Body Mass Index: Three Words That Ruined My Life

⚠️Trigger Warning: Mentions of disordered eating and weight/body image issues.

I recently went to the doctor and there was one thought that kept popping into my head:
Are they going to chide me about my weight?

At 210 pounds and 5”5’, my weight is not ideal according to ye olde BMI (it says I’m obese to be exact.) For those unfamiliar, BMI stands for Body Mass Index. It’s been around since the 19th century, and even Yale says there are problems with it.
YALE.
LIKE ONE OF THE FANCY EXPENSIVE UNIVERSITIES.
THAT YALE.

But despite my BMI saying I could die at any moment, I feel great. I’ve run four half-marathons in the past two years, run 5ks for almost three years, and go to the gym regularly to lift weights and train. So when my BMI tells me there’s something wrong with me, I can’t help but feel like all my hard work gets a slap in the face.

Me, present, after finishing my most recent half-marathon.

There was a time when my BMI was at a “normal” weight. I was 130 pounds and, according to those metrics, I was healthy! I was far from it though; I felt downright awful, thanks to me obsessively counting my food and not eating very good food when I did eat. Part of this was out of having barely any money at the time — I spent like $15 a week at the grocery store which gets almost nothing, even at Aldi — but I think most of it was due to a desire to fit this arbitrary number so my BMI said I was normal.

Almost every morning started with me weighing myself to check that I was within the magic range of a normal BMI. Once I determined whether I’d lost weight (good) or gained weight (bad), I’d start my day with some watery oatmeal and a spoonful of peanut butter. At lunch, I’d enjoy a peanut butter and jelly sandwich along with some peanuts that I’d counted the night before. Finally, for dinner, I sat down to a luxurious frozen chicken pot pie or some tortellini and pasta sauce. Sometimes I would treat myself to a hot pocket if I was feeling extra good — what a delicacy!

At other times, when I wasn’t restricting what I was eating, I’d eat an entire pizza for dinner, thinking I should stop but feeling out of control. Then I would eat a dessert — or two, or heck, why not three? I remember eating so many cherry-flavored cookies once that I threw up and it was red — a worrying sight until I remembered it was probably from the bright red food coloring and not me. While I never went to a doctor about it, I’m going to venture a guess that I had some sort of eating disorder.

Almost 100% positive these were the ones. Much better going in than out in my opinion.

It didn’t end there though. Because of my habits, I was tired all the time, my right knee ached fairly often, and I did almost no physical activity aside from the occasional walk around my neighborhood.

But my BMI said I was normal so who’s to say I had a problem? Definitely not the doctor who’d look at this number and be thrilled to see I was “healthy!”

Me on my 26th birthday, back when I was hardly eating.

Fortunately, this story does end well. I met my partner Jenn and, in meeting her, slowly came to realize how messed up my eating habits were. She showed me that there was more to life than counting your peanuts. Eating was more than just a thing I had to do so I didn’t die — it became a way to bond with her and my friends and family. As I started to practice intuitive eating and listen to what my body needed from me — whether that was more food or to stop eating — I also learned I could actually enjoy and savor what I put on my plate.

In retrospect, I make this all sound easy, but trust me it was far from it. Before I even started down this road, it was months of Jenn slowly getting me to see that I needed to change my eating habits. From there, it was a daily battle figuring out what I even should be eating in a day — when your eating is so minimal, it’s hard to know anymore what normal even looks like!

And with my increased eating, so came the thing I was fearing most: weight gain. Mentally, I knew this was going to happen since I was getting too skeletal, but emotionally it was a different story. When the scale crept up, I couldn’t help but feel like I was doing something wrong or had failed societal expectations.

Even though I feel worlds better than I did back then, it’s honestly something I still wrestle with to this day. But when I look in the mirror and see how much healthier I look and think about how I feel now, it helps me to stop focusing on that magic number a little less and think more about how feeling good is much more important than reaching an archaic number. It’s taking time, but I’m slowly coming to a place where I love my body where it’s at. And even though not every day will be perfect and some days I still have bad body image days, I know it’s been worth all the work I’ve put in.

Oh, and the doctor's visit? Funnily enough, he didn’t even mention anything about my weight. He was a tall burly guy so I have a feeling he probably knows first-hand the frustrations of BMI. My labs came out pretty good aside from needing some vitamin D (A problem Jenn had a few years ago) and to lower my intake of saturated fats. So, even with a “bad” BMI, I left the visit happy knowing I could continue to do what I’m doing.