In-Focus — One Size

Recovering from an eating disorder takes dedication and support. But it’s not impossible. Out of those diagnosed, 60% make a full recovery. In the remaining 40%, half will manage to survive while the other half won’t make it. This a battle no one should fight alone, and awareness could be the first step in saving someone. (Bennett)

These are stories of hope, clarity, and life beyond an eating disorder.

“I kind of have this mantra for myself: Create over destroy. I am an artist. Creativity and being artistic bring me so much joy. It’s such a huge part of my identity and in my eating disorder, I lost that, I just didn't have the energy.”

Rachel has been in recovery for two years now. This February, she turned 23, marking the ten-year anniversary of her dad’s death. After a full decade of struggling with an eating disorder and overall mental health, she’s trying her best to put it behind her. Still, it’s not easy.

“It’s terrifying to leave your eating disorder and let that go. The world's terrifying and I was so terrified of pain, conflict, and all of these different things are so overwhelming, but it's just having to be super brave. And, for me, it was accepting that there's going to be pain in life, there's going to be all of these things, but I also want to experience life. It terrifies me more to think about coming to the end of my life and having all of these regrets about the things I could have done if not for my eating disorder.”

Rachel is continuing her undergraduate degree in public health and wants to work in eating disorder prevention. The sooner someone seeks help, the easier it is to recover. She believes honest conversations and accurate information play a crucial role in the process.

“It's so important to keep putting the truth out there rather than misinformation. There is a lot of focus on the shock factor of anorexics, being a skeleton. But there's also a wide range of people who could be suffering so much and be at a normal body weight. Their heart could be giving out when they could be a normal body weight.”

“To live in recovery after living in an eating disorder feels like a dream come true. The fact that I know that I'm in control right now versus my eating disorder being in control. And the fact that I can behave in ways that align with my values, rather than ways that aligned with what my eating disorder wants. That's the most powerful, confidence-building thing. And it makes me feel like I can do anything.”

For Cohen, it took structured independence to start recovery and separate herself from the internal dialogue that she’d thought defined her. Allowing herself to open up to the world again ignited a sense of clarity. After a relapse in college, Cohen took time off from school and moved to Portland where she participated in an out-patient program and worked at Starbucks.

“When I was in Portland, this girl came and talked to us when I was living in the house, and she was like, I'm living my dream life right now. And I'm working at Safeway. For me, that was the go-ahead to do whatever is gonna happen. Because it doesn't have to look a certain way or be a certain thing. You can literally be working at Safeway and if you're living in recovery, you can be having a dream life, because it's gonna be so different than what this was.”

Cohen is now attending Denver University and studying psychology as she hopes to help people navigate mental health issues, specifically addiction as it compares to disordered eating. The skills she learned through cognitive behavioral therapy changed her life and she believes everyone should have access to mental health resources.

She explained that after the fire, “everything starts to grow back bigger and better and fuller than ever because it's been nourished by the ash. I look at all these things I can do that I'm really good at and bring me so much joy, and that's who I am. Now I am what I do. I'm not what I look like anymore, but for a while, that's all I had.”

“When you're living with anorexia, you're lying to yourself about everything. You're lying to yourself about it giving you control, it's not. It controls you as much as you think you control yourself by doing it.”

For Emily Lund, honesty has played a crucial role in recovery, but it took time to get to that point. In the thralls of anorexia, she knew that her family and friends saw its physical effects, but no one said anything. Frustration, shame, and physical exhaustion forced Lund to confront the disease and what it was doing to her.

“When you want to recover, and you tell people what you've been struggling with, you have to tell them, this is what it means, this is what I do, this is how bad it is. And that's a really hard thing. It's hard to talk about anorexia because it goes against basic human instincts. And so when you tell people about it, especially people who love you and care about you, you can just see the horror in their eyes. And it's so alienating.”

Lund also wanted to succeed in school, something she knew she couldn’t do without fuel. She developed a passion for history as analyzing the world’s past helped her make sense of her own. Through recovery, she transferred from community college to the University of California, Davis, where she’s currently maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Proving to herself that she’s capable of academic achievement has inspired her to apply to law school, a dream that grew after meeting the lawyer who defended a close friend’s child in a sexual abuse case.

“When I interacted with her, it kind of inspired me because she was there protecting somebody, and she was successful, ultimately, in protecting a very small person who had been a victim.

I never got any kind of justice or even an acknowledgment from the person who abused me as a child. So of course, I took it very personally when my loved one was a victim. I identified with that. And so it kind of was like my own little version of justice when my loved one’s trauma was at least a little bit rectified in a court of law.”

As of now, Lund doesn’t know what type of law she’d specialize in, but she wants to help victims and specifically children. She also aims to foster a child in the future, an aspiration that largely motivates her continued recovery as she knows health is paramount in creating a peaceful home.

“I just need to remember that I have so much more to give to myself, that I had robbed myself of throughout my adolescent years, and this is my chance to take it. I have no family to tell me anything. No one comments on how I eat. And the only person that had really been saying these things to me, for the past few years, was me.”

Bernadine Kwan moved to the United States for college, attending West Virginia University. The distance gave her the space to start recovery, though she needed support to separate truly beneficial habits from those veiled as another way to avoid food. At first, she found herself over-exercising or getting too busy to eat, but through therapy, she’s become more self-aware.

