Content warning: This article covers my experiences with anorexia. If you’ve been affected by disordered eating, consider reaching out to therapists who specialize in treating eating disorders or finding a support group through ANAD or these resources.
Six months ago, I spent an entire pole dancing class fantasizing about meat – the smell and taste of beef, a big bite into a juicy hamburger. I spent most of that class sitting on the floor watching the other students because I was too hungry and cold to dance. Despite my fantasies, I went home after class without getting a hamburger. As a default, my disordered eating made it a habit – a triumph, even – to deny myself.
But I was also working towards recovery. Not to mention, the experience of sitting on a cold hard floor and watching my classmates fly in ways I was too weak to even attempt was profoundly miserable. So I decided that from then on, I would get a hamburger before pole class.
My History of Disordered Eating
I was 36 years old when I started nutritional therapy and finally admitted that I was anorexic, but none of my behaviors were new. Just a few years before embracing the big “A,” I started identifying many of my habits and choices as “disordered eating” or even “orthorexia.” These terms were softer ways to avoid admitting the full truth, but I got there in time.
I used to think that the definition of anorexia was extremely narrow – you were (most likely) a teenage girl who was so underweight that you were in danger of being hospitalized, with a BMI under whatever arbitrary number was deemed “normal.” Turns out, it’s a lot more than that – and the concept of BMI is better off thrown into the sun forever.
Nowadays, treatment has shifted to recognizing the full experience of anorexia, which could involve obsessing about what food you eat, anxiety over gaining weight, distorted body image, starvation or aversion to food, or compulsive over-exercising to lose or avoid gaining weight.
Guess who has two thumbs and every single one of those experiences?
After hitting puberty, I was diagnosed with PCOS and told that I could manage my condition by losing weight. During high school, I made a concerted effort and lost a quarter of my body weight. I exercised most days and ate primarily yogurt, cereal, and apples. My PCOS symptoms faded and I maintained my “goal weight” through college. For several of those years, I also chose to fast for Ramadan – and while the experience was rewarding, it also sharpened my starving skills to a fine point.
I have multiple generations of family in healthcare, many of whom came up when fatphobia was especially rampant. My entire life, they stressed the importance of avoiding the horrible fates of diabetes and heart disease that plagued our family tree and spelled the perfect storm for me. Weight gain practically became a death sentence, surrounded by anxiety.
My unhealthy habits proved somewhat sustainable in my twenties, even as I emotionally and physically tanked an abusive marriage and all the devastation in its wake. The anorexia teamed up with my desire to mentally escape. Some nights I’d have just a beer or two for dinner because hey, they’re basically like a sandwich in calories, right? (So wrong in so many ways.)
When I moved to Los Angeles in my late twenties and started pole dancing for the first time, I hit my lowest adult weight. My monthly food budget covered smoothies and coffee shops. I attempted heavy squats and deadlifts at the gym through a lightheaded fog, but I could never lift heavier than the barbell. I calculated the “perfectly optimized” nutritional breakfast and lunch by calories and macros and ate the same two meals every day, except weekends when I’d seesaw between starving and binging on “bad” foods. I rarely planned for weekday dinner so I’d spend the evenings staring at my empty pantry. I was always frustrated that my pole classmates seemed to progress so much easier and faster than me.
At one point, for no particular reason, I obsessed over maximizing my protein intake and lowering the ratio of carbs and fat in my diet. I switched out eggs for egg whites, replaced 2% yogurt with fat-free, and limited myself to chicken breasts, lean whitefish, and quinoa. I was hungry and exhausted constantly until even the rest of my disordered family told me that I should cool it. This is when I learned about the possibility of rabbit starvation!
Remember That Big Thing That Happened?
When 2020 hit, the pandemic drastically changed my life and habits. I took online pole dancing classes for a while but stopped because of Zoom fatigue. My carefully calculated meal plans fell apart. I wore nothing but soft clothes and struggled to move my body. When the lockdown ended over a year later in summer 2021, I visited my doctor for a checkup.
At the doctor’s office, I stepped on the scale. I knew I’d gained weight over the pandemic so I mentally braced to see that number go up, but I underestimated how much. I’d gotten to the same weight as when I was first diagnosed with PCOS – the heaviest in my adult life. My other numbers were higher, too – cholesterol, blood glucose. The world was opening up and I couldn’t fit into any of my clothes. My doctor suggested that I exercise more for my health and she wasn’t wrong.
I walked out of the office and into the worst spiral of disordered eating I’d experienced in years. And this time, I was in my thirties. My body couldn’t function the same under those conditions.
Over the next few months, I showed up to therapy depressed and hungry. During one session, my therapist started asking questions about my eating habits and I shut down. In the end, my therapist noted that disordered eating was not her area of expertise and referred me to a specialized, trauma-informed nutritional therapist. I was skeptical but made the call after a few weeks.
My Experience With Nutritional Therapy
I was a chatty, anxious mess for my first session with the nutritional therapist. I told her I wasn’t sure I even qualified as having an eating disorder while I brain-dumped a long and detailed account of my disordered eating history. I didn’t come around to admitting that I had an eating disorder, much less anorexia with a capital A, until our third or fourth session.
