**and other pics from my husband's phone 

I know I'm not supposed to step on a scale, but I do anyway.  I don't own one, but I'm good at finding them. For the past year or more, I'd been at a weight I knew was too low (between 97-99 pounds), the weight below my forever "goal weight" of 100 pounds that I maintained for all of high school.  A few weeks ago, I realized I'd gotten back up to the "goal weight," and it trigged the familiar old eating disorder behaviors all over again. It's like 100 was my comfort number for so long that now I needed to give it padding to make sure I didn't go over it. 

It's stupid, really, because it's a matter of a few little pounds.  But apparently a few little pounds is enough to mark me as "healthy" on the BMI rating, and though that should be reason to celebrate, for some sick and twisted reason it had me going into a panic.  OK yes, I was more-or-less consistently skipping meals before, but now I was body checking, prodding and poking my stomach, and fretting over calories again. I was feeling food guilt and wanting to purge, although that's something I only ever successfully did once four years ago. It's even more stupid because I know that it's the reason for my exhaustion and headaches that pop up more than they should, and yet it doesn't deter me from acting up again.

Despite these behaviors, when I stepped on the scale again today, I had gained more weight and was 102 pounds. Again, only a few pounds. I felt so frustrated and defeated.  But then, when looking through my husband's phone for photos of our latest trips, I stumbled upon screenshots of old Snapchats and was stunned to see the difference in my face and body over the space of a few months from 2017 to 2018 when my eating disorder really kicked into gear.  It's crazy for me to see how much healthier and honestly prettier I looked when my weight was normal.

**Note: I am aware that lighting and angles can change the way the face and body look. I am also aware that age plays a factor.  Back then I was around 21.

Same date. No more roundness to the cheeks. Sharp angles.

Flowers that died in the fire:

It's been three months now since I accidentally burned my house down, and I can confidently say that I am doing significantly better than I was.  

The thing is, though, I was already clinically depressed before that happened and had been denied from receiving services through the university counseling center due to my history of anorexia.  I required "specialized services," but the only actually specialized services I could find outside of the university, covered by my student health insurance, had a wait list several months long. Being me, I didn't sign up for the wait list and cut off contact with my case manager, who couldn't understand that someone outside the university counseling center who "specialized" in 20 things--with eating disorders being one of them--was not truly an eating disorders specialist.  I was told when I was first diagnosed with anorexia that I am stubborn with a will of steel, and I guess that hasn't changed. It's not a good thing, so I'm not bragging about it.  I guess I'm just baffled that a progressive university wouldn't offer services for their students with eating disorders, because heaven knows eating disorders run rampant among this age group.

Fires don't help depression, and depression doesn't help healing from the psychological "burns." I've stopped having nightmares about fire finally, but people can't talk about their pet fish without me biting back tears.  Looking through my phone photos or old blog posts, something that would usually be sweet, is now bitter as I remember the house I burned and the beautiful clothes I will never wear again.  Hell, going through the candle aisle at TJ Maxx or having a campfire makes my mind flicker back to the fire and think about what could happen if I dared tempt fate again by striking an innocent match.  I love my new home, and I am beyond grateful that my husband, roommates, and cat are safe, and usually if I avoid those triggers that bring back the memories, I don't feel residual trauma. And, well, as long as I triple check that I turned the stove and oven off or didn't put the fork in my bowl in the microwave or leave the curling iron plugged in, then I don't fear starting another fire.  The suckiest thing is being paranoid every time I leave the house that my upstairs neighbors will start a fire while I'm gone and that my cat will be trapped. I kid you not, this thought goes through my head every time I shut the door.

I'm doing pretty good in school, but I find myself forgetting meetings or not meeting as high of a standard as I should. Mostly I'm just worn out, but every three weeks or so the depression sucks me back in.  I had written this rant of a poem a few weeks back to describe the feelings I thought no one else could understand:

 i feel like im drowning in a vast ocean. my body is pulled in two directions, by the current and by the boat that pulls me by a rope, and in the struggle i am choking on the waters, unable to come up for air. more often than i want i wish that i could just cut my life vest,  sink into the dark depths and succumb.  

