This is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I’ve sat in front of my computer for hours the past couple of weeks, typing, deleting, and retyping, trying to find the right words for this post. For the first time in my life, this week was marked on my calendar in advance. This cause is close to my heart now, and I needed a way to explain it in a serious, yet readable way. Last week’s post was a good start, but I wanted something “just right” for this week.
Finally, I decided to write to the culprit itself, my eating disorder, or ED, to explain its insidious effects and the way it wreaks havoc on your body and your mind.
Dear Eating Disorder (ED),
You successfully took over my life last summer, and I didn’t realize what was happening until you were completely in control. Even though you chose to make yourself known recently, you’ve been lurking in the shadows for many years. You’ve been hanging around my life for a long time, I just didn’t know it.
When I was young, you would show up as sugar binges, times that I couldn’t get enough candy to eat. As I got older, you made me aware of my size and how I was bigger than all my friends. Looking back, I can now see that I matured faster and was much taller, but you told me that bigger=fatter=bad. You told me that being bigger than all my friends and looking different made me ugly. You’ve been giving me these messages for a long time.
In high school, you popped in on me for a few months now and then and caused dramatic weight loss that the doctors couldn’t even figure out. They did all sorts of tests and tried different medications, but nothing worked. You are the master of disguise, but I now know that it was you all along. Eventually, you faded back into the shadows again (kind of).
You were constantly whispering in my ear in college. Being a college athlete, my weight and body become the focus of most of the things I did. I weighed in several times a week in the weight room, assumedly so that the coaches could watch out for dangers like you, but that only put my weight at the forefront of my mind at all times. I could appreciate my body and my size more in college, because it was to my advantage to be bigger and stronger than other girls while I played. But as time went on, I began comparing myself to others, and you sneakily pointed out all of my flaws until I could no longer appreciate my body at all, even from an athletic standpoint.
When I underwent my hip surgeries, I started to hear your voice even louder, even though I still didn’t know who you were. I wasn’t active anymore, I was unable to be, so the diet that I got used to feeding my body with was not conducive to my body image goals anymore. As much as I hated working out, I missed it because it gave me control over my body and weight like nothing else could. Laying in bed on my hip machine, you repeated insults in my ears, “You’re lying here and getting out of shape. You’re lying here and getting fat.” Your voice was getting louder.
You loved it when I would get depressed or anxious. Any strong emotions like those, especially for days, weeks, or months at a time were your excuse to take over. Depression made things not taste good, or not taste at all, and you would whisper in my ear and tell me, “If you can’t taste it, why eat it?” During these periods, I would step onto the scale more and more, liking what I saw, even though I knew I wasn’t being healthy. These instances built up your power even more.
This past summer, I was feeling a lot better. I actually had energy to go and do things. You saw that, and sprang into action. I was unhappy with where my body was at, and I set out to change that. I started in healthy ways, exercising in moderation and eating healthier. But it wasn’t good enough, things weren’t happening fast enough and you knew exactly what to do. You started telling me things like, “The less you eat in a day, the more weight you lose.” I started restricting. When I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore, when I was starving, you would cheer me on with words like, “Those hunger pains are GOOD! It’s the feeling of success!” These little pep talks in my brain would help me to push through the hunger pangs until they started going away altogether, which I think was your plan all along.
Every morning, you told me to step on to the scale. Pretty soon, once a day wasn’t good enough and it turned into multiple times a day. You told me that the number on the scale defined me, you told me that I was only as good as the number was low. Every “goal” you would set for me was surpassed and another goal was made. No matter how much I lost, it was never quite good enough for you and your persuasive voice.
You also told me that restricting was not enough. It was a start, but it wouldn’t help me get to my goal weight all alone. I went for a run one day with a friend, which was totally uncharacteristic of me because I hate running, and your voice echoed through my brain the whole time, “Yes! This is perfect! You’re burning so many calories, I just know it. You need to do this every day!” And with that, even though I still hated running, you, ED, fell in love with it. It came to the point that if I didn’t exercise one day, you would start yelling so loud in my ears that I had to stop what I was doing and go run.
“It’s 10 o’clock and dark? Oh well, go run through the dark streets anyway.”
“You have plans tonight with a friend? Make sure you workout before or cancel those plans, working out comes first.”
“It’s impossible for you to work out today? Then you don’t get to eat.”
All of a sudden, you started making up all these rules for me to follow, and I had to follow them at all costs or risk being what you called a “failure.” You knew that I’m a strict rule-follower and used that to your advantage. I followed each rule to a T, and would literally panic if circumstances made me break one of the rules. My brain became my prison, and you were the warden.
You liked it when my body started showing signs of collapse. That was your ultimate goal after all. Although it would frustrate you when I could not get my heart rate up enough to burn calories, you told me to keep pushing anyway. When I would get dizzy because my body had nothing to fuel it, you told me I was being successful. You would yell at me, tell me to keep going, to work through the pain and dizziness. You would tell me that what I was feeling was a good sign, feeling dizzy and weak meant that I was achieving the goals that I thought were mine, but were actually yours all along. For a long time, I listened to you instead of my body, and it could have killed me.
