Taking My Body Back

A guest post about the journey out of an eating disorder and into life.

Friends, I’m so honored that Ellen Burkhardt decided to share this very personal journey. She’s a talented writer I have known for a long time, though I never knew about her struggle until she asked to write it for Pickle. Her honesty and vulnerability are something I admire and I’m so grateful that she was willing to share it in this space.

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The year I returned from studying abroad in Spain, I became obsessed with hot yoga.

I started going to the yoga studio next to my senior year internship as close to daily as I could. It didn’t matter that my internship was basically a full-time job on top of school, which was also a full-time job. It didn’t matter that I barely made enough money to cover the monthly dues. The sweat, sore muscles, and buzz around the relatively new trend made me feel like I was working toward something and I threw my entire self into it. 

And oh, the praise I received! For my ability to balance it all. For not drinking and partying like every other normal college student. For being so “responsible.” For my toned thighs and ripped abs and sleek arms. “You are so healthy!” people would say. “So dedicated to your strict routine! I wish I had your drive and self-control!”

I quickly learned that everyone wanted to talk about how fit I looked from my new infatuation with exercise and “clean eating.” The thing no one wanted to talk about? My eating disorder. 

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I know the exact moment when I was finally so weak and disgusted and tired from battling bulimia nervosa that I decided to ask for help. I was at my parents’ house the summer before my junior year of college. I’d just gotten back from the Minnesota State Fair with friends and had the house to myself for a few hours. I can’t remember if I’d actually eaten a lot at the fair or just told myself I’d eaten a lot, but it didn’t matter: the only message surging through my brain and body was, “Get rid of it.” So I did. In my parents’ bathroom in my childhood home, I tickled the side of my throat with my finger in the way I’d learned was least painful and most effective, and made myself vomit. Then I washed my hands, splashed water on my blotchy face, collapsed onto their bed, and started sobbing. 

I’d been binging and purging for a full year at that point — the culmination of years of calorie counting, over-exercising, and becoming more and more terrified of anything with any sort of fat content or sugar or “bad” ingredients to the point where I didn’t know anymore which was my voice, and which was the eating disorder’s voice.

I didn’t call it an eating disorder in those early days, though. I didn’t have an eating disorder — no, I was being healthy, staying fit, seeing food as fuel, being responsible. But one night, alone in the shabby one-bedroom apartment I shared with a random roommate a few weeks into sophomore year of college, I snapped. I can’t tell you why it happened, only that I could not put food into my mouth fast enough. Bowl after bowl of cereal. Handful after handful of trail mix. My brain went blank and, for however long the binge lasted, the only thing I felt was the bliss of chewing and swallowing without caring about calories. Until, suddenly, I cared again. 

The only word I can find to describe how I felt in that moment was disgust. So I did what I told myself I’d never do: I forced myself to throw it up. 

The first thing you tell yourself once you cross that line is that you can fix it on your own. It’s just a matter of willpower. Of persistence. Of forming new habits and sticking to them until you’re better. 

When that fails, you tell yourself that it’s a phase. This won’t be your life forever. You’ll grow out of it and arrive at a moment where you no longer are even tempted to do it. 

When that also fails and guilt-ridden frustration and self-loathing settle in for the long haul, you have a decision to make. Tell someone and get help, or wait until it gets so bad someone forces you to get help. 

You never forget the sensation of making yourself sick. In the moment, it feels like you’re doing the right thing, the good thing, the logical thing. “You ate so much that you’ll feel miserable, so just get rid of it. Problem solved.” And so you do. Afterward, you tell yourself that it was a fluke.

You’ll never do it again. You’ll do better tomorrow. 

Tomorrow comes and you hold true: you do better. Then, a few days later, maybe even a couple of weeks later, you find yourself alone and hungry after a day of making sure any calories you take in are used up. So you have a bowl of cereal. And then another. And then that blissful blackout takes over and you suddenly don’t care again. You’re free! Ah, to eat and not calculate the grams of fat, of sugar, of carbs, of anything! It’s just food and it’s heavenly!

Until it’s not.

II.

During these binge/purge cycles, only I knew what was happening. Even though I shared a bedroom. Even though I worked at a summer camp and had zero privacy. Even as it got worse and the purges happened more frequently: no one caught on.

The worse things got, the more I loathed myself. I journaled and prayed (at the time I was Very Christian and very convinced that, if I just prayed hard enough and repented sincerely enough, I would be healed; spoiler alert: I was not) and shamed myself and said, “ENOUGH! NO MORE!” over and over, but none of it did any good. 

I longed for the relief of not carrying this boulder of a secret. But even more, I wanted to get better without anyone ever knowing about it. Because if no one knew, no one could worry. I would fix it. I was an adult. It was my burden to bear.

Until I couldn’t bear it anymore.

That night after the state fair, my parents came home to find me face-down on their bed, sobbing inconsolably, and unable to vocalize what had me so upset I could barely breathe. When I finally could speak, I immediately started apologizing: for disappointing them, for adding stress to their lives, for lying to them, for not being the daughter I thought they wanted and deserved. I suppose a part of me felt better after sharing my darkest secret, but a bigger part of me felt angry with myself. I should have fixed it. I shouldn’t have dragged them into this. 

The burden of being a parent must be excruciating. I’ve been told of moments of intoxicating joy, love, awe, and gratitude. But to have your 20-year-old daughter who you thought was thriving disintegrate in front of you and tell you something that would forever shift your life and your family’s reality: there can only be pain in that moment. 

The pain I’d inflicted on my family shattered me. But it was done, and now I needed to heal.

III.

When you finally decide to get better, you have to tell yourself that it is indeed possible to get better. Totally and completely better. Back to before-you-thought-about-food-all-the-time better. 