“Anytime I find myself slipping back into my old ways, I make sure I pause now. I always try to take a pause and assess the situation like, okay, why am I doing this? I'm using running as a goal, but I'm still trying to balance the mindset of using running as a form of restriction and purging as well. So there's still a lot of work that needs to be done there.”

Kwan recently fell in love with running as a sport and she’s trying to navigate it through prioritizing her health rather than physical effects. If she uses a behavior, she won’t run that week. She’s realized the importance of food as fuel, noticing that when she tried to run without the right nutrients it resulted in injury. Kwan’s also found journaling and cleansing her social media of body toxicity to be helpful. Now she follows motivational recovery accounts.

“Recovery is possible. And if you're still in the dark and in the depths of your eating disorder, recovery is seriously possible. Don't give up, don't give in. If you can fight it for just one hour of one day, that's better than not doing anything at all. The voices get softer. With each opportunity you get to fight it, it’s powerful.”

“The thing that triggered me to go into treatment was my first really serious girlfriend in college. She didn't even know about it or anything, but I was like, I just can't be with you until I get over this.”

Juju went to the Eating Disorder Recovery Center in Denver in their early twenties as they couldn’t stand lying to their girlfriend. At the same time, Juju began finding their identity within the LGBTQ community, sparking inner confidence and self-acceptance.

“It was a change in the world. I didn't have to fit into the world of straight people that I hung out with before I met [my girlfriend] and I wasn’t trying to blend into that world anymore. Now I'm able to fully commit myself to being flamboyant and as butch gay as I want to be, because I'm surrounded by a bunch of people that love that about me. And it took a long time to find that crew because you have to be that way for people to love you like that. You have to be comfortable enough to be that way in front of those people.”

Juju is now married to the woman they were dating at the time and has continued discovering different sides of themself. Their work as a massage therapist strengthens holistic healing and about four years ago, they started performing burlesque.

“Burlesque helps you be more comfortable with how your body is at any given point. Because people don't care about what your body looks like up there. It's more about your confidence and stage presence. Some of the best performers are the most big, beautiful bodies that you've seen. They take up the stage with their presence and their auras like triple the size. And it's just so powerful to watch. People with all different body types, not just big people, not just little people, but disabled people, trans people, nonbinary people, people of all different body types, skin tones, and seeing beauty in all human forms. And knowing that you don't have to be any type, but you are who you are.”

“I'm trying to live a more normal life. Everything revolves around my eating. It's difficult to go to family things or go out and celebrate at a restaurant because that creates such high anxiety for me. I've gotten a lot better. But I don't think I'm ever going to be perfect.”

The 63-year-old woman is trying to get healthier so she can live more freely. Though due to her long history with an eating disorder, it’s difficult to make a full recovery. She’s trying to compare herself to others less and find pride in who she is.

“My husband's always saying, you shouldn't compare things like that. You know, you've raised three wonderful kids and you enjoy your grandkids so stop it.”

Running provides another outlet of support and self-assurance. She’s involved in a running group where her peers, one of them being a doctor who specializes in eating disorders, help keep her on track. As of now, her goal is to run a marathon.

“Once I up my mileage, I'm going to have to be really careful that I'm eating enough so my body doesn't break down.”

“Seeing how horribly this affects your organs and that people are dying every single day from eating disorders makes me realize, okay, I need to address this problem.”

SL is still struggling. Her part-time job as a model intensifies the fear of gaining weight, though she’s taking the initial steps to remove toxic influences.

“I deleted TikTok because that was something that was huge. All these people posted stuff like, this is how I do my life, I wake up at 6 am. I work out for all these hours. And then I eat all this food. And I'm perfectly pretty and skinny. And that's kind of going back to the Tumblr phase, but now I'm more aware that seeing these people hurts me. It hurts my self-esteem.”

Beyond social media cleansing, SL is going to see a nutritionist for her kidney stones, though she hasn’t sought direct help for eating disorders at this point.

“I wish I could say, I've recovered and I'm great. It's a constant battle. And that's something that will never ever go away. Even people who have recovered from eating disorders relapse. You know, just like any addiction. It's not bound to happen, but it can.”

“You feel a lot better when you start to live your life. I swear no amount of the self-hatred you have while you're either practicing eating disorders or anorexia compares to how good you feel when you give it up. Even if you feel [disordered eating] is the right thing to do, if you feel like it’s going to make me happy once you complete it, it's not. The only true happiness I felt is when I started to live my life.”

Roxy’s now a junior in college and through therapeutic guidance, she’s committed herself to control schoolwork rather than food. Additionally, engaging in social activities or personal hobbies helps create distance from the disorder.

“All of me is trying to get better constantly in every area of my life. But it's definitely not easy to get help or see a therapist, see a psychiatrist, it's really a hard thing to do. So, in my life, I definitely see it as a positive thing. But the process is hard to keep up with. So I have been taking care of myself, but emotionally it's still always a commitment.”

Roxy aims to create a body-positive environment for those around her. She believes her mother’s hyper-focus on dieting and beauty idealizations in the media impacted her early development.

“I don't want other future generations of young girls or young boys to go through this, and it won't help if they see grown adults still acting out and inadvertently perpetuating it. I don't think people deserve to feel like this. I don't think I deserve to feel like this. And in sharing this story, I hope that others will follow in my footsteps of recovery.”