Katie31185 was my AOL screen name circa late ’90s. Those were the years lucky households starting getting PCs and dial-up internet. Sending an email, stopping by a chat room (a/s/l?), and sending messages via AIM were about the extent of “social media”. Life before MySpace, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat was easy and fun.

Look familiar?

Fast forward almost 20 years and we’re playing a whole different ballgame. Information of every kind is available in an instant. We can announce engagements, share disgust for politicians, ask for advice, or show off our new LBD at the push of a button. For a $1.99 we can alter a photo to make us taller, thinner or tanner. Bullies can hide behind a screen and hate groups can pray on the innocent.

Thank goodness I’m not a kid these days.

Even as an adult social media can be detrimental. It’s easy to succumb to feelings of envy and self-hate. Very few people choose to post an unflattering picture or announce when they’ve been laid off or dumped. On social media everyone is leading seemingly happier lives than you.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t get sucked in sometimes. I would be lying if I said I never compared myself to a girl I once knew in college or a professional athlete. Why aren’t I having babies? Why isn’t my house as big as hers? Why is she skinnier than me?

I just can’t help but wonder how young girls handle these stresses. Who is teaching them to use social media as a tool and not a weapon? Do they understand that much of what they read, even see, is not real?

Throughout this process I’ve considered signing off for good. However, I decided that would mean admitting I was weak. I’m not weak and neither are the millions of pre-teens/teens on social media at any given moment. Sometimes we just need a reminder that we control social media, not the other way around.

Can we all agree on this?

XoXo

Katie

I think there are two types of people in this world: picky eaters* and non-picky eaters.

Beginning in sixth grade I fell into the former category.

One random day I decided I wasn’t going to eat red meat ever again. No more burgers, or steaks or Hamburger Helper (my favorite at the time).

I wish I could say that this was the result of an animal rights movement, or even an attempt to lower my risk of heart disease. It wasn’t. I did it “just ’cause”.

Many experts will argue that girls like me begin to “shun” certain foods or food groups as a way to exert power when they feel powerless over something (as many pre-teens do).

When I told my parents about my plan they said “OK” (I can only assume they figured this would be short-lived). My mom’s only real comment was: “This is my kitchen, not a restaurant.” I could choose to eat what she cooked or go hungry (which, for the record, I think they had the right attitude).

From then on, unless we were having chicken, my meals lacked serious protein. It wasn’t unusual for me to eat a plate of buttered pasta with parmesan for dinner or garlic breadsticks from Pizza Hut for lunch. Even in college, my “go-to” lunch consisted of pasta salad, Lays Baked Potato Chips and a Diet Coke. I was healthy because I wasn’t eating hamburgers and tacos. At least that’s what I convinced myself.

In grad school I eliminated all meat. Instead, I looked for anything that was ‘fat free” and/or “low calorie”. I think it’s safe to say that if you had opened up my fridge at the time you would see an arrangement of Yoplait yogurt that could rival any grocery store shelf, fat-free dressings of every kind, and Michelob Ultra (because, according to their ads, athletes drink it).

Fast forward several years and I have my husband to thank, in part, for dragging me out of this food rut. Had it not be for him, I would have never discovered some of my favorite foods: sushi, pho, eggs and WINE (just to name a few). I also have my dietitian to thank for reintroducing me to beef**. It has led me to rediscover my affinity for hamburgers. I can’t believe I deprived myself of the deliciousness for far too many years.

My Take Home Message: If you notice someone cutting foods out of their diets for no apparent reason, dig deep to find out why. It may not be as simple as you think.

Since I’m on the topic of delicious food, below is a recipe for an easy fish dish that is arguably better than anything you will get in a restaurant. Seriously.

I vividly remember the first time I made the connection between the way our bodies look and the food we eat. I was probably in 4th or 5th grade and my mom was in the kitchen throwing out some food. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me she was going on a diet.

Looking back, I now understand she was starting a very popular weight-loss program. In a nutshell, this particular program assigns “points” to certain foods. Essentially, the more calorically dense a food is, the more points it has. Depending on your goals, you are only allotted a certain amount of points each day.

That was the day I started to differentiate between “good foods” and “bad foods“.

I looked at a list to find a food with virtually zero points. Aha! Cucumber! I ate cucumbers dipped in Italian dressing for a couple of weeks. I noticed my shorts fitting a little differently.

I could only eat cucumbers for so long. Eventually I went back to my regular ways and my weight dipped up and down throughout middle school, high school and college (I’ll write more about that in future posts).

Below are a few pictures throughout the years. I won’t post pictures like this very often, as I don’t want to perpetuate “body shaming” of any kind (even my own). I’m sharing these pictures to illustrate part of my journey. A journey that started with an innocent diet.

1985

1995

2003

2011

2014

My “take-home message” is this: If you’re a parent, a teacher, an aunt (anyone that spends any significant amount of time around young girls) PLEASE be mindful of your words. Little girls are so impressionable and they are always listening. Always.

XoXo

Katie

It always takes a minute or two to process what happened. During those moments the sounds of the day are muffled, almost dream-like. All at once I become so lethargic that it seems easier to just fall asleep. Eventually I begin to notice a set of eyes peering into mine, soon followed by the recognition of the familiar words of someone asking if I’m alright.

What I just described to you was what I, for years, explained as a fainting episode brought on by low blood sugar. These “episodes” have happened since I was a kid. They have caused me to end up on an ambulance en route to the ER, be written about in the “Crime Blurb” section of my college newspaper and savagely eat M&M’s out of a very handsome firefighter’s hand.

However, It wasn’t until about 6 months ago that I accepted the fact that I was lying. I was lying to my family. I was lying to my friends. I was even lying to myself. These weren’t “episodes”. I wasn’t hypoglycemic. I wasn’t diabetic. To put it simply, I was starving myself.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t simple. It isn’t simple. I have (and continue to) seek guidance from a barrage of professionals and “survivors”. The latter being the very motivator for putting my story out there.

In my future posts, I will talk about my history, how and when it started, ways I cope day to day, fertility issues, and my relationship with running and working out.

While I wholeheartedly believe in the effectiveness of professional help (I’m working on my graduate degree in dietetics), reading other people’s stories (struggles and wins) has provided more inspiration than I ever thought possible. In many ways, Thirty Stars is dedicated to those women before me.

This is not going to be easy. I am an extremely private person. I considered the pros (reaching out to other women, bringing attention to the subject) and cons (possible alienation, future elephants in rooms), and in the end my husband and I both thought that this was the right thing to do. I left a great job in the medical device industry, in part, to follow my passion. This is it.

XoXo

Katie