Challenges of having an Eating Disorder

Writing a story about my mental health journey at Minerva, my university, was never something I saw coming before moving to San Francisco. I considered myself to be “normal”, which is a word I have come to hate as a descriptor for those who were never forced to think about their mental wellbeing.

Overall, I came to San Francisco excited. I was excited about the people I would get to meet, the places I could visit and the interactive classrooms I was promised. But weirdly enough what I was most excited about was being able to shop at Trader Joe’s (which I had only seen in health blogger’s videos before) and to weigh out my food without having to hide that from my family. If you think that is weird, just sit back and listen. And if you can relate to that consuming desire to be thin, then I challenge you to stop and notice your hunger cues right now and let this story give you some insight into my recovery. You are never alone in what you are facing.

Having an eating disorder at Minerva is weird. Food is integrated into so many aspects of the community that it seems impossible to escape: We eat at feasts, we steal the snacks from the office, we get together at events and request funding for snacks no matter the event we are organizing. None of these things are bad or need to change, but they can be incredibly painful for people fighting their eating disorders.

Apart from the community events around food, it is also something that I couldn’t escape just with my peers. I don’t know how many hours I have wasted trying to calculate the exact caloric content of any restaurants I would be invited to, or gone to coffee-shops trying to justify getting a chai latte or boba to myself with the exercise I would put my body through later. Some classmates seemed oblivious, others were sticking to unsweetened tea and meal-prep containers themselves. Whenever I saw a fellow student turning the label in their hand to read the numbers, I would think to myself that we should talk, but we never did.

I lasted for about 2 months into the first semester, before my carefully constructed net of workouts, scales, no-sugar drinks, and 1200 calorie days came crashing down on me. The change happened gradually, yet too fast for me to comprehend in some ways. 

First came the binges. If you have ever deprived your body and your soul the way I did for that long, you know what hunger feels like. The kind that makes you scared that you will never feel satisfied again. When I decided to eat a cookie, it felt as if I couldn’t physically bring myself to stop until the whole box was empty. It was humiliating, it was unsettling, it was painful, and it made me want to run for hours just to work off the extra calories.

I don’t know how long I would have kept up the binging, and purging if it hadn’t been for the onset of my depression. In a way, I now think that it was always there, just hiding behind the coping mechanism that food presented to me. And when the control that I had over my eating slipped, so did my depression. I spent hours sitting in my room, crying, and beating myself up for the fact that everyone else seemed to be doing so well. It was easy to think that way if you looked at their Instagram. On good days, I would go out with a friend to explore a new part of the city. On bad days, I would walk towards the Golden Gate bridge, needing that knowledge that I still had control, that I could end my life if I really wanted to. And most of the time, I would just end up at Bob’s Donuts’, because what did it matter how much I weighed, if I would end my life anyways.

At that time, I thought I would never get better, but I was completely and utterly wrong! During the spring semester, I noticed that my binges were getting smaller. My weight gain was slowing down a bit and even though I did not give myself credit at the time, my actions played a big part in it. I read books on intuitive eating, stopped weighing myself, started journaling, unsubscribed to every health and fitness influencer, went to therapy every single week, even if it was exhausting, and I started looking into the possibility of in-patient treatment over the summer.

If I reflect on my life now, I can confidently say that food is not something that takes up my mental capacity, anymore. It is something I forget some mornings, enjoy with friends, cook without any worry of the caloric content and add sugar too without measuring if I think it is not sweet enough.

So I guess if you wanted to take away anything from my story, it should be two things:

• First, remind yourself that you do not know what others might be struggling with.
• And secondly, no matter what you might be going through right now, just take the next step. You will get there.