How Fro-Yo Kept Me Running
- athleteswitheds
- Jul 10, 2016
- 3 min read
My eating disorder revolved around an obsession with eating healthy. It led to a diet filled with a rich variety of fruits, veggies, proteins and whole grains. What it lacked was CALORIES (and fat).
And that was a problem because I was so physically active. I had track practice 6 days a week, lifting 3 days, and the rest of the time I was riding my bike everywhere on campus to get to where I needed to be. With how hard I trained and how restrictive I ate, I was under eating. No doubt about it.
I was walking a tight rope. But there was something helping me stay up there and that was frozen yogurt. It sounds silly but I believe it’s true.
I think it started because Fro-Yo was huge in my college town. My freshman year if we wanted dessert we would always go to the main frozen yogurt place in town that had more toppings to choose from than anywhere I have ever seen. It was the place to go, thing to do. Then when I developed my eating disorder all dessert became off limits (along with anything else high in calories). But for whatever reason Fro-Yo was spared.
Well let’s be honest not entirely. Nothing I ate was consumed without significant thought. I had plenty of rules around the toppings I could have and an OCD process for how I constructed my dessert (it had to be layered, it had to have the proper ratio of toppings to yogurt, it had to be kept cold in a cooler as I drove it home) but all in all Fro-Yo was safe to me. I think my ED initially allowed it because it was low in fat and that was always my biggest concern. And from there, as my ED spiraled, Fro-Yo was left out of the war zone. I could go into the shop, fill the biggest container they had, eat it all, and not have any issues.
With a diet so deprived of calories and a sport where sugar and carbs where essential, Fro-Yo literally kept me running. It was the one meal that would give my body the extra fuel that it craved and boy did I crave it. I was depleting myself with all of my running and my body was desperate for sugar to replenish my glycogen stores and give me a fuel to run another day. I had Fro-Yo every week if not more.
I was walking this tight rope where I was either barely meeting my intake requirements for the day or more often than not falling short. If it weren’t for the nights I was eating my weight in Fro-Yo I would have been in a constant deficit and never have been able to continue without falling off.
I knew that. My dietician knew that. My mom knew that. All of these people were constantly encouraging me to eat Fro-Yo anytime I liked. Friday nights became Fro-Yo nights. Track weekends ended with a Fro-Yo trip. Birthday cake was replaced with Birthday Fro-Yo. Even father’s day was celebrated with Fro-Yo because my family knew it was the only dessert I would consume. Everyone catered to me because they were so desperate to keep me eating. They knew it was keeping me going.
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