A Dancer's Struggle

  Did you know there are 7 different types of hunger cues? Something most people struggle with is reading these senses and acknowledging them. When someone has not been eating enough or restricting certain types of foods their hunger and fullness cues are hard to distinguish. This also goes for people who don’t have a bad relationship with food. It can apply to anyone. When people have a stressful event in their life, they haven’t been getting enough sleep, they are super excited, etc. These factors make your emotions heightened and can throw off your hunger signals that your body will normally give you. Society only deems stomach hunger as being the single way to determine if you need to fuel your body; though that can be hard if your hints of hunger are dismissed.  It is important that we teach others the many different ways we can tell if we need to feed ourselves physically and mentally.  In no particular order the first is Stomach Hunger, which is perceptible by peop...

  You never fully recover. Thoughts still find a way to creep back inside your brain, like an ant sneaking into your house on a warm day. The house is your brain and the ant is the abominable eating disorder opinions. When your house is infested with bugs, you get rid of them. You don’t let the ants take over. So why let ED do the same thing. In the beginning, middle, and end of recovery it is hard to not listen to your eating disorder ways of thinking. It is scary to realize but even after years of being “all in'', there still might be days where your ED gets the best of you. But that is where you take the bug spray and get rid of them because they are not doing you any good. They are harming your body. Just like ants can invade the food in your house, the eating disorder thoughts can lead to more problems than just mental health issues. They could affect your physical health by causing amenorrhea, ostoperious, hair loss, liver damage, and even more. My liver was failing due t...

Body Love is something I have felt so much pressure around. Growing up and having an eating disorder I had outside forces that made me feel guilty for not loving my body. Body Image is how you perceive yourself looking from the outside. How you appear to look in photos, mirrors, certain clothing, etc. It is a person's perception of their physical body. Not everyone has a perfect relationship with their body image. I would even argue to say no one does. At some point, everyone has looked at themselves and have had negative thoughts slip into their mind. This is 100% normal and should be more talked about and accepted.  I myself have struggled with body image from a very young age growing up as a dancer. As I have grown up my physical self image has gotten worse. With that also comes social media telling me to love my body. When people post things about loving their body and “you should love your body always”, it makes me feel inferior. I am substandard because I can’t love my body. ...

  I had never been so nervous or afraid, but soon I would find out I was surrounded by the best people. In August of 2021, I started intensive outpatient treatment at Evolve Healing. Evolve is an eating disorder treatment center. My first “technical” day was meeting with my treatment team and evaluating what kind of care I would be getting. This check in process typically takes most of the day and your parent or guardian is with you. Also on this day I wasn’t allowed to see any  of the other patients I would be in treatment with. The following day, August 5th, was my first official day of treatment. Since I was in IOP my day started at 3pm. I would walk in and check myself into the front desk and fill out a paper everyday that asked how I was feeling. Next, I would meet the PHP kids in the dining hall for afternoon snack. I remember not knowing what snack I was going to be given on the first day, or if I even had any say in it. This created some anxiety for me, because I wasn’...

  I was in the middle of my daily mile long walk when I got a call. Little did I know this call would have been the one to save my life. It was the summer time, and I hadn’t admitted to having an eating disorder. My parents and doctors put me on a 3,000 calorie diet. They were confused as to why I hadn’t gained a pound. I wasn’t though. I was pretending to eat, throwing away my food when they weren’t looking, and over exercising . At this point, I was at my lowest weight ever and lowest point in my life. My family medicine doctor back in May had suggested a treatment program for eating disorders. I told her no because, “I didn’t have an eating disorder”. She had told me, “I am putting you on the waitlist because I am scared for you. You are dying”. Fast forward a month later it was the week leading up to my dance nationals. The treatment center had called my parents saying there was a spot open for me starting on Monday. If I didn’t take the spot, they would give my place to someon...

  It was Christmas Eve and I was begging my parents to go to the gym. Last year, I had an unhealthy obsession with running. I would run to earn food and to be skinner. The night before Christmas day I was asking my parents over and over again if I could go on Christmas, even though it is a holiday, I wanted to go to the gym and run. After pleading all night they eventually agreed. Christmas morning at 7:00am before eating breakfast or opening presents, they took me to the gym. I proceeded to run three miles. The reason I had wanted to work out so badly was so I could then enjoy my Christmas day and not feel guilty for eating food.  In reality, I wasn’t close to eating enough food to fuel my body in the first place. When we were done at the gym I went home and had a piece of toast. There was no butter or any spread on it. It was simply just a piece of toasted bread. Running and the thoughts in my mind to be the ideal image of “skinny” were controlling my life. Did I actually wa...

  I was trapped in an invisible ice cube everyday. I couldn’t escape the feeling of being frozen. When I was heavily using behaviors in my eating disorder, I was malnourished as you know. This came with consequences that I couldn’t flee even if I tried. There was zero fat on my body at this point. I was a walking skeleton. My body had no warmth to protect me or generate heat. I felt extremely cold 24/7. This wasn’t your ordinary feeling of cold. It’s not like standing outside in the snow with no clothes, it is dreadful. My bones would constantly hurt from the pain. The coldness I felt would never go away unless I was sitting under my electric blanket that could produce its own heat for me. This point in my life I wasn’t happy. I was suffering all day everyday. No one around me could relate to the immense amount of pain my body would feel from freezing. It got to the point where I would have panic attacks before going to school because I just could not endure the agony my body was g...