Blog
A Journey to Health
A member of the Mindfullness community details her journey from anorexia to health.
I’m standing in the middle of the street in downtown Detroit. It’s dark. It’s cold. Adrenaline is pulsing through my body. I’m nervous and excited. Am I really going to do this?
I hear a shot-gun blast.
Music blares.
Thousands of people around me start walking…then jogging…then running. I can’t help but smile as I look through the throngs of people. I join them, gradually accelerating to a run myself. There’s no turning back now.
I’ve started running my first marathon.
People often compare long, arduous tasks to a 26.2 mile race. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” they say. I guess that means it doesn’t matter how fast you get to the finish, it just matters that you get there, and enjoy some of the scenery along the way.
That’s life, really, isn’t it?
As I make my way past the first mile marker, I begin to contemplate how I ever got there in the first place. (Not to the first mile marker, I know how I got there—one foot in front of the other.) But here, at the Detroit Marathon; not only as a spectator, but as a runner. I’m a runner. I could start when I began my training eight months earlier, but that’s not far enough back. I could start a year and a half ago when I ran my first 5K, but that’s not far enough back either. No, I have to go back 17 years. That’s really when it all started.
I was 12 years old, just beginning seventh grade. In that awkward, pre-teen stage of life. I still carried my “baby fat” with round cheeks and a plump belly. It never really bothered me before. Okay, maybe occasionally, but never to the point where I thought I had to do something about it.
So why when I turned 12, did all that change?
Breathtaking. It’s the only way to describe the view from the Ambassador Bridge around mile five of my marathon as the sun begins to rise. The sky is filled with rich hues of pink and blue and yellow. Some runners even stop to snap a few photos. It almost makes me forget how hard my quadriceps and calves are working to propel me up the incline. Almost. But, aaaahhh. What goes up, must indeed come down. And I’m on a decline, back on level ground, entering Canada.
We visited Canada when I was around 12 years old. Niagra Falls to be exact. My brother was upset because our trip took place over the Thanksgiving Holiday—he didn’t want to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant so far from home. But eight-year-olds don’t make the decisions, moms and dads do. We probably ate burgers and fries, I can’t remember. I do remember visiting Madame Tousseaud’s Wax Museum. And I distinctly remember feeling uncomfortable taking a dip in the hotel pool. I thought I looked too chubby in my bathing suit. I didn’t tell anyone. Just tried to hide my flesh under the beach towel.
I still don’t know why things changed when I turned 12. Puberty, boys, becoming ever more conscious of society’s demands for women to be rail thin, watching women in my family starve themselves on diet after diet. It’s probably a combination of all of those things. I just wanted to fit in, to belong. I thought that my life would be perfect, absolutely perfect, if I were skinny. So I asked my mom for advice. She said, to lose weight, you just don’t eat. Now I know she didn’t literally mean to not eat, but my 12-year-old brain took it literally. So my “don’t eat” diet began.
As I make my way back into the United States, I still feel incredible. I’ve been running now for about an hour and a half and am coming up on the 10 mile mark. The energy from the crowd fuels my body as I continue to put one foot in front of the other. When I look to the left, I spot a bright yellow sweatshirt. An unmistakable bright yellow University of Michigan sweatshirt. It’s my husband. Supporting me from the sidelines, cheering me on, photographing this momentous event. Seeing him sends even more energy through my body and I think, this isn’t so bad after all!
The “don’t eat” diet wasn’t so bad. It started pretty innocently really. I cut out breakfast and ate less at lunch. I didn’t change much during dinner. This continued for a while and I lost a few pounds. So I eventually cut out more and more food until I wasn’t eating much for any meal throughout the day. But as the weight melted away, something strange happened…or didn’t happen. My life didn’t magically improve. I didn’t all-of-the-sudden fit in like I thought I would. I wasn’t any more perfect than when I weighed more. So I focused harder on the numbers on the scale. My original goal weight wasn’t low enough. If only I could lose a few more pounds, then everything would be better.
It just doesn’t get better than this. The sun is shining. The air is cool but not too cold. I’m already at mile 13—I’m halfway through the race! And the best part is, I still feel incredibly good. My body doesn’t ache, my lungs aren’t tight, I’m relaxed and simply enjoying my surroundings. I spot the bright yellow sweatshirt again and wave. As I run by, I realize it’s probably time to refuel my body. I take a few swigs of my fruit punch sports drink and eat a handful of jelly beans. During my training, I learned that your body needs fuel before, during and after an intense workout like a marathon. I experimented all summer with various sports drinks, gels and bars and finally decided that jelly beans and gummi bears gave my body exactly what it needed—energy. Plus, they’re a lot cheaper than the fancy gels and bars you can buy in a sporting goods store. I can’t remember the last time I ate candy without feeling guilty.
