Life After An Eating Disorder

They say that when you are an addict, you are an addict for life.

TW: Personal story about battles with anorexia, this story could be triggering for some. No personal photos have been shared as they can be especially triggering. I hope to share this story in efforts to inspire others to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel and that change is always possible.

The definition of addiction is to be dependant on a particular substance or activity, causing one to act in a compulsive manner that is out of one’s conscious control. It is the seeking of an external feeling or force that fills the addict with something they once thought was missing and now, consumed by it, abstinence is no longer an option.

The compulsion has become them and they can no longer draw the line and differentiate who they are with said substance and who they are without it. It is, as if they are now one singular identity. That is the dark side of addiction. It changes a person.

Now, disorders such as anorexia or clinically referred to as anorexia nervosa, is an eating disorder in which a person refuses to eat food out of fear of gaining weight or maintaining an undesirable body shape. A person with anorexia, has a distorted body image.

They self-starve or eat small amounts of food only when strictly necessary. People with the disorder are not aware of how thin they are and are unable to see an accurate reflection of themselves, pushing them to continue the cycle.

A cycle of vacancy. A cycle full of nothing.

So if addiction is about consumption or a participation in something, anorexia would be a lack of participation in consumption. A lack of nourishment. A lack of participation in life.

They say “you are what you eat”. So in the case of one suffering from an eating disorder, the saying “you are what you don’t eat” would be far more accurate.

Personally, as someone who has battled with anorexia for years, I believe that the disorder has very close ties to addiction, the only difference is that, rather than chasing something you need to take to feel free, you are taking something most people love and enjoy, out of your life in order to feel free.

It’s chasing the emptiness rather than the fullness.

With a disorder such as anorexia, you do in fact become addicted to certain things too. You develop certain feelings or attitudes that give you some sort of high. Some strange feeling of accomplishment.

They are these little things that start small. Sometimes it starts when others begin to show concern. It’s the looks of pity you get from other people that you almost enjoy. That is, if you are even aware of them.

People with anorexia do not starve themselves for others, it is however the battle one has with themselves that keeps the ball rolling.

It’s the things like:

The feeling of your clothes getting bigger, hanging off of you, until you are drowning in them when they once hugged your body.

The feeling of your stomach so empty and flat, a gaping hole, not knowing when it will be fed. At this point the body is so starved it no longer pangs in hunger or protest. It simply stops asking.

The feeling of a general emptiness, the world turning in slow motion. Gravity feels heavy and time seems to stand still.

It’s the things people say to you like; “you look really sick”, “are you ok?”, that you wear like badges of honour.

You are changing yourself and people see it. They must be jealous you think.

At the beginning they say you look great.

I even started getting more jobs (as a dancer). I was being awarded for what I was doing and that made it all the more addicting.

In fact, at one point, I remember being so disappointed with myself. I didn’t have enough motivation I thought. I was still eating too much. I couldn’t stop thinking about food because I wasn’t eating enough, and the things you aren’t getting have a way of swirling around, occupying your mind endlessly and obsessively.

So I made a conscious choice not to taste anymore. Yes, you heard me right.

In order to take all the enjoyment out of eating, I tricked my mind into shutting certain senses off. If I couldn’t taste the food I was eating, I would no longer crave it and therefore think about it less. That was my logic.

After all, we eat for two reasons, for nourishment and survival, and for the love of food, and if I did not love food and I could no longer taste it, I would win. I would be the one to control my body’s signs and signals.

So I stopped feeling hungry, I stopped tasting. I stopped spending time around people. I stopped going out.

Talk about power over the mind. Imagine what we could do if we were able or willing to channel all of that power for good? This was pure mind over matter. Its not that I didn’t like food, it was that I didn’t like what happened to my body after I swallowed it.

How this all started is still very clear in my mind. I was always the chubby kid. I was always pressured by my dance teachers to lose weight, even since the youngest age that I can remember, probably around 7 years old. All my friends ate the same as me but were always smaller.

I remember a dance that we were preparing for a competition. I thought the concept was stupid but I just wanted to dance honestly. We were chefs and we were asked to bring big bowls from home. We had to sit in the bowls and spin each other in them. Yeah, I know, stupid, but we were 7. I remember being excited to contribute to the props and my mom gave me two huge salad bowls, made for tossing salad that we would place on the dinner table for the whole family to serve themselves salad from.

I though that, because I brought the bowl, I would get to spin in it. That made me happy as I also wasn’t as naturally talented as the other girls. I thought that I might get cast in a special part. But my teacher looked at me and then looked at the bowl and said, “I doubt you will fit in it. What are you doing eating out of bowls so big anyway? Maybe that's the problem”, she said as she looked me up and down.

