When I ask folks what I should write about, my personal story is the most popular answer. I will try as hard as I can to eliminate potentially triggering content, but please exercise caution in reading this account if ED related stories can prove triggering to you. I will not use numbers, or discuss my weight, but some relatively tame thought-processes will be discussed.
I grew up in an active family. Throughout school I played competitive sports including cross country, soccer, field hockey, and track. I loved the thrill of athletics, the endorphin rush, and the camaraderie that comes from being part of a team. I was comfortable with being mediocre, and riding the sidelines at times. I never judged my body or thought about calories, pounds, or formal exercise until college.
In my first year at Carolina, I enrolled in a lifetime fitness course that required us to weigh ourselves, track our calories and exercise for a week, and weigh ourselves at the conclusion of the unit. Any health and wellness professional can and will tell you that this activity is absurd. Weight fluctuations are common, and the information gathered over a week is so negligible, it’s almost laughable. Beyond that, as I have expressed time and time again, weight is an exceptionally poor indicator of health. At the time, however, I was convinced that something was wrong with me. I had done everything “right,” and my weight had increased. I decided to continue tracking my caloric intake with the program and integrate exercise into my daily routine.
It started as an “innocent” diet, and, as diets often do, it spun quickly out of control. I was so intense about tracking calories and logging exercise, that I lost excitement and enthusiasm for almost anything else. I refused to eat anything that wasn’t trackable and tracked everything that went into my body – to the last packet of ketchup. I was sucked into a vortex of “self-betterment” that became a competition of will. I learned to exercise self control to an extreme, ignoring my body’s cries for nutrition and forced my caloric deficits as high as I could. I never took days off, and found myself starting to get anxious when I couldn’t get to a gym. I realized that my mind’s resistance to expending energy got stronger and fought against the anxiety that pushed me to work harder and harder, until something snapped.
I lost a lot of weight in my first year at Carolina – and received a great deal of praise for it. People complimented my body, admired my diligence, and looked to me for advice. I fed off of their compliments, craving the admiration, affirmation, and the attention I was receiving. Their kind intentions fueled my disorder’s fire. I began to abuse diet pills and engaged in dangerous compensatory behaviors.
That summer I felt something was wrong, but brushed it aside. I was intensely uncomfortable with my body, and incurred major anxiety around food. I had restricted so heavily that my body craved everything I saw, and when I allowed my body to eat, I felt I couldn’t stop. I was out of control. I became scared. I felt that if I didn’t exercise better caution, my work would be for naught, and I would fall into my worst nightmare. I won’t describe it here, because the thought processes are so disordered that they are highly problematic, but I was terrified.
I flew to Spain alone for my study abroad, pacing the airport with my heavy bags, lamenting the interruption in my exercise schedule. I arrived in Sevilla tired, lonely, and confused. I checked into my hotel, slept for a few hours, woke up to darkness, and cried for an hour more. I felt alone and lost. I was anxious beyond belief. I walked out of my hotel to find food, and circled for a good hour to find something my disordered brain found “acceptable.”
Once I was put at a host family, and school started, the disorder took flight. I had no friends, no support system, no family, no voice to hear but the disorder and nothing to do but obey. I went for a run on my first day and got lost in the city, running for miles and miles until I found home, ruining my right knee in the process. I feared the food my host mother made for me, and would do almost anything to avoid eating things that scared me.
My gym was my church and my disorder was its priest. I worked out incessantly, pushing through fatigue, dizziness, soreness, and hunger until my disorder was satisfied and my anxiety was abated. I lived and breathed to satisfy the disorder. I isolated myself from my cohorts, wasting away in the gym to avoid their food-filled recreation.
I tried to travel as little as possible. The gym was my safety net, and the thought of deserting it petrified me. As soon as I would arrive home from a venture (I scheduled in my lucid moments) I would run myself into the ground trying to make up for lost time. My body screamed at me for rest, demanding respect, and I shut it up, pushing myself over and over, harder and harder.
I had my first panic attack after eating a salad in Granada. I put corn on my salad, I didn’t know how many calories were in corn, and it sparked the most intense anxiety I had ever felt in my life. I wanted to cry, but feared the judgment of my cohorts. I ran to escape, but felt trapped even in my solitude. Something snapped - I was out of control. My disorder was screaming at me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Sometimes, my hunger kept me up at night. I couldn’t sleep, but I knew satiating my hunger would incur a nightmare were more terrible than anything in my sleep.
