{"id":150,"date":"2017-07-07T07:58:41","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T07:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/?p=150"},"modified":"2017-07-07T08:02:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-07T08:02:20","slug":"kaytis-story-proportionally-awkward-late-bloomer-developed-an-eating-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/2017\/07\/07\/kaytis-story-proportionally-awkward-late-bloomer-developed-an-eating-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"Kayti\u2019s story: \u2018Proportionally awkward late bloomer\u2019 developed an eating disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

As a kid, Kayti Protos had asthma and she was \u201ca late\u00a0 bloomer, proportionally awkward\u201d and other kids thought she was uncool.<\/p>\n

Aha! We recovering addicts and alcoholics think we know what\u2019s next \u2013 Kayti turned to drugs and alcohol.<\/p>\n

Not so. Instead, Kayti restricted her eating and soon had a full-blown eating disorder that would rule her life.<\/p>\n

Now in recovery, Kayti, 30, is one of 10 folks or so working really hard to put on RecoveryFest Nashville next Saturday (Sept. 27). And she has told me her story because she and others on the festival committee want you to know that we are celebrating people in ALL sorts of recovery that day.<\/p>\n

Take it Kayti.<\/p>\n

Around the age of 14, I started restricting my eating. I have always been a perfectionist, very much that kid wanted to do everything perfect, wanted to stay out of trouble.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t keep up athletically, my appearance, my body was different;\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t do what other people could.<\/em><\/p>\n

Middle school was hell on earth. It\u2019s not cool to be a smart kid. I didn\u2019t know you weren\u2019t supposed to be a smart kid \u2018til high school. Mostly it was a lot of bullying.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was chubby and very slow to develop. Baby fat so to speak, and asthmatic, I couldn\u2019t do sports. The mile for presidential fitness test was humiliating. I remember walking around the track crying; I hated everything about that moment.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I was excelling (at other classes).\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Kayti\"<\/a>In ninth grade, I watched a video about eating disorders. The female had very similar experiences to myself. Then she was more athletic, popular, and she had more friends. I saw the second day of the film four days later, and that\u2019s the one with all the consequences. I never saw that second day my freshman year.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It was subconscious.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was throwing away lunches because I didn\u2019t like mayonnaise on my sandwiches. High school. I\u2019d make my lunch bag look full, but I\u2019d only have Sourpatch Kids, a diet soda, and an apple.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d tell my parents I\u2019d eat at work and I\u2019d tell work I ate at home.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

In seventh grade, I had acid reflux. A doctor told me, an idiotic doctor, the doctors told me if anything comes out, spit it out because if I swallowed it back it could hurt my esophagus.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

So that\u2019s not purging because a doctor told me to.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I would exercise and restrict and had low levels of purging.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

My body was changing. No one knew how little I was eating. I knew something was abnormal but I was starting to feel a little more like someone worth picking for the team.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"KONICA<\/a>In college, I decided to eat and keep my mouth shut the first semester. Got friends, and I started drinking.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I got my first B and freaked out. Some relationship issues, the sorority scene \u2014 \u00a0I started restricting again. I told this person I met in camp and she said, you need to go to a therapist and a doctor.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

My sorority sisters did an intervention on me. My sisters said we see you\u2019re not eating.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The problem \u2013 I got put with an intern who was incompetent. After three sessions, he said I was OK, and sent me on my way. Of course, I wasn\u2019t completely being honest with him.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sophomore year of college, my life fell apart. A grandparent died and I had trauma.<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know how to cope. I thought if I look sick, people won\u2019t hurt me. If you feel bone, people won\u2019t hurt me. It felt like survival.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I stopped eating and started drinking a lot. The student health center, I went there and deal with trauma and got to a stable point. But that was a very dark year.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The eating disorder made it more raw and harder to get past.<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t continue getting treatment for trauma. Left Vandy. And I got an awesome job, worked with people who made sense of my own story.<\/em><\/p>\n

I did OK for a year, but I got in another abusive relationship, and I hadn\u2019t dealt with my stuff.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I started relapsing, culminating in getting treatment, lost a lot of weight in a short period of time.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Diet pills, purging, weighing all the time. I wasn\u2019t drinking anymore because I didn\u2019t want the calories. I was petrified of marijuana because I heard it gives you the munchies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Back to Tennessee, I went to the Renfrew Center in Brentwood for nine weeks.<\/em><\/p>\n

I gained weight back, was told not to go back to upstate New York. But I did.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Two months later, I relapsed completely, I was working in the field of trauma but not doing my own trauma work. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I called a friend and said, I\u2019m in trouble, help. I\u2019d lost all my weight and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

I came back to Nashville in 2008, and I\u2019m in trouble. This is going to kill me if I don\u2019t try something different. I did 10 weeks of a day program and IOP for five weeks and followed through with after care stuff.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I relapsed a third time and in 2009, I started working at the women\u2019s center at Vandy where I used to go as a student. I helped other kids get help.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

There, I found my way to 12-step ED recovery. Two people in a room talking about EDs, they\u2019ll both abstain from bad behaviors. We\u2019ll go out and eat together. It\u2019s great to have a friend at the table who understands.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A lot of my journey is I connected with a Higher Power and I found a spiritual path.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I figured out I\u2019m gay because I\u2019m gay, not because of trauma experiences. As I learned to come into my own self.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kid, Kayti Protos had asthma and she was \u201ca late\u00a0 bloomer, proportionally awkward\u201d and other kids thought she was uncool. Aha! We recovering addicts and alcoholics think we know what\u2019s next \u2013 Kayti turned to drugs and alcohol. Not so. Instead, Kayti restricted her eating and soon had a full-blown eating disorder that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}