How I Recovered From an Eating Disorder
By: Jenna Mcrae
Tags: Recovery, Mental Illness, Anorexia, Eating Disorders, Mental Health

How I Recovered From an Eating Disorder

And my journey to get there

Photo by Siora Photography on Unplash

I’ve always had a certain discomfort with my body, even when I was a young child. I had sensory issues regarding tight clothes and certain fabrics. I could feel how much space I was taking up; hyper-focusing on where my body was and how others were perceiving it. Because of this, I have always been much happier — and more comfortable — hidden beneath layers of clothes that are three sizes too large for me.

I recall in grade one a classmate telling me tell me, “You’re going to be fat when you grow up.”

“Why?” I asked, terrified.

“Because anyone who is skinny when they’re young grows up to be fat, and anyone who is fat when they’re young grows up to be skinny.”

I panicked.

That was the first time I can remember someone planting the seed of fear in my head. However, I remember this fear existing my mind even before then, but I do not know the origin of it.

When I think back to that day now, I wonder where the child heard such misinformation. Surely it affected him negatively, too. I don’t believe parents — or any adults — should be commenting on body types, weight, or calories, especially to children.

Children are not born with the innate fear of food, and I most certainly wasn’t. I loved food, and was never a picky eater.

I remember eating cereal almost every morning with my younger sister and we would read the nutrition label on the side of the box for entertainment. Calories, fat, protein. we had no idea what any of those numbers meant.

I wish I could go back to that innocence because once you start seeing food as a number, it’s almost impossible to stop.

A lot of my life revolved around food, and a lot of life does revolve around food; socializing and eating are heavily intertwined in many cultures. There’s a quote that I heard long ago that says “I don’t trust people who forget lunch”, and that was very much my perspective. I didn’t understand how people forgot to eat, because food was always on my mind.

I went swimming at the pool one afternoon, fully clothed to hide my body as usual, and was met with a terrible fate shortly after:

I had gotten my period.

I was, from an early age, terrified of puberty and of developing a womanly figure. I didn’t want hips. I didn’t want boobs and would check in the mirror to make sure I wasn’t growing any. I didn’t want to bleed once a month (but to be fair, who does?). I didn’t want anyone to know that my body was changing, and to be honest, I was rather humiliated by it.

The changes that came along with my period — namely, the weight gain — pushed me even further into myself. I was still at a healthy weight; nothing drastic happened to me except getting a tiny bit of stomach, but that tiny bit of stomach felt gigantic to me.

I first learned about eating disorders from a show called Popular. One of the main characters, Brooke, had an eating disorder. I saw her struggle with it, but I also envied her for having so much ‘self-control’. I watched her with wide eyes, eating an entire box of Ritz crackers, and promised myself that I would lose weight once and for all; to be just like Brooke.

And I did.

It was New Year’s 2012 when I made the resolution to lose weight, believing it would make me happy with my body and more confident.

Maybe then I could wear tight clothes without feeling uncomfortable.

Maybe then I could wear a bikini to the pool without feeling ashamed.

Maybe then I wouldn’t be so revolted with myself.

I thought I knew what I was doing; that I was in control. In reality, I hadn’t the slightest inkling what I was getting myself into.

I started eating one-third of what I was eating before, convincing myself that I was just being ‘healthy’. As I became hungrier and hungrier, my calories became less and less. I got so hungry one day that I ate almost an entire bottle of omega-3 gummy vitamins. I would eat mustard from the bottle because it said it was 0 calories and I screamed at my dad when he caught me; I was embarrassed by it.

I was embarrassed for people to know I was hungry, believing they would think “why is she hungry? She’s so fat she could probably survive for months without food”.

When I got home from school I would go straight on the Wii Fit, firstly checking my BMI. I was in the ‘healthy’ range, but wanted to be ‘underweight’. I’d then proceed to do my daily exercises, which I would sometimes do while watching Doctor Oz, who fed me more dieting tips.

My parents noticed my change in behavior— obviously — and became worried. They did some research online and showed me a video of a young girl with an eating disorder on YouTube.

“We think you have anorexia,” they told me.

On one hand, I was proud of myself, “I’m becoming like Brooke. I do have self-control”. On the other hand, I didn’t believe them, “I’m just being healthy, there’s nothing sick about that. I don’t even look sick”.

The Hospital

After only three months of my ‘diet’, shortly after my 16th birthday (which I cried on because I was forced to eat cake), I started to have chest pain. My parents brought me to the children’s hospital, which I was admitted into after an assessment; my heart was failing.

I was furious that the hospital and my parents were going to take everything from me; everything I had worked so hard for. I was finally happy. right?

Every morning I had to wear a gown to be weighed, get blood work (ouch), and have my vitals checked.

The nurses brought me my meals on trays, with a piece of paper beside it that read ‘Aqua menu, Coral menu, Blue menu.. ’ Each time the color on the paper changed, I knew that the doctors had, once again, increased my calories. And I would, in turn, hyperventilate.

I’ll admit that most of the time I didn’t even eat the food they gave me. I was on the medical floor, where I was left to my own devices for most of the day, and where I was left alone to eat. I was reluctant to gain the weight I needed to gain, and for some reason, I thought that they would kick me out if I didn’t comply with their rules. Of course, they wouldn’t just let me go.

