Overcoming Anorexia: A First-Hand Account
Courtesy of New Harbinger Publications
By Mary Kearl
“I’ve dropped again. I don’t feel anything. Apparently my weight is so low for my height that I’m eating myself (brain included). But it just doesn’t make sense. It’s a sterile, passionless statement … I feel so detached … I just can’t see what they’re seeing. Occasionally I’ll catch a fleeting glimpse of myself in a car window or shop door and step back in horror. But then, flesh will grow back and hide the skeleton, and no amount of squinting will bring it back…”
So wrote 18-year-old Lucy Howard-Taylor in her diary while still within the grip of anorexia nervosa. The entries, which have now been adapted into her new memoir “Biting Anorexia” (available in the U.S. September 2009), follow her progression from denying having an eating disorder to admitting she may have a problem, through treatment and finally touch upon the beginnings of what — she knows now at age 19 — will be a long recovery. In an interview with AOL Health she describes how anorexia damaged her body, relationships, successful academic record and even her ability to hold a conversation, plus one aspect of her disorder she’s not willing to discuss.
AOL Health: In your book you discuss that when you were in the grip of your eating disorder how important it was to appear like a real anorexic, to appear like you were disappearing. Why?
Lucy Howard-Taylor: The level of competitiveness among people suffering from anorexia is extreme. Involved as I was in online pro-anorexia communities, I was constantly seeing other peoples’ weights, and I constantly felt myself under pressure to go “further,” to “beat” them. Some communities wouldn’t approve your joining unless you were severely emaciated. The desire to be a “real” anorexic was a very real one, and still is. I remember treating the hospitalized girls with a deathly reverence — as though only they knew what it was to be truly anorexic. There are so many people on diets, and eating disorders have been so popularized in the media, that there was the very real feeling that one had to “prove” the genuineness of one’s problem — and that this could only be done through forced hospitalization, or through appearing scarily emaciated. When I first met one of the girls on one of my forums [in person], I was so anxious that she’d think I was faking the anorexia I could barely eat for the week beforehand. Later, she confessed the same.
AOL Health: What happened to your school-life, love-life, family-life and social-life during the year-plus that you were fighting anorexia?
Howard-Taylor: They collapsed. My family life became fraught with arguments. I used to walk for hours just to escape the heat of the house, and the constant attention on my food and behavior. School-life was a little easier, but I withdrew absolutely, and people began not to approach me. I started to get what I would understand later were panic attacks, and I’d retreat to the bathroom for ages. Unable to pay attention in class, and embarrassed by the noises my stomach made all the time, I started to skip classes for the first time. I was in a position of leadership (I was school captain) which made things much harder. I often had to give speeches, and be present at events. When I think of my final year at school (which is when I was sickest), I remember struggling to get up stairs, and little else. My social-life was non-existent. Someone told me that they had stopped asking me out to things because I never came. I couldn’t sustain conversations. There was no space at all for a love-life.
AOL Health: How long did it take for your loved ones to notice your disordered eating?
Howard-Taylor: It wasn’t noticed for a number of months, by anyone — least of all myself. It developed so incrementally that by the time I was already very ill, the idea of anorexia hadn’t really occurred to me. When my psychiatrist told me that I was very sick, and that I had anorexia nervosa, I remember registering a strange sense of shock. My parents had picked up on it before I did, but because I was so badly-tempered (because of the lack of food over weeks) they chose to write me a note instead of confronting me directly. I will always remember the part of it that suggested that I let Mum make an appointment with a nutritionist “to discuss my ideas on food.” There was a part of me that realized a small problem at that point. From memory, my friends and teachers only really started to notice when I came back to school after summer, having lost a lot of weight. Again, no one directly approached me about it. Some of my friends made jokes, because they didn’t know what else to say. A couple of teachers started asking me more regularly “how I was,” with that significant undertone that suggests they know something is wrong. A close friend wrote me a letter, like my parents, rather than confront me verbally. I treasure that letter. It was the one incident of someone else reaching out to me outside my family that I remember, and it meant so much to me.
AOL Health: In your memoir you have blocked out the numbers that you kept track of so diligently in your journal — the weight dropped, the weigh-ins. Why?
Howard-Taylor: Firstly, the numbers represent nothing. Anorexia is first and foremost a psychological disorder, which may or may not manifest itself in emaciation, or dramatic weight loss. Secondly, (and I have had ample experience with this on pro-ana forums) the weight statistics of others will always provide a sufferer with another number to beat. It’s horrifically competitive, and I will not contribute to that.
AOL Health: Do you mind sharing how much weight you lost and how much weight you’ve regained?
Howard-Taylor: I’d prefer not to for the above reason. For one person, the loss of 10 pounds might put them in dangerous territory; for another it might take 150 pounds. No one is more “truly” disordered for having lost “more” weight than anyone else. It is enough to say that I was dangerously underweight, well below the B.M.I. [body mass index] at which hospitalization is suggested, and at constant risk of a heart attack.
