Cecilia Doss graduated from Arkansas State University with a Bachelor’s in Psychology. She went on to complete a Master’s in Teaching through the University of Central Arkansas. Cecilia has served the past two years as a teacher and Cross Country/Track coach, and has been a lifelong athlete who enjoys running. After going through her own experience with an eating disorder, Cecilia is passionate about advocating for individuals who are going through similar struggles, and providing more eating disorder education to coaches, teachers, students, and other individuals.

Content Note: This post contains personal accounts of eating disorder behaviors, as well as mentions of suicide or self-harm. The views expressed in guest posts reflect the author’s lived experience and do not substitute for professional medical or mental health treatment.

 

I think everyone remembers the fever dream of spring 2020.

I was a high school senior, preparing to compete in collegiate athletics for track and field. I planned for the next four years of my life to be filled with fun and success. But when COVID hit, everything came to an abrupt halt. “It is what it is” was a common phrase I said to myself when nothing seemed to go my way.

For most of high school, my life revolved around sports, grades, and always being the “good kid.” The pressure to perform perfectly ate away at me. I questioned myself daily, wondering if I was good enough, fast enough, strong enough, or smart enough. As a three-sport athlete in cross country, basketball, and track, I had lofty expectations. Despite knowing that these expectations may have been too high, I was devastated when I couldn’t reach them. I blamed myself, my body, my lack of discipline. The uncertainty and lack of control that probably many people felt in 2020 amplified my behaviors significantly.

While stuck at home, I tried to find some routine. I resorted to a strict exercise plan and diet. Little did I know that something that starts with, “Well, today I will just eat half a sandwich at lunch with carrots,” would evolve to putting less on my sandwich, then to just skipping meals, and eliminating several food groups.

My mind enforced the rigid rules, and with that, my body changed. The eating disorder made the weight loss feel good, feel like success, feel like I was winning. I always had to beat the number on the scale. Little did I know that I would never win the eating disorder’s game.

“How Much Brain Space Does Your Eating Disorder Take Up?”

This was one question I remember being asked early on. When I went to college in the fall of 2020, the answer to this question was 110%. The cunning words of my eating disorder influenced every decision. If I dared go against the rules I set for myself, if one minute of exercise went incomplete, if extra calories were mistakenly eaten, I felt a rush of anxiety. My mind would race with a voice whispering that I was not good enough, I ate too much, I was lazy, I was ugly, I was fat. If I didn’t attempt to compensate for the seemingly minuscule mistake I made in my routine, the feelings became so powerful that I began to question if I should even keep living.

That is the trap of the eating disorder: to make one feel like life cannot go on without it and its rules. At one point for most of us, the eating disorder fills a need, protects us, and masks the pain of a deeper problem. However, it becomes an abusive relationship that seems impossible to escape because the pain of leaving the eating disorder seems worse than just staying.

New rules, expectations, and rigidity became my way of life in college. All-or-nothing was the only way my brain would allow me to think. As the voice continued to lull my wiser self and its emotions and physical functions to sleep, I became addicted to what the eating disorder had to offer. Turning away from it no longer seemed like an option. It would tell me that the only way to survive, to live with myself, to succeed, to be okay with my body, to be in control, and to be noticed, was to continue taking part in the very behaviors that would eventually lead to my destruction. All the ED was trying to do was cover up its true plan, for the game I played every day on the scale would only ever end when the number read zero and it was too late to return to the place where it all began.

As a college athlete, we had practice every day. But on top of the workouts that we did in practice, I would run extra. I did not eat full, complete, nutritious meals because I convinced myself that being smaller would make me better, faster, and more successful. At the beginning of the semester, I was faster than I had been in high school. But throughout the coming weeks, my muscles began to deteriorate. By Thanksgiving break I was no longer anywhere near the right condition to compete. Despite my performance slowly tanking throughout the semester and my noticeable emaciation, my coaches didn’t say anything to me about it.

The Recovery Journey Begins

I will never forget the look on my parents’ faces when I walked through their door for Thanksgiving break my freshman year. The girl that they had dropped off at college just a few months prior was not the girl that walked across the threshold that Thanksgiving. This would mark the start of a hard, long, yet necessary recovery journey.

