How Food Restriction Affected Me

Restricting food is common in everyday life; however, not managing food restrictions

safely led me to experience a constant fatigue, worsening of my mental health, and an impact on

my memory. To begin, fatigue is one symptom I experienced when I was restricting the amount

of food I consumed. Due to a lack of calories, my body would not have the energy it needed to

get through the day, which led me to feel chronically tired regardless of how much sleep I got.

The lethargy from the lack of proper food made me feel more sluggish and left me struggling to

find the energy to take care of my responsibilities, like schoolwork and chores. To continue, the

lack of food worsened my mental health when I restricted food. Not eating proper meals left me

feeling irritable, tired, and sad due to hunger. The negative emotions I experienced from my poor

diet built up over time and contributed to the body image issues I felt. I started restricting myself

from food because I used to feel as if my body was not good enough the way it looked. Thus, this

caused me to start “punishing myself” for not adhering to my unhealthy body expectations by

limiting the food I ate. Lastly, I noticed that my memory got impacted when I restricted food

from myself. To elaborate: my ability to think, learn, and retain information was made harder for

me the less food I consumed in a day. Thus, this made learning in school difficult because I

would have trouble when I tried to remember what I learned that day. My poor memory led me

to struggle a lot with school assignments, which caused me to get worse grades, even in classes I

knew I would have been able to excel in previously. To conclude, my lack of energy, declining

mental health, and increased moments of forgetfulness impacted my ability to function in

everyday life, which leads me to state; restricting food should be managed under caution.