AOL Health: What did you eat most days during that time period?
Howard-Taylor: I ate a lot of fruit and low-calorie cereal. I had cups and cups of vegetable stock, which I liked to think of as soup. Rice crackers, and anything with a lot of flavor and salt: mustard, vegemite. A binge would probably have consisted on a few spoonfuls of cereal, some mustard, perhaps a few grapes, maybe a little slice of cheese, an olive, a spoonful of yogurt, three nuts, or so. My “binges” generally involved tiny quantities of a large range of foods. When I developed bulimia in recovery, my binges were much more substantial.
AOL Health: You visited nutritionists and psychiatrists to deal with this disorder, but one said, “You don’t look anorexic…”
Howard-Taylor: I was mortified. I got out of there as soon as I could. Seeing this first psychologist was the very first time a part of me had started to admit that I might have had a problem, and she just cut me down. The psychiatrist I started seeing a little while later was an expert in eating disorders. I still see her. She is amazing, and I am so lucky to have found her. The nutritionists I saw at first were hopeless, and just told me everything that I already knew about the necessity of eating healthily. It was the dietitian my psychiatrist recommended who actually sat me down, went through what I was eating, and showed me what was wrong with it. I disputed a lot of what she said, but slowly things started to get through.
Overcoming Anorexia: A First-Hand Account
Courtesy of New Harbinger Publications
AOL Health: In the beginning you joined “pro-ana” groups online. Later, you joined recovery groups. Can you describe your experiences with both and why you decided to join?
Howard-Taylor: I went first to pro-anorexia sites, after reading an article about them. They’re awful places, with weight-loss challenges, “thinspiration,” and tips and motivations, but they gave me what I needed: Contact with people who knew what was going on. I made some deep friendships that I continue to keep today. One of the girls I met on one of these sites is now one of my closest friends, in real-time. It was only through these pro-ana sites that I came to the realization that what I was going through was not peculiar to me, myself, but that it was shared and that the things I thought were madness particular to me, were actually widespread hallmarks of a disease. In that way, the pro-anorexia sites actually helped me to acknowledge that I had a problem. On the other hand, of course, they represent close-knit communities of generally-young girls tied together by common illness. When you lack that sort of bond in real life, the urge to remain close “within” those communities is very strong, and was one of the reasons I didn’t want to get better. Luckily, a group of us decided that our lives were not being helped by the site we were on, and we decided to start a new site, a positive site that valued people as individuals, rather than as victims of a disease. Our site naturally became recovery-oriented.The birthing of We Bite Back and its forum marked the beginning of my recovery. It is born out of a disorder, but it exists because we refuse to be defined by that alone.
AOL Health: Taking the final exams which would determine whether you would be admitted to Sydney University was a turning point for you.
Howard-Taylor: I am naturally very proud, and very ambitious. I’m also terribly competitive (which worked to help develop the anorexia in the first place). I had for some years been at the top of my school year. Everyone just expected that I would do excellently. Anorexia fouled all of this up. My marks started dropping, and my brain started feeling more like a flubbery, unresponsive blob than an active, analytical organ. Other girls started to beat me. As totally as anorexia had destroyed my sense of self, my relationships with others, and my academic ability, it had yet to destroy my ambition, and probably couldn’t have destroyed my pride. The fact that anorexia could cause me to fail, was what first turned my mind. As much as I just could not see my level of emaciation, I couldn’t deny the mental effects. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write essays, I could hardly keep conversations. I couldn’t “find” words. I couldn’t process ideas. It was agony to accept that the only thing holding me back was the fact that I was starving myself.
AOL Health: Did keeping a journal help?
Howard-Taylor: Keeping a diary was just another way of meticulously controlling and documenting everything that I ate. Writing in my diary became as much of a compulsion as the anorexia itself. [But] keeping a journal was [also] a way of keeping my mind, of managing it.
Anorexia is so senseless, and so incomprehensible to anyone on the outside. I felt that if I could find words for what I was feeling, and for what I was going through, if I could somehow invent a vocabulary for the darkness, that I would be able to manage it better — and moreover, be able to explain it to my mum. She was so distressed that I needed a way to articulate what I was going through, to help her to understand.
Now it represents my personal evidence that all of it really happened, and in those moments when I try to convince myself that nothing was ever wrong with me, it shows differently.
AOL Health: For a great deal of the time you were battling anorexia, you couldn’t admit to yourself, let alone to your friends and family around you, that you were a “real” anorexic. How have you been able to not only admit the problem to yourself, but open up and share your story in a book that is available worldwide?
