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In March, after undergoing my fourth stress fracture over the past three years, I wrote that it was time to step back and reevaluate – to stop "fighting the water." ". I have fought like a god in recent years to try to stay healthy and run as I like to do it. And while I was tired of fighting for many reasons, inside, I knew that I was left with a big fight. Because there was one thing I had not tackled head-on for a long time: my eating disorder.
I am not dense: I have long known that I am alive and living example of RED-S (also known as "triad of female athletes"). the bones keep breaking because I have 20 years of history with anorexia. But I wanted to be that person who could straighten the ship on my own. I have been in and out of treatment so many times in my life, I was not ready to admit that in my mid-thirties I was again fight it. You feel helpless to solve problems when you are proud to be self-sufficient and able to do difficult things. There is a paralysis that comes with the cognitive dissonance of knowing what you need to do but below that.
But the most difficult things to do are those we do not want to admit to ourselves. And I finally admitted that I could not do it myself.
In April, I was off work in Seattle, where I spent the last three months at Opal Food & Body Wisdom, an eating disorder facility.
I've long resisted more intensive treatment because it was not my first rodeo. I was diagnosed for the first time with anorexia nervosa at the age of 16 years. It began with one month hospitalization, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, in 1999, and then school and college, with internships at various levels of treatment, including a stay in a residential facility immediately after college.
Because of the treatment and the very visible physical illness, I spent the vast majority of my youth being "the sick girl". It's a chapter of my life that I did not talk about in public because it was an identity that I was anxious to lose. After my stay in institutional treatment after college, the disorder seemed to calm down. Finding myself in a state of solid recovery, I promised myself to move on. So I stopped talking about it. I went to law school, became a lawyer and buried the disorder in my past.
When I started running and I drew attention to my athletic achievements, I did not talk about it during the interviews. I did not talk about it during my climb to domination in the obstacle course. I did not tell interviewers who asked me about my sporting background that the reason I did not practice sports at university was because I was too sick and too weak to even climb the stairs , not to mention the sport. I did not mention that my friends and family spent those years worrying about getting up in the morning. I did not want to "stay in the past," I told myself. In my mind, it was a chapter of my life that had passed and a may be I would talk about when "the time was right", but I could never know when. I was running hard, I was running hard, I felt strong, and in my mind I did not identify with this disorder anymore.
In fact, even though I no longer defined my world around my eating disorder identity, for all these years, I had not completely abandoned it. I clung to messy thoughts and eating habits. The only difference now was that I had the sport to settle. And I was at the top of the world racing obstacles. I was a "normal" BMI, I was muscular and I won all the races. It was therefore easy to minimize my messy relationship with food. It was easy to compartmentalize thoughts and say, "Hush, I'll deal with you later," or think there was no problem, because I'd done so well. Having a diet or different eating habits suited me because "I was an athlete". I could also compare myself to other female athletes on the starting line and covet their abs, because that's what women do. It was okay to dehydrate me and let me starve before the covers were part of the show. As long as I competed and won, "just managing" with food did not seem like a big deal. I'm coming out with that. So, clearly, there was no problem.
Until there.
Even if I had managed to deceive myself, the body does not forget so easily. He does not forget the years of famine and malnutrition. He does not forget the extent of damage to your growing bones: so severe that I was diagnosed with osteopenia at age 16.
I was a time bomb that exploded with my first fatigue fracture (the case of femurs!) In 2016. At the time, I could qualify a stress fracture as a stroke of luck – this happens to all the athletes. But the series of traumas related to bone stress that have resulted is not easy to scratch.
Listen, I'm not stupid. As I threw my hands in the air and proclaimed, "I'm doing everything I want" to avoid injury, I struggled with increasing internal self-flagellation to know that I was not doing everything that I I could. I could do all the bleeding exercises, slow back in the progress of the race, take supplements, spend thousands of dollars for all the sophisticated recovery tools, but I knew one thing deep in my heart: There is no substitute for abundant food and food to prevent injury.
Logically, I knew all that, but manufacturing myself, it turned out to be much more difficult. During the past year, I thought I would make changes. I told myself that I would rather be in a much bigger and healthier body than in a smaller body and be broken up standing. "Watching the game" of an athlete does not mean shit if you are too hurt to even go to the starting line. I knew these things. And sometimes, I thought I could change things.
But with the fourth stress fracture two weeks before Barkley this year, I hit the bottom. The sport removed, I looked around to see everything that had motivated my "management" of the eating disorder, and I realized that my disorder was all that remained to me.
I had spent 20 years starving. Literally. Not only physically, but emotionally. I was tired of fighting and so tired of being hungry.
When I called my parents and told them that I was being treated, I was not prepared for the flow of emotions that accompanied this decision, this time with a motivation that came only from me . I was able to do some really difficult things in my life, so I felt a sense of shame at not being able to solve this problem myself. I felt guilty for taking time off work and forcing my colleagues to take on my workload. I felt guilty for telling my sponsors that I was disappearing from the race and the competition for a while. I was wondering if I really needed treatment, since (a) everyone seems to have a fucking relationship with her food and her body, and (b) I've been "managing" her for so long.
The truth is that I "managed" an illusion: I excelled I went through the world of eating disorders and I probably could have done it for the rest of my life. But that would have been a miserable, hollow existence. More than sport, this mess had an impact on every aspect of my life: my relationships, my ability to bond and my hell – even my ability to feel my feelings. I felt that life could offer a lot more, and I had to make a leap of faith to do it – a gesture that required going out of my life in the short term to participate fully in the long run.