I was privileged to have access to some of the necessary resources that I needed: a medical provider, licensed therapist, and registered dietician. However, I initially resisted recovery and my parents did not quite understand eating disorders. “Just eat” rang in my ears everyday as I longed for someone to look at me and express empathy rather than frustration over the burden I felt like I was to the family. They did the best they could with what they knew. I am grateful for what I did have at the start of my recovery journey. But it wasn’t enough.

I recognize that everyone’s recovery journey looks different. However, I can assume that many others have felt the anxiety and frustration of feeling like you are losing a piece of your identity as the behaviors are taken away and your body begins to change. My recovery journey felt as if it was split into two pieces.

The Appearance of Recovery

The first part was forced weight restoration. I resisted, but I think there was a small piece of me (emphasis on small) that realized that if I didn’t do something, I could die.

I felt disgusted with myself as my body changed. I felt like recovery at this point in my life was not my choice. When I did the seemingly “easy” part of restoring my weight, the severe problem that I had in the eyes of my parents and those around me disappeared. I was “cured,” because it wasn’t “that bad” anymore, because I wasn’t underweight. The lies that I began to believe because of this poor assumption did not help fuel the continued forward momentum in my recovery.

Some don’t understand that despite eating disorders having potentially significant physical complications, they are indeed mental disorders. Therefore, they require healing of the body, mind, and soul – not just one’s body.

On the outside, my body looked “healed,” but my mind and my soul still felt shattered. I had no idea how to begin to pick up the pieces. My life went back to “normal” as I went on to finish my undergraduate degree online, start a master’s program, and begin a career in education and coaching. But I was still running in silence. I continued to restrict and overexercise. I was deemed “okay” because I wasn’t underweight anymore, and so that was the lie that I continued to believe.

Mental and Emotional Recovery

The slow, arduous work of healing the mental and emotional aspects of my eating disorder didn’t begin until a few people who saw me and supported me came into my life. Having people to walk alongside you in this journey is a crucial aspect of recovery.

My eating disorder therapist played a pivotal in helping me to continue to challenge eating disorder beliefs and uncover the “why” behind the eating disorder. A couple of dietitians provided support in navigating recovery and had to lovingly challenge the plethora of food rules that I made over the years. I even had the opportunity to work with a recovery coach and a group of women who proved to be an influential part of my recovery journey. Additionally, my friends and my older sister supported me when I didn’t know what I needed, helped me change my perspective, and reminded me to lean on God for strength and peace in a situation where I often felt severely unequipped to handle.

My recovery was not linear, nor has it been a road full of beautiful or radical restoration or healing. My recovery has been years of ups and downs, of painful anxiety and depression, and a process of grieving the body that I once idolized as my best self. No words can explain what each person goes through in their recovery from an ED, but I would say that it is the hardest thing that I have ever done. Yet, it is the thing that I am most thankful for and that I continue to choose every day.

Hope

Many moments in my journey, hope felt unrealistic and absent. There were days that I felt as though nothing would ever change, that the anxiety would never lessen, that I would be stuck in the miserable cycle that the eating disorder had me in forever.

But I learned that hope is not a feeling. Hope is not saying that we know when we will be recovered and how exactly to do it. Real hope remains even when we cannot see the outcome and when we are faced with moments of anxiety and fear. Hope is choosing the next step and trusting that healing and growth are possible. Hope is the silent whisper that challenges the eating disorder, that tells us this battle is not our whole story, and that there is purpose in continuing forward.

For those who read this and say, “I still can’t find hope,” I get it. But here is the best part about it: sometimes you don’t have to find it yourself. You can borrow it from someone else until you can hold hope for yourself again. This is why you can’t embark on your recovery journey alone. It is necessary to have those support people offering you their hope, reminding you of what is true, and reminding you of who you are. Recovery asks for courage before it offers any sort of certainty.

If you are struggling, show up to your appointments, find your support people, challenge your eating disorder thoughts, and keep fighting. Your life has value far beyond what the eating disorder seems to give you.