What Life Is Like After an Eating Disorder

Image: Erik Mace for Yahoo Beauty

Recovery from an eating disorder (ED) might seem like it would be obvious — a positive transformation that would see a once-fragile frame appear suddenly strong again. There’d be a glow to the skin, a light in the eyes, and a spring in each step, right? Plus, laughter, eating outside of the house, and less rigidity to everything he or she does — healed.

But not quite, not totally, and perhaps not ever. Eating disorders are mental disorders, defined by the National Institute of Mental Health as “serious and often fatal illnesses that cause severe disturbances to a person’s eating behaviors” and “obsessions with food, body weight, and shape.” Although the outside changes can be jarring, most of the battle remains inside for those who suffer from eating disorders.

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Recovery is not a switch you flip. Negative thoughts do not suddenly vanish as the pounds slip back on. And while seeking recovery is a hard step, it is perhaps not the hardest. Staying the course is the long, worthwhile journey of every eating disorder survivor, with land mines and triggers lurking everywhere, says Gina, a 20-something Chicago woman who began recovering from anorexia in 2014. (Gina, like the other subjects in this story, did not want her last name used so her identity would remain protected.)

“I think the majority of people enter into recovery thinking that it’s like a giant eraser,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “If they follow all the right steps, their ED will just disappear as if it were never there. That is not the case. I don’t ever say that I am ‘fully recovered,’ because I truly don’t think anyone can be — sort of like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, even after they stop drinking.”

Here, four survivors explain what it’s like to bounce back from an eating disorder, transforming a life of rules and restriction into one of happiness and freedom.

Out with the eating disorder, in with recovery

During the height of Gina’s eating disorder, she was on autopilot — consuming just one calorie-controlled meal per day, exercising herself to exhaustion, and feeling constantly depressed. “Life with anorexia was not life,” she says. “It consisted of thinking about food, calculating food, calculating how many calories I was consuming, how many I was burning, and how I could manage to fit in more exercise. … Emotionally, I felt nothing.”

Gina finally reached her breaking point while preparing one of her calorie-controlled meals. “I was preparing to make dinner one night for my husband and myself, and, sensing that something was wrong, he offered to help. I broke down,” she says. “I had a panic attack in the middle of the kitchen. We sat there and talked, and we both agreed that we knew I needed to get help. Later that night I started my research into recovery, I took a quiz assessing my risk for an eating disorder, even though I knew the answer, and I made an appointment with a therapist that I’d found through the NEDA [National Eating Disorders Association] website.”

Although she says recovery has, in some ways, helped her uncover a newfound sense of freedom, she has to be constantly careful that her new, positive eating behaviors are not derailed. “Dealing with the aftereffects of anxiety, or a cold, or anything that disrupts my appetite [is hard],” she says. “Because in the back of my mind, I think, Oh, I haven’t eaten in [however many] hours; I could keep this up — and that’s a very dangerous mindset.”

Thought control is an everyday practice, according to 25-year-old Jordan from Los Angeles, who began her recovery from orthorexia (an unhealthy concern with otherwise healthy eating) in 2014. After starting to follow a vegan diet in college, she had developed a silent obsession with the rules that guided the practice. “I loved the rigidity within that small umbrella of foods,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “I eventually became addicted to all of the food rules and ended up creating more and more until I was hardly comfortable eating anything that wasn’t kale, steamed broccoli, or low-glycemic green juice.”

She slowly began to isolate herself and dive into all the rules and guidelines, making it “absolute hell” for family and friends. They couldn’t go out to eat without researching menus, or calling restaurants to see what types of oils they used in their cooking. “I was not a fun person to be around when it came to food,” she says. “I was also very, very obsessive about planning, prepping, and shopping for my food, which was all pretty internal. I don’t think anyone realized how much time I spent doing all of that.”

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After having a long discussion with a friend about ED recovery, she finally sought help for her own disorder. However, she says it was difficult to suddenly “break the rules” that orthorexia and plant-based eating had helped her establish. “I have had to work really hard to let go of my fears of foods like refined sugar, refined flour, restaurant oils, red meat, and many other things,” she explains. “And it’s hard, because I am still passionate about health.”

