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NAYA | Point à la Lynn: From anorexia to self-love
BEIRUT: The challenge of maintaining the right weight has become an obsession for a lot of people, specifically, it is an obsession that takes the form of addiction nourishing on false presumptions.
Lynn Laz’s story began when she first went to college at the age of 17. She looked around and noticed that almost every other girl she knows is on a diet plan. Although she wasn’t overweight and didn’t have any health issues that require her to lose weight, she decided to start a diet plan of her own to lose a few kilos.
This desire to lose a few kilos, however, was developing into something much more serious.
She kept herself busy with tasks, which led her to skip some of her meal courses, which resulted in the loss of four kilos. Then, not being on a diet plan wasn’t going to work for her since she wanted to maintain this weight loss.
The next stop of Laz’s journey was predictably a diet center, the ones that take care of one’s meals throughout their day. The center offered her a total of 1100 calories a day including dessert which made her realize that it’s not the quality of food that matters rather than the quantity: losing some more kilos would require eating fewer calories.
This is where the obsession of counting calories began, and in three weeks Laz lost another four kilos.
What made it easier for Laz during this period was the comments she was receiving from people around her, “you have lost a lot of weight, keep going you look amazing,” they would say.
The curiosity she had built regarding food and nutrients pushed her to take a nutrition elective course in college; she was eager to know more because this knowledge will help her maintain the weight she wants.
Laz left the diet center and joined the gym. The instructor advised her that she needed to gain back four kilos of muscles which will boost her metabolism.
“This is where my real obsession of weight was revealed because I didn’t care about anything besides not wanting to gain back the kilos I have lost, so I went to the gym when the instructor wasn’t there,” Laz told Annahar.
She started working out five times a week, she would train for hours using all the machines and equipment available, and then she would swim for an hour and a half. All of that reassured Laz that she was getting in shape and getting healthier.
She even tried to make the meals that were given to her at the diet center but that didn’t make her feel good due to her obsession with counting calories. In the morning, she would have 30g of cornflakes with an apple “because milk is water and that’s just a waste of calories, I’d rather have chocolate instead,” along with a 200-calory sandwich.
It was all about calories. A month went by and Laz lost another two kilos.
There are two types of anorexic patients; 90% are the people who lose control of their meals and eating behavior and have what is called binges, which is an excessive indulgence in eating, and the other 10% are the ones who stay in control and don’t ever give up to a cheat meal. Laz was part of that 10%.
“The last two kilos I’ve lost made me lose my period as well, but I was just very happy I was still losing weight and Ramadan was near so I was excited to fast,” she said.
Some symptoms became evident to Laz. She knows about anorexia from a project she had done in high school and she knows that losing her period and getting dizzy are definitely alarming signs. She decided to stop losing weight but she just didn’t know how.
She tried going back to normal eating behaviors but she just couldn’t, unconsciously, she would throw half of the cornflakes’ quantity, half of the bread of the sandwich, she would even choose the smallest apple to eat, “nobody understood that I just couldn’t eat, I had a fear of it,” she told Annahar.
She avoided being around people in order not to get criticized. She preferred eating alone or even hiding the food she’s eating.
Still being controlled by the obsession, she lost another two kilos during Ramadan.
Laz then decided to travel thinking that maybe breaking down the routine would push her to break down the restrictions she had on food. She went to Turkey for ten days and came back with another loss of two kilos.
She became progressively worse until one day she got very dizzy and they forced her to run tests and the results were as expected. All her tests results were below the healthy average. And this is when she admitted to being anorexic; which was the first step towards recovery.
She finally went to a therapist and began to work on battling and defeating her illness.
This whole experience made Laz realize the inaccuracies and misinterpretations that could lead to bad consequences. This is why she created ‘Point à la Lynn,’ which is a play on word in French for the final point, the final point of suffering and the beginning of recovery, body positivity, acceptance and self-love.
Besides being an anorexia survivor, Laz studied Radio and film, she is currently a social media expert and she is taking life coaching sessions to become a certified life coach and keep helping people in the right ways.
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