So you start the process — weekly one-on-one therapy sessions with a specialist, family therapy sessions, sessions with a nutritionist who weighs you and tells you how many full-fat Triscuits you need to try to eat that week while asking for details of every binge and purge.

Somewhere along the way, you realize that full healing might not be possible. The people who say it is possible more often than not haven’t actually had an eating disorder. They’ve studied them, but they haven’t actually had to dig in and fight against everything their brain and body has told them for years.

But still you try. You fight. You juggle a full credit load, a full-time internship, being a good friend, being a present daughter and sister knowing what you’re putting your family through, and being a 20-year-old woman trying to figure out who the hell she is. You tell your roommates your weekly therapy sessions are extra hours at your internship. You force yourself to eat whole eggs instead of just the egg whites. You do the fucking work, even though you’ve never been more exhausted and less encouraged in your life. 

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The following semester I went to Spain. I’d wanted to study abroad for as long as I could remember and used it as motivation to “get better.” I knew my parents wouldn’t be okay with me going unless I showed them that I was “better.” Same with my therapists. So, I “got better.” Sort of.

I never lied to my therapists or family, but I also didn’t fully share how every day felt like my insides were being torn apart and my brain was being used as a punching bag. My binge/purge cycles lessened, but I still gagged at the site of an avocado or mayo or fat of any kind. And I certainly was not okay with the weight I was gaining.

But I told them what they needed to hear: that all the mindfulness practice, breathing exercises, talk therapy, and nutritional guidance was helping. And it was. But I was far from the version of “better” everyone wanted to see. 

It was in this mindset, after Spain, when I began to think hot yoga was my cure.

It took 10 years to realize that I’d just swapped one eating disorder for another. And let me tell you, I clung to that new disorder like it was my true salvation. For that decade of my life, I thought I was healing when really I was drowning, just in a society-approved way.

Those years of hot yoga, then weight training, then 5:30 a.m. gym sessions and meticulously balancing what appeared to be a normal social life while being constantly terrified of my body changing, I suffered as much as I had when I was binging and purging.

I finally broke down for good when I was 31. 

I’d been diagnosed with anxiety and premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) when I was 27, but refused to take the medications prescribed to help me. Once again, I decided I could manage my symptoms on my own.

Exercise, diet, sleep schedule, journaling: I would fix it. 

After multiple anxiety attacks, ruined relationships, and feeling more distanced from myself and others than ever, I finally gave in. I started taking birth control for PMDD and Prozac for anxiety. I told myself that it would be temporary — that I would learn the skills I needed to quit the meds and still feel like myself. That was in 2018. I attempted to quit Prozac four years later, but the spiral was immediate. As it turns out, medicine is medicine, and my brain needs it.

A few months after starting meds, I began to gain weight. The sensation of feeling fat on my stomach, of no longer fitting into jeans I’d worn for a decade, T-shirts suddenly being tighter around my shoulders and waist, having to buy new winter and rain jackets because the arms — the arms! — got too small: it crippled me all over again. It was as if I was just starting my journey out of an eating disorder instead of having 10+ years under my belt like I thought I had. It was devastating.

I moved to Colorado from Minnesota in September 2019, a year and five months after starting medication. My first priority was to find a therapist to partner with me in my actual healing journey. I did, and I’ve been painstakingly ugly crying, clawing, and battling my way out of the grips of the eating disorder since then.

Since moving, I’ve gained weight. The size of my jeans and shirts has increased. I’ve seen my body completely change in ways that are terrifying, but that I know are okay. Are good. Are necessary. Are actual healing.

But goddamn it’s hard.

The eating disorder voice never goes away, not completely. It’s a constant critic weighing in at the least opportune times: intimate moments, packing for a vacation, trying to enjoy dinner, meeting new people. I’ve learned how to turn down the volume of that voice much of the time, but it’s there.

I’m no scientist and there are other folks in recovery who will disagree with me on this, but I believe you can never fully de-program your brain to forget calorie and fat content; to remember exactly how you used to look and feel when you thinner, fitter; to guilt you into trying to get back to that place. And society certainly doesn’t help. Every week it seems there’s a new trend when it comes to “healthy eating.” This week it’s Whole 30. Next week it’s paleo. Four weeks ago it was no fat. Four weeks from now it’s good fats and no gluten. 

This constantly changing landscape of good vs. bad is impossible for anyone to navigate, but even more challenging when the eating disorder triggers you’ve worked so hard on reprogramming are suddenly cast as good. Ignoring hunger pangs to fast intermittently? Great! Looking at nutrition labels to make sure there are four or less ingredients? Excellent! Obsessing over getting 10,000 steps (or is it 20,000 now?) a day? You’re amazing! And when society cheers, so, too, does the eating disorder. 

Calling it trauma feels extreme, but it’s the closest word that fits. The flashbacks and moments of self-repulsion are real, even as I try my damndest to ignore them. Logically, I know bodies are meant to change. I know that society’s standards are arbitrary. I know that worth has nothing to do with body size. I know that being smaller than someone else does not make me better than that person. 

Logically, I know all of these things. It’s the fact that I constantly have to remind myself of these things that exhausts me.

It’s been six years since truly diving into healing; six years of being the most honest and vulnerable I’ve ever been, of constantly working to quiet the eating disorder voice in my head and replace it with a voice of kindness and gentleness, of approaching food with curiosity instead of fear. 

Six years. 

In the scheme of things, it’s not that long. But if you think about where you were six years ago, and how much has changed since then, it feels like a long time. 

I won’t give up. I can’t. I refuse to go back to living a life of restriction and fear. I’ve come this far, and I’ll keep going no matter how hard it is and how much it hurts some days. To go backward isn’t an option. Forward — whatever forward brings and looks like — is the only direction I can live with.

So here we are.

Here we go.