Obsession. "I used several jeans on top of another, so that the legs looked more normal"

She was locked in what she had come to call a "dietary loop." Without her brother near her -who was also her friend, confidant and companion but had moved to the country's capital- she had taken refuge in food so as not to feel so much anxiety or miss him. She ate, she gained weight, she went to the nutritionist, went on a diet for two weeks and lost weight. Then the binges returned. However, at some point in that vicious cycle, everything she made of herself bored her. “The nutritionist only gave me diets and not tools to deal with anxiety. One afternoon, after eating a dozen bills and a quarter of fat biscuits, I made myself vomit. I felt a relief that was new: from then on the situation got out of control”.

a quiet childhood

Genovena Tenaillon had had a quiet childhood. Born in the city of Buenos Aires, at the age of seven she moved with her family to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego. Her change was positive in that she knew what it was like to play in the street without fear, although she missed her grandparents, who had stayed away from her and with whom she had a very close relationship. With adolescence also came some episodes that marked the following years. When she was 14 years old she used to spend the whole summer in Necochea with her uncles, that summer she lost weight and, when she came back, many people told her that she was prettier. “Then at 15 I fell in love with a boy a couple of years older than me and it was the typical madness of teenage love; he was with me but he treated me pretty bad. And he always made jokes about my big tail. I started eating less and one day this boy told me you are skinnier, I love it. Another trigger."

Bulimic cycle and the fear of summer vacation

At 16 she began the bulimic cycle, that is, she vomited voluntarily every time she ate something. However, there came a point where she felt overwhelmed by the binge and subsequent purging (purging is the act of cleansing the body, through the use and abuse of laxatives, which leads to post-binge vomiting). So she chose to stop eating. There had been so many visits from her to different nutritionists, that she had already learned how to eat about 500 calories a day and stay -as she believed- nourished. “My days passed between fasts-she had a pear with mate cocido for breakfast before going to school, then she had a soy juice during the day and that was it. Some days she was able to eat solid food, but with low calories, such as fruits and dairy products”. In those moments she felt that she was in control.

But other times she was dominated by lack of control: those were the days of bulimia. During them, she used to, for example, cook a cake and eat it whole. There were days when she didn't have the patience to wait for a bake, so she directly took a taxi and went to a bakery and spent any amount of money on food. That is, she could eat 10 thousand calories in just a short time. She alternated with drinks - usually milk - so that, at the end of the binge, vomiting would come out easier due to the liquid in her stomach. "After vomiting came laxatives, because in the time it took to consume such amounts of food, the body managed to digest something and when the binge was over I needed to make sure I was cleansed of all that garbage."

Summer vacations were a separate chapter. Since during the Genovena year she was alone in her house most of the day, she had no one to control her behavior. However, during the holidays, all of her close family plus her cousins ​​and her uncles would gather at her house. ”It was not sustainable not to eat. One day my family was so insistent that I eat, that I did. I ate a lot. And then, since I couldn't purge myself because there were so many of us using a bathroom, I locked myself in the room and made myself vomit into a garbage bag. Years later I saw that same scene in the movie To the bone and for the first time I told someone that I had also gone to those extremes. Then I took the bag to a vacant lot in the middle of the night. I often think about that episode and it shocks me how my family's attempt to help me ended up making me worse.

Her life was one lie after another

In her worst moment, the scale marked 38 and although she realized that she was very skinny, she could not get out of her illness. She "wore several jeans on top of another, so that the legs looked more normal."