Jordan says she had to redefine what health meant to her, with fewer guidelines governing every aspect of her life. Although life is happy for her now, it is not always the case, she says. “Those of us who are recovering know that it’s a day-to-day process, and even postrecovery there are difficult days,” she says. “I tried to maintain a positive outlook the entire time, because that’s what I knew I needed in order to get through it all — but it didn’t mean I wasn’t struggling. I have some sort of food struggle every single day, multiple times a day. I have changed my reaction to those struggles, so they don’t impact me nearly as much as they used to.” But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

There have been many times during recovery that others have lacked full understanding about her condition, says Jordan, believing that she’s suddenly all better. “Few know how hard it is to rewire your brain and the way that you think about food,” she says. “That rewiring process is very internal, and it takes a ton of self-love, time, acceptance, and surrender. It is so, so worth it once you reach that blissful point of waking up and realizing how far you’ve come — but it is certainly not an overnight process.”

Hayley, a 21-year-old college student from Colorado, has experienced her share of ED-related setbacks. Restrictive dieting and overexercising led to a complete collapse, to the point where she grew terrified of eating, lost all her friends, and barely left the house. She was weak, as most of the muscle had evaporated from her once-athletic frame, and her hair had begun to fall out. It was then that she began to recognize the depth of her problem. “I was always cold, I was always on edge, and I was just not very nice,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “I was totally disconnected from my body.”

Hayley sought the help of a counselor and dietitian in November 2014 but was not completely able to give up her ED-related habits at first. Sticking with it, in June 2015, she finally had a breakthrough. “Just these past few months, I feel like I have gained the most freedom. What really spurred me was that I was so tired of being unhappy, unhealthy, and not a fun person. I wanted to be able to go out to eat and just be spontaneous,” she says.

Eating disorders often begin from a false place of finding happiness or health in a thin figure. Hayley says she never found either there. “I finally realized that what I thought was going to make me happy, ‘being skinny,’ was not going to make me happy,” she explains. “Through recovery I have found when I am the least controlling, and not trying to control my weight, I am the happiest.”

Hayley struggled to even accept that realization, though. She couldn’t immediately let go of the control — of counting calories, weighing food, fighting impulses to eat. She says that it’s been absolutely worth it, but sometimes she still gets down about her behaviors.

“I struggle with accepting that I need to let myself just eat, and sometimes it’s a lot,” Hayley says. “I sometimes feel out of control around food I once never allowed myself to eat in my ED. I sometimes find myself overeating it. It is scary for me, but I believe it’s part of recovery; I restricted myself for so long that my body is so happy to finally be getting it. Eventually it will even out.”

Her other struggle is body image. “I have to constantly work on it, daily,” she says. “I tend to compare myself to the frail body I had when I was in my ED. I compare myself to other girls who are in recovery also, and that is not fair. I still have a little body dysmorphia in my head. Sometimes, I love my body. Other times, I think I’ve gotten ‘big’ — especially in my tummy area. But I am determined to keep going and learn to fully love and appreciate my body.”

Dani is much the same. According to the 20-something Australian, she has never been thin. But after losing much of her “puppy fat” by working out as she began to enter her teenage years, she began to get compliments that she took to an extreme. “I am naturally a perfectionist who does not take failure very well,” she tells Yahoo Beauty. “As I grew through my early teenage years, weight became my measure of beauty, happiness, health, success — everything. I definitely became immersed in the idea that weight loss would cure everything.”

Emotionally, mentally, and physically, Dani says she felt trapped. “I was working out up to five hours a day in addition to school and extracurricular activities, and I had a food diary to hold over my head like a prisoner on death row,” she says. When that wasn’t enough, she began purging her meals.

Everyone close to Dani eventually noticed her eating habits and encouraged her to get help, but she says those promptings were never very strong, because she “teetered on normal to high weight,” was doing well in school and had an outgoing personality. “I was absolutely miserable,” she says. “I hated myself. So many thoughts surrounded me that I would be better off dead.”

At 18 years old, when she began to discuss suicide more often and more openly, Dani says that her best friend saved her life. “She basically gave me an ultimatum,” she says. “She said if I didn’t go to a therapist, she would call the hospital the next time I talked about suicide and have me admitted to the mental-health ward.”

Recovery started slowly and tentatively. Her plan was to see a therapist “on the down-low,” so that people wouldn’t learn about her suicidal behavior — because in the past she’d been written off and told it was a phase. “I felt shame, humiliation, embarrassment, and helplessness,” she says. “I even once had someone say, ‘Oh, well, you’re fat, so if it helps you lose weight.’ I had convinced myself I wasn’t worthy of an eating disorder title, because my BMI was never too low. … But I was so tired though, of hiding, pretending — physically, mentally, and emotionally. Deep down, I really did want help.”

