Today marks the close of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and I want to share my story with you.
40-60% of girls ages 6 to 12 are concerned about becoming "fat," and will continue to remain concerned throughout their life. Over 60% of teenage girls and almost 30% of teenage boys are actively trying to lose weight. Most of them will use some form of unhealthy behavior in order to achieve their goals. 1/3 of girls in a healthy weight range are attempting to lose weight right now. Access to recovery is significantly reduced amongst marginalized communities, such as BIPOC and LGBT+ people. Eating disorders have the second-highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders. *
I am one of these girls. When I was 10, a girl mindlessly told me that I looked pregnant in a dress that I happened to love. While I'm sure her words weren't intended to hurt me, as most people at that age just say whatever they think, her words stuck with me.
I was 10 when I skipped my first meal. I was 16 when someone noticed.
It sounds unreasonable that someone wouldn't notice for so long. The sad fact is that people knew, and they accepted it. Girls in my class knew the struggle that I was going through; they felt the same way. Every week there was a new girl going on a diet, which was just code for temporarily restricting her eating habits. The only difference is that my restriction wasn't temporary.
I started with just lunches. I would drink my juice box every day and throw away my pb&j. I convinced myself that I didn't need it. I had been doing this for over 5 years. 2 meals still wasn't bad, but at the beginning of sophomore year, I decided that it was still too much. I started the year almost 30 pounds overweight. Waking up early was hard for me, so I used that to my advantage. I spent all my time in the morning picking out the perfect outfit and fixing my hair and makeup, so by the time I would get to breakfast, I needed to leave. This made it easy to say I would just grab a coffee and go. That cup of coffee would last me the whole day until dinner.
I lost over 30 pounds my sophomore year and started out junior year at a healthy weight. At first, I was content with what I looked like, and I was ready to start having more meals. Not far into the year, I started experiencing bullying from students and parents. I stressed out and went right back to my old habits. I would have a coffee for breakfast, and then I'd wait until dinner to eat, and my dinner portions were getting smaller and smaller.
My junior year I managed to lose 10 pounds in 1 month. I have never had more people compliment the way I look than when I lost that weight. The funny thing is, some of these people knew about my eating habits. They'd sit there and tell me how much prettier I looked knowing full and well I was barely eating 300 calories a day to do it. But it all came crashing down in late October of that year.
In late October, I had a robotics competition, lasting 3 twelve-hour days. We were competing from 6 to 6 and spent the evenings preparing for the next day. I was the captain of my team and took that responsibility seriously, so seriously that I forgot about food altogether, and went all 3 days living on straight coffee with some protein powder mixed in. Competition ended, and when there wasn't any adrenaline left to run on, I crashed.
The next morning I woke up sick to my stomach, completely unready to attend school. I had assumed it was just sleep deprivation, but I moved to ask my mom to stay home and the next thing I know I was on the floor with my sister yelling for her. I had fainted. It wasn't the first time I fainted, but we had originally attributed fainting to overheating. I didn't attend school that day, and my mom noticed something was wrong when I hesitated to eat. The next day I got up without fainting luckily, and it was off to the doctor for the earliest available appointment. While I avoided the subject, my mother brought up my diet. I lied about how much I was eating. I felt ashamed that I was a varsity athlete and still needed to skip meals to lose weight. I felt terrible for lying, but at the time it seemed like the only logical thing to do. Even with the lies, the doctor told me I had atypical anorexia. I missed yet another day of school for my mother to make sure I ate, and then it was back to normal.
I have never felt more betrayed by something in my life. How can something that provided so much positive feedback in public have been so detrimental to my health? Why did I have to start eating again? Why didn't anyone want me to look pretty?
I told a few friends to create a support network, and I was held accountable for what I ate. Eating three meals was hard, so I started with 1 meal and a snack and worked towards eating more.
It has been 15 months since I started my recovery journey, and I am proud to say that this week is the first week in 7 years that I have consistently eaten three meals. Throughout this process, I've been forced to come to terms with the fact that what I did hurt me more than it helped. Here are a few lessons that I learned:
Eating disorders are about more than looking a certain way. They're about control. When it felt like I couldn't control what others said about me or how much I achieved, I could still control what I put in my body.
You don't have to be skinny to have anorexia. One of the things I told myself was that I couldn't be anorexic because I was either overweight or normal. It's about how much you eat, not what you look like.
Recovery isn't about how much you eat, it's about wanting to eat. Being pressured into eating by friends, family, and doctors is not a long-term solution. And while that may be what has to happen to keep you healthy, recovery is ultimately about forming healthy relationships with food and your body.
Relapse is normal. There are days when I feel like a rockstar because I was successful in my attempts to eat. There were also days when I cried trying to eat a bagel. It's okay to have a bad day and relapse, what's important is making sure that relapse doesn't become permanent.
Eating disorders are hard to cope with. They make it feel as though the world is against you sometimes. But if you develop a support system, you can succeed in fighting it too. Drop a comment below with words of encouragement for other people who might be struggling, or share your own story.
*Statistics from the National Eating Disorders Association
