My name is Katye.  K-A-T-Y-E.  Not Kayte.  Not Katy.  Not Katie.  Not Katherine or Katelyn, or anything of the sorts.  Just Katye (well Katye Mateer to be exact).  I realized it’s “spelt wrong”.  Get over it ; ).  I started running in July 2009 with the sole purpose of raising money for cancer.  I hated running.  But I did it because I wanted to make a difference.  It all started with the most disastrous 2 mile run known to history and has since turned into something I love deeply.  It has truly taught me more about myself than I would have ever realized.  Running gives so much to me, so I continue to give back with as much charity running as I can manage.  This is my story.  ”This world can be ugly.  But isn’t is beautiful?”

The Real Story: Added 11/22/11

This is a post I have been putting off for almost the entire two years I’ve been writing this blog.  I have eluded a bit to the fact that I haven’t always had the best relationship with food, exercise, and my own body, but I  have always left it purposefully ambiguous.  I was surprised by the amazingly positive response I got from posting this video but still didn’t know how to share the real story.  It is something I have never quite put into words and a piece of my life that brings back memories of shame, guilt, and self hatred and obviously not something I enjoy revisiting but when Jess posted this post I immediately felt compelled to do the same.  To be honest with not just my readers, but really…its time to be honest with myself.  As I have said before, I love having readers and have met so many awesome people through this blog, but at the heart of it…this blog is something I want to be able to look back on for myself.  So here it goes.

I actually grew up with a rather high view of myself.  I had a very positive self concept and was very self actualized.  Like any other little kid, my parents told me I was the prettiest, cutest, sweetest, smartest little girl out there…and well I pretty much agreed.  But somewhere along the way that changed.  I developed a very distorted body image and went into full perfectionist mode.  I’m not sure exactly when that started to change but the first memory I have of truly disliking my body was in 4th grade.  I remember I was wearing shorts and was on the school bus on the way home from school.  I noticed how much my thighs “expanded” when I relaxed them on the seat and was horrified.  I was in tears when I got home and although I seemed to “get over it”, to this day I have the habit of sitting on buses with my knees up against the seat in front of me to keep my thighs from “expanding” on the seat. 

This body image issue and need to be perfect continued to grow but for the most part I kept it very internalized, although later in middle school, I started having what I can only describe as emotional breakdowns.  I would spend hours with my parents just crying and acting completely hysterical but just couldn’t find the words to explain why.  By 8th grade, I had started to get taller than my friends and I hated it.  The last thing in the world I wanted was to stand out.  I wanted to disappear into the crowd as much as possible and my height didn’t let me do that.  I started to develop awful posture because I wanted to appear smaller than I actually was.  Weight scared me and I hated that I was bigger than my friends.  I have no idea how old I was but I remember feeling panicked the day I went for a physical with the pediatrician.  They were weighing me and for the first time, the nurse had to click the “100″ weight over.  I weight over 100 lbs.  That seemed like the end of the word.

And it might sound silly, but it wasn’t until high school that I ever connected the weight and body thing to food.  For the most part, it was just a very distorted and hateful self image but I never connected it to dieting and food.  But things started to change.  Although a bit TMI, in middle school, 1 by 1, my friends were getting their periods and developing.  They were changing and I wasn’t.  I was a “late bloomer” in all senses of the concept.  My mom was the same way growing up so she wasn’t particularly concerned but when I turned 14, my mom asked the pediatrician if everything was okay.  It was.  My doctor explained to me that I was very tall and very thin, and also very active.  I danced and played sports and while not underweight, was on the low end of the BMI for my height.  She wasn’t concerned and told me that I just didn’t have the body fat to menstruate yet and we would look into it again the following year if it still didn’t happen.  I had no problem with this.

  But then it happened.  I was 15 and my period hit with vengeance.  I would be incredibly sick and anemic for weeks on end and could barely get out of bed.  Of course it is common for periods to be irregular for the first few months but it got to the point that we needed to take care of it.  My mom took me to the OBGYN and we got things on track.  But it wasn’t the being sick part that scared me.  It wasn’t the dizziness or the inability to get out of bed that I was afraid of.  It was the fact that it had happened.  In my mind, this meant I was now fat.  If I had been “too thin” for it to happen earlier, now that it did happen…I was no longer thin.  They had told me that although healthy, I just didn’t have enough body fat to menstruate.  Well now I had enough body fat.  Too much in my mind.  I hated it.  That year I gained weight (as every girl who finally start developing will…and plus I was still growing), but I was mortified.  

I started to have a ton of anxiety about my body and developed some very obsessive habits with my clothing.  There were very few clothes I felt okay in.  I would spend a decent amount of time “stretching” the waistbands and arm holes of all my clothes before putting them on.  I had to wear a uniform for school so I didn’t have much choice, but on weekends I would spend entirely too much time trying clothes on and immediately ripping them off and throwing them in my closet, not to be touched for months.  My mom took me to my doctor just so she could tell me I was by no means overweight.  She showed me the height/weight charts for my age.  I was at the very top for height and still pretty low for weight.  But nothing registered.  The sleepless, screaming, hysterical nights spent sobbing in my mom’s bed began to add up.  I was slowly loosing control and I knew I was starting to worry my parents.

