I’ve been thinking about this post for a few months, and now I feel ready to openly discuss this. My name is Ivy and I’m learning how to be in recovery from an eating disorder. It’s been several months since I got my diagnosis and began treatment. I want to share my experience with my eating disorder to try and destigmatize it for others.

To provide context, I’ve always been a stress eater. Growing up I was always dysregulated. As a kid, I quickly found out food was a way to soothe that dysregulation within me. I can still recall eating goldfish crackers when I was anxious in the mornings. Greasy and salty foods always were what I craved for some reason. I still prefer salty and savory foods over sweets.

I felt like I was a bit bigger than my friends growing up. I wasn’t really out of the norm per se with my body weight, but I still took notice of it. I think I started obsessing over the number on the scale in middle school. All the cool girls were super thin, and, as such, I wanted to be super thin. Thus I started dieting in the eighth grade.

My weight continued to fluctuate throughout high school until I lost a substantial amount of weight in my senior year of high school. I don’t recommend losing weight the way I did, though. I remember starving myself and being so hungry I would see stars in front of my eyes when I would get up. I kept the weight off for most of college, but then my mental health crisis came.

Life changed drastically in such a short amount of time. I moved back home with my parents, quit my job, and wound up taking more medications than I could count. I was feeling such intense despair that I just wanted it to go away. Food was the way I coped with the waves of crippling depression that would overwhelm me once I got out of the hospital. My sleep schedule fell out of whack, and it would take a year or more to feel normal again in that regard.

One of the most difficult things about taking medications for mood disorders is that the medications take time to work. You don’t instantaneously feel better. I remember feeling as though I would never feel “normal” again. I would also compare overeating in my case to cutting or any other form of self-harm. I would have this emotional feeling that would be too overwhelming for me to handle, so I would eat until my stomach aches would start. Then I would just focus on those aches.

The binges, at first, were occurring several times a week, and as the medication started to work they became less frequent. It became evident I only had binges when I was upset and couldn’t cope with how I felt. I remember I would feel so weak for relying on food to get me from day to day and moment to moment. The self-loathing fueled the binge eating and the cycle would continue. I knew I had a problem for a long time, but I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. I felt too ashamed. There was one particularly bad binge on the more recent side of things where I felt so horrible afterward that it motivated me to make some serious changes.

I told my primary care provider about my disordered eating and she was thankfully very compassionate. I had expected anyone I told to be disgusted or not know what to say. She referred me to a dietician who had experience with patients suffering from disordered eating. I’ve been working with this dietician (along with my therapist and my primary care provider) on this issue for the better part of four months now. I feel much better than when I was in the deepest throes of my eating disorder. I’m learning how to really listen to my body, which was something I avoided doing for so long.

It’s been weird relearning how to lead a healthy lifestyle and eat intuitively. I didn’t realize until recently that I was chronically overeating. I’ve started going to group fitness classes because that feels better for me than just doing it individually. A lot of times I’m the biggest person in the room and my form is that of a beginner. The awkwardness of being new at something is worth it, though, because I’m learning something new and I’m having fun. It’s a new beginning to a healthier chapter of my life, and that’s an adventure I’ll happily trek upon.