An honest update about eating disorder recovery
PSA: If you are currently struggling with or have a history of disordered eating and find content centered around eating disorders to be triggering, please opt out of reading this post.
If you find yourself relating to any of the behaviors + thoughts expressed in this story, I encourage you to reach out to a loved one, a trusted friend + mentor, a professional in your area + at your school, or a hotline that can direct you toward the help you need.
The last thing I want is for my story to give any inspiration on how to behave in a disordered manner. My past relationship with food + exercise is not a diet plan and it was never healthy for me. I share these behaviors + thoughts + experiences in detail purely to prove the unbearable + unrealistic life I lived because of my disorder.
No one needs to live this way, and the path of recovery is always available to you. It’s also important to know that disordered behaviors do not need to be extreme and someone struggling with disordered eating does not need to be “underweight” in order to seek help.
Any uncomfortable or restricting relationship with food + exercise that hinders you from fully living and enjoying your life is disordered. You are not disordered. I am not disordered. The way of thinking + the programming that escalated the behavior is what needs to change. I am not a medical professional, and I am not seeking to give advice on how to recover. My only advice is to seek help + support immediately.
I am also describing my experience in a vacuum, where my disorder is the main character. In my struggle, there was also an unbelievable amount of beauty, love, joy, and growth in my life. These things are not suddenly less valuable because I was sick when I was participating in them. These things are actually what the main focus of my life should be. Thank you to everyone who has supported me during this major transition, and everyone who brought joy into my life when I needed it most...especially this blog and the community we’ve built together.
I chose to recover from my eating disorder because I wanted my life back. This is not as poetic as it sounds, because the life I got back was a little messy and dusty from years of non attendance. Hey, this is not what I signed up for! I was told that there would be plenty of life to live once I no longer focused all of my mental + physical energy on food and fitness, but no one told me that life would be so difficult. In low moments, I wonder if the pain of having an eating disorder is easier to face than the pain of being human. When I look back on how my life was during my disorder, I realize nothing could be more painful for me.
Choosing to recover is the greatest decision I’ve ever made.
This was always a control issue. My eating disorder made my life predictable. It is not an exaggeration when I tell you that I did the same things, the same way, every single day that I could (excluding events + holidays...mostly). And this was in 2020, when the world was shut down. It was so stupidly easy to do the exact same thing in a controlled environment every day because there truly wasn’t much else to do. Every day was a checklist, from 4:30 AM to my 8PM bedtime, 8 hours of sleep every night, then wake up and repeat.
I was happy because I was secure. When there is no room for unpredictability, there is no room for upsets or for chaos. Simultaneously, there is no room for surprises, for love, for growth, or any other positive outcome of the unplanned areas of life. I did not have an unplanned area of life. All things became routine. All things were in my control. No setbacks, no surprises, no questions. Certainty kept me alive. Certainty was killing me.
And here I thought I was thriving and other people thought I was too. How noble! Such a strong will! So powerful to deny sweets, treats, carbs, chips, bread, cheese, meat, processed foods….almost everything that wasn’t a “clean” “sugar-free” “fat-free” joyless food. How lucky! To be able to work out consistently, 5-7 days a week, without missing a single workout for any reason whatsoever for an entire year straight. How healthy! How resilient! More people wish they could do the same!
I don’t blame anyone who encouraged or envied my disordered behavior. That’s because none of us knew it was disordered. The thing about my eating disorder is that it was not the amount of food (at first, but things escalated) that I was trying to control, it was the kind of food.
On paper, I was adhering to a very healthy diet.