I started the treatment thinking that my main goal was to relearn how to feed myself and feed myself in order to stop constant bone lesions. It was certainly an important part, that's what I learned, is that I really needed to leave room for everything else other than food. Living in disorder had allowed me to dig a tunnel in my life and avoid having to deal with bigger and more frightening things: fear of losing sport, loss of relevance, the sorrow of past relationships, the need and the desire to connect with others to do it in a way that would never satisfy that need … the list is long.
Sometimes what you get is not always what you thought you needed. And at Opal, I started to learn everything beyond simple food. I've learned to restore confidence with my hunger after 20 years of ignoring it, and to restore trust with my body after 20 years of mistrust towards it. I learned that I could connect to others without the veneer of achievements, achievements, or admiration.
I learned that it was good to compete and win as long as you have other ways to fill in when that does not happen. I learned that it was not bad to be sad and upset not to be able to practice my sport as I would like, but that I can survive and thrive without it. And most importantly, I learned that it was good (and wonderful!) To feel my feelings.
Although this article discusses eating disorders, this is really not the case, it's really learning to relive. As the saying goes, eating disorders never really concern food. But considering that I've been suffering from a eating disorder for more than half of my life and considering that I'm leaving this public now, I thought I might as well talk from some things related to eating disorders that you will probably hear about and write about in the future.
There is no stereotypical eating disorder
I stop to answer this question because I know I know what you all think: BUT WHAT IS POP-TARTS? Surprisingly, yes, even in the depths of my illness, I ate Pop-Tarts. And always do it. My eating disorder does not look like what many people generally think of a competitive athlete. Unlike the elimination of food, my problems have always been to eat "appropriate" amounts. I've been petrified feeling full, and I could not sit down for a full meal. I have spent the last twenty years of my life in a constant state of physical hunger and constant mistrust of my body, which is an exhausting place (Note: this is particularly compounded by the culture of Diet and well-being that taught us not to trust our hunger signals and do everything we can to not listen to them. Since when did having an appetite become a bad thing?)
Eating disorders are of all sizes and health, of all sizes
In Opal, I was surrounded by extraordinary people of all shapes and sizes, all struggling with disordered relationships with food. I connected with clients with restrictive behaviors similar to those of me but whose body was completely different. Opal follows the principles of "Health at every size" and eat intuitively (warning: not at the beginning of the recovery, but as the ultimate goal). I acknowledge that I initially resisted both concepts, but over time I learned to deal with my own internalized oppression and judgments about food, weight, and size. I finally realized that the size of our body was not as simple as the culture model "calories inputs, outputs" told us all our lives. Someone is not in a larger body because he "lacks willpower" or is lazy. Fat is not a simple "choice". The fat and phobia of fat are real. The weight stigma and the mild privilege (which I have and which I enjoy) are real. I have become passionate about combating weight stigma and denouncing lean privileges and fat phobias because, no matter how big your body, it hurts us all (I'll briefly touch on them) here, but these concepts deserve much more robust piece for a future date).
Although I trust, I'll get there, I'm not found
I want to believe in complete recovery – to a life completely free from unhealthy thoughts of food. There are many stories that tell me that it is possible. I am currently in the phase where I have thoughts – I note thoughts without judgment – but I do not take them. Over time, thoughts have calmed down, but I know it's not a quick fix. I have spent 20 years looking after them – a full recovery does not occur in a few months. And although my stay in Opal is over, I am well aware that my trip is just beginning.
So why talk about it now? This is a question I asked myself and which I weighed a lot before writing about it. I could easily have kept silent about what I had been doing for a few months. It is useful to protect my recovery from large masses, as the peanut gallery can sometimes be exceptionally hard.
But when I balance the factors, I trust that's the position I'm ready to take. For so long, I'm proud to share my vulnerability by talking about injury and sport. But it's a selective vulnerability and hiding my disorder left me in a crippling state of cognitive dissonance, which has affected my ability to build relationships with the world. It even made me feel MORE disconnected when I share selectively and do not talk to the elephant who has been cluttering my room for many years.
I know that I made judgments about the idea of "sharing my story". I am aware of the fact that this sentence makes me tremble, because I had already thought that sharing could be perceived as a target of attention. And the last thing I ever wanted was sympathy, or to proclaim that I am somehow different. I'm no different: my story is too common.
Fortunately, many courageous women and men, in and out of the sporting world, stood up to talk about their struggles (a special cry for Hannah Fields, who unintentionally urged me to seek treatment from Opal after bravely talking about his disorder last year). But the vast majority of these voices talk about their struggles in the past related to eating disorders, once they have "beaten" or once recovered.
Nobody likes to talk about it when they are face down in the arena.
Although I'm not quite in the arena, I get up slowly and dust off. And I think it's important that we have these conversations at every stage of the fight. Disorder and shame thrive in darkness and silence, so I put my disorder and shame in the light where there is no place to hide.
I have many unknowns going forward: the unknown size of my body that will land when I continue to feed it well, the unknown how people will tell or receive this, and the scariest thing to face – the unknown of if I've been so badly injured by the body after so many years of starvation that even with proper food, I may still be unable to not stop the bone lesions. But for the first time in many years, I feel totally aligned: my head, my heart and my soul. And for me, it's freedom.
For those of you who have paved the way and have given me the hope and courage to tackle recovery again, thank you. For those of you who are currently struggling and wondering if there is not more than life, I see you. I was wondering the same thing. I believe it now. And I keep a space for you.
So it's me: imperfect, messy and having a mental illness for 20 years. I am not ashamed. I'm not afraid anymore. And most importantly, I'm not starving anymore.
Instead, I am hopeful.
This article was originally published on the blog of Amelia Boone.
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