This might sound crazy, because you have “a belly” or other part of your body that you deem fat, or excessive, but its not actually any of those things. We’re taught that those parts are the result of eating too much. That isn’t the case at all, those parts are the things that genetics have given us, the way that our body wants to be. The messages about how your body should look are deeply internalized, its not your fault that you perceive your body in a way that instructs you to deem it bad, or want to fix it. The major thing here is that the message is WRONG. There is nothing wrong with your body.

If the only way to get rid of the pouch is to starve yourself, try to ignore your body’s wisdom, it won’t make you happy babe. As someone who did that very thing to her body, being starving and in the body you thought you wanted, not a happy place.

Talk to someone! Think about the things that you really think will make you happy. Is changing your body really what you want? Or is it the stuff you think that will bring into your life? I wish I could go back in time and take back all the time I spent thinking that my body was a problem. It wasn’t :) and neither is anyone else’s EVER.

A lot of people have given really good advice, and I hope some of it reaches you and allows you to find the help you need. All I can say is: don’t feel guilty about eating. Your body needs food to work, to run and kick and dodge and score. We haven’t perfected that brain-in-a-jar technology yet. ;)

That ‘pouch’? You have it because you’re a woman- that’s actually the curve that woman have because you have a uterus. It’s more evident on some women than others.

You are hungry because your body is telling you that it wants something. You need to give it the fuel that it needs to keep you going through all your activities.

Do you feel like things are beyond your control? I know a lot of us have. There were an awful lot of things that were out of my hands for years. Until one day I realised that I wasn’t giving myself the fuel I needed to run properly in an emotional and intellectual sense.

Don’t deprive yourself in any sense of the word, please.

I know it’s scary going outside for help. But it’s scarier to stay inside.

http://everywomanhasaneatingdisorder.blogspot.com/

Dr. Stacey, the doctor whose blog this is, is a clinical psychologist with an NYC practice. She has her contact email in her “About Me” section of the blog and this past year was the team psychologist for the lady New York City Marathoners.

I’m not sure where this young lady is but if she’s not in our tri-state area, I’m sure Dr. S. could refer her to one of her trusted colleagues. She could also make the suggestion as to how to discuss counseling with parents and coaches, if they’re likely to react the way mine did. (Adults do NOT have perfect judgment; I don’t care what positions of authority we’re in.)

And as much as you don’t want to hear this, it’s true – nearly every teenager I have known thinks this way. I thought this way. My friends thought this way. That is what it’s like to be sixteen; especially when you near the end of high school, it seems like you have finally reached the end of childhood, and you want to be taken seriously as you feel.

But in all honesty, you’re not an adult yet. I’m 24, and I don’t know if I’m an adult yet. But I can honestly say that I’m a good bit more adult than I was at 16. I can remember being so very sure about some things – sure that I was going to marry my boyfriend because we were soulmates, sure that I understood how the world worked, sure that I was smart enough and adult enough to make my own choices. Sure that I was grossly fat and very unattractive.

Another thing that I have noticed in teenagers I have known since then is that they universally recoil from the above statement. It’s insulting. It makes me sound like your Mom. It makes me sound like an idiot, because I obviously don’t remember what it was like. But that is another insult – I’m 24. I don’t remember anything about what I was like 8 years ago?

You want help. You wrote here for advice. Even if you think it sounds stupid, this is the best I can give. Try your very hardest to step outside yourself and look at yourself objectively, if only for a little while. You’re not ugly, and you’re not fat – there are parts of you that you do not like, but they do not make you ugly. Neither do they make you a bad athlete – you yourself said that you are a great soccer player. Remember too that you are only sixteen – it feels like a lot from your point of view, but there’s a lot more left to go. You’re not actually completely done with puberty, for one thing; one of the earlier comments made a very real point that some of the weight you have gained and the changes you have undergone are part of becoming a woman. Almost nobody has the body at 18 that they had at 14 or 15.

Especially as you get older (and I mean 30, 40, and onward, not trying to scare you too badly here) there will be more and more things about your body that are not society’s ideal of beauty, and that is part of being human. The longer you focus on parts that bother you, the longer you hate yourself for having them, the longer you will spend not appreciating the things about you that really matter, and the longer you will be unhappy. And the older you get with this same mindset, you will become increasingly miserable.

Right now you feel unhappy, you wouldn’t have written if you did not – and it’s NOT because of your stomach. It is because you have told yourself that your stomach is not good enough. Instead of hating it, embrace your body. You are almost finished becoming a woman – there are more changes ahead, until 18-20 – and this is part of that change. And if you can’t embrace it, if that’s too hard, then just learn to deal with it. That is one of the hugest things I ever did for myself; instead of hating things about my body and my personality, I decided that I would make peace with them. I do what I can to change the ones I don’t like, but there are some things I can and some things I can’t change. Part of this balance is not hating myself because parts of me are immutable.

