When My Dad First Complimented Me, I Was Anorexic

The first time my dad complimented me on my body was when I had become anorexic as a teenager.

This picture isn't from then, this is me as a kid, but I put it up because it helps me connect with just how damaging it was as a little girl to be always measured by how I look.

My obsession with how I looked came from both my parents, but in this post I want to focus on my dad.

My dad and I weren't close. He was abusive both physically and emotionally to me, and the way I felt around him was a combination of fear of his violence and also a desperate feeling of wanting him to like me, which he never did. If he wasn't being abusive at any given moment he was generally disconnected and disinterested in me and I was pretty much invisible to him.

I never felt approved of or liked by my dad — ever. He criticized and made fun of almost everything about me, including my creativity, my sense of humor, and all my opinions. I became a quiet, withdrawn child very young, due to my parents disliking and disapproving of me so deeply.

My dad never complimented my heart, or my nature. He never encouraged me about being kind to others, or my love for God, or anything I made or invented.

Nothing about me mattered except how I looked. I was never loved for who I was as a soul.

If my dad did ever notice me, it was really just for my looks. It was a very toxic dynamic with my dad, because he was also sexually creepy towards me and that increased as I got older. So a lot of the time I would wear baggy clothes around him and no makeup in order to minimize his leering. But I did know that it was NOT ok for me to be chubby, which I often was as a pre-teen due to my seeking emotional comfort in overeating. The disgust and disapproval for such a thing from my dad was palpable.

At some point we grow up enough to realize that we can control the size of our bodies, and that was the case for me. When I was old enough to learn about calorie calculating, I felt elated at the idea I could finally be thin and get the approval and favor of my parents and (I thought) the rest of the people in my life.

So I started starving myself. I'd have days I would eat just a few hundred calories, particularly if I thought I'd ate too much the day before. I'd weighing myself up to 12 times per day. Calorie counting and weight took up 95% of what I thought about in a day. By the time I was 17 years old, I had an anorexia diagnosis from a therapist.

At this time, my dad complimented me. He looked at me in an approving way that he never had in my whole life and said, "You know, you've been looking really good lately, you've really slimmed down."

He has never cared that I developed an eating disorder. He has never been concerned about it; he was just glad I was thin.

This kind of body image trauma from parents can result in not only restriction, but also binge eating. It contributes to terror and obsession about how we look and this can actually fuel overeating as well.

Not everyone has this significant body image trauma ingredient in their overeating causes basket, but many of us do. And if we are to change our behavior with food to becoming healthier, whether that means stopping the addiction of restriction or stopping the addiction of overeating, we need to feel through what we have been taught about how we look.