My Eating Disorder Story
Before we get into it, I want to insert a warning that I will be discussing eating disorder behaviours in the blog below as well as in the episode. If this is something that might trigger you, I’d encourage you to skip it and give a listen/read to another podcast episode or blog instead.
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I’ll never forget it.
After a heart wrenching 3-month break up, Adrian and I sat on the love seat in my tiny downtown Toronto apartment that would eventually become our home together. All he wanted to know was what was going on with me; during the last 3 months of Summer 2016, I had acted completely out of character. After almost 6 years of hiding (we had been dating for 3 of those years), I finally mustered up the courage to say “I have an eating disorder. I’m bulimic.”
I can’t pinpoint the exact time that my body became an issue, but I know that it started when I was quite young. My body image issues were a combination of a lot of factors that mounted over the years. Like when my parents would call my sister ‘skinny mini’ but not say anything to me. Going to the doctors and being told I was overweight according to the BMI chart. Not fitting in with the ‘popular’ kids at school, and blaming my body for it. Not being allowed certain foods at home because they were considered ‘junk.’ Seeing idealistic body types on TV and in movies. Reading in teen magazines about getting toned for summer vacation. Trying to lose weight for a family trip to Florida when I was 11, only to have it not work. Blaming my body for not being invited to high school parties. Freaking out about losing weight for prom. Trying at-home workout videos we had on VHS. Although I passively blamed my body for not being seen in the way I wanted to by others, that preoccupation was in the back of my mind until I gained weight in first-year University in 2011.
Looking back, this is completely normal and wasn’t anything I had to ‘do anything about’ but I felt like I did because I had been fed that message my whole life- and for the first time I had the space and freedom to truly do something about it, not just secretly do a master cleanse while living at my parents house while in high school.
I don’t exactly remember the first time I had ED symptoms, but I know it was during my second semester when I was living in University residence. I didn’t even feel shameful about it. It felt like a relief.
At the same time, I started working out. I began going to the gym for the first time in my life, and I loved it. Working out was like a high. It felt amazing. I felt empowered and excited and motivated by the way my body started changing. I was constantly complimented on my weight loss and body from my friends, family, and guys. I was told I was so dedicated and had so much willpower; this only drove me further into believing what I was doing was fine.
Come second year, I was living off-campus with a group of friends. I was cooking for myself and got super into nutrition, as a way to continue my pursuit to ‘get healthy’ and fit into the box I thought I needed to. My parents had always cooked healthy, but I took ‘health’ to a new level and my diet became increasingly restrictive. I remember feeling top of the world; I was single, loving life, and feeling so confident in myself.
Meanwhile, I was digging myself deeper into the pit of dieting. Although I was already counting calories, I discovered IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) through the fitness influencers I followed on Instagram. Slowly, the numbers became a bigger and bigger part of my life. The scale, the calories, the macros. I discovered Intermittent Fasting and would wait until 4 pm to eat every day. I was on top of the world, but simultaneously inching myself closer and closer to rock bottom. Going out with friends became an opportunity for me to skip meals and eat hardly anything during the day, only to binge drink and binge at the end of the night. My weekdays were highly strict and my weekends were free-for-alls. Throughout, I would binge and purge.
When I met Adrian in my 3rd year of University, I was deep in my habits. So much so that I was in complete denial I even had a problem. I could stop anytime I wanted to, so I thought. I fell in love and finished my History degree. When considering my next move in life, I decided to go back to school for Nutrition- what better of a career option than something I was deeply obsessed (ahem- passionate) about?
When I started my Nutrition degree, I also found a job at a boot camp teaching fitness classes. Ironically enough, I thought I was a walking billboard of the epitome of health: giving advice to about the importance of eating veggies and protein, spending hours a day glued to my phone tracking every single calorie on MyFitnessPal, even throwing out an Oreo my boyfriend gave me because I was too scared to eat it (only to go home and secretly binge that night because I felt so restricted, of course).
Little did I know, my obsession with my ‘healthy’ diet was destroying my life.
