Eating Disorders are for teenage girls

(this one has been simmering in my drafts for long enough. here goes)

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

Eating Disorders are for teenage girls.

Having an eating disorder takes so much work. But so does not having an eating disorder.

At 55 years old you’d think I’d be over this. I’ve been cooking for a living and it brings me such great joy to feed people. I’m an ultra distance runner. I need to eat to fuel my body to run for hours and hours, miles and miles. I love to spend hours wandering markets and grocery stores when I travel. I can sit and read cookbooks like novels. I have even worked as a health coach, writing meal plans and teaching people how to take care of their bodies and their health.

I can eat a bowl of ice cream, and not want to finish the whole container. I never feel the urge to binge eat anymore and then purge it all away. Thinking about the money I literally flushed down the toilet for years and years. The shame and disgust with myself. I don’t feel that anymore.

I don’t ever let myself feel full. If I am being honest, I don’t even know when I am hungry. It feels like I am just hungry all of the time and maybe if I acknowledge that hunger I will never stop eating. That was my fear when I was sick. But I’m not sick anymore. I can eat dinner and go for a walk or sit on the couch and watch a movie.

I don’t look in the mirror and think “my stomach could be a little flatter, my butt could be smaller.” Now when I see photos of me I think, “wow, I look really skinny in that picture.” But not in a good way. So why then do I stay looking like this. That’s when I realize that this really is a mental illness. Why else would I continue to keep looking this way and hating it, but not able to change my thoughts. It’s like my brain has been responding a certain way for so long that is all it knows how to do.

I tell people that I just “can’t gain weight.” But is that completely true. Do I really try. I know that in order to gain weight you need more calories in that calories out. That’s just math and science. But is it even about the food?

Every time I get on a scale and the number is lower than I know it “should be” a part of me still feels excited for a split second, but then feels disgusted and angry. So much of this is also related to the conditioning that as a woman I have been bombarded with my whole life. (Thankfully this is starting to change for women.) Most of the time I avoid the scale as it is still so triggering. It’s like an alcoholic going into a bar and ordering a sparkling water.

Sure, there is a physical part and a mental part to drug and alcohol addiction too. You can stop the addiction behavior but still have to deal with mental aspects. But you can stay away from drugs and alcohol. Eating disorders are different in that we need food to live. We need to eat. Food is central in so many other parts of life, connection, community, love, traditions. And yet an eating disorder is an addiction just the same. Or as I read this morning on

Lindsey Hall

‘s Substack, “anorexia is a symptom, an addiction.” Even when we tackle some of the physical aspects to the disease (and stop the starvation, binging, purging) the mental aspects are there and the addiction mindset is too.

When I was in the worst of my eating disorder in my late teens and hospitalized, I was told to “just eat.” I was force fed high calorie protein drinks that tasted like chalk. I gained the weight, left the hospital and had no idea how to function in the world. That is because eating disorders are mental disorders, not physical illnesses that can be fixed with protein shakes. When I was 15 my brain learned a behavior to deal with whatever was going on in my life and the eating disorder appeared. But 40 years later this is what my brain knows.

When people talk about recovery some say “I am recovered” or “I am in recovery.” But how do you recover from eating? Food is an essential part of life. An alcoholic can never drink again. Someone who is addicted to drugs can avoid drugs. I’m not saying it’s easy but it’s possible. I can’t avoid food. We all need to eat to survive. So how do you “recover” from something you need to do every day.

Sometimes I think about what it would be like for someone to be in my brain and read my thoughts for a day. They would probably be exhausted and confused. I know I am.

Seven years have gone by since I wrote these words. I am now 62 (!) and I finally feel like I have “recovered.” What do I really mean by that though? If I am honest (and why wouldn’t I be at this point in my life) a turning point occurred for me with my osteoporosis diagnosis in my 50s. My first response was anger at my younger self, which was most likely a big contributing factor. Turns out starving yourself during your teens and twenties, the years that your body is building bone, isn’t such a great idea. But of course, when you are in your 20s and 30s you don’t think about your 60 year old self. But then I realized what good would anger do in moving ahead and seeing what I CAN do at this point in my life. Turns out I can’t really build bone anymore, but I can try to make the bones I have not get any worse! Turns out another thing I CAN do to help and protect my body is to (drumroll please…..) gain weight! Could I actually commit to this and do it though? Actually I can. And I have.

Another thing that has changed for me since I wrote those words, is I have started to run crazy long distances. (If you missed my post on why I am running a 100 mile race here it is.) So how does this relate to gaining weight and recovering from a decades long eating disorder????? Well turns out if you don’t feed your body it is not going to perform very well. Like a car, if you are going to run it for hours and hours it needs fuel. I also found that I was more in touch with body and learned what hunger feels like and also how to loosen up the “food rules” that I had for so many years. I could eat Pop tarts, potato chips and drink Coke and actually enjoy them. In fact, the other day Michael and I were out for a walk around 4 pm and I felt like an ice cream cone and we got one! Before dinner!

A few months back I went to a doctor visit and while I do NOT weigh myself at home (as I mentioned, scales are still triggers for me) I let the doctor weigh me because I actually felt like I had gained a little weight and felt good. A funny thing happened though when I got on the scale. She started pushing the little weight up along the top and it kept going. When she hit 20 pounds more than I was at my last year visit I felt a slight terror, if I need to be honest, but I tried to remain neutral. But then she noticed nothing was registering right and started again. Turns out I had gained 10 pounds since last year. And in the midst of heavy ultramarathon training I take that as a big win. But I am still thinking about my initial reaction to when it was 20 pounds. It was like the nightmare I had during the height of my ED where if I started eating I would never stop. I came home from that visit really inspired by my “recovery.”

As I mentioned, I think “recovered” and “in recovery” becomes a slippery slope. I guess I finally feel that at my age and with all that I have been through I am “recovered.” That doesn’t mean that I am done “recovering.” I think it just means that I have moved beyond the exhausting, painful parts and can begin to live my life more fully. Does that mean I will never have another ED thought? Of course not. But now I can acknowledge the thought, realize it is only a thought, not a truth, and let it slip away.

Was this hard to write? You bet. But I can do hard things.

Thank you for being here with me today and reading my ramblings. Please let me know if you liked today’s post by tapping the “heart” and add a comment if anything in particular resonated with you. I always enjoy hearing from you!