Sohee Carpenter

I like staying busy.

I like having more going on.

So yeah, I was running a full-time business while also pursuing my PhD at the same time, which was a little bit tricky when it came time for data collection.

I won't lie, especially because the, I kind of, it was,

Because of pandemic and other variables, I ended up moving quite far away from my satellite school while the ethics approval process was still happening.

So by the time it was approved, I was living 80 miles away from campus.

That's where it all stemmed from was my own personal struggles with especially eating behavior.

So to rewind a bit, in my early teens, I struggled with anorexia and bulimia for a little bit.

And then I was able to thankfully recover from that.

anorexia within a year or so, but I struggled with binge eating for years and years, probably into my early 20s.

I think it has to do with a lot of high-achieving, perfectionist tendencies, as well as, at least for me, as a teen, I really...

cared, as many people do, I cared a lot what other people thought.

And as is still the case today, when you enter your teen years, that's when you start hearing more chatter about, oh, she's pretty because she's skinny.

And she's, you know, she's popular.

So that messaging or, you know, at least where I grew up, there was a lot of unsolicited commenting about people's body size.

At the time, I was living in Korea, actually.

And even though I know in the U.S.

diet culture is a big problem, I would say, I don't know about now, back then, in Korea, it was worse.

The standards are much higher.

Yeah, beauty standards are different.