And then she walked away and gave the part to someone else.

It was the first time that someone had called me fat. Or at least the first time that I really understood what they meant. Then the comments continued. They would say “she has so much potential, but she will never be a dancer with that body”.

Potential. I grew to hate that word.

What a backwards, backhanded way to express something. To praise the thing that you are not and might never actually be. At least it always came across that way.

From this moment forward, the snowball kept rolling, and rolling. Praise and acceptance followed and I was made to feel as though I was on the right path.

At first.

But then I went too far.

My body had eaten all of my muscle away and I could no longer perform. My body was riddled with pain. Everything ached and I didn’t have the energy to live.

I had lost the will to live. I started to think, I’d rather be dead than fat. I would rather not have legs than have big legs.

At this point I started losing jobs. I was taken out of shows and often humiliated by my directors in front of everyone. “Look” they would say, “you are so weak, you cannot do anything, look what you have done”.

Hearing that was like taking a knife to the heart. All along I thought that I was doing the right thing.

"I had fooled myself into thinking that this was the key to the success I had wanted more than life itself. That I would no longer be just "potential", but the realised version of what everyone said I could be."

Fast forward a few years, and despite the criticism, I couldn’t pull myself out of the hole that was my life. At this point I was suffering from blurred vision and extreme dizziness, acne, joint pain, IBS, hospitalised for chronic constipation, and my hair was coming out in chunks.

I was still unable to see an accurate picture of what I looked like, but I do know that I was suffering mentally, emotionally, and psychologically.

Now this is the point in the story where you are waiting for a big “Ah ha” moment, the epiphany. That something or that someone that turned my life around.

But this is where we come back to the very first point that was made about addiction. If an addiction is forever, so is a disorder. It doesn’t just dry up or disappear. And if the praise or the dismay of others couldn’t change me then, it certainly couldn’t change me now.

But what did start to change was my fear for the future. I didn’t like the image that I was creating for myself. I didn’t like what I was embodying. I didn’t like the example I was setting.

I had always imagined having a family and realised that if I continued down this path, it would never be possible for me.

"My body had become a hostile and toxic environment, so much so, that I didn’t even want to live in it."

So I started with an idea. The idea being that, if I continued like this, I would likely die. So I only have one option really, which is to choose me. To choose health. To choose life. To win my own trust back. To rewrite my past and build my future.

It was in that moment that I also realised that I would never be able to just flip a switch. There would never be a way to just, turn all of this off and put it behind me. That like any addiction, I craved power and control, so instead of controlling my body, I decided to begin taking the wheel of my life.

Now my life is that car.

Everyday is a reminder that, this body is the only one I will ever get, and I need to get in and drive it everyday. And food is the gas that this car needs to drive.

I remind myself everyday who I am doing it for. For myself, for the child in me that still doesn’t feel like she is enough, for the people I hurt along the way, for the child I one day hope to have. I do it for the people who stuck around.

So just as I once used the power of my mind to terrorise my body, now, I use it as a tool to make better choices. I tell myself when eating is hard;

Eating is social

Eating is bonding

Eating is nourishing

Eating is enjoyment

It’s all mind over matter

I stopped following accounts on social media that made me feel like less and began adopting the right role models. Powerful, unapologetic women. Women with muscle, strength, curves, women who put their health and often, themselves first.

Each day I actively practice to let go of the past and I continue to let pieces of it go with each day that passes.

Healing is not linear. I am still fighting ailments and trying to get my body back to a place where it can function after years of destruction and demolition.

So I cannot conclude this story in any way because it is still an open book. I am still filling in the blank pages with new triumphs, breakthroughs, and documenting the hard days too.

But I continue to do it for me and for the 7 year old me who wanted to spin in that stupid salad bowl and dance in the front for once.

I think often about how she would be in absolute awe of me now. Of how I made it here when the world seemed to be against me.

I do it because my future children deserve better. They deserve to celebrate their bodies. They deserve the education I didn’t have then. The support system I didn’t have then. And therefore, I choose not to erase the past. I choose to share it.

To release it and let it become a story, in hopes that someone reading it will feel seen, heard, and know that although the pain will always be there, anything can be conquered.

Especially if the one that needs conquering is yourself.

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Jasmine Melrose

Director & Founder of DECO the Blog

Jasmine Melrose is a Toronto native living in Amsterdam. Once a professional dancer, her passions include movement, fitness, yoga, healing, and all things vegan. Jasmine is a 500-hour trained yoga teacher, who loves to get you deeper into your practice. She is also a certified barre teacher who loves making raw vegan, guilt-free and good-for-you treats. Check out her recipes and articles on everything from fitness to yoga, to notes on a journey towards healing.

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