I’m 13. I’m sitting at home, working on my homework when the phone rings. My mom answers it and keeps talking to the person on the other end. They talk for a while. When she hangs up, she tells me it was a client.
By now I’ve lost about 30 percent of my body weight. My face is drawn; dark circles have appeared under my eyes; my hair has been falling out; my skin is like the Sahara; and I’ve grown this fuzzy hair all over my body. Instead of feeling good about myself, I feel miserable. I weigh myself 10 or more times each day. When the number is even one half pound higher than the previous time I weighed, I go crazy. I run up and down the stairs until I’m ready to collapse. I vow to eat less. I contemplate eating a box of laxatives. Yes, a whole box.
I can’t think straight. The only thing I can think about every day is the number of calories I am eating and the number of calories I won’t let myself eat. I’m intensely afraid of gaining weight. I don’t want to be fat. I’d rather be dead than be fat. I’ve lost more weight but the only thing I see when I look in the mirror is an ugly girl with huge hips and thighs. My mom tells me I have to go to the doctor. She thinks I have something called anorexia. I don’t know what she’s talking about. Then she breaks the news to me that the phone call wasn’t a client. The phone call was my cousin. She’s concerned about me and told my mom that I haven’t been eating lunch and haven’t been acting the same. She thinks I have anorexia. She says she read about it in a teen magazine. I feel betrayed and angry. There is nothing wrong with me.
Ugh. I’m running on Belle Isle, what’s supposed to be a beautiful island oasis along the marathon route. It feels more like three miles of hell. It’s right on the water, so it’s windy. It’s off the beaten path, so the crowd is pretty thin. And it’s at a kind of “make or break” place along the race—around miles 16 to 19. My body is starting to betray me. I refuse to give in to the pain. There is nothing wrong with me.
The doctor agrees with my mom and my cousin. Apparently I have this anorexia thing. I have to talk to a therapist and a dietitian. I still don’t know why. My first few appointments don’t go very well. In fact, most of my therapy appointments don’t go well. I’m not really a big fan of my therapist, Ellen. So I usually stare at the walls until my hour is up. This goes on weekly for about a year or so. Not much changes. Except now I’m in high school. I tried out for the basketball team and made it. Of course my mom tells my coach about my little anorexia thing and I make a deal: I’ll eat and keep my weight above a certain point or I’ll be removed from the team. It’s that, or be admitted to the hospital for treatment and I really don’t want that. So I manage to hover around that magic number set by my mom and doctor.
The pain is setting in. My feet ache, my thighs burn, my lungs tighten. Somewhere between mile 22 and mile 23, I start to have extreme doubts. Tears well up in my eyes. Physically and emotionally, I’m starting to crumble.
I’ve given up hope that I’ll ever be “normal.” I thought I kicked this anorexia thing to the curb during my junior year. I gained most of my weight back and I had a better body image. Then my parents go through a divorce and that apparently set it off again. My weight plummeted and I ended up back in counseling, this time with a different therapist. Things stabilize until I go away to college and relapse again. The good news though: I’m catching my relapses and actually acknowledge that I need help.
Leslie, you have to pull yourself together. I have three miles left. Only three miles. The only way to the finish line is one step at a time. I’m running slower, but I’m still running. I haven’t collapsed. I haven’t crumbled. And I won’t. Only a few more turns and I’ll be able to see the finish line. I can’t lose hope.
I’m 29 years old now. I’m married to my best friend and have a career I really enjoy. I am truly blessed. When my battle with anorexia started 17 years ago, I never thought I’d get to this point in my life. It’s been a struggle and honestly there are times I expected the eating disorder to win. But I am surrounded by so many people who care about me. They won’t let it win. They won’t let me give up.
I can see the finish line. It’s so close and yet so far. But I’m going to make it.
I did make it. I finish my first marathon in four and a half hours. I feel incredible once again. Sore, but incredible.
Finishing that marathon is one of my proudest accomplishments. It showed me what a healthy body can do. And it taught me that life really is like a 26.2 mile run. There are twists and turns. Moments when you feel like you’re on top of the world and times when you feel like all hope is lost. I learned that it’s normal to feel pain and that it’s okay to occasionally let yourself think you might not make it…those are the moments that form us and shape us and make us who we are. But the most important lesson I learned is that I can’t always just rely on myself. I have to ask for help and I now know that, that too is okay. I couldn’t have finished the marathon without encouragement and support from my family and friends and I certainly wouldn’t have beaten my battle with anorexia without them.
Today my body is healthy and strong. Like most people, I still wake up some days and don’t necessarily like the image staring back at me from the mirror. I sometimes eat too little, I sometimes eat too much. But that’s life, isn’t it? It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And I’m finally starting to enjoy some of the scenery along the way.
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