Fruits
(but none that were too large, and if they were, not the entire fruit all at once)
Vegetables
(but not the starchy kinds, and only cooked in the lightest oils or sprays)
Whole grains
(but only 2 bread items a day allowed, and only 1 bread item per meal, and that item had to be carb-balanced or full of “superfood” power)
Nuts + nut butters
(but only 2 tablespoons a day, and only ¼ cup of nuts a day)
Proteins
(but only vegan, organic, expensive meat substitutes, eggs, and beans—but only black beans + chickpeas and never more than a handful)
Fats
(but actually only avocados...and at first only half of an avocado, then eventually only a fourth of an avocado, and at my worst? A fourth of a half of the smallest avocado I could find)
Absolutely no processed foods were allowed
Excluding the 35-calorie flavorless rice cake I had with my lunch every day and the occasional 300-calorie sugar-free pint of vegan Halo Top I would “treat” myself with—I always felt guilty about it. Eventually, 300 calories in the Halo Top was just too much for me to indulge in, so I’d opt for the 10 dollar pints of vegan, sugar-free, fruit based poser gelatos that were actually just frozen smoothies with artificial sweeteners in them to make them taste like a dessert. 150 calories for an entire pint….I called that a wild Friday night.
But there are things I couldn’t control, especially if I wanted to go out with friends or family or coworkers for a meal. In advance, I would study the menu for the healthiest option I could manage (or try and suggest restaurants where I knew what I could order and felt comfortable indulging in). In those predicaments, I would order that “healthiest” item and eat as little of it as possible. I would ask for a to-go box because everyone else was getting one. I would take home my leftovers and immediately toss them.
If I couldn’t get out of a certain restaurant with a certain kind of food, I would cancel the plans last minute...or I would allow myself to eat the smallest amount possible of what was available. Ideally, I would have a week’s notice of where I was eating that weekend so I could work out + eat “cleanly” in preparation for my indulgence. If the decisions came at the last minute, I would work out more + eat cleaner in the weeks following the indulgence in order to “make up for” what I had done.
This is all as exhausting as it sounds. Even explaining it now is making me tired and honestly a bit bored. But that’s the lens I was viewing life through. Everything came down to good or bad eating and enough or not enough exercise. Every aspect of my day revolved around whether or not I was succeeding with my wellness routine. If I faltered, I would spiral. I can think of a handful of times where something as small as a single milk-dud or a bite of homemade dessert or a coffee with actual sugar in it sent me into a full-blown panic attack. I honestly thought I had lost control in those instances. If only that version of myself knew how much I would need to eat in recovery to heal my body. I wouldn’t even blink if I ate a single milk dud. But that version of myself would regret that piece of candy for days, even weeks, after the fact.
I remember the week of my 24th birthday in February of this year. My birthday was on a Sunday, and I had plans to go to dinner with friends on that Friday. I kept telling myself that I would enjoy a good meal + strong drinks with my friends and really celebrate all the work I had done in the past year. I kept telling myself that birthday treats are allowed and maybe I’d buy myself a cupcake and put a tiny candle in it. Here’s what actually happened: I had stuck to my usual “healthy” routine up until Thursday, when a coworker of mine brought in a dozen donuts. Without really thinking, I decided I would celebrate my birthday and eat (half of) a (the smallest) blueberry cake donut. I hadn’t had a donut in over a year.
Without really going into detail about how that “mess-up” made me feel, I can tell you that I wound up feeling so guilty for what I had done that I canceled my dinner plans with friends and spent my birthday weekend alone. I did not want to eat, I did not want to drink. I wound up curling up in bed alone with a sugar-free, 160-calorie chocolate “mug cake” recipe I found on instagram. It only had 4 ingredients and they were all “healthy.” I ate the entire thing and cried, because although it was only 160 calories and had 4 ingredients….it was physically too big and I wished I hadn’t eaten that much. Happy birthday to me.
I find it embarrassing and shameful to say these things out loud.
