The weekend before my wife went into recovery we were driving home. We were having a discussion about going to her first therapist session. At this point, I didn’t know she was anorexic. As I said, I knew she had a problem, but I thought it was something else. She didn’t think she had a problem, because she still ate and as she said, “I’m too fat to be anorexic.” That’s the amazing thing. Girls know anorexic girls are skinny. Most anorexic girls do not think they are skinny. Therefore, many do not think they’re anorexic because they’re too fat.
Anyway, we were driving home and she started crying. It was one of the hardest cries I have ever heard before. It wasn’t loud and wasn’t “wailing”, but you could just sense all of the emotions behind it. More than anything you could sense that the emotion was fear and dread. I realized that night that the fear wasn’t being anorexic. The fear was getting better and healing. Better = More Weight and Stopping the Weight Loss. Getting Better was giving up the addiction. I knew she had a problem, but I think it was that night that I became fully aware of just how deep that problem ran.
A few months after Stunning was in recovery, we were talking about it. She was doing well, but she was frustrated. The entire way she had lived her life the past couple of years was being forced to change. She’s a very Christian woman and in our conversation, I asked if she was praying for healing. She danced around the question and I realized that she wasn’t. Again, the severity and the deep seeded nature of this disease became evident.
It turned out well though. She ended up praying. As she’ll say below, there was a point where she went all in and it was at that point she dumped her eating disorder.
Her Words:
My 2nd year in law school, John and I joined a Bible Study at church. Our previous one had disbanded when our leaders moved away and we were invited to join a new one. It just so happened to include my mom’s good friend who I saw a few times a year. She hadn’t seen me in a few months and when she did, she “knew.” Her daughter’s friend had struggled with an eating disorder and she was fairly aware of what to look for. After a couple months of seeing my behaviors at Bible Study dinners and whatnot, she informed my mother that I had a problem. My mother then informed me that I was going into treatment. At that point, I was so sick of the constant worrying about what I put in my mouth that I think I had just resigned myself to the idea that treatment may be a decent idea—not because I HAD an eating disorder, but because I probably had it in me to eventually develop one if I kept on going the way that I was. Repeat: I still was sure that I didn’t have an eating disorder—I just wanted to nip it in the bud before it got to a point of being a problem.
I didn’t tell anyone I was entering treatment though because I knew that they would all think it was silly—after all, it was clear from looking at me that I didn’t have an eating disorder: I wasn’t skinny enough to have an eating disorder. In fact, I remember being terrified to go to that first appointment. I was sure they’d look at me and think, “Who is this girl kidding? She is nowhere near thin enough to have a problem.” I sat in that waiting room sure that every single girl in there was thinking that I was too fat to be there. Ridiculous.
That first appointment, they did a bunch of tests: height, weight, blood pressure, etc. The therapist crunched all the numbers, looked at some charts and graphs and said it, “Well, you’re clinically anorexic.” I remember laughing to myself. Clearly, she wasn’t looking at me. I wasn’t anorexic:
a) I ate. Anorexic girls don’t eat.
b) I wasn’t the skeletal girls you see on TV warning about the dangers of anorexia.
Nevertheless, I agreed to see her and a dietician because I figured they had some magic button or phrase or something that would make it easy for me to just accept my body for what it was and stop feeling so down on myself. I truly thought that within a month or so, I’d be cured from all my sad thoughts and all would be right with the world. If you would have told me then that a year and a half later, I’d still be in treatment, I probably would have walked out the door and never returned. I sincerely thought it was going to be easy.