My relationships with friends and family suffered. I was constantly distracted because I was always thinking about food: what am I going to eat next? Uh oh, my friends want to go to lunch, so let me just quickly log that into MFP to see if it’ll fit in my macros...Adrian knew something was wrong, and I almost told him about a thousand times. I would stress out at the idea of making a food decision, torn between what I actually wanted and what fit into my plan. I was preoccupied and anxious all the time, snapping at my friends and family, although I never fully realized how much energy it was taking up. I was moody, irritable, and did not feel like myself. I was sneaky and I lied about silly things, but I couldn’t stop.
Most importantly, my relationship with myself suffered. I completely lost trust in my intuition. I felt out of control around food. I hated what I saw when I looked in the mirror (even when I looked ‘fit’ to the outside world). I was constantly obsessing over food and my body, and spent every moment of my day from the minute I woke up, to the minute I went to sleep, thinking about food or exercise in some way. Even though I had lost weight and was in better shape than I had ever been in, it was never enough and I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t the version of myself I wanted to be, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to be either.
The summer of 2016 was when Adrian went away for 2 months for work. At that time, I was deeply vulnerable, hardly eating, and working full-time managing the kitchen at a kids camp. I projected my own insecurities onto my relationship and made the impulsive decision to end it. The next 3 months were marked with depression and using my eating disorder as a means of control over my life.
Adrian is the reason I got out of that dark place. He never gave up on me even when I gave up on myself. He stayed by my side even when I didn’t stay by his. And when we were sitting on the couch in my tiny apartment and I told him about my eating disorder, everything changed.
It was like a fog lifted. I was finally able to see my eating disorder for what it was- a result of my intense preoccupation with my body. I realized my priorities were in the wrong place and weren’t aligned with what I truly cared about in life. Telling Adrian about what I was struggling with helped me take a step back from my habits to see what my body preoccupation was doing to my eating and my overall quality of life. After I told him about what was going on, my eating disorder symptoms started to ease up. I started focusing on other pieces of my life that mattered, and although my relationship with food and body needed work, my ED symptoms slowly disappeared. Once I outed my eating disorder, I was able to recognize and be critical of my inner critic. I realized that it wasn’t helping me be better- it was making my life worse. I was finally able to recognize that voice for what it was; my eating disorder voice.
During this time, I stumbled upon a book called Eat Lift Thrive by Sohee Lee. It talked about listening to your body and relying on internal wisdom rather than external cues for what, when, and how much to eat. Although the book still had a focus on body size, reading it brought me to the empowered step to stop using MyFitnessPal. For the first time in 6 years, I didn’t know the exact calorie and macronutrient breakdown of everything I was putting in my body. It was both terrifying and freeing. Although I knew the nutrition information of essentially all foods and could count up the calories in my head, I felt mentally lighter. I soon started analyzing those mental calorie counts for what they were- my eating disorder voice. If they ever popped up, I took a step back and recognized that they’re hurting me, not helping me. They weren’t allowing me to listen to my body; they were keeping me in the same box I had been trapped in for so many years. I worked to reject those thoughts until eventually, they weren’t there anymore.
When I was Googling more information on how to listen to my body, I stumbled upon the Food Psych podcast by Christy Harrison and the Intuitive Eating book. It was everything I had learned from Eat Lift Thrive but went even further into helping me leave behind the diet mentality for good. That discovery opened the floodgates. I consumed absolutely everything I could when it came to intuitive eating, body acceptance, and the idea of food freedom. I read Health At Every Size, and my life was changed forever. Now that I knew all of this information, I could never go back. My ideas on health, body size, fatphobia, weight stigma, and diet culture had completely transformed my outlook.
My body was changing as a result of no longer restricting, and although it was challenging at times, I knew that what I was doing was bigger than my physical self. I was empowered to be more than my body.
More than a year and a half later in the Spring of 2018, I began the process of becoming an Intuitive Eating Counsellor and starting my own business. I was beyond excited to help others go through the transformation I had gone through so they could experience the shift that would open up their world to what life was meant to be about- love, connections, fulfilment, alignment, and caring a whole lot less about what people think. I wanted to help women heal their relationships with food and their bodies so they wouldn’t repeat the cycle for their children. I wanted to help them end it so they could spend the precious years of their lives focusing on them, not wasting it chasing an impossible ideal. It was my newfound passion, and I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.
