healthy body, healthy soul

The following is an article written by Pepperdine student Karley Osborn about the reality of distorted eating habits and body image issues women struggle with. I was honored to be interviewed for the article along with my dear friend and fellow wmGirl Lindsay Jernigan. With her permission, I’ve decided to share the article with you with hope that it will encourage you in your struggle or perhaps open your eyes to a darkness you didn’t fully understand before. Enjoy!

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Pepperdine University – a campus where palm trees tickled by sea breeze sing students to sleep from right outside their windows, and the view from home plate on the baseball field is the Pacific Ocean. In Malibu, bad weather is considered any day the temperature drops below 75 degrees, which keeps the Pepperdine campus humming to the easy rhythm of perpetual beach and bikini season. Though Pepperdine boasts a challenging academic environment, for many female students scholastic concerns often compete with a fixation on body image spawned in part, perhaps, by the pressure to perform at Pepperdine – and to look good while doing so.

“At Pepperdine…there are three unwritten rules of success: be attractive, intelligent, and overcommitted. I really feel like I learned that my first semester, but no one really talks about it,” said Natalie Horne. “There’s such pressure to perform in those three aspects and I think that was really what led me to turn inwardly to control things.

A Pepperdine alumna, Natalie currently works as a full-time University Ministries intern at Malibu Presbyterian Church. Recently, she accepted a position as a Regional Chapter Director for a body image program called Wonderfully Made. Because she has spoken at Pepperdine at convocation and is currently involved with bringing Wonderfully Made to campus, Natalie calls herself a “a token body image person” in the Pepperdine community. But don’t get her wrong; she’s grateful for the title. Her willingness to speak openly about her once skewed relationship with food has led many girls to approach her, albeit hesitantly, to discuss their own issues with body image. Natalie ministers to girls through conversation and Starbucks coffee, and through this relaxed environment she’s come to see just how prevalent body concerns are amongst female students at Pepperdine.

“… I’ve definitely had girls approach me – we chat for 10 minutes and it just comes out. And I’d say the majority of the girls I’ve met with this year are struggling with, if not certainly with anorexia or bulimia, having a very skewed body image or an unhealthy relationship with food,” said Natalie.

To help demonstrate how prevalent this toxic thinking has become on Pepperdine’s campus, five female students agreed to keep a food journal for one week. Each student was asked to record whatever thoughts she had concerning food, body image, or caloric intake throughout the week.

Natalie’s struggle with food coincided with several major losses that occurred during her freshman year at Pepperdine. During this time period, Natalie scrambled to balance adjusting to college life with the pain of losing both of her grandfathers, the shock of finding out that an aunt had been diagnosed with cancer, and the process of readying herself to deal with change again as she prepared to study abroad in Germany for her sophomore year at Pepperdine. It was a period Natalie refers to as an “uncertain, crumbling time.”

It was through this trying freshmen year that Natalie came to a realization about food that still remains with her today.

“Food issues aren’t about food – it usually has to do with something else. It’s a coping mechanism, really,” said Natalie.

For Natalie, food was a way of establishing control. Initially, she convinced herself that her primary focus was simply on being healthy and putting the “right” kind of things into her body. “I was classified as anorexic, but there was definitely a season when I was obsessed with purity and quality,” said Natalie.

“I really see that,” said Natalie. “Obsession with food and the health side of food.”

Natalie’s struggle with food continued through her junior year at Pepperdine despite the concern of many of her closest friends. Her ultimate wakeup call came from Registered Dietitian Katherine McCune, who works with Pepperdine students in the Student Health Center.

“You’re actually killing yourself,” McCune told Natalie. It’s a diagnosis she still remembers to this day.

“Having an outsider who was trained tell me cut-and-dry, ‘This is what’s going on’ was huge rather than people telling me I looked so skinny,” said Natalie, “because with them I thought, ‘I know, I’ve been trying.’”

Natalie’s battle with establishing and maintaining a positive conception of her body continued, and perhaps even intensified, once the number on her scale started moving toward a healthier bracket.

“Even when I got back to a normal weight the emotional side effects still continued. Everyone thinks that you’re fine and it’s like no, I still have that chaos in my mind, I’m still processing through so many things.”

The phenomena of calorie counting and the trend of alternating between caloric over-indulgence and denial are common amongst women of all ages. However, this tendency seems to be especially rampant among college students, whose sporadic schedules can make it difficult to establish proper nutritional habits. Eventually, Natalie was able to overcome this challenge by recognizing the importance of balance.

“I’ve learned how to exercise in a way that is healthy and learned to forgive myself for days when I don’t have time to exercise, and to make good food choices but know that there isn’t a perfect food choice,” said Natalie.

Natalie’s realizations have equipped her with the mindset needed to mentor other girls struggling with the same eating issues she battled while at Pepperdine. Lindsay Jernigan, a current Pepperdine student, is one of many girls who have benefitted from the insights Natalie gained through her struggle.

Of her own experience, Lindsay said, “I can’t adequately describe how much darkness I was in. It’s indescribable. Suffocating.”

“I remember all I could think about was food. I think a lot of people think it’s a fear of food – it’s not. It’s a fascination,” she said.

The darkness Lindsay experienced was primarily caused by the mental entrapment of food fixation. This obsession leaked onto her to-do list, as two to three hour gym sessions took the place of spending time with friends, and carefully proportioned meals eaten in solitude replaced family dinners.

“I remember thinking, ‘why is that all I can think about?’ Literally I couldn’t get my mind around anything else,” said Lindsay. “I didn’t want to be that way, but I felt if I didn’t do those things I wouldn’t be skinny, and not being skinny was too precious to me to give up those things even if I didn’t want to do them.”

Today, Lindsay is enjoying using what she has learned through her own struggle with body image to minister to other girls in the same way that Natalie has ministered to her. She is currently working with Natalie to help install Wonderfully Made onto the Pepperdine campus as the director of “Her Story,” a program specific to Wonderfully Made. She is confident and self-assured, ready to take on new responsibilities and excited about future possibilities.

As for Natalie, she’s vivacious. She talks with her hands, she’s energetic, bubbly, a coffee enthusiast and a conversation starter – and to top it off, she’s newly engaged. Her depression is gone, her need for control lifted, her pain quieted and her joy multiplied. So what’s the secret to their recoveries?

“Learning to understand what hunger feels like and what fullness feels like,” said Natalie. “Learning to respect my body and listen to it – listen rather than to so harmfully mandate that I have to do certain things to be worth something.”

“I choose to look at my body as a gift,” said Lindsay. “I have completely, fully functioning, working parts – and that’s not something everybody can say. I’m not going to berate myself for hours on end about it. I’m going to celebrate my body no matter what weight it’s at and what I think when I look in the mirror.”

Natalie believes that the key difference in who she is today stems from her understanding of what makes her worthy of love and acceptance.

“My worth comes from what God says about me rather than a certain weight, size, appearance or accomplishment,” she said.

And her most important realization?

“It’s great to know my worth isn’t dependent on what size jeans I’m wearing.”