How the F*ck Do You Navigate Health and Wellness Post Disordered Eating?

Written By Caty Neeser

As of recently, I’ve been craving using writing as a way to put down and share my thoughts. I’ve had countless “Oh, that! I should definitely write about that!” moments, but the more I think them through, the more I realize they are thoughts without clear conclusions. This quickly discourages me and I tell myself I can’t write about a topic that I haven’t figured out myself yet. 

I would like to work on this way of thinking because I recognize it as a result of my ongoing struggle with perfectionism. Rather than solely using my writing to inform others, what if I also use it to open discussions and share the unfinished thoughts, in hopes that community brings us all a little bit more clarity and comfort? So, here comes this new “series” of me putting onto paper what’s been going on in my head. Not intended to give answers or anything profound. Not intended to give anything really, other than possible connection in the unknown and messy. Here we go! 

I would say my parents did a lot wrong growing up, but one of the things I have to give them credit for is not giving me an eating disorder. From taco eating contests to my mom owning her own burger joint for 8 years, food was something to be cherished in my household. They never made comments about my body or how food may impact it. While every now and then I would do the occasional 15-minute core workout thinking I would wake up with abs, making efforts to alter my physique were close to none. It just wasn’t something I thought about. I was content with my body. 

It wasn’t until I got older and listened to other women's experiences that I realized that it was my experience that was strange, not the other way around. I know of mothers who tracked their daughters’ weight and put them on diets starting at 12, and I’m positive everyone knows of a mom who drank smoothies or ate a few almonds for their dinner (hence the new term “almond mom”). That being said, I am extremely grateful for an adolescence shielded from the culture of self-loathing.

The unfortunate turn to my story, however, is that I didn’t make it out unscathed; as if hating yourself at some point or another is a woman’s rite of passage. Moving to a massive university, ending a long-term relationship, and watching my body change from that of a teenager to a young woman, resulted in it being my turn to learn what self-hatred felt like. 

My experience was not as severe as many, but it surely wasn’t good. At the extremely impressionable age of 18, I finally fell victim to the bullshit marketing pushed on women about what “healthy” people do; calorie counting, intermittent fasting, Whole 30 (extremely restrictive diet), going vegan, cutting out sugar etc. You name it, I have probably tried it. These things that began as innocent attempts to be healthier resulted in giving me an eating disorder. At its worst, I endured short periods of skipping meals and then later binging. This was also the phase of my life that I consistently worked out the most but had an awful relationship with exercise. Working out was stressful, I dreaded doing it, and ultimately, I only did it to try and stop my body from changing more than it already had. 

My last year of college I moved into a house with five other girls who I saw just being… normal. They ate cheese and gluten and seemed to genuinely enjoy moving their bodies. We would cook meals for each other and sometimes I’d agree to join their group workouts (sparingly haha). This may all seem extremely simple, but for me it was a massive wake up call to assess the relationship I had developed with food and exercise. I realized what an ugly place I had gotten to and didn’t even recognize myself. 12 year old Caty who won taco eating contests or who would get barbecue sauce on her forehead from eating ribs like an animal never would have skipped a meal and endured a day hungry in the name of being skinny. Never. 

I knew I needed to make some changes, so in order to begin healing my relationship with food and exercise I had to lift all restrictions and mental obligations. Slowly but surely, I began reintroducing foods I had been avoiding and stopped exercising all together. I began to learn what it means to have compassion for myself and allow myself to rest (continuous work in progress). Moving to Spain also significantly helped in this process as food is such an important part of the culture and saying “I don’t eat cheese” is not received very well. 

Ok, so you have the story. Like nearly every single woman I know, I struggled with disordered eating and exercise. Though here is where my confusion really begins: While all of the above efforts were primarily fueled by contempt for my body, a lot of them genuinely made me feel good. This was a very dark mental phase of my life, but in many ways learning that by implementing some lifestyle changes you can feel so good and strong was actually liberating knowledge for someone who was raised on a diet of frozen burritos and cereal. Going on a run or eating loads of fresh fruits and veggies felt incredible. I was significantly less fatigued and felt stronger than I ever had. “Of course,” you may be thinking, because those are healthy things to do. The problem was in my obsessive nature, inability to practice balance, but ultimately the terrible inspiration for these behaviors.