After a few months, I quit my job at boot camp because I couldn’t stand to work in a setting where weight loss was the most important thing. Although I felt strong enough in my recovery to remain in this setting, my boss wasn’t interested in incorporating non-diet programming into the studio and I wasn’t prepared to continue to help clients with weight loss. It no longer felt right. In fact, it felt so wrong I couldn’t do it anymore.
Quitting this job was my final personal tie to diet culture. Although at face value it seemed as though I had just left a part-time job, it represented the last connection to a version of myself I no longer identified with. When I started as a fitness instructor, I was in a world that revolved around weight loss. I craved as many connections to that world as possible. When I left, I was able to see that world for what it was: a multi-billion dollar marketing scheme that preyed on the insecurities of innocent people who didn’t know any better. It was a beast that falsely spreads the notion that you have to be a certain size to be healthy. Now, I want to help change that world. I want to give others the power that I felt then and still feel now- the power to make decisions for myself, my body, and my health that I know in my heart are in my best interest, not in the interest of a twisted culture that’s lied to us into believing we’re not doing enough.
I felt like I had a new life. One where I got to call the shots. I was no longer a slave to the decisions that were misguided by diet culture. I finally felt free to live my life the way I wanted to. The time that was spent searching for low-calorie or ‘clean’ recipes or entering potential meal ideas into MyFitnessPal was now free to do whatever I wanted to do. I found joy in cooking again because I could actually go to the food blogs I loved and cook anything that sounded good. I was eating enough for the first time in a long time, so I didn’t have brain fog anymore- I could finally focus and felt clear. My moodiness went away, and I didn’t snap at my family anymore. I could go out for dinner and not stress about how I would make up for it. I started baking again because I didn’t have to worry that I would eat the entire batch. I stopped beating my body up with high-intensity workouts. I actually stopped exercising entirely for a while, and the world didn’t end. When I came back to it, I felt a renewed sense of appreciation for what my body could do, instead of what it looked like.
I got closer to Adrian, not only because he understood a huge part of my past, but also because I could finally be present with him. I wasn’t stressing about what we would eat, or snapping at him when he didn’t understand why I anguished over food decisions. I allowed him to touch my stomach and my arms when he wanted to and didn’t cringe at the idea of how I felt beneath his hands. I didn’t care about the way my body looked- and I was finally able to fully enjoy intimacy without an undercurrent of anxiety. We could have spontaneous dates or be out for an entire day and eat whatever was available. The food and my body didn’t matter anymore; the memories did.
Food freedom represents living my life for me. Spending my time how I want to. Making my world fuller, not smaller. Food freedom means everything to me. It changed my life for the better, and I want to help others experience that change too.
I wrote this piece 2 years ago. It was the first time I really put everything on paper. It was also part of my journey to try and tell my parents a secret I had been keeping for what was 8 years at this point.
And even after writing this, going to therapy, meditating, more journalling, visualizing myself telling them, I had a major block in telling them. The number of times I wanted to tell them, but just couldn’t, was honestly more than I could count.
When I was active in my eating disorder, there was no way I was telling them. I was in denial that I even had a real problem myself. Even once Adrian knew and I started to heal, I still wasn’t ready, and that was okay. I was doing well recovering on my own terms, and I wasn’t ready to let anyone else into that process. It was once I had recovered for over a year, started a business, and was helping other people recover that I really started to get frustrated with myself.
Why am I so stuck? What on earth is my problem? Why am I such a chicken?
Although I easily told any client who asked about my history with food, every time I tried to tell my parents my heart would beat in my ears, I’d get a flash of heat over my body, and my mouth refused to surface the right words (or any for that matter). I’d proceed to shove the idea of telling them back down into the vault, and carry on with my life until next time I decided I should really try again. It was horrible.
The therapist said I should practice telling someone easier first. A friend, or my sister. So I told them both at different times, which was terrifying but empowering. I remember feeling exhausted the next day after both. Yet I still couldn’t manage to tell my parents. I stopped seeing the therapist.
