Answering Personal Questions About My Eating Disorder
Trigger Warning (this post gets pretty personal about my experience with anorexia. I don’t mention numbers or weight, but some of the content could be triggering to those in fragile stages of recovery).
I want to start by saying that each eating disorder is very unique. The person suffering from said disorder is even more unique. It’s an incredibly personal experience, and this blog post is exactly that. My experience. I can only speak from my own perspective and not for anyone else. If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder of any kind, you should seek individualized medical help (from a physician, dietitian, licensed therapist, etc.). Thanks to everyone who wrote in. I tried to get to as many questions as I could without writing a chapter book. Hopefully I can do a part 2 soon!
“How did you handle growing out of old clothes? Did you ever experience quasi recovery?”. This is a question I actually receive a lot from those in recovery. If I’m being completely honest, this part of recovery was incredibly difficult. For quite some time, I thought I could somehow manage to recover without actually having to give up any control. This is called Quasi Recovery (also known as halfway recovered). You’re now at a healthier weight and incorporating new foods into your diet, but you’re still very restricted and routine in what you eat. You still have a deadly fear of weight gain and are unaccepting of your new body. You’re still trapped in the mindset of the disorder and are controlled by what you can and can’t eat. You may be weight restored, but you aren’t experiencing the other benefits of being recovered.
I refused to give up my old jeans that could have fit a 9 year old because, in my disordered and unhealthy mental state, I thought that meant I had lost. For the first few months of recovery, weight gain felt a lot like defeat. As if I were giving up on myself and my “goal” to be thin. I told myself that having to buy a new size was just a stepping stone towards becoming overweight and losing all control of my body (which, looking back, was the furthest thing from the truth and was just my ED telling my lies as usual). I struggled to squeeze into my old clothes even though they made me feel uncomfortable and terrible about my body. I honestly don’t know what finally did it for, but something inside of me clicked and I realized that children’s clothing should be too small for a woman in her 20’s (yes it took that long but was so worth the battle). Look at it this way: as you leave your disorder behind and begin a new life of freedom and health, you’re going to need new “skin”. This means clothing that makes you feel beautiful and confident in your new, thriving body. Think about all of the wonderful things your body can do now that it’s nourished. You don’t want to shove her into clothes that make her feel anything but amazing. You deserve at least that.
“How do you recognize an ED before it properly develops? How can you get ahead of it before it becomes a larger problem?”. Unfortunately for me, I did not recognize it before it became a deep issue. However, throughout my own recovery and years of studying what it looks like to have a healthy relationship with food and your body, I think I can confidently point to some signs to watch for. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but are just a few of the signs I exhibited while my disorder was developing:
- Turning down social outings if they interfered with my eating schedule (i.e. meeting up with friends after they went out for pizza so that I could eat my “safe” meal at home, avoiding weekend trips with friends because I wouldn’t be able to eat food that I deemed as “healthy” enough).
- Obsession with sticking to a workout routine. While I’ve always been a very physically active person, it was always done out of pure enjoyment. When I became more interested in my physical appearance and became preoccupied with my weight, exercise started to feel like a burden. If I wasn’t able to find time for exercise on a given day, I would relentlessly beat myself up for it. The mental torment I went through for skipping a run drove me to extreme measures, like running in heat advisories or at 4 a.m.
- Compulsively measuring food. Before school each morning I would pull out my food scale (as if it were a normal part of every 17 year olds morning routine). I weighed my oatmeal, my almonds, my milk, my berries. I counted the number of grapes for my snack, the exact ounces of turkey to put on my sandwich for lunch. I don’t even want to think about how much time I wasted on calculating every morsel of food that went in my body in those years. While it’s not a bad thing to be aware of what you’re eating, this can be accomplished in a much healthier way, by listening to your body and honoring it’s hunger and fullness cues. If you struggle with that and are working your way towards a more intuitive mindset (because it does take practice), then roughly estimating (or “eye balling”) your portions is a much more sustainable way to do that.
- And then there’s the obvious one: intentional weight loss when it’s either not necessary or achieved in a dangerous way. This can be an early sign if you’re close with the sufferer, but for others, it could be harder to tell until the weight loss is more drastic. Weight loss is not always an indicator of an eating disorder, but for my case, it certainly was.
“What are the best ways to support someone fighting an ED?”. I recall one instance when I was at a local Mexican restaurant with some friends in high school for lunch (hello cheese and carbs… an ED’s worst nightmare). I ordered a salad (sans cheese or dressing). I skipped out on the chips and salsa and sat quietly in the corner of the booth. After our food came, one of my “friends” made a snarky comment to get a cheap laugh from the table (“Woah Haylee, be careful not to over do it!”). This was followed by some suuuuper awkward silence and made me want to crawl under the table and never come up. I guess the reason I’m telling this story is to talk about how not to support someone fighting an ED. Others used phrases like “just eat it” and “you could use a trip to McDonald’s” to convince me to eat. It’s probably no surprise that those tactics didn’t work. Those types of judgements made me feel like I couldn’t trust that person. It’s completely okay to encourage someone to seek professional help, but don’t push. At the end of the day, receiving help is a decision the person struggling has to decide he/she wants. Those who were the biggest supporters during my recovery were the ones that treated me like a normal person. Those who prayed for me, were there to listen to me when I needed to talk, never mentioned my appearance, and didn’t get frustrated with me.
“How did you know you were ‘sick enough’?”. From my personal experience with anorexia, it began very gradually. It disguised itself as a “healthy lifestyle”. Who would be concerned with someone that decided to eat more vegetables and pick up running? Eating nutritiously and increasing physical activity are 2 things that almost everyone could benefit from. The problem really started to develop when this became an obsession. I eventually got to the point where eating at restaurants or eating home cooked meals at friends houses felt unsafe. I didn’t have a say in how the food was cooked, how much was served, etc. I think when I began distancing myself socially is when my parents started recognizing the larger issue at hand. When I would get extremely upset with my dad for putting cheese on my burger, take my own food to family get togethers, and forced myself to workout on Christmas Eve while the rest of my family sat by the tree…. this is when my “healthy lifestyle” became incredibly unhealthy. And it was after all of these things that I decided I was not happy and couldn’t possibly maintain this way of life for very long.
Not only was I physically sick and in need of help, but I was also extremely mentally ill. Although I won’t ever disclose my weight (because that kind of information can be triggering to those currently suffering), I can say that I was in a very risky place both physically and mentally, which led me to know without a doubt I needed help. Something worth noting here is that you don’t have to be a certain weight to be categorized as “sick enough”. If you’re unhappy and feel your relationship with your body and food is not a positive one, then it’s time to seek help. Eating disorders don’t have a specific “look”. There is no physical criteria categorizing one person to be “sicker” than another. Mental illness cannot be seen, which is why eating disorders are so damn sneaky and dangerous.
That’s all I have time to rant on about for today, but I will definitely be doing more of these soon! Thanks to all who wrote in and also to those who took the time out of their quarantine to read this post. I hope you’re having a great week and are showing yourself the love and grace you deserve. Stay safe!