Howard-Taylor: It was difficult at first. I still worry about how people will perceive me when I go and give talks on anorexia. I’m still worried that I won’t come across as “thin” enough to have people believe me. But I have the evidence: I kept such a detailed diary, that reading back over it now, I can see all too scarily how sick I was. I have my prescriptions. I have the every-day reminder of a handful of anti-depressants. I have a family who can (unfortunately) never forget. I still see my psychiatrist. But with developing health comes a developing sense of just how wrong things were. I can admit to myself now that I was very, very ill. But it takes time to appreciate this, and just how dreadful it got only becomes apparent as life gets better and better. When I was editing my diary and putting the book together, I often neglected it for weeks on end because I didn’t think there was a real issue there at all. I came close to deleting the manuscript a number of times. In those early days of recovery, you have to learn to trust. I had to put my trust in my family — that they were horrified by my body for a reason, that they were genuinely scared for my life.
AOL Health: Can you describe some of the treatments you’ve had?
Howard-Taylor: Medication (anti-depressants and an anti-psychotic to help me sleep) was very helpful. It was difficult, and I could feel my brain rearranging and numbing itself, but I don’t like to speculate where I would be had I not had that chemical intervention. Weekly appointments with my psychiatrist were invaluable. I hated them, but only because she hurt my head with all her arguments that so effectively countered mine. Weekly appointments with my dietician were also a great help. The most important thing for me to realize was that recovery would take a long time; that I wouldn’t be better in any number of months; that it would take years. I was prescribed a liquid calorie replacement (Ensure) that I was supposed to have twice a day. In the beginning it was too confronting, and I used to tip it down the sink, or dilute it ridiculously with water. Slowly, over months, I began to drink a little more of it, every week, and it gave me some strength. I used to use visualization after I had eaten a meal to make me feel better, and to restrict panic attacks. On my recovery forum, worried about other girls, I used to dispense advice, and try to get them to eat and look after themselves. It didn’t take long before I realized the hypocrisy, so in that way, We Bite Back represented an important part of my treatment, too. Writing, however, was my chief therapy. Doing something you love to do is incompatible with anorexia and the self-hate it requires you to cultivate. Writing is what I love, and as I wrote, pages and pages of diary entries, lists, ideas, I could almost feel the anorexia scowling. Writing helped me to wrench my self-definition from the eating disorder, and place it firmly in my hands.
AOL Health: You experienced periods of depression while anorexic. Have those subsided?
Howard-Taylor: I had never experienced depression beforehand. I still struggle with it, but only from time to time, and I’m luckily on anti-depressants. But my days are never “black” now, as they used to be. Sometimes I feel that very particular “grey pall” of depression, coupled with lethargy and listlessness, but my days are on the whole, okay. More than okay, actually. My days are wonderful.
AOL Health: Do you think you’re fully “recovered” from anorexia? Do you fear relapse?
Howard-Taylor: I think I am getting to that point where I can say, confidently, that I am “recovered.” It’s a wonderful, liberating feeling. I do feel the threat of relapse, however, especially in moments of great stress. But I am able to identify the triggers now, and act accordingly. I know that if I have a particularly stressful time coming up at [Sydney University] that I need to go to bed at a regular time every night and do things that I like to do. I know that I need to keep myself organized so that I don’t become overwhelmed with work, and turn to not eating to cope. Sometimes, when the start of the descent is not obvious to me, my mum, or a close friend will pick up on it. What works in my favor, and against relapse, however, is that I have only just realized in the past couple of months that I have absolutely no desire to go back to anorexia again. There is too much that I want to achieve.
AOL Health: What does healthy eating mean to you now?
Howard-Taylor: Healthy eating to me now is being conscious of what I eat, but not letting myself be tyrannized by it. I eat what I want to eat, when I want to eat it. If I crave something, I’ll have it. I no longer binge, at all. Bingeing and vomiting faded out of my life as slowly as they faded into it. I can recognize feelings of fullness and emptiness, which I haven’t been able to do for years. I eat until I’m full, and then I stop. The body is amazing, and so complex. I rely on it to tell me what I need, and it relies on me to provide it. The most satisfying thing is having your body trust you again.
AOL Health: Who do you hope reads your memoir?
Howard-Taylor: I first put the thing together in the hope that it would help my mum to understand what I was going through. She was the one who suggested that it might be worth publishing, at some point, further on into my recovery. The suggestion that I could reach out to people and show them that they weren’t alone in their war really appealed to me. So the third part of the book is directed specifically at sufferers. I particularly hope that health professionals, and those involved at schools and colleges (teachers especially) will read it. There is very little understanding of what it is to go through a mental illness, and those who do risk becoming totally and dangerously isolated. There are still stereotypes that urgently need dismantling. We need to create a culture of awareness and acceptance — a mental illness is not something to be ashamed of, nor is it something you bring upon yourself. There’s a long way to go, but as more people speak out and tell their stories we’ll be on our way towards creating a dialogue of mental illness that can only work to liberate and empower its victims.
Since seeking treatment, Lucy Howard-Taylor was accepted at Sydney University where she studies English and law. She is a photographer and published poet.
Filed under: Anorexia, Anxiety, Bulimia, Christian Counseling, Christianity, Depression, Eating Disorders, Mental Illness, Psychotherapy