And it was a Tuesday that everything fell apart for her. She had lunch at her boyfriend's house and then walked to the house of a friend of hers. “The bad mood that eating gave me was so great that in the middle of the avenue I stopped to tell my boyfriend everything; I told her absolutely everything, we went to look for my friend and from there the three of us went to ALUBA (Association for the Fight against Bulimia and Anorexia) for an urgent consultation. When I started treatment I realized that getting out was going to be harder than the years she had been lying. She was hospitalized only during the day. So she would go back and forth to my house, change centers and at that time also my career (she was studying psychology). One Friday afternoon I was so tired because I felt I couldn't cope with life, that I filled myself with diuretic pills and almost died of an arrhythmia, due to the loss of minerals caused by diuretics. They stabilized me and I decided that I could no longer be a burden to my surroundings. I self-admitted myself to a psychiatric clinic. For the first time I felt containment, I spent almost a month hospitalized there and I learned that I could recover and I could have a life. I was 22 years old and felt that enough time had been wasted.”

Since that hospitalization, the process was quite easy for Genovena. She focused on having projects, enjoying family moments. Her weight came to the fore and her life plan was the main thing. Simultaneously she began to study cooking and cooking was a great therapy. She understood that she really loved food and that she could have a healthy and harmonious relationship with it.

Her boyfriend and her current husband, whom she had met as a teenager, was her partner, her best friend and the one who constantly made her feel that she deserved to love and take care of herself. “For him it was very hard, his family had gone to live in Mexico when I started treatment and mine lived in Ushuaia, the only support he had was my friends and her friends. Today I think that she was very strong, very brave and I admire her very much. Any man at that age would have run away from such a scenario.”

unexpected news

In December 2012, Genovena had a clothing business and worked a lot. In addition, she had begun to talk with her husband about the possibility of settling outside the country. That summer she accompanied her husband on a work trip to Chile and she took a few weeks vacation in Santiago.

“When I returned I noticed that I was late but I attributed it to the change in routine. On the trip I had morning sickness but I blamed the change in diet typical of travel. When I was already ten days late, my husband brought me a test and asked me to do it for him. At dawn when I woke up to pee, I did. Before going back to bed, I went to pour myself a glass of milk and grabbed the test to leave it for my husband on the bedside table (convinced it would be negative). I see the test with the two lines, I wake him up and tell him that the test was wrong, that he should go to the pharmacy (it was 5 in the morning) to get another one. He brought four, all positive. I burst into tears. It was real: there was a life growing inside me and I had a hard time accepting it.

In this context, her husband was offered the opportunity to settle in Chile and work in the same company from that country. “I was happy, I had loved Chile and a little I felt that my daughter had come out of that trip. But being a mom and living away from the family was a tremendous learning experience. When I arrived in Chile I couldn't work because of the visa and also my daughter was only a few months old, so I started taking a personal trainer course (I didn't do any sports, but I wanted to be more active to have more energy for my daughter). In that course I learned a lot about the functionality of food in the body and I started to cook healthier. I opened an Instagram account -which was fashionable- and I shared "the experiments" that I did. Little by little, people who were looking for ideas of healthier meals began to follow me, and soon after, I began to work in the media.”

After a year of sharing healthy recipes and training tips, Genovena noticed that most of the women who followed her had one fixation: losing weight. No matter what, the important thing was to get down. “I started doing parodies of (ridiculous) weight loss advice, and some people listened to me. So one morning I recorded myself telling my story and calling people to see how much health they were willing to lose to lose weight. It was a shock, I received thousands and thousands of testimonies, many men and women over 30, to my surprise because I thought it was a teenage issue.

Popularity was not long in coming. They invited her to tell her story in many media, institutes, schools and medical centers. She also wrote a book and continues to raise awareness on the subject because she dreams that her daughter will grow up in a world where being a good person, being intelligent, loving nature is more important than being skinny. “The pandemic mobilized me, like everyone else. I put a pause in my life in Chile and decided to return indefinitely to the nest: Ushuaia. I started studying journalism because I love communication. Today I have a podcast on food therapy, together with a psychonutritionist and I dedicate myself to enjoying my daughter, my parents, my brothers and the magic of Ushuaia that I lost for so many years locked up in my own hell”.

I shared your experience

If you had an experience that improved your well-being and quality of life (it can be medical, food, sports, a trip, sentimental, professional or of another nature), and you want to share it in this column, write to saludlanacion@gmail.com