Your stomach may not be something that you absolutely can’t change – and then again, it may be. You cannot know right now, not while your body is still working itself into that of an adult. I don’t think it’s wrong for you to be dissatisfied with parts of your body – it’s almost impossible to not be – and it’s not wrong to try and change things about yourself that you don’t like. But you have to learn when to stop obsessing, and you can’t do destructive things to yourself in an attempt to fix one problem. Bulimia may be able to get rid of your stomach, if you lose enough weight – and maybe it can’t. But it will destroy your heart, ruin your teeth – weaken your muscles and make you a worse athlete – it can even have mental effects like seizures and further depression.

I don’t know you well enough to say this for sure, but what I do know about bulimia is that it’s about control and guilt and shame. You might feel like purging is the only way you can control yourself, like you have to do something to make up for the guilt of overeating. But in reality, your obsession is controlling you – it is making you destroy your body in pursuit of something that is ultimately much less important than things like your sports, your friends, college someday – your life.

I know that what I recommend is really, really hard. The first thing you need to do is to make yourself stop purging, and if you can’t do that, then you need to ask for help – the way you look is not worth dying for. Besides that, you need to try your hardest not to obsess on your body. It will take time and effort to turn your thoughts around, but it will do more for you than any amount of dieting and exercise ever could – it will make you happy.

I agree with other commentors that you should find someone to talk to. A doctor would be a good start, just to make sure that you don’t need any medical care, just make sure that the visit will be confidential – you can call and ask before you make an appointment. Many cities have free clinics that you can visit, check your phone book. While you are there, you can ask the doctor about free, confidential, counseling. Or, if you want, you can talk to me – shishkani at gmail.com. I’m not a counselor, but I have been through a lot of things myself, including weight issues – and I truly am okay with myself now. And I desperately want you to be okay with yourself.

See a therapist first. I looove my therapist and I didn’t want to go at first but find one you can really trust, especially if you can’t trust your parents. Ask a teacher for some help finding one.

Here’s what I know about throwing up: you will either get to a) the point where you cannot physically take it anymore or b) you have a heart attack from vomiting too much. Maybe you aren’t there yet, it took me a while.

There is real help, it is a real problem, and it’s not your fault.

A doctor is best because there are real risks that, even if you don’t care now, you will later on. I promise you that.

Love; xoxo.

What I wanted to say, before I distracted myself, was that I think it’s pretty awesome that you reached out and wrote your email. That is such a hard step to take. I wonder if you could go the route suggested by advice columnists sometimes (I know, I know) and show what you wrote, or part of it, to someone like a doctor or nurse or coach.

When I first started talking to someone, they gave me a book–The Inner Game of Tennis–which starts out something like, the opponent inside your own head is more formidable than the one across the net. It stuck with me, because it rang so true for me, and made me realize that if I’m not okay with myself, then there will always be something I hate, no matter how hard I train or how I eat.

The same person who gave me that book said that I should try to think of it like this–I underpronate. It’s just a fact. I can’t force my foot to change, but I can find shoes that work for me. I might really desperately want this other pair of shoes, but if they don’t work with my feet, then they’re doing me more harm than good.

And my boyfriend says it’s like Batman–dude is cool, but only in comics. In real life he’d be terrifying. And I can’t do what he does. Kids might try to surf on subway cars, but even the best of them probably wouldn’t try to stand on one leg blindfolded on top of a train car to work on their balance. Me, it’s enough of a challenge just keeping my balance inside the car.

So that’s mostly how I talk to myself, when I get so caught up in my own obsession with counting every. single. nutrient, or pushing myself until I drop. There was an awesome post somewhere recently that linked to a series of black and white photos of female athletes of every size and shape–I wish I could find it again to share with you because thinking about those charts helps me a lot when I start nitpicking at my own body. I have to come to terms with who I am: I’m a boyishly shaped slightly taller than average girl with mild scoliosis, imperfect feet, and a habit of slouching all the time because the opinion of some jerk here and there sticks more than my boyfriend’s, who tells me that when somebody calls me an Amazon woman for being taller than them, I should take it as a compliment–stand tall with Wonder Woman, and kick some serious ass.

I don’t know that this is anymore helpful than my first comment, but I still really hope that you can find someone to talk to because this is such a hard thing to fight on your own. I hope you can try to trust someone close to you to help you.