And then the idea of food hit me.  I started to feel very uncomfortable eating in front of anyone but my family.  I knew we almost always had dinner as a family and I wouldn’t be able to get away with skipping dinner, so I started to skip lunch at school.  I would find ways to walk around during the whole lunch period, looking like I was getting more food, but I was actually throwing away food.  I was obsessed with what was on my friends plates and if it looked like less than what was on mine, I freaked.  It got to the point that I didn’t even want to be around the cafeteria at school.  I constantly drank water to “feel full”.  By senior year, I found a way to actually create a schedule that didn’t give me a lunch period.  I felt like I had outsmarted the system.  I took on an extra psych class that would take place during my lunch.

I also had practices after school so by the time I got home, I was usually starving.  I still felt safe eating around my family but by the time dinner came around, I was so incredibly hungry.  I know skipping 1 meal a day doesn’t seem like a serious issue, but it was.  It was the fact that I felt panicked around food in crowds and went out of my way to avoid it that was the real issue.  I was getting more and more obsessed and was loosing control of my emotions more and more.

And then college happened. Updated 3/10/12

From what I had always heard, you were supposed to go to college, have everything figured out, and make life long friends.  And apparently that doesn’t always happen.  Within my first year, I changed my major three times and realized someone who I truly through I could trust was a real friend was far from it.  I felt isolated and alone.  I didn’t quite fit in with the girls on my hall (as a dance minor, I ended up in a dorm hall of art majors, most of whom were sophomores and already had their “place”).  And honestly, school wasn’t hard.  I went to a very challenging, academically rigorous school my whole life.  I was used to being pushed to my limits and knowing all my teachers.  I was overwhelmed by the auditorium sized classes I found myself in my freshman year.  My professors didn’t know me.  I didn’t know them.  And the scan-tron tests just weren’t working for me.  I was used to writing, proving my points, doing research, etc. and those fill in the bubble tests totally freaked me out and made me second guess myself. 

My anxiety was growing.  Everyone around me was joining sororities which was totally not me.  Putting myself in a situation to let a bunch of girls decide whether or not I was good enough for them just didn’t seem appealing to me.  Actually, it sounded like the scariest thing in the world but out of desperation to find my place, I almost went to a pledge night.  When I told my boyfriend I was thinking of going, he looked at me like I had two heads and said, “are you sure that’s what you want?”.  He wasn’t being critical or telling me I couldn’t, just very confused.  And the truth was no…that wasn’t what I wanted.  It was far, FAR from what I wanted.  I had no idea what I wanted.  Or who I was.  Or what I was meant to do.  I thought I was supposed to have it all together.  I was supposed to be perfect.  I was supposed to do things by the book and to the plan.  And I was failing.  Sure I was getting straight A’s…but I still had no idea what I wanted out of school, or myself.

And on top of all that, a big piece of my life was becoming a major problem.  I danced.  That’s what I did.  It was one thing I was good at and truly enjoyed.  I literally danced hours and hours and hours a week through school.  A big drawing point of this college for me was that I could minor in dance.  So I started my dance classes.  I joined the company.  But it was all wrong.  It was triggering.  The first girl I met was stick thin.  I mean ribs everywhere thin.  Not every girl was so small, but I felt like I was wrong.  I was too tall and thus too big.  I had to be smaller in one way or another.  Going to dance practices become a major source of panic.  I would get on the shuttle to the studio and literally have to talk myself down from a full out panic attacked.  I was picking myself apart more and more everyday.  I just hated everything about me and had no idea why.

So I started “doing things different”.  I honestly don’t know how it began.  But slowly I found myself staring at my body in pure disgust.  It made me so angry to look at my own body.  I became obsessive about my clothes.  Anything that felt the slightest bit “off” was thrown in a box never to be touched again.  I started spending more and more time at the gym and focusing more and more on what I was eating.  I started making silly little rules about food like periods of time when I could and could not eat, replacing more and more meals with “supplements” and replacement bars.  The cafeteria terrified me for many reasons.  1) Too many people.  I hated eating in public.  2) Too many options.  It was just one giant obsessive panic attack mulling over what to eat.  3) Not knowing exactly what was in EVERYTHING.  4) Endless access to cookies and ice cream.  I would convinced myself I was fine.  That one scoop of ice cream would be okay.  Then a couple hours later I was in pieces.  I was a total wreck, literally hysterical about those bites of ice cream.  I obsessed.  I screamed.  I cried.  I had no idea what to do.  So I hit the steps.

I lived on the 9th floor (the top floor) of my dorm.  When these anxiety attacks over good hit, I’d throw on some shoes, go to the stairs, and sprint up and down the floors.  When this started it was about 30 degrees out.  The stairways weren’t heated so it was very very cold.  My chest would burn just as bad as my legs…and I liked it.  I would keep going and going until I literally couldn’t go anymore.  I didn’t care what drunk guy walked past, what girl stared at me…I was beating them.  I was burning.  I was “in control”.

This little taste of “control” spiraled into one giant loss of any semblance of control. TBC…