I promise that I am not posting that as a cry for help now, it is just me trying to explain the rollercoaster of emotions I have going on for far too long. My meds have stabilized, so I don't feel that dark anymore. Really, I'm pretty good 80% of the time. But that doesn't mean I didn't burst into tears today during a meeting I showed up to 15 minutes late because I forgot about it. 

I don't have a tidy way to wrap this up. I know I might get calls from people worried about me.  Maybe it's unorthodox to be this straightforward in public.  It's just honesty.

I found a nearly finished draft from September 21, 2020. I never published it because I felt it was too negative, and shortly after writing it I was able to bounce out of these feelings for a little bit. For a couple of months there I thought I was recovered. OK, yeah, I thought, I can still be KINDA weird about food, but I definitely don't have an eating disorder anymore! Heck, I thought my depression was a thing of the past too. Then in February I found it again and added several paragraphs more of thought. About 60 seconds after publishing it, I freaked out and unpublished it. Do I dare be this vulnerable? Do I dare make the ones who love me worry about my well-being? 

    Recently I read that the anorexic high is a real, physiological thing. Apparently, when the body is in starvation mode, it releases endorphins as a survival mechanism before slowing the heart rate, metabolism and other internal functions. Reading that made it click for me.  It made sense why I used to {and still do} crave something so horrible, something so contradictory to every evolutionary concept of survival. Starving did feel good, in some insane way, even when it gave me a raging headache, stabbing hunger pains and utter exhaustion. I couldn't explain why, when I first started along the recovery path in 2018, I would hear hiphop and rap and suddenly crave starvation with every fiber within me.  I know, it seems weird. But I needed it, it seemed.  I could cry I wanted to relapse so bad.  Now, however, I wonder if it had something to do with these endorphins.
     Lately, I've had to check myself  because I am starting to feel again like petite is my identity. I developed an eating disorder a couple years ago because I had felt like petite was part of who I was all growing up, and when I gained some adult weight, I felt like I had lost a part of myself.
     At my new job at the treatment facility, I work with teenage girls. Being in college and on a mission over the past 5 years, I had forgotten how much teenage girls notice other people's size and appearance, because rarely do adults ever comment on what I look like physically.  If adults compliment me, it's usually on my fashion sense.
     But since I started working at the treatment facility a month ago, I hear comments about my physical appearance multiple times a day.

• "You're smaller than me!"
• "You're so little!"
• "Why are you a staff but you're so little?"
• "Why are you so small?"
• "I thought you were a student, not a staff!"
• "You're so petite!"
• "You're arm is skinny enough to reach under the bed and grab my ball!"
• "I wish I was as skinny as you!" {I nip this one in the bud}
• This 13ish-year-old girl is OBSESSED with my size because we are roughly the same size. Every time she sees me she says over and over, "You're so tiny! You're so tiny!" Today she told me that she thought she weighed more than me, which seemed insane to me since she is so small.  I shrugged her off.  But since neither the girls nor I ever get to know our weights, I guess we'll never know. 
• Although this is more with face than body, I have heard things like, "Hey! Pretty blonde staff!" or "Isn't that staff so pretty?" 
• Etc. 

• I became extremely depressed to the point where I dreaded every day and felt guilty about everything {not just food, but how I was a "failure" as a student, sister, girlfriend, daughter}. 
• I had no energy.
• My heart rate dropped under normal BPM.
• My hair started falling out.
• When I started recovering again, my body acted as if it had been injured, which it had.  For a month of two, my stomach and limbs swelled up with edema as my body brought in fluids and white blood cells to heal my damaged organs and muscles. I had little fat to begin with, so pretty soon after I started losing weight my body turning on itself as an energy source.
• Trying to eat semi-normal quantities of foods again caused heartburn and discomfort because my damaged digestive track wasn't quite sure how to process normally anymore. 