So, here we are now. After almost two years of purging these habits, I have arrived at a point where I would like to engage more in daily exercise and care for my body through food. Not in order to look different, but to just feel good. I wholeheartedly believe that food is something to celebrate and enjoy, but I also know it does drastically impact how we feel on a day to day basis. And I don’t have to explain that exercising has endless benefits unrelated to weight loss. As someone who struggles with their mental health and is constantly fatigued, I know incorporating these things in my life would serve me really well. However, I have found that every time I attempt to intuitively eat or exercise daily, my brain wants to fall back into old habits. 

Let me explain. Intuitively eating involves giving your body what it craves and trusting that it knows what it’s doing. So, this means eating the ice cream because you want it but also eating a salad because you are craving something lighter. However, there are times where I will try to put this into practice, for example opting out of having dessert because I am full and it doesn’t sound good, and my mind freaks out. It’s like making this decision for myself triggers my past of restriction and I now must eat it just to prove I am no longer restricting. Well, now I’m stuffed and my stomach kinda hurts. Or I sign up for a gym membership and want to start going just a few days a week because I’ve been really stationary. Well, now it feels like a requirement, and it causes far more stress than good. In short, a past of disordered eating and a poor relationship with exercise has left me a little traumatized. 

I went from being obsessed with eating healthy and working out to stopping those behaviors — but the mental struggle continues. Now I don’t know how to find the balance between incorporating healthy habits and going crazy again.

I wonder though, is me even worrying about this just a different stage of a continuously poor relationship with food and exercise? Should I just stop worrying about it altogether? Life is short and it does it matter if I am constantly tired or can’t do a single push-up?

But what if I don’t want to take a nap every day and want to be able to feel the freedom of running for miles? What if I want to heal some of my health issues by making different decisions with food? Where do topics like “healing your gut” fall into my journey? What do I do when I once trained for a race so I wouldn’t gain weight, but I also loved the feeling of accomplishing something I didn’t think I ever could? What do you do when you’ve been shown how good you can feel physically but can’t seem to go there again safely?

My era of disordered eating and exercise was branded under health, so I feel in many ways that I was robbed of the ability to trust myself and answer these questions myself. 

That’s it… Like I said, the intention of this article is not to provide answers, but rather to open a discussion. Therefore, I would still like to share a few things that I know have helped me recently in healing this cycle and also give myself some credit for how far I’ve come. 

1. Only engaging in movement that I thoroughly enjoy. I play volleyball with a team every week, go to pole dancing classes (which holy shit you need to have strength for), rollerblade, and do yoga in my room. I have so much fun doing all of these activities and it’s something I genuinely look forward to doing - the fact its exercise is a plus not the motivation.  I would still like to get into the habit of being active daily, but for now I am really happy with my progress. 

2. When something triggers old thoughts, I do visualization exercises. I visualize what it would be like for me to act on the urge (i.e., not put cheese on a sandwich or force myself to go to the gym because I ate a lot of junk food that day) and I think about what life this would lead to me to again: cranky and fueled by self-loathing. That’s not the life I am going to choose for myself. I will not allow the culture that loves women’s suffering to rob me of a joyous life, and that’s that. While my tendency towards black and white thinking normally works against me, I can also harness it to my benefit. 

3. Following @no.food.rules on Instagram 100% changed my life. She is amazing and puts a lot of my worries at ease. 

Welp, there you have it. There’s no conclusion to write, because I do not have one. If you have had a similar experience and conquered it or are still in the thick of it and would like to share thoughts, you know where to find me. And if you don’t, my Instagram is @catyneeser.

Enjoy some pictures of me living my best food life this past year!!