BUILT BY BAGELS
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
HOW I GOT HERE
Hey hey! Im Lyndie,
My story goes way back to my younger school years where body image became an obsession. The second I saw my body start changing with puberty I became very self conscious and AWARE of my broad shoulders, bigger thighs, and dumpy truck.
I would compare my body to all the skinny girls in my class, leading to an “eat less to weigh less” mentality, which, yes dropped pounds off my frame, but at the expense of my energy dropping, losing my period, hair falling out, and heart even having irregular beats at 800 cals. Food was the enemy in my eyes and I was even congratulated on how “amazing” or “fit” and “healthy” I looked for being so lean year round.
You can imagine how much that praise just confirmed that my actions towards food and overexercising *cough cough* my eating disorder was justified, heck my own grandpa would even compliment me on my weightloss!
After I graduated HS and stepped foot onto a college campus, where I went to the next extreme.
Because I was in a new environment where no one held me to the standard of the being THE “fit girl” I didn’t feel the pressure of eating the bare minimum.
First morning of Freshman year and sitting in the cafeteria my eye caught sight of fresh baked bagels on the breakfast bar. I hadn’t eaten a bagel in over 2 years at that point, and ya know what I did? I got me a dang bagel. WITH cream cheese… gasp.
All of those years of restriction built up to that one moment of tasting freedom and I lost control. My anorexic tendencies took a sharp turn to binge eating.
I felt insane. All my thoughts and actions were locked in on anything I could get my hands on to eat and NOTHING would get in my way to stop me. It was so bad that I entered college weighing 125lbs (im 5’7 btw) and went home my freshman year pushing 170lbs.
I gained 45lbs in 1 single school year.
You should have seen the look on my grandpa’s face when I got home from college that summer.
I remember it like it was yesterday…
He slowly looked me up and down and with an unfiltered reaction said, “Wow, you’ve put on some weight.”
Crushed my soul that I didn’t have the approval of someone I thought so highly of. It was that day that I started YouTubing diets that could help me drop weight fast so I could get back to where I used to be in high school.
Vegan, paleo, keto, no dairy, gluten free, intermittent fasting, OMAD… I was promised results from these diets but all it lead me to was back to where I started in my binge eating cycle.
Going back to college for my sophomore year, I was meeting up with a close friend and I was utterly FLABBERGASTED by how good she looked, weight she had lost, and toned her body looked since I last saw her.
I asked her to tell me her “secret” thinking maybe she had found some special diet I hadn’t come across in my hours of web research.
“Ive just been tracking my macros and joined a CrossFit gym!” she said as she ordered a bagel sandwich and coffee.
I was sold. I wanted to look like that and still eat bagels even though every ounce of me screamed that THAT was the wrong answer because bagels were a major trigger food for me ever since that first day of freshman year… but I had nothing to lose so why not.
I joined a CrossFit gym and asked my coach to do my macros for me and I could not believe how much food I was SUPPOSE to be eating.
I also could not believe the food freedom, energy, and muscle mass I had obtained! My mindset gradually switched over from “eat less to weigh less” to “food is fuel” to make me stronger for my lifting the more I saw my body change…
Which has lead me to now. THRIVING in a body that I am proud of and wanting nothing more than to share my story and help other ladies go from bingers to baddies all the while not feeling guilty to eat the dang bagel.