Life Without Ed
One of the first things I was told to do upon entering treatment was to read this book:
This book was probably the most important part of my recovery. Every page was a different tale of things she’d done or thoughts she’d had and I remember thinking (aside from the bulimia parts), “Holy crap! I do that!” I was sincerely shocked to learn that this stuff was not normal. All this time, I had convinced myself that my behaviors were normal and it was just what everyone did, the secrets of being thin if you will, so reading this book and really realizing that these behaviors were the behaviors of someone with an eating disorder was the first step to me accepting the fact that I did have a problem and that I needed to fix it. The way that her therapist approached treatment was also important—it was about not beating yourself up for having these “you’re fat” thoughts…instead, realize that it was Ed (Eating Disorder, get it?) that was telling you all those things. You begin to hate Ed instead of hating yourself. It sounds super new-age-y but I’m convinced it saved my life (or at least saved me from getting even worse—to this day I don’t think I’d have died from my eating disorder. Isn’t that funny? Through all of this, it’s still hard for me to think I was ever “that bad”. I never got under 100 pounds so I am convinced I would have been able to stop myself. Silly Silly.)
Treatment was not easy. I would gain a pound or two and then stay stagnant for months at a time. I would get angry at the stuff they made me eat. I remember standing in the granola bar aisle the week that my dietitian assigned me to eat one granola bar every day between meals. I stared at the different options (she had made it clear that I was not allowed to get any of the low fat or low calorie ones) and just started crying. There I was in the flippin’ granola bar aisle crying! A man came up to me and said, “I know. Sometimes there are just too many options to choose.” Cute, sweet old man. Anyway, I had lots of moments like that when I was assigned new foods or given new caloric minimums. It was hard. But throughout it all, I remember being really proud of the progress I was making. My wonderful husband constantly told me how strong I was and how beautiful I was. He left notes on the mirror and my computer and my Bible and my text books—everywhere—telling me that I was more beautiful than ever and that he loved me and that I could do this. He admitted that he had no idea what I was going through but that he was there with me every step of the way. He was, in short, the perfect recovery partner.
My other recovery partner was obviously God. I was still reading the Bible daily and praying and going to church…but I never asked Him for help in healing because, frankly, I don’t think I wanted it. Healing meant getting fat. I was convinced that if I let myself really succeed in treatment, I would go back to that girl from high school. It was so silly but I know that’s what most ED patients think. So I wasn’t ready to let go of this and give it over to God. Nevertheless, He stood there holding me the whole time waiting for the moment I was ready to let Him in. My therapist used to tell me that I had one foot in treatment and one foot out the door. I think that’s true: I was following treatment just enough to keep me from losing weight but I refused to go all in…I refused to throw myself into the ring and really do everything they told me to do. I just didn’t want to reach that moment where I would be okay with gaining weight, where I would be okay with not weighing myself on a daily basis. That moment came one night when I went to an ED speaker at a local church. He made an analogy that I still think about to this day:
As Christians, we believe that our bodies will be resurrected with Christ in Heaven. We will have perfect, heavenly bodies. Who knows what that means—will we all look the same? Will we all just look the best we ever did? Will we just finally accept what it is we look like? Whatever, that’s not important. All that’s important is that we will think they are perfect. Now say that there is a caterpillar. This caterpillar thinks he is fat and lumpy and ugly. He’s always down and depressed about how ugly and gross he is. What would you tell him? Of course, you’d tell him all about how he is going to be one of the most beautiful creatures in the world—that in just a matter of time, he is going to be a beautiful butterfly whose beauty rivals all other creatures on earth. It’d be inevitable that the caterpillar would start to act a bit more like that butterfly; if the caterpillar truly believed what you told him, he’d start looking forward to that day of being so beautiful and his mindset would change. He’d start loving himself more. It’s the same principle with Prince Charles—He knows that one day he will be king. So he’s started acting like a King now. Similarly, I am going to have this perfect body when I am resurrected with my God in Heaven. If I truly believe that, why am I not accepting that now? Why am I not believing that I am beautiful now? Of course I had heard all the “Your body is a temple” stuff but none of that stuck. I still felt ugly. I still felt like God had messed up my temple. For some reason, this caterpillar analogy stuck for me.
That night was a turning point for me and I remember going to my appointments that week and going all in. After almost a year in treatment, I was FINALLY ready to do exactly what they wanted me to do and really beat this thing. I was ready to win.
