Body-positive blogger says gaining weight 'saved my life'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Lacey-Jade Christie, 30, said for years she struggled with an eating disorder and was obsessed with losing weight. (Photo: Lacey-Jade Christie/Instagram)
A plus-size blogger recently opened up about embracing her size 24 body and how it has saved her life.
Lacey-Jade Christie, 30, said for years she struggled with an eating disorder and was obsessed with losing weight. Her ultimate goal was to someday be a size 14. But after bulimia left her hospitalized, she realized she needed to learn how to love the skin she's in.
“I now know my body is sexy, because sexy is something that can be present irrespective of our size,” Christie said. “Being a size 24 has saved my life.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In a post on the women's lifestyle blog Mama Mia, Christie, who is from Australia, said she was militant about her regimen when trying to lose weight, which included working out six days a week, meal prep, compulsively counting calories and taking appetite suppressants.
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At the age of 25, she was battling bulimia and was literally making herself sick.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I starved myself so that I could fit society’s idea of what beautiful is," said Christie, who has more than 8,000 Instagram followers.
"I was a size 14. I had finally made it. But I was miserable, and I was killing myself," she added.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Despite the damage she was doing to her body to achieve her desired weight, Christie said she received tons of compliments about her dwindling figure.
“Nobody noticed that I was dying on the inside -- I was an expert at hiding it,” she said. “But we are also so programmed to celebrate weight loss that it never occurred to anyone to ask me if I was OK.”
Things took a turn for the worse when she collapsed twice at work and was rushed to the emergency room.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}While at the hospital, Christie said rather than sending her to a psychologist about her eating disorder, she was told by a nurse that she should lose weight.
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“The health care system failed me,” she said. “I had to fight for treatment because I knew I needed help. I still wanted to be thin, but I didn’t want to die.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Five years later, Christie has learned to embrace the body she’s in.
“I now live in a size 24 body,” she wrote. “The difference is now I have a love and appreciation of food and a balance that never existed at a size 14. I am able to think about my body size in terms of what it has done for me and what it has survived rather than what it ‘should’ be.”