When Loved Ones Can’t Understand Your Eating Disorder

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Trigger warning: eating disorder behaviors mentioned.
Post updated 3/5/21 to reduce triggers and update the writing because I am still a perfectionist. :)

 

“How can you physically keep stuffing in more and more food?” my dad asked one night. “I mean, I get to the point where enough is enough in one meal.”

My dad and I had agreed to sit down to talk about my eating disorder the summer going into my senior year of college, and it wasn’t off to a great start. At that moment on the couch, in the darkness of one summer evening, I felt I had to explain to my dad exactly what was going on within. Then, then he would “get it.”

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: “When you hold back on food for so long–like my two-year restriction–then your body is going to try to make up for it. It’s going to go for the simplest sugars. That’s why many people crave high-calorie food at the end of the day if they don’t eat enough. Your body wants to find the most calorie-dense form of food so that it can break it down fast and use it. And with an eating disorder–with your body in that desperation mode–you often stuff yourself until you are uncomfortably full, even if it hurts.”

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Today, I Graduate

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This post was updated 3/2/2021 to improve the writing and readability. I’m still a bit of a perfectionist. :)

 

I entered college anticipating a chance to start over.

It was a chance to bring out the person I had always felt had been trapped inside. I left high school as a depressed, eating-disordered, running-consumed, people-pleaser perfectionist who found out, upon entering college, that I still couldn’t let it all go.

I didn’t know how to let it all go.

I reached my dream in running with school records and All-American finishes as a college freshman. But it was then that I realized this was not as fulfilling as I had hoped it would be. As everyone praised me for my efforts, a yearning to go to extremes haunted me in the loneliness of the disorder.

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10 Life Lessons I’ve Learned in Eating Disorder Recovery

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The more I’ve explored what it means to live outside of perfection, the more I’ve realized how much joy I have denied myself. Worry and guilt were the two feelings holding me down, and courage was what allowed me to stop making myself my own worst enemy. Thus, I’ve realized ten things:

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To Let Running Go

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There was a point in my life when I–and I’m sure many of us–experienced that heavy walk through each day. We could not find the energy to speak to our friends and family. We lost ourselves so deeply that we felt defined only by what we accomplished or how we ate.

Running was my protector. It was the thing I looked forward to each day. Through it, I experienced the exhilaration of flying over large expanses of grass in cross country, the challenge of leaping over piles of snow on the coldest but most serene winter days, and the awe in watching the sun rise over the horizon on muggy summer mornings.

I also experienced the shooting pain of an injured knee, the ache of a stress-fractured foot, the tears over the shoulders of teammates after races when it felt more like we had raced through mud than over clouds.

The eating disorder devastated much in its path, including running. But more importantly, it took away the people and pieces of life that I began to realize mattered even more.

The eating disorder also forced me to pull everything apart and find my identity–an identity, I learned, that connects me to so many others through empathy and understanding. I was never as alone as I thought.

I have learned to test the limits of the soul rather than just the body, and to find courage when the false walls of perfection are stripped down.

I am more than running, and I have more to give to the world.

I’m ready to fly on my own. I’m ready for the next adventure ahead.

I’m ready to live.

 

Title changed from “Finding Peace,” and post updated to better capture the feelings of 2015 on 2/20/21.

A Lot Can Change in Two Years

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I began this blog in fear.

I didn’t know who I was or where I was going, but two years ago I needed this blog to make me feel like I was getting something done. It was my last hope for change.

I feared what my friends, teammates, and family would think. I worried they would think that I was faking an eating disorder, or that I was being over-dramatic. Maybe they would think I was just trying to seek attention. I knew the website could be met with skepticism, but something deep down screamed for relief–and the writer inside of me persisted.

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What Are You So Afraid of?

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I’ve been asked this question a lot lately, or at least questions similar to it: What is my fear, how do I handle it, and why am I so afraid?

I feel like fears need examination in order to face and deal with them. Half the battle is knowing what you are dealing with–and for me, coming to terms as to why I fear food must be faced.

Thinking Through Everything

When I make time to think through all of this, I can finally “hear” my thoughts. But the answer doesn’t come in a roar or in an astounding revelation. It doesn’t change my life in an instant. It comes in increments, entering either slowly or suddenly as I allow my mind to wander and drift among my thoughts to the deepest emotion.

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I Have an Eating Disorder

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I started this blog to talk about my struggle with an eating disorder, but it has taken me so long to come to terms with that diagnosis. I still worry that an eating disorder is not really what I deal with (“it’s not that bad,” I tell myself). Because that would leave me with this obsession/preoccupation with food and confusion about what it is or what it means. The missing label would make it more confusing and difficult to own what I’m struggling with. It’s as if the label allows me to move forward and recover.

But it’s also terrifying to have this diagnosis next to my name.

Owning Up to the Diagnosis

I have gone through denial and back-and-forth internal dialogue for so long. I’m trying to understand my thoughts, actions, and feelings around food. It wasn’t until now that I told myself this is real: I have an eating disorder.

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We Must Speak

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I want to tell you that it is okay to ask for help. That even now I still struggle to do it myself. That just the other day, when I finally admitted to myself that the eating disorder was worsening again, that it was okay to say something.

That I must.

I want to tell you that no problem is too small to keep to yourself. That you deserve to speak for your body, and that perhaps those of us who suffer from eating disorders or other modes of self-harm have some of the toughest times asking for help because we have learned to speak with our body instead of our tongues. That perhaps we do speak, but in a language of silence when we leave the dinner table too soon, when we skip lunch, when we creep to the kitchen at midnight to fill our bodies too quickly, when we stow away to the bathroom after every meal. Because doesn’t it feel like your eating disorder will always be there for you? That it will keep you company when you feel your worst, and no one else will get hurt but you? That you don’t have to “wear anyone down” but yourself when you feel stressed, hurt, angry, and frustrated?

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Relationship With My Mom: Discussing Eating Disorder Triggers

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Before I told my mom about my eating disorder, any comments she made about my food or hers felt like a knife slicing through my chest. The eating disorder twisted her words to make them sound like a jab at me. The comments could be about how much I ate, what kind of food I was eating, and how full she felt.

I know that my mom was not trying to be cruel when she made comments about my food. My mom just didn’t understand the impact these comments had on someone with an eating disorder hissing through their mind. But the more I opened up to her, the more I was able to voice my concerns about these triggering comments. In turn, she learned to avoid the triggers as I worked through recovery.

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Guest Post: Lize Brittin’s Anorexia Recovery as a Runner Part 1

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I am honored to have Lize Brittin as a guest on the blog. She is the author of Training on Empty which chronicles her struggles with, and recovery from, anorexia nervosa as a runner. Rated one of the top mountain runners in the world in the 1980s, she has worked in careers ranging from teacher to chef to assistant manager of an art gallery, and has also hosted her own radio show.

When I first got the offer to write a guest post for the blog Running in Silence, I was both excited and honored. There are so many topics I would like to address, but I feel I should break the post down into a limited number of points I believe will help others most. Since I have already shared my story in my book, Training on Empty, I decided to give only a brief history of my career as a runner. The reason why I feel this is necessary at all is to show not just what I have survived but how my past played a role in both the eating disorder and my recovery.

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