When I was in my disordered cycle, I clearly never told anyone about the weird set of rules + restrictions + boundaries I had built in my life. This is because, once I’ve said them out loud, I realize how strange and upsetting they are. Eating disorders isolate you because you secretly don’t want anyone to know about the weird ways you operate around diet + exercise. People knew I ate “clean,” people did not know anything that I just shared with you about food. People knew that I exercised regularly, but they did not know that I rolled out of bed and immediately started my workout every morning at 4:30 alone in my room where no one could see me, fumbling through HIIT training videos and trying not to collapse because I don’t even think I was fully awake yet.
Like I said, I decided to recover from my eating disorder because I wanted my life back. Needing 8 hours of sleep every night in order to work out at 4 AM hindered my ability to spend time with friends or to stay up late enjoying Netflix / a good book / a good conversation. Being afraid of eating or drinking makes it pretty hard to socialize, especially with other people in their 20’s or with coworkers, because most social events involve food or alcohol.
I couldn’t and wouldn’t stand another minute of calculating, recalculating, adding, subtracting, and adjusting my daily intake of food for the week. I couldn’t fall asleep without mentally running through all the meals I would have over the next few weeks, coordinating exactly how I could eat 3 meals + two snacks while still following all of my rules and maybe leave room for dessert. I would do this almost every night. I wanted so badly to think about anything else other than food or working out.
Not all people with eating disorders end up underweight, but I did. For my shorter height, being well below 100 pounds was still an optically acceptable size for my frame (by other people’s standards of “thinness” and “health”). I also only wore the same pair of black gym shark leggings and large shirts / sweaters / button ups / jackets every day. Having a smaller body did not mean I was suddenly mentally able to show more of it. The smaller I got, the more I covered up. I was also unbearably cold all of the time, so the larger clothes kept me warm. Even on warmer spring days, I would run the space heater below my desk on high in order to feel comfortable.
Recovery became a serious option for me on the day I realized that my feet were turning blue, more and more of my hair was falling out, I hadn’t had a period in over 6 months, and my body was possibly shutting down. I couldn’t even work up the strength to crush a clove of garlic...and I worked out 5 days a week.
That is not the healthy lifestyle I thought I was living. That is not how I wanted to live my life any longer.
I wasn’t going to write about my disorder until I was fully recovered, because I didn’t think there’d be any point in sharing my struggle without having a solution or advice for anyone struggling with the same issues. I’m only 2 months into my recovery journey, and that process has come with its own laundry-list of upsetting, painful, and isolating issues.
But recovery is also giving me more time to spend with people I love, more energy for my passions + my career, and the opportunity to reclaim my relationship with the everyday magic I’ve always looked for and promoted on this blog.
I guess I’m sharing this because maybe it’s okay to not be okay. I can tell you that I am not “cured” just because I am “weight-restored” and I am eating “normally.” Reprogramming my brain to want to eat, move, and rest like a “regular” person is going to take time. I am not a medical professional, and I am not fully recovered, so I wouldn’t dream of giving any tips on how to cope with this situation or how to help someone you love who is struggling.
But every day, I know I am getting just a little bit better. Growth takes time + patience. “Full recovery” is not a destination that will fix all of my problems. It is how I choose to live today that will promote my healing in the future. When I choose things that promote my recovery, I am choosing what’s best for myself.
My only advice:
if you or someone you love is struggling, you (or they) need help. I’m talking about immediate (compassionate + tactful) intervention. I can’t be angry with myself for not committing to recovery sooner, because I’m glad I did it at all. It’s never too late to get better, it’s never too late to heal. The changes we experience in recovery on the road to reclaiming our lives beats the alternative option:
“Eating disorders are among the deadliest mental illnesses, second only to opioid overdose. 10,200 deaths each year are the direct result of an eating disorder—that's one death every 52 minutes.”
This is how I cope and how I learn to grow, through writing about it. Sharing my story also holds me accountable, because now there’s a handful of people who understand my struggle and could possibly be rooting for me. I also know my love for researching and writing about tarot + astrology + spirituality gives me a sense of peace and fulfillment that motivates me to keep seeking something better.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, we do not need to suffer alone.