“Pretty Girls Don’t Eat”: How I Stopped Counting Calories

There is an old diary of mine in which, in careful girlish handwriting, there are sentences like “Pretty girls don’t eat.” and “If you want to be beautiful, you don’t need to eat.” When I open those pages today, I don’t see a silly girl, but one who was desperately looking for something to hold on to and found it, of all places, in numbers.

For many years I counted calories, weighed my food, ate according to plans and made up for every deviation. Anorexia later turned into bulimia, and in between I stood on a stage where, as a bikini athlete, I was admired for exactly this discipline. Back then I would have thought it impossible that one day I would stop counting calories.

I’m Lina, a state-certified nutrition consultant and health coach for women’s health. In this article I’ll tell you how my eating disorder began, what was really behind the counting and how I stopped counting calories. Not as instructions, but as an honest insight that might help you see your own story with different eyes.

An eating disorder is a serious illness, and yet one thought gave me something to hold on to early on: The sentences of an eating disorder are not the truth about you, even if they feel exactly like that every day.

Becoming visible by becoming invisible

From the outside, anorexia looks like the wish to be thin. From the inside, it felt to me like a scream without a sound. I wanted to become visible by becoming invisible.

Behind every kilo that disappeared was a need I couldn’t put into words: to be seen, to be held, to feel love and safety. Because I didn’t know how to ask for that, I defined myself by what could be measured: performance, perfection and an ever smaller number.

That’s exactly why it falls short to explain an eating disorder only through food. Food is the stage on which something is played out that has its origin elsewhere, and my way out of the eating disorder, my recovery, was correspondingly long.

How my eating disorder began

As a child I experienced abuse. When it was uncovered, I was nine years old, and suddenly so much was happening around me that it was simply too much for a child.

At the same age I started my first diet. I thought I was fatter than the other girls, although I never was, and the teasing at school dug this thought a little deeper every day. I still remember looking up for the first time how many calories a slice of white bread has. The number meant nothing to me, but it was the beginning of a long relationship.

At twelve I was in a clinic for the first time. Looking back, I already had an eating disorder by then, because my thoughts circled endlessly around losing weight. An eating disorder begins in the head, not on the scale. During this time I also made my first suicide attempts. I was a little girl who longed for attention and simply wanted to be held.

In the clinic I met a girl with anorexia who kept saying to me:

She meant it as a warning. For me it was the starting signal. It was about control over myself and my body, and about not having to become a woman.

A smile as a protective wall

Back then I talked about the abuse and other distressing things while smiling, as if I were talking about the weather. Nobody could tell how bad I felt.

Today I know that this was a protective mechanism. After overwhelming experiences, the psyche can split off feelings so that everyday life keeps functioning. You are present, but not quite there inside, a bit like watching your own life through a pane of glass.

When the abuse was uncovered, my inner wall collapsed. With the eating disorder I rebuilt it brick by brick: out of rules, numbers and prohibitions that gave me the feeling of having at least something under control.

If you have experienced something similar: please get therapeutic support. It helps you get out of a distressing environment, process what happened and one day be able to say: the past is over, and I’m walking into my life.

15k followers, successful in sport, and I threw up every meal

Then came bulimia. I no longer talked to anyone about it and dealt with everything on my own, because I was convinced nobody would understand me anyway.

For a long time I believed food was my problem and I simply wanted to be thin. Only later did I understand that there was a huge, deep emptiness inside me. I wasn’t living, I was existing, like a phone in battery-saving mode that still switches on but no longer has real power for anything.

For a moment, food gave me a sense of comfort: I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to achieve anything and was briefly out of my head. Then came compensating and self-punishment, and with them the emptiness all over again. And the crazy thing? Not even my partner at the time noticed that I was suffering from bulimia.

Recognising these connections was a turning point for me. If you are affected yourself: Don’t look away, look closer, at your own pace and ideally with support.

And if something here stirs you up right now, you may take a break at any time. A trigger is unpleasant, but it is also a signpost: it shows you where an old wound hasn’t healed yet. It’s similar with an eating disorder. You notice it because it is a very strong signal from your body and your inner self, trying to shake you awake and tell you: “Hey, you! We need you! Please listen to us! How loud do we have to get?”

Counting calories, bodybuilding and the fear of letting go

At nine I started cooking for myself. From the age of eleven I counted calories and ate according to plans. I calculated and wrote down everything, and habits turned into compulsions: the mere thought that I might have forgotten something almost drove me out of my mind. My head was an inner spreadsheet that never clocked off.