At Dani’s first session five years ago, the therapist validated the dangerous and serious nature of Dani’s disorder. “I am so grateful that she looked past my weight and actually revealed to me that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes,” she says. “What I was going through was scary, bad, and dangerous. Ultimately, I believe it would have ended my life.”

Life today: Struggling toward strength

Today, 23-year-old Dani has a well-rounded group of friends, a loving boyfriend, and a true enjoyment of food — but it didn’t come easily, and the battle’s not over. “The first three years of recovery kicked my ass,” she says. “I had to completely go against the messages my body and brain were sending me.” Specifically, she says it took several restarts to stop purging whenever she felt full (she is now more than 1,300 days purge-free).

“Still, to this day, I may have an eating disorder thought, but it is very rare that I act on that and exhibit behavior,” she says. “Recovery is an ongoing process in my life. … I believe eating disorders will always be a predisposition for me as a past sufferer, in a culture specifically obsessed with weight, control, food, diet, and beauty.”

Dani is now an advocate for the recognition of eating disorders in people of all sizes, shapes, genders, races, and ages. Most important, she has found peace. “I am so blessed to have walked through those doors on the first day of therapy, given the tools that helped save my life,” she says. “Recovery, like an eating disorder, is messy, challenging, and at times heartbreaking — but it is the one thing that will give you the tools to be able to have a happy life which you deserve.”

Hayley says she has found that rich, fulfilling life she had lost to her disorder years before. “Of course there are still the ups and downs, but it is a whole different world,” she says. “I think back to my ED days, and I cannot believe how much different things are now. I found I have a passion for helping people. I love to go out, meet new people, and dance. I love to be spontaneous. I want to constantly be doing something to better myself and others. There is so much to life, and I do not want to take that for granted.”

Now a full-time blogger and published author, Jordan has immersed herself in recovery — seeking support and help from all sides, even writing a book about her experiences called Breaking Vegan. She says she’s finally learning to let go of perfectionism and impossible standards surrounding food and health. “One of the best things I’ve learned is how mentally strong I am,” she says, “and how strong all of us can be when we really need to be.”

She compares recovery to running a marathon — something she’s now done after seeking help. (In the middle of her ED, she injured herself while trying to run a half marathon.) “When your body gets tired, the rest of the race is all mental,” Jordan says. “Your body might be exhausted, but you run the last several miles of that race straight from the passion of your heart, soul, and spirit. In that marathon I kept telling myself, Yes, you can. Yes, you can. You’ve got this. Your spirit has got this.”

It might sound silly, she says, but the ultimate belief of knowing she was stronger than her ED has helped her heal. “I knew I was stronger, and I knew I was going to beat it,” she says. “I didn’t know how at first, but I knew I was going to. I don’t allow it to take over my life anymore, because I have developed such a strong mental stance on the issue, and I know what it’s like to fall back down that rabbit hole. It’s not pretty, and it’s not a place I ever want to be in again.”

Today she focuses on balance across all aspects of life. “During my ED, I was stuck in a rut where I felt like my entire being depended upon how healthy my diet was and how thin I was as a result of that,” she says. “It was very, very imbalanced. Balance is way more fun.” Before, it was all diet, rigidity, and rules. Now Jordan is filling her time with real reasons for living: people she loves, writing as much she can, exercising because she enjoys it, cooking and eating foods to sustain and fulfill her, traveling, and cuddling with her kitten.

Gina has found a sense of freedom she didn’t know was possible when she was restricting — and she’s finally found her voice to talk openly about her disorder as she has found herself conversing with others who can relate. “The more I talk about it, the more ‘me too’ and ‘I’ve felt that way for so long’ I hear — so many people in my life were struggling with the same feelings, to an extent, as I was, but never felt safe enough to talk about it,” she explains.

Although she still struggles from general and social anxiety, Gina says that she can view those struggles through a lens of hope and strength. “I believe that someone who has struggled with an eating disorder will always struggle with it to some degree,” she says. “It’s a part of you — but you have control over that part. And you make the choice, every single day, to not let it take over.”

“Recovery doesn’t mean the hurt never happened,” she says. “It means the hurt no longer controls you.”