Eventually, something hit me. I remember little other than that I walked into my apartment, fell into my chair, and started to cry. My tears turned into sobs, and my sobs choked me up, filling my throat and hands with grief, disappointment, and fear. I had lost myself. I was more machine than woman. I cared for nothing and no one. I hated myself. I hated my disorder. I could no longer separate the two. I called my mom, and cried to her. “Mom, something is wrong with me, and I don’t know what to do” I cried over and over. I don’t remember what she said, but I remember resolving to do something. I wrote everything that was running through my mind down, and promised to beat this thing. It was the first day that I admitted I had an eating disorder, and the beginning of a long journey to health. My favorite line from my writing became my recovery mantra over time:
“I want nothing more than normality. I want nothing more than to let my life be run by my desires and dreams for the world rather than debilitating fear that by not letting it be run on a treadmill I am condemning myself to failure. “
But that didn’t happen, and arguably still hasn’t fully happened, for years. When I came home from Spain I went through refeeding, which incurred more anxiety and stress than I have ever beared in my life. My exercise was still out of control, and the disordered thoughts with it.
It took two of my friends doubling down on me and begging me to see a therapist to convince me to go. My disorder wanted me to believe that I didn’t really have a problem - that compared to other patients, I was totally fine. **This is a common and highly problematic defense mechanism of the disorder. ** They practically dragged me to my first appointment. It was a disaster. But I persevered and began going to therapy weekly. As awkward, painful, and uncomfortable as it was – my increased vulnerability opened doors to recovery. I learned to exercise self-compassion, and opposite-to-emotion actions to combat the disorder. I started telling my close friends about my problems and received overwhelming amounts of support. Many people said they knew something was wrong, but didn’t know how to help. I felt immensely loved. I knew I wasn’t alone.
With the support of my friends, professional treatment team, and family, I worked hard through three years of therapy, nutritional counseling, and numerous doctors appointments. I started to see the fruits of my efforts. My attitudes about food and exercise slowly relaxed, I started to love myself more and more as I regained my personality back, and re-established who I was. Those three years were the hardest and most rewarding of my life. I have never worked so hard for something so valuable - my life.
I wanted to help others like me, to help people realize how worthy of love they are – especially from themselves. I wanted to wage the war on disorders from a broader perspective than that of my own.
There’s a lot more to this story leading up to how I got where I am now, which I will likely tell in later posts. For now, let it suffice to say that treatment changed my life. I am changed, and my passions have evolved. That’s why I’m here. My disorder was fueled by and fueled my exercise. A healthy relationship with our bodies, with exercise, with food is hard for anyone. There simply aren’t enough strong role models that promote self love through exercise, that preach and practice compassionate physical vitality.
I am on a new journey. A journey to be that role model to others – to help ensure that my friends don’t go through what I did – that they recognize how immensely worthy they are simply for being, and not for doing.
I grew up in an active family. Throughout school I played competitive sports including cross country, soccer, field hockey, and track. I loved the thrill of athletics, the endorphin rush, and the camaraderie that comes from being part of a team. I was comfortable with being mediocre, and riding the sidelines at times. I never judged my body or thought about calories, pounds, or formal exercise until college.
In my first year at Carolina, I enrolled in a lifetime fitness course that required us to weigh ourselves, track our calories and exercise for a week, and weigh ourselves at the conclusion of the unit. Any health and wellness professional can and will tell you that this activity is absurd. Weight fluctuations are common, and the information gathered over a week is so negligible, it’s almost laughable. Beyond that, as I have expressed time and time again, weight is an exceptionally poor indicator of health. At the time, however, I was convinced that something was wrong with me. I had done everything “right,” and my weight had increased. I decided to continue tracking my caloric intake with the program and integrate exercise into my daily routine.
It started as an “innocent” diet, and, as diets often do, it spun quickly out of control. I was so intense about tracking calories and logging exercise, that I lost excitement and enthusiasm for almost anything else. I refused to eat anything that wasn’t trackable and tracked everything that went into my body – to the last packet of ketchup. I was sucked into a vortex of “self-betterment” that became a competition of will. I learned to exercise self control to an extreme, ignoring my body’s cries for nutrition and forced my caloric deficits as high as I could. I never took days off, and found myself starting to get anxious when I couldn’t get to a gym. I realized that my mind’s resistance to expending energy got stronger and fought against the anxiety that pushed me to work harder and harder, until something snapped.
I lost a lot of weight in my first year at Carolina – and received a great deal of praise for it. People complimented my body, admired my diligence, and looked to me for advice. I fed off of their compliments, craving the admiration, affirmation, and the attention I was receiving. Their kind intentions fueled my disorder’s fire. I began to abuse diet pills and engaged in dangerous compensatory behaviors.
That summer I felt something was wrong, but brushed it aside. I was intensely uncomfortable with my body, and incurred major anxiety around food. I had restricted so heavily that my body craved everything I saw, and when I allowed my body to eat, I felt I couldn’t stop. I was out of control. I became scared. I felt that if I didn’t exercise better caution, my work would be for naught, and I would fall into my worst nightmare. I won’t describe it here, because the thought processes are so disordered that they are highly problematic, but I was terrified.