Because of you and your voice, I ended up in treatment hundreds of miles from home, away from my job, away from my family. They taught me about you, and how seductive your voice can sound. Until I arrived in Arizona, I didn’t know that other people had you in their heads too, but they do. The more I learned about you, the more angry you got. You knew that you didn’t have much power over me there, surrounded by people that were helping me pinpoint your voice and teaching me how to fight back against you.
In fact, I learned quite a bit about you in treatment. You prey on my personality type and my intelligence, using my perfectionism, people-pleasing, and obsessive-compulsive personality to your advantage. You only work when you can activate those other pieces of me, the pieces that won’t stop until they’re “perfect,” using my ability to obsessively focus on one thing to take over my life.
I learned that you have been dormant inside me for a long time, coming alive from time to time, until this past year. As a result of my personality, circumstances, and my disordered eating, it was the perfect storm to help you attack me full force this past summer.
I learned that you lurk within many other people too. I used to think that women were the only people that struggled with eating disorders, but men can have eating disorders too. I learned that other people also hear your voice in their heads. Most of the time, you tell me to restrict and over-exercise, but you sometimes tell people to binge, purge, and do other harmful things to their bodies as well.
Before I learned about you, I used to think that someone could tell if a person had an eating disorder by looking at them. In fact, because of this assumption, I didn’t take you seriously at first because I wasn’t underweight. However, this is not true. People of all different body types can have eating disorders, and many times, the people that don’t “look” like they have an eating disorder are the ones that are in the most danger of serious medical complications or even death.
Through the treatment process and reflection, I learned what makes your voice louder in my head. Situations where there is a lot of food talk, wake you up and make you use everything people say about food against me. I’ve learned that for awhile, while I’m new in recovery, I need to stay away from that type of talk until I’m more comfortable controlling you.
I also realized through my own experiences and talking with others that have you living in their brain, any comments about our bodies are unwelcome. Whether they are negative or positive, you always know how to turn them around so that they are all damaging. People can give compliments without commenting on someone’s body, how about intellect or skills or personality instead? Regardless of whether someone has an ED in their head or not, body comments are inappropriate and just not helpful or productive.
Through research, I have learned just how deadly you are. Your voice sounds so seductive and tempting in the moment. In fact, you often tell me that you are helping me, but now I know that you aren’t. Your goal is to break my body down bit by bit until you kill me. Those are harsh words, but they are true, ED. You have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. No matter how good your promises sound, you do not have my best interests at heart and the longer you linger, the more powerful and dangerous you become.
In fact, me writing this letter right now is making you angry. You don’t want other people to know about you and how you function. You thrive off of stereotypes, misinformation, and ignorance. The less people know about you, the more powerful you are. But here’s the thing, ED, weeks like this week, National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, are made to make you weaker. To educate people and to take away your control.
National Eating Disorder Awareness week has the theme, “Come As You Are,” this year. ED, you hate those words. That is the last thing you want people to do, because with you, nothing is ever good enough. You tell people that their bodies aren’t good enough, you tell people that they aren’t good enough, no matter what they do. I jumped through your hoops for years, doing everything you asked of me, and it was never good enough. Every time I would reach one of your “goals,” you set the bar higher. That’s what makes you dangerous. Nothing is ever good enough for you, ever.
Here’s the deal, ED. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of hearing your voice in my head and being bossed around by you. So this week, I’m going to post this letter on my blog. This letter that tells your secrets and tells my story of how I fell for your promises in hopes that it can shed light on your insidious nature and educate people so that your power is taken away. You may have a strong hold on society, with all the weight shaming, diet culture, and unrealistic expectations of beauty, but we are starting to fight back.
You’re good, ED. I’ll give you that. But I’m on to you, we’re all on to you, and your time is running out.
-Cassie
Thoughts for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week:
Be aware of society’s expectations, and fight back. Come as you are and don’t buy into the diet culture or weight stigma that society is throwing at us in every commercial, social media post and ad.
Don’t comment on anyone’s body, even if you think you’re giving a compliment. Pick something you like about how they are on the inside, and compliment them in that way. It’s much more productive.
Familiarize yourself with the signs and symptoms of eating disorders. Living in our society today, it’s easy to fall prey to the messages that we aren’t good enough the way that we are. Be watchful of those around you, including kids, that they are receiving healthy and accepting body positive messages.
Don’t be fooled by the common stereotypes of eating disorders. People struggling with eating disorders come in all body types, races, socioeconomic statuses, and genders. Just because they don’t fit the underweight and female stereotype, doesn’t mean that they don’t have an eating disorder.
Resources with more information:
Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer
Almost Anorexic by Dr. Jennifer Thomas & Jenni Schaefer
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