When I first saw the number 89 on the scale, it was thrilling.
     10 weeks later, when the doctor told me for the first time that I was anorexic, there was no shock, only guilt. Shame. Disgust. If they were going to force me to visit the health center, then I had at least I thought that a diagnosis would help me feel validated. Instead, my eyes welled over with tears as she informed me of all the negative impacts my body was beginning to experience as a result of malnutrition. Somehow, it wasn't just in my head anymore. It was real. And I felt oh so stupid.
    So how did it happen?
 
     THE SHORT VERSION: I realized in a blog post here that body dysmorphia and an unhealthy relationship with eating began when I was 11. I had heard so much about bad foods and body image that at a tender age I didn't know how to healthily comprehend it.  Within 2 scary years, my intense fear of anything over 150 calories subsided, but over the next 7 years my methods of "healthy living" fluctuated between obsessions with tape measurements, "whole foods," rigid exercise, lifestyle and vegan Instagrammers, occasional calorie restrictions, and often complete removal of wide ranges of food groups.
   When I moved to Provo the January following my mission in Europe {where I gained weight}, it was the first time I had REAL authority over my own diet and exercise routine. Combine that with perfectionism and the stress of heavy schoolwork in a new environment... my 2-year obsession with getting back my "sexy high school body" {100 pounds, already achieved in December} warped into a craving for lower and lower numbers. I was using extreme restriction -- starvation -- as a means of coping with unprecedented levels of anxiety.  Anorexia nervosa offered me an artificial high off of a very sick form of control.
 
     And it was throwing me into a depression I thought I could never climb back out of.
 
     Pi Day was the day Dallin confronted me for the first time. BLESS HIS SOUL. I was finally willing to admit aloud that I was seriously depressed, but he insisted it was due to my lack of eating. I didn't believe him. After much wrestling about, he convinced me to visit the counseling center, but even to the therapist I wouldn't admit I had an eating problem. I liked how little I ate. It felt good. The empty sensation in my stomach felt more like those post-workout aches which are associated with hard work paying off. Besides, sometimes 89 pounds didn't even seem small enough.
    Meanwhile, I was a shell, a skeleton of my old self. I felt guilty for indulging in any hobbies besides exercise, but even then, at times when I was supposed to be having fun, I felt numb at best.  I was a zombie, void of any emotions outside of anxiety, self-loathing and despair. Social interaction was next to impossible because I could be in a crowded room and all the while feel like a ghost, only half there, blankly watching the people around me as if behind a gray veil. I couldn't... engage. It was dark and I was spiraling out of control.

     It wasn't until I went back home and shocked my family with my fragile appearance that I started to snap out of it.  I realized I had younger sisters who had always looked up to me as an example, and right now I was LAST the person I'd want them to model their lives after.
     I grudgingly met with a psychologist specializing in E.Ds; she immediately had me set up a doctors appointment along with regular meetings with herself, group therapy and a dietician.  I was highly skeptical of all of it because I still had very little desire to change.
 
    2 months later, the state of my eating disorder varies from day to day. But today is a very good day, and yesterday my therapist was so excited to show me the insanely improved results of my E.D. and mental health examinations.  For the past 1/2 week, I have eaten substantial meals and snacks and hardly felt any guilt; on the other hand, I have started to see many types of food not as numbers but as fuel excellent for the sustaining of my body. I am ravenous in recovery because I have switched into a hyper-metabolic state; the neurons in my brain are firing wildly as they are fed the nutrients they were deprived of my so long.
   The more I see positive results, the easier recovery becomes.  Much more often I find myself abounding in energy.  MY BRAIN HAS SWITCHED BACK ONLINE.  Gosh, it's insane! I've learned that I wasn't doomed to a future of clinical depression, rather my brain was starved and couldn't produce the chemicals necessary to sustain my mental health! I hadn't realized how dulled my capacities were until suddenly I started eating and then felt like KATIE WAS BACK, until suddenly I could laugh and smile and get angry and actually experience emotions beyond the cold and empty blues. I LOOK FORWARD TO TOMORROW.
  Yes, tomorrow is at last an enjoyable and exciting prospect. And so is the next day and the next, and twenty years from now too. On hardest of days, when I want nothing more than to let the E.D. take over again, I remind myself of a future in which my fertility AND my ability to model healthy body image for my daughters depends on the choices I make today in my recovery.

My email is kelundgreen@gmail.com