We admire Mary for many reasons. She is open and honest about her journey battling eating disorders. She has transformed her body, and most importantly her mindset around the number on scale and food. Here’s her story…
My fitness journey is probably a bit different than the most common type of stories you will read, stories of losing weight and such. My journey has mostly been around learning how to feed myself, and provide my body with the nutrition that I need.
Starting at the age of 10, is when my eating disorders began. All through my pre-teen and adolescent years, I dealt with Anorexia and Bulimia. Sometimes it was harder to restrict my eating, and I had to become Bulimic. Other times, it was very easy to just not eat. There was really only one instance in my life where obsessing about food was not taking place, and that is when I was pregnant with my twins. That was the only time that I had no qualms with eating as much as needed to be consumed.
Of course, it was extremely hard to sustain such a low body weight. I would choose a number on the scale, and then once that number was reached, I had to lower it again. No number on the scale was ever going to be low enough for me. Of course, I also had a very distorted visual representation of how I looked. So it wasn’t enough to look in the mirror, I still looked extremely fat and overweight, or that’s what my brain was telling me.
So, I didn’t have a problem with being overweight, even after I had my twins, I quickly got back down to a very low weight. I spent years eating 800 calories a day. I chose that 800 calories number because everything I read online said that women should eat 1200 calories a day, and so of course I had to eat less than that.
In 2013, I decided that I wanted to get in shape. I made some life changes and was in a better frame of mind to make these changes. I was also sick of being skinny-fat and feeling terrible all of the time. I started out with running, very quickly realized that I hated it. I then found my love of lifting, CrossFit, more specifically. The trick is finding something you love.
Obviously, 800 calories a day was not going to work with an active individual like myself. So I did slowly bump my calories up, starting in 2013 to transition away from eating disorders. This, in and of itself, was extremely difficult for me. I was willing to increase to 1800 calories a day, by the beginning of 2017. I will say, I was an average CrosFfitter, but I still felt that I had the ability to become stronger and more fit that my current situation.
I decided to visit BodymetRx in February 2017. I was able to get a 3-D scan, a body fat test and then I decided to also have my resting metabolic rate tested. I wasn’t exactly happy with the aesthetics of my body, nor was I completely pleased with my performance. Quite frankly, I felt a bit lost. I spent so many years not eating, that when I became active, I didn’t know how to eat i. So, I did what I did best and erred way too much on the side of caution. I would also say the side of ignorance.
When I was told that I needed to increase my calories up to 2200 a day, I had to have looked at her like she was crazy. There is no way that I needed that many calories, and I just knew if I were to eat that many that I was going to gain so much fat. She also told me that I needed to eat more fat, and so I was very reluctant in the percentage of macros that she was discussing with me. I knew that others had great results, but there was just no way those numbers could be right for me. However, I did decide to trust the process and I strongly trusted Marly.
I met in the middle, I didn’t go all the way up to 2200 calories, I did go to a lesser amount of calories at first, 2100. However, I did start tracking my macros. By the summer of 2017, I was in the best shape of my life. I was so strong, aesthetically, I looked very fit as well. I had just won a competition at my CrossFit box for losing the most amount of body fat in five weeks time. I lost almost 8 pounds of body fat, and remember I’m not a very large woman to begin with!
Others would ask me what I did, and I just stated that I had my numbers tested, and I followed the advice of Marly and began tracking my personalized macros. My performance had become so strong, and I actually even lost weight with so little body fat, I did decide to up my calories to the initial recommended amount.
I did have a few months where I became very sick and lost much weight, and was unable to eat. However, that was straightened out and I got back on my plan immediately. At my last visit with Marly, I found out that in one years time, I lost 10% body fat. I had lost over 17 inches, while gaining close to 9 pounds of muscle during this year. I was not making progress like this prior to my appointment with Marly. I was so scared to even eat, even with as active as I as.
I was still terrified that I was going to get fat, being an athlete put me way out of my comfort zone. Further more, I had no idea how much I really needed to eat, or what the breakdown should have been of nutrients. If you search online, the numbers that you receive our very generic and very general. They would not have worked for me, and I feel confident saying they probably wouldn’t work for most people.
Although I was nervous at first, following the advice of Marly, not only helped me mentally (as I started to have faith in the ability to trust that I was taking care of my body) but I also noticed wonderful changes in how my body looked. All of that aside though, the most important fact is that my performance and strength increased significantly. None of this would’ve happened if I would’ve continue to restrict myself. I’ll be honest too, I would have continued to restrict myself. I didn’t know my individual and personalized numbers. And if you remember, I’m very numbers oriented. At first it was the number on the scale, now it’s the number of calories that I need to eat to feel my body for optimal performance. I would not have had this information had I not visited with Marly. I am a believer and will continue to visit BodymetRx. As my performance increases and body continues to change, my needs will change. This is a life-long process.