But logic doesn’t get you very far when dealing with an eating disorder; someone can tell you that you’re sick, and you won’t believe them. They can say you’re underweight, and you won’t see it.

You’re so deep in your own mind that anyone who questions your reality — or who tries to control you — is immediately seen as a threat.

Eventually, the doctor placed me in the hospital’s eating disorder treatment program because I wasn’t gaining any weight.

When I first entered the lounge (the room with couches where we had group therapy), I saw the friend I made back on the medical floor, and a blonde girl doing a Twilight puzzle. It was nice to be surrounded by people who had similar struggles as me and who were able to understand me. Up until then, I had felt completely alone. I made a lot of friends there, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged to a community.

I gained the weight back, exactly as they wanted, and although I was uncomfortable with it, I enjoyed the time I had with my group. We had Friday outings and got to do fun things together, like painting pottery and going to a water park and a beach. I had a blast, honestly, but I was soon kicked out of the program and my new friends were told to not talk to me anymore. I was completely devastated.

The entire time, in the back of my mind, I knew I was going to get sick again. I wanted to, in fact. My heart just wasn’t in recovery, and I felt like it was forced onto me before I got to experience how bad an eating disorder could actually be. And did I ever get to experience that to the fullest?

I started to get sick again, but more cautiously this time; I had to hide it from my parents so I didn’t end up back in the hospital. But a few years later, that’s exactly where I ended up, sicker than before, and admitted once again.

Eating disorders can be highly manipulative. It’s like something living inside of you — a parasite — that will make you do anything so it can survive.

I lied my way out of the hospital and got released prematurely, promising with ‘sincerity’ that I would recover on my own; that I knew I could do it.

I didn’t get better.

I got sicker.

And sicker.

And sicker.

Until the night I thought I wasn’t going to wake from my sleep.

The Pseudo-Recovery

Before that moment, I never thought I would actually die from anorexia, even though the doctors had all warned me countless times. But as I was laying there that night, praying to God to let me live — to give me another chance — I realized how serious this illness was, and I realized that I didn’t want to die.

I woke up the next morning and began my half-hearted attempt at recovery. After a couple of months, I had gained a bit of weight; enough to not be knocking on death’s door anymore. But I had hit a stumbling block in my recovery; I wanted to get better, but I didn’t want to gain any more weight (and I had a lot left to gain).

Pseudo-recovery, or half-recovery, is a stumbling block experienced by many people on their journey. I was eating just enough to not letting myself get dangerously ill again, but not enough to fully weight restore.

I was stuck there, and I was miserable.

The Real Recovery

After almost a year of pseudo-recovery, I stumbled across a Youtube video that was rather heartbreaking. In it, there was an old woman with an eating disorder weighing vegetables, which was all she would allow herself to eat. And it dawned on me then, as I watched her frail body struggling to do sit-ups on her bedroom floor,

That was my future if I continued down this path.

Fear was the main motivator in my recovery;

The fear of death, and the fear of not living my life.

Was this really the life I want for myself?

Could I even call this a life?

Does it even matter in the end what I look like?

Was I really willing to risk my life for something as fleeting as a silly ‘beauty standard’, when we all get old and lose out youthfulness anyway?

I started to watch videos about recovery and could feel my motivation growing. I felt ready to take the next step — excited, even, — though I was terrified.

I took back my control. Instead of decreasing calories, I increased them. Instead of watching my weight go down, I watched it go up.

Some days were harder than others, and some days I wanted to give up completely. But I had committed to recovery; I made a promise to myself that no matter what, I wouldn’t let myself slide back, not even for a day. Because, as those of us with eating disorders know, if you let just one symptom creep in one time, it can quickly develop into something no longer in your control.

I dove in headfirst, as I tend to do these things. I gained the weight fast — faster than I wanted — but I did it.

It was uncomfortable, but it had to be endured. It was terrifying, but it had to be faced.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how intertwined my illness had become with me. It had taken up so much of my headspace that it almost become my identity, and recovery meant shedding that identity. This not only applied to how others perceived me but also how I perceived myself. I needed to find myself again; my passions, my interests, my dreams. Slowly, I began to listen to music again, to dance and sing, to make art, to write more.

Things resurfaced in recovery that I had to finally face; things that I was using my eating disorder to suppress and distract myself from. An eating disorder is a coping mechanism, and when it is removed, it needs to be replaced with healthier coping mechanisms.

I’m okay now, and I have been for a while. I’m glad I got out of it, and I know there are many people out there who aren’t as lucky as I am.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t look back on that time of my life with some regret, but there is also so much gratitude, so much growth, and so many strong people I am thankful to have had the pleasure to meet.

Occasionally, I hear the eating disorder’s voice in the back of my mind, trying to slither its way back into my life. But I know better than that now. I’ve learned how to tame the beast; I’ve grown stronger than it, and not one shred of me wants to go back to that hell I created for myself.

My one piece of advice to others struggling with this illness would be to not wait until you think you are ‘sick enough’ before you try to find help or recover. Every day counts, and every day your eating disorder controls you is a day where you are not the narrator of your own life. Your life belongs to you and you only, not to a quiet voice in the back of your mind whispering that you will never be happy until you reach a certain number on the scale. Because the truth is, you are worth so much more than that, and you always have been.