Emily L.

If you’re reading this, find acceptance in your own skin.

The following contains the discussion of mental obsession with appearance and obsessive thoughts of food. Viewer discretion is advised.

A month ago, I went out to lunch with a friend. Browsing the selection of packaged items available to us, I noticed her flip the package. Rather than brushing it off, I realized that motion was quite familiar. Over time, this has become an unconscious practice, and one that I then realized is shared with others. I’ve never been the best at memorizing terms or concepts for tests; however, I've memorized the calorie count of almost every food item / food group you could imagine. And after all of that unintentional studying, I realized I had wasted so much mental and physical energy. Yes, I am choosing to write this letter for myself but also because now I know I am not the only one with that unconscious calorie calculator. So let's talk about it.

Before coming to college, I was told I'd have to learn to enjoy being alone. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy time by myself and with my thoughts. But sometimes those thoughts become a cycle, a cycle of false truths and distorted standards. This subjective reality may be due in part to the current standard of beauty that has spread like wildfire across all social platforms. Yet it is also due in part to this impractical standard I've set for myself, one that's not at all attainable.

Prior to college, my body type was different, relatively underweight due to unhealthy habits and this recurring idea of trying to meet this extremely unrealistic standard. But I was still unhappy, unhappy with my underweight body. My mental calculator began to fade as I took on the first few months of college. I was extremely stressed with adapting to both the college social and work life. I enjoyed food outings, chatting in the dining hall for an hour or two or DoorDashing late night bites with new friends. My weight inevitably went up. Even though my weight went up to a genuinely healthy number, I felt so embarrassed for gaining the supposed “freshman fifteen” and not maintaining an unhealthily small figure. I didn’t even want to go back home for the summer; I didn't want people to see the new, heavier body I saw in the mirror.

Looking back, my figure prior to college is the body I now desire. But that desire has grown into the realization that I have never felt happy within my own skin, no matter the weight on the scale or the total calorie count on that oh-so-draining calculator. That’s the hard truth, one that I'm still learning to accept. I want change, not necessarily in how I appear, but in how I feel. I want to love this body because in a year I may wish I loved this body. In ten years, I KNOW I will wish I had loved this body. I have wasted so much of my adolescence obsessing over some version of myself that I am not, and may never be. I am quite literally DONE doing so, and if you’re reading this, I encourage you to be too.

Emily L., Syracuse University

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