It frustrated me so much that I gave up for a while. It felt like I needed permission to NOT tell them. It felt good to do that, but secretly I was hoping that permission would unlock some magic porthole that would give me the courage to finally do it. Spoiler: it didn’t.
I bargained with myself: maybe I don’t need to tell them. Maybe it would be fine. They don’t need to know, right? It’s all in the past. But not telling them created such a block when it came to the social media side of my business. My content felt so hollow without referring to my own experiences, I wanted to shout from the rooftops, “I’VE BEEN THERE TOO! I GET IT!” but I couldn’t. I started to get so uninspired that I stopped posting altogether. I was starting to let my business suffer because I couldn’t tell my parents about a mental health issue that happened so many years ago. By this point, it’s been 5 years since I recovered.
What was it? Why was there such a block?
I’ve always had somewhat of an issue with people-pleasing. A big part of who I’ve been, and especially who I was growing up, is a peacekeeper. I never liked conflict or yelling, or people getting upset. Especially at me. I’d do whatever I could to make sure I wasn’t a source of upset and I’d shut down if I was yelled at. I think part of me thought that if someone was upset at me or if I did something wrong, they’d love me a little less. Over the years I’ve gotten a LOT better- I’ve learned how to stand up for myself and voice my opinion when I want to even if it causes a bit of conflict. But with my parents I still fall into old patterns. This is pretty normal, but still, annoying.
Although this may sound a little woo-woo, one night, I meditated on all this. I knew consciously that my parents wouldn’t love me less or get upset at me or be disappointed, but there was clearly a part of me that felt threatened. My inner child. She’s still in there, and she was scared. Scared of all the things I used to be scared of, and so she wanted to keep the secret. She made it hard for me to say anything in those moments that I wanted to just get it off my chest and get it over with so badly.
So I talked to her. I told her what she really needed to hear- which is truly what I needed to hear when someone was upset at me. I said, “no one is going to love you any less. No one is going to get upset at you. No one is going to be disappointed. But if something goes wrong and someone is upset, I am here to protect you. I will keep you safe and make sure you are alright. I will still love you no matter what. It’s going to be okay.”
So there I was, laying in my bed with all the lights out before I went to sleep, tears streaming down my face while I gave my inner child a pep talk. But I felt relieved. Like a part of me was more secure that it felt before.
Sure enough, the next day I told my parents. I had told myself that morning I’d try to find a good time (for real this time) and when we went on a walk together, it felt right. I still got the fast heartbeat and I had to muster up some courage to just say the words, but I did it. “There’s something that’s been on my mind for a while that I’ve really wanted to tell you. I used to have an eating disorder.”
My parents were so understanding and supportive, and they wished I told them sooner. But at the same time, they understood why I didn’t. It was honestly so painless that the feeling of frustration came back that I didn’t say anything sooner- but I remembered my inner child and how scared she was, and I did my best to use that as reason to back off.
So, 10 years after it all started, I finally told my parents about my eating disorder. And now I’m telling all of you. Which somehow feels a whole lot easier, but that’s okay.
I don’t owe anyone an apology, but I’m also sorry. Just like with my parents, I wish I shared this sooner. At times, I felt so hypocritical- preaching food freedom, owning who you are and being your authentic self, yet there was such a big part of me that is quite literally so related to this work, that I wasn’t being authentic about. I was coaching my clients on how to talk about their disordered eating and eating disorders with friends and family, yet I couldn’t do it myself. I like to think that every conversation I had helped me too, though. So here I am, coming clean. I hope in some way you can resonate with my story, and know that you’re going to be okay too.
I appreciate you so much for reading my story. I look forward to opening up more about my history going forward, and I hope that you can find some hope in it as well.
Until next time,
Britt
Join me for The Food Freedom For Life coaching program! This program is for those who know they want to improve their relationship with food and their body, but are afraid of spiralling out-of-control and want a proven, step-by-step system to go from feeling crazy around food to normal again. Book a free consult to learn more.
