Reader Recovery Stories: Erin’s Journey

A year and a half ago, I was handed the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa as I sat across from a therapist, anxious and scared. A year before that, if somebody had predicted that scenario, I would have called it absurd. As somebody considered obese, I felt that I was the last person in the world to be diagnosed with an eating disorder, yet nonetheless I found myself seated across from my therapist as an underweight and terrified girl with anorexia.

My complicated relationship with food began years before my diagnosis, of course. In late elementary school, I found myself caught in a painful, perfect storm. I had experienced some pubescent weight gain and early development, around the same time that my father remarried an emotionally abusive woman who was especially critical of people’s bodies.

These things, coupled with my innately high level of sensitivity and tendency toward anxiety led to a relationship with food that was anything but healthy. My parents, noticing my weight gain, tried to be helpful in the way our society advocates. I tried Weight Watchers (multiple times), Curves, Dr. Phil’s weight-loss plan, The South Beach Diet, and countless other regimes to lose weight, but I never succeeded. I had one medical test after another to discover what was wrong with me, but each test revealed nothing. With every failed attempt, my level of shame grew and I turned to food for comfort. I felt ashamed of eating and of my body, and food became a taboo substance that I did not deserve rather than an essential part of life. With each diet and medical test, the message that my body could not be trusted around food sunk in a little deeper. Gradually, I spiraled down into depression, driving farther and farther away from any level of connection with my body’s needs.

When I left for college, things changed. I still felt ashamed of my body and still wanted desperately to find the diet and exercise plan that would work for me, but I gradually began to crawl out of my shell. I made friends with whom I shared interests, I found the career path that interested me, and I spent a life-changing semester abroad. I started to see my value as a person and things were falling into place in my life, but I saw weight loss as one final hurdle that I simply had to jump over to find happiness.

During the fall of my senior year of college, I started the diet that I wish I had never begun. If I could go back two and a half years, I would rip my cell phone out of my hands to prevent me from installing the app that would allow me to chronicle my subsequent starvation and increasingly problematic devotion to exercise. At first, I was dieting and exercising in a fairly benign way. I casually counted calories and worked out a few times per week. But, for reasons I cannot explain, an eating disorder took over complete control of my brain. It happened quickly and subtly, in a way that was almost imperceptible to me. As I lost weight, I allowed myself fewer and fewer calories. Fitness goals became unhealthy obsessions. My quality of sleep dissolved, my hair began to fall out, and people told me that I had never looked better.

The ensuing months are hard for me to explain because eating disorders do not make sense, and by this point I was fully controlled by one. The person that I became around my college graduation and in the months following was not me. That person was the malnourished, obsessive-compulsive, irritable shadow of my former self. I descended farther and farther into disordered calorie-counting, where things I once allowed myself to eat in moderation dissolved and were replaced with Splenda. In this world, food was seen simultaneously as reward and punishment, but it was never fuel. And, despite succeeding at my life’s one true goal, to lose weight, I found myself wishing that my life would be cut short.

It was at this point that I sought help for myself, and I thank God that I did. Despite people’s continued compliments of my new physique, I was not happy and I did not want to settle for a life of calorie-counting and brutal workouts. Something in me spoke up, told me that I deserved better, and I entered into the maze of recovery.

Recovery is the hardest journey that I have begun, but it pays off each and every day. Slowly but surely, I am undoing all of the damage that has been done, both physically and mentally, by years of believing in the diet mentality. I am learning to honor my body by feeding it. I am learning that hunger is a sign of a healthy body, not something to be ignored or to feel guilty about. I am learning that we need food. We need it to think, to walk, and to breathe.

Over the course of my life, I have learned what happens when food is no longer seen as the pure, life-sustaining substance that it is but as something that needs to be earned. I have seen how a change in perspective has allowed me to live a fuller life where I am able to focus because I am not starving, and where I am able to fully engage those around me because I am not thinking about the calories in the banana that I just ate. I still have a ways to go until I am where I want to be, but I am getting there. I am learning that my body is created in God’s image, just as each of our bodies are.

I would not wish anorexia on anybody, including myself, but the last couple of years have taught me more than any book could have. I have expanded my understanding about my body and food by leaps and bounds, and in some ways I would not trade this experience for a life of ignorance. This has been the hardest thing that I have endured, but I believe wholeheartedly that I will come out of this as a stronger, more self-aware person and I am endlessly grateful for that. After years and years of never believing that I could have a normal relationship with food, the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine and that is worth each and every bit of work.