During the time when I lived vegan for 2 years and then started strength training, I always had excuses to cancel family meals. After my second stay in a clinic I was anything but healed. Because: you can’t see an eating disorder. An eating disorder is not a weight disorder.

So far, so good. Shortly after my 15th birthday I became a two-time German champion in the bikini fitness class. Competitive bodybuilding fit my eating disorder perfectly, because it gave it a stage and a justification. It gave me structure in my thinking: I didn’t have to feel, didn’t have to listen to myself and didn’t have to pay attention to my needs, because the plan supposedly knew better.

I lived in a bubble of weighing myself, weighing food and counting, and my biggest fear was letting go of exactly that. When the competition was over, I suddenly had no goal. The structure that had held me fell away, and I slid into the worst bulimia phase of my life.

There were many foods I didn’t want to eat, so I lived vegan for a long time. Today I know: Healthy is what is good for you and strengthens your relationship with food, and that can’t happen as long as rules and prohibitions decide what ends up on your plate.

I was afraid of being ugly, of not being seen, of getting fat and of giving in to my hunger. And yet I was enormously hungry, for food and for life.

At some point my body pulled the emergency brake: my heart, my thyroid and my kidney were affected, and my period stopped again. Because of my heart I ultimately wasn’t allowed to exercise for 4 years. Back then I died a million deaths, because nothing I did was ever enough.

How I stopped counting calories

When I was forced to stop exercising, I admitted to myself honestly for the first time where I stood: I have heart problems, my period is missing, and I’m dissatisfied no matter what I do. I counted calories strictly, forbade myself foods and made up for the previous day’s pizza. My decision: I stop controlling all the time.

I had often tried to eat intuitively, but kept falling into the trap of subconsciously eating too little. Until that moment. That was my impulse, and I was ready for it in that moment. This is my story and not advice: your path may look completely different, and with an eating disorder, medical and therapeutic support belongs to it.

Just as important was working on what lay beneath the counting. These questions took me further; maybe they’ll help you too:

My inner child wanted love, support and safety. Instead I chased performance, perfection and a beauty ideal, like someone who is thirsty and drinks salt water: the more of it I got, the bigger the lack became.

Why am I so extremely hungry? Why is my period missing? Why am I not well? It was exactly these uncomfortable questions that took me further, not the next rule.

How I got my period back

My period was missing for years. The diagnoses back then were hypothalamic amenorrhoea, PMOS (formerly PCOS) and Hashimoto’s, and I started hormone therapy. What nobody explained to me at the time: Bleeding on hormone therapy is not a real cycle, but a withdrawal bleed. It looks like a period, but says nothing about whether your body triggers ovulation on its own again.

Imagine the missing period as a warning light in a car. For years I tried to cover up the signal instead of checking why it was on. Only when I took care of the engine did my body start working on its own again.

My period came back when I stopped fighting my body: with a fixed meal structure, with permission to eat everything, without counting calories and with the break from exercise that my heart forced on me. And with work on what lay beneath it: that I had rejected myself as a woman.

Today I have a regular cycle with ovulation. This is my story and not a recipe: if your period is missing, please always have it checked by a doctor.

Exercise for joy instead of punishment

Since my illness I have gained weight, and that no longer matters to me. I eat what I feel like, and my weight stays stable, even in phases of very strong hunger. My period is back, and that’s what counts for me. I love my femininity, which for so long I had interpreted as weakness.

Today I exercise to do something good for my body, not to burn calories or chase a beauty ideal. I cycle for joy, with wind in my face instead of numbers in my head, and feel better than ever. How I think about training today, you can read in Exercise despite losing your period.

I have learned to move from thinking to feeling and to trust my intuition. It is much wiser than your head wants you to believe.

What I want you to take away

I no longer need this illusion of control. Food has become a side issue for me, I no longer let my moments be spoiled, and for the first time in my life I am really living instead of just functioning.

You can stop counting calories if you look closely at why you do it: what does counting give you, which need is behind it, and how can you meet it in another way?

You take back real control by learning to follow your needs. When your body gets all the nutrients it needs, cravings and binges often become much quieter. You are a human being, not a machine to be programmed with numbers.

Whether you carry on as before or face the fear is up to you. You may take the fear by the hand and walk through the door together with it, behind which your life is waiting. How it feels to arrive on the other side, I tell you in Overcoming an eating disorder: who am I without it?

That’s exactly why I founded FemBaLina. In my coaching I pass on my experience and knowledge, professionally grounded and at the same time with work on inner attitude, trauma work and soul work.

My life is so much more beautiful since I’m no longer afraid of my body changing, and I’m grateful that it works for me again. That’s exactly what I wish for you too.