What is a nutritional therapist? I’m grateful that I got a super solid referral because my nutritional therapist was uniquely qualified to address my eating disorder. She had a Masters in Clinical Psychology and had worked in residential treatment for eating disorders. She was IPE and NTA certified, trauma-informed, licensed as a marriage and family therapist, and registered at a local practice. She was also living with type 1 diabetes so she had first-hand experience with managing metabolic conditions. I recommend looking for similar qualifications in a therapist.
Despite being a “nutritional coach,” my therapist didn’t focus solely on food during our sessions. I knew how to cook well, I just avoided it at all costs. The act of grocery shopping was a Sisyphean task that left me starved and in a state of freeze for days. I could sit all day, hungry, not eating, next to a bunch of prepped and ready-to-eat food in the refrigerator. I understood my nutritional needs, I just couldn’t maintain anything between absolute control versus free-for-all binging.
Instead of honing in on food, my therapist zoomed out on the bigger picture. We put our efforts toward uncovering the emotional triggers that ended up manifesting through my relationship with food. We identified helpful tools, coping strategies, and boundaries that came naturally to me, with varying levels of accessibility. (For example, on days when my body feels impossible to move, can I shift my position even the smallest bit?) We also listed experiences that bring me delight and joy, large or small, whether they involve food or otherwise, for me to refer back to when I needed.
I worked with my nutritional therapist for about a year and a half. During that time I became significantly more self-aware of my disordered eating and developed a deeper understanding of helpful behaviors to break through some of those patterns. Sometimes we just held space or made incremental progress, and at other times we broke through with leaps and bounds.
I ended our sessions because our discussions plateaued and I continued with a different kind of therapy, but I took copious amounts of notes and I continue to use the tools I learned to this day. Plus, I still have my nutritional therapist as a resource if I need a session or two to refresh or check in at any point.
How My Anorexia Manifests Today
For four months, I successfully committed to eating a hamburger before pole class. I made a ritual of it, something that incorporated delight into the process of feeding myself.
And it worked. I had more energy and endurance to participate in class. I was less dissociative and more present. I progressed with the rest of the class instead of falling behind.
I’ve recently realized that I usually experience one of two modes of hunger or starvation. One is deeply dissociative – that’s what I identify as anorexic hunger, which is when I disconnect from my body and its sensations. I’m hungry but I refuse to feel it, so I push the feeling down and away. Or I burrow deep into my psyche, somewhere I can ignore the unwanted signals my body is sending me.
I started identifying the other type of hunger because of my efforts to shift away from the urge to dissociate and disconnect. As my body became more capable of connecting to movement and exercise, as I participated more in pole dancing classes, I needed even more fuel to keep up. This was a clamoring, clawing type of hunger, demanding to be fed. I suppose it’s also the opposite of dissociative hunger – I’m hearing my body’s messages loud and clear.
Unfortunately, it turns out that a hamburger (and usually some fries) doesn’t make for the best meal to have right before spinning around and turning upside down for extended periods. Even though I felt better overall, the meal itself didn’t help me feel great, physically, in pole class.
Before the hamburger routine, I would regularly drop out of pole class because I didn’t eat enough that day and I didn’t feel well enough to go, much less invert or shake my ass. Ever since I started the hamburger routine, I’ve continued working on my mental and emotional accessibility to food. So even if I don’t stick to the hamburger routine anymore, I feel like I’m growing through it, not taking a step back. Now, the hamburger is a tool in my back pocket, but I have to put in a little more effort to feeding myself something that helps my body feel physically good for pole dancing.
When I say I’m in recovery from my eating disorder, that doesn’t mean its effects on my life are gone. I still have flare-ups, usually caused by emotional upsets, where my inner competition to eat as little as possible comes into play. To me, being in recovery means that I want to recover. I’m no longer investing in the voices that tell me to deny myself until I take up as little space as possible. I still experience the effects of my eating disorder every single day, but I’m no longer buying into that harmful narrative.
Talking openly about my experiences with anorexia with the people around me has also helped. When teachers or classmates in pole class ask if I’m okay because I’m not participating, I’m honest about the fact that I’m struggling because I didn’t get enough calories that day. If I’m out or traveling with friends, I tell them that I’m fading and need some help feeding myself. Sometimes I openly celebrate eating or even desiring a really solid meal because of how hard that can be for me.
As for my weight, I don’t know what it is. The last time I got weighed was at that doctor’s appointment in summer 2021. Now when I go to the doctor, I simply decline getting on the scale because I know that number will be triggering for me. Fortunately, none of my doctors or nurses have had a problem with this.
Pole dancing as an activity can be challenging when you struggle with body image and eating issues. By design, you show a lot of skin and your body is on display in the mirror. You’re surrounded by opportunities to compare your body and its capabilities with others, and we’re all trying to exist in a world under unrealistic and harmful standards. I try to turn these opportunities for comparison into exercises in acceptance and celebration instead. Feeding myself means fueling my body so that I can fly more freely, with greater endurance, and with fewer injuries.
You can read more about my pole dancing journey here. You can find resources for eating disorder support here and here. I write more about my mental health on my Patreon.