I flew to Spain alone for my study abroad, pacing the airport with my heavy bags, lamenting the interruption in my exercise schedule. I arrived in Sevilla tired, lonely, and confused. I checked into my hotel, slept for a few hours, woke up to darkness, and cried for an hour more. I felt alone and lost. I was anxious beyond belief. I walked out of my hotel to find food, and circled for a good hour to find something my disordered brain found “acceptable.”
Once I was put at a host family, and school started, the disorder took flight. I had no friends, no support system, no family, no voice to hear but the disorder and nothing to do but obey. I went for a run on my first day and got lost in the city, running for miles and miles until I found home, ruining my right knee in the process. I feared the food my host mother made for me, and would do almost anything to avoid eating things that scared me.
My gym was my church and my disorder was its priest. I worked out incessantly, pushing through fatigue, dizziness, soreness, and hunger until my disorder was satisfied and my anxiety was abated. I lived and breathed to satisfy the disorder. I isolated myself from my cohorts, wasting away in the gym to avoid their food-filled recreation.
I tried to travel as little as possible. The gym was my safety net, and the thought of deserting it petrified me. As soon as I would arrive home from a venture (I scheduled in my lucid moments) I would run myself into the ground trying to make up for lost time. My body screamed at me for rest, demanding respect, and I shut it up, pushing myself over and over, harder and harder.
I had my first panic attack after eating a salad in Granada. I put corn on my salad, I didn’t know how many calories were in corn, and it sparked the most intense anxiety I had ever felt in my life. I wanted to cry, but feared the judgment of my cohorts. I ran to escape, but felt trapped even in my solitude. Something snapped - I was out of control. My disorder was screaming at me and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Sometimes, my hunger kept me up at night. I couldn’t sleep, but I knew satiating my hunger would incur a nightmare were more terrible than anything in my sleep.
Eventually, something hit me. I remember little other than that I walked into my apartment, fell into my chair, and started to cry. My tears turned into sobs, and my sobs choked me up, filling my throat and hands with grief, disappointment, and fear. I had lost myself. I was more machine than woman. I cared for nothing and no one. I hated myself. I hated my disorder. I could no longer separate the two. I called my mom, and cried to her. “Mom, something is wrong with me, and I don’t know what to do” I cried over and over. I don’t remember what she said, but I remember resolving to do something. I wrote everything that was running through my mind down, and promised to beat this thing. It was the first day that I admitted I had an eating disorder, and the beginning of a long journey to health. My favorite line from my writing became my recovery mantra over time:
“I want nothing more than normality. I want nothing more than to let my life be run by my desires and dreams for the world rather than debilitating fear that by not letting it be run on a treadmill I am condemning myself to failure. “
But that didn’t happen, and arguably still hasn’t fully happened, for years. When I came home from Spain I went through refeeding, which incurred more anxiety and stress than I have ever beared in my life. My exercise was still out of control, and the disordered thoughts with it.
It took two of my friends doubling down on me and begging me to see a therapist to convince me to go. My disorder wanted me to believe that I didn’t really have a problem - that compared to other patients, I was totally fine. **This is a common and highly problematic defense mechanism of the disorder. ** They practically dragged me to my first appointment. It was a disaster. But I persevered and began going to therapy weekly. As awkward, painful, and uncomfortable as it was – my increased vulnerability opened doors to recovery. I learned to exercise self-compassion, and opposite-to-emotion actions to combat the disorder. I started telling my close friends about my problems and received overwhelming amounts of support. Many people said they knew something was wrong, but didn’t know how to help. I felt immensely loved. I knew I wasn’t alone.
With the support of my friends, professional treatment team, and family, I worked hard through three years of therapy, nutritional counseling, and numerous doctors appointments. I started to see the fruits of my efforts. My attitudes about food and exercise slowly relaxed, I started to love myself more and more as I regained my personality back, and re-established who I was. Those three years were the hardest and most rewarding of my life. I have never worked so hard for something so valuable - my life.
I wanted to help others like me, to help people realize how worthy of love they are – especially from themselves. I wanted to wage the war on disorders from a broader perspective than that of my own.
There’s a lot more to this story leading up to how I got where I am now, which I will likely tell in later posts. For now, let it suffice to say that treatment changed my life. I am changed, and my passions have evolved. That’s why I’m here. My disorder was fueled by and fueled my exercise. A healthy relationship with our bodies, with exercise, with food is hard for anyone. There simply aren’t enough strong role models that promote self love through exercise, that preach and practice compassionate physical vitality.
I am on a new journey. A journey to be that role model to others – to help ensure that my friends don’t go through what I did – that they recognize how immensely worthy they are simply for being, and not for doing.