My Journey Through Anorexia

It’s been seven years since I started recovering from anorexia and exercise addiction. In honor and celebration of this near-decade of healing and self-discovery, I want to share my story with you.

My history with anorexia and exercise addiction

Like many girls and women, I began experiencing body dysmorphia at a young age. I spent adolescence standing in front of so many mirrors, yanking at my skin and feeling a rage bubble up inside me. I shouldn’t have been able to grab and hold onto my body; it should have been perfectly taut, pure muscle and bone, like the women in magazines and on TV. 

I began seriously starving myself in college. I sought comfort in the hunger; it numbed me and made me feel like I could deal with the pain I’d been carrying around. At a glance, eating disorders look like vanity gone rogue, but while a desire for thinness is the surface-level issue, the root is buried so much deeper.

Society seems to be growing more adept at identifying and understanding emotions, but in the 1990s and early 2000s, that just wasn’t the case. The cultural norm was to bury feelings deep and/or laugh them off, but what we didn’t realize is this didn’t make the trauma and grief disappear. Instead, those emotions flooded into these dysmorphias and dysfunctions, and we all picked our poison. 

Mine was anorexia and exercise addiction—a.k.a., the only things I felt I had control over in the midst of my exhausting people-pleasing patterns that I couldn’t begin to understand or unpack. I was asleep to what I needed to move through life effectively—feeling things, letting them pass, and remaining grounded in the present. I didn’t know how to understand my emotions and work through them; instead, I opted for letting them out in self-harming, dysfunctional ways. 

The appearance of perfection

If you’d told me I had an eating disorder when I was in the midst of it, I would have laughed in your face. In fact, that did happen—several times. But I’d googled anorexia and found forums and “pro ana” accounts where people discussed eating a piece of candy a day, withholding water to avoid bloat, and being so weak and sick with hunger, they couldn’t get out of bed for days.

This was a far cry from me at the time: I was working weekly shifts as a grocery store cashier, going to college full-time with straight A’s and honors, and working out at the gym several hours a day. I was on the school’s speech and debate team, where I did extensive research and won tournaments. I spent my free time creative writing; I traveled to LA and New York for internships at prestigious global media companies. And I was eating every day. All of my meals were super low-calorie and largely vegetables, but I interpreted that as a healthy diet—not a malnourished one. I felt like I was performing at an extremely high level, and that meant I couldn’t possibly be sick. Try again, everyone.

Despite all that I had going on, I was definitely fostering a secret: I was absolutely exhausted. I constantly felt like I was at my limit, but I kept pushing myself. I thought it was what I needed to do to set myself up for success in the adult world—to get ahead of my peers and set myself apart as someone who was serious, driven, and willing to sacrifice everything. Extreme exhaustion aside, things were going great for me. Until they weren’t.

My foot remained on the gas for years, and I only grew more exhausted, more deteriorated, more irritable and antisocial. People were becoming more blatant in their concern for me, and I started to wonder if they were seeing something I couldn’t. Still, I brushed off those creeping thoughts, pushing forward in my misery.

And miserable I was: I would spend every evening scrolling endlessly through Instagram, lusting after mouth-watering images and videos of all of the food I wouldn’t let myself eat. I watched other people live, enjoy, and commune with one another from the solitude of my bedroom. And then one day, I came across a post that was sort of unusual.

It was another food photo, but this one wasn’t necessarily engineered to be aesthetically appealing. It had little scraps of vegetables and fruits scattered about, and it didn’t exactly look well-rounded; it felt eerily familiar. And then it hit me: this looked like one of my own plates. 

My eyes shot to the caption, and realization set in. This was the accountability page of someone who had just started recovering from anorexia. Using the account to post her meals and seek encouragement on her budding journey, the caption was full of emotional strain; she didn’t want to eat, but she knew she had to do it if she wanted to avoid severe illness, or worse. This was the first time I admitted to myself that I had a problem: from the solitude of my bedroom.

The road to recovery

I grasped onto my secret for a few more months, but I had also started exposing myself to more recovery accounts and forums. Something in me knew this would have to be my next chapter, but I wasn’t able to admit it until one night, I started to fall asleep and was jolted awake by the terrifying image of claws reaching out to claim me just as I was drifting off. I’d finally had enough. I shot up out of bed and asked my parents to take me to Urgent Care. I told them I had a problem, and I was ready to get help.

Thanks to the brave souls who I’d been following for months, I created a recovery account on Instagram, where I planned to share my journey as a means of accountability. If I relapsed, everyone would know. This way, I could only go forward, no matter how grueling a path it seemed.

Those first months of recovery were so insane. I went through a second puberty as an adult: all of the periods I’d missed while I was underweight came roaring back, and I was menstruating every 2-3 weeks. My hormones were all over the place and my food cravings were wild; I learned that my body didn’t trust me not to starve myself again, so it clung to everything I fed it, demanding more and more until my stomach felt like it was going to burst.

I was incredibly depressed and anxious, and a major part of me wanted to turn around and run back to the comfort of starvation. But it was too late. I’d already become aware, and I knew that the only chance at happiness was through the harrowing journey of recovery. I had to be brave. And for as difficult recovery was, it was also beautiful. Colors were bright again. For the first time in years, I felt myself wanting to participate in life—to soak up as much of it as I could.

I also had amazing role models on Instagram that I owe my endurance to. Watching the people further into their journeys live full, healthy, and happy lives encouraged me to keep going until I found the light myself.

Photo taken in 2017, one week into my recovery journey

Recognizing the triggers and staying aware

Eventually, my brain chemistry started to balance back out, and so did my hormones. My body was able to trust me again because I’d dedicated myself to caring for her. I’ve worked hard for that trust, and I’m very grateful for it.

I started reaching back out to God, the Universe—whatever language you want to use—calling out to the NYC sky to ask for help and direction. My dad sent me affirmations to speak aloud daily. Eventually, I found my way back into myself: I embraced my inner child and gave her the self-love she’d been craving so badly. I settled into my career in media and started writing. I shared my story in a few different publications and received such beautiful messages of support and understanding, it encouraged me to keep going. 

Seven years later, I’ve never felt more in touch with myself. However, recent events taught me that I have to keep an eye on eating because it’s one of my biggest triggers. I lost my dad in 2021, and some of the intrusive thoughts I’d all but forgotten about started to poke at me again. While I didn’t restrict, I found myself overthinking about food and exercise. This made me realize that when life throws its curveballs at me, eating might be the first thing I try to “control.” I just have to be aware of that and keep fighting. 

I’ve also won the life lottery with my husband, who I met just a few months after my dad departed. While I feel my dad in me, pushing me to keep learning the essential lessons about being present and loving myself, I have my soulmate physically by my side, constantly making me feel perfect and beautiful in every way. 

Being loved by him is the highest act of being present I’ve ever experienced; I never want to miss a moment, and I’m more determined than ever to take good care of myself so I can show up for him every day. 

I know life will continue to throw its wrenches, and that’s okay. I’m better equipped to deal. I’ve built a solid toolbox, and I’m still picking up tools along the way. That’s all we can do: stay open, keep learning, and prioritize self-love above everything. I’ve committed my life to it, and I’m never going back.

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