high calorie school lunch, an entire tube of crackers when I got home, and McDonalds for dinner. At the same time, my mom was obsessed with working out and her physical appearance, but I never got that luxury as a child. Instead, I got fat, she wouldn't give in to my request to participate in sports (no time or money), and I began getting teased.

Here enters the low self esteem. My first diet started in 7th grade by taking Herbal Life diet pills, and my mom continually tried to make me feel better by telling me smart girls would get farther in life. I guess I could always fall back on being smart - right. Something a girl in 9th or 10th grade is really going to accept and understand. In college it got to be too much. I lost weight, I gained weight, and again in the same cycle. My self esteem fell, my depression was contributing to a grade drop, and I no longer felt good about anything. Here enters the eating disorder. Now that I am going off to graduate school, I want to leave this life behind, but when it has been embedded into me since I was ten or eleven, I will never get over not being able to have a perfect body.

The clothing and movie industry is to blame for this fixation of thinness over health. Right now, I'm 5'5, 135 pounds, I can run 3 miles, I work out five times a week, and I never eat fast food. I'm not a stick by any means, but I am healthy. Why is this not good enough for society? Or I am wrong...is it really okay with society, but the media is hiding our opinions. Why must we put so much pressure on ourselves to look like skeletor actresses and models? When will it be okay to just be healthy?