 I am not sucking in, holding my breath, flexing, or standing in any way to stretch myself taller or thinner. The frustrating thing is that I LOVE my stomach at this weight...but I hit 100 lbs when I was a tiny little cheerleader my freshman year of high school! I know that I was still a child when I hit that weight, and yet 100 lbs is the weight I was OBSESSED with from then on. I never, ever wanted to gain more weight than that, and it was when I started gaining weight my freshman year of college and on my mission that all I could think about was losing the weight again.  I hated my body when I got up to my max of 114 lbs, thinking that I was chubby and had no self control, never stopping to think that maybe an adult body was supposed to be different than a child body.

Dieses Foto wurde am 9. Mai 2019 aufgenommen.  Zu dieser Zeit ich war ich sehr krank.

 The semester is in full swing! It may only be a half of a week into classes, but we already have almost 300 pages of readings and four quizzes coming up next week. Senior year is ON.

This semester I am taking:

• Hearing Tests and Measures
• Medical Speech Pathology
• Intro to Speech Sound Disorders
• Language Disorders
• Advanced German I

I am also involved on a research team studying the effects of dyslexia and/or speech-sound disorders on reading skills, and I am beginning to TA for Hearing Science and Acoustics!

COMD girls: Rachel, me, Haylee, McKayla, Riley, Katelyn

 Haylee and I full on NERDED OUT tonight as we studied for a few hours of our Friday evening.  It turns out that all the studying we did to get 100% on our March exam about the inner ear is still paying off -- we can still remember so much from that course!

• quinoa with ground beef, roasted onions, peppers, corn, butternut squash, black beans, taco seasoning, green enchilada sauce and cheese
• whole wheat pitas stuffed with baked falafel, bell peppers, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and homemade hummus with lemon lentils on the side

An Amazon meal, circa 2012

    The biggest {and frankly most exciting} part of ED recovery has been relearning my love for food.  Gone are many of the fears that made food no longer enjoyable. No longer must I fret while I chew, forgetting the delight of sweet, of salty, or of savory. For too long I was so scared of every calorie that no bite felt worth it, unless the food was "safe" or I was just so hungry I couldn't bare it any longer.
     Recovery gets easier the longer I go along because I can eat a food and think about how good it tastes rather than if it has too many carbs.  Getting married has also given me the opportunity to cook for the man I love, and with this comes the desire to make food that is both tasty and will make us feel full. Over the past few weeks, I have made many things from scratch:

• ricotta cheese, used in a baked ziti
• BBQ and Hawaiian pizzas
• Italian chicken
• some of the 45 lbs of salmon that Dallin caught in Canada, cooked with either teriyaki sauce or with lemon and parmesan 
• Thai peanut curry noodles
• Indian chicken curry
• lemon parmesan pasta 
• mango-pinapple chicken tacos
• the Lundgreen family's famous sourdough waffles
• etc.

      Recently I have become much more open and public about my past struggles.  I have been willing to share my former struggles and my advice, because I know there are other people out there who are currently suffering.  Why stay silent when I can offer a voice of both empathy and encouragement?  It's been both incredible and sad to see how many people open up to me in return in order to tell me about their own or their friends/family members' similar struggles.  But that's why I will keep on talking, and keep on eating, trying to set that example.

     It's not like Dallin and I always had this perfect relationship.  We rarely ever got in disagreements,  but it was also a little nerve-racking to think about the future when we knew we were high school sweethearts and therefore hadn't dated around / "gotten as much experience" as much as people said we should.  And like all couples, there are always going to be little issues here and there.

     In my case, it didn't help that I had depression and anxiety and didn't realize the full effect it was having on me.  Sometimes, like when we were in San Francisco, I took it out on him.  Often though, like on Pi Day when he had arranged a fun and elaborate pie- and circle-themed datenight, I tried so so desperately to just feel happy. Dates like that were fun-- and the sad and painful feelings would go away for a little bit, but I felt nothing more than numbness. It was the very night of our Pi Day date that we pulled over on a dark street overlooking Provo, and Dallin finally said, "I feel like I'm not making you happy."
     That statement broke my heart.  Immediately I jumped up to defend him.  "Dallin, I promise, it's not you!" I said, and finally, slowly, attempted to explain for only the second time to anyone in 4.5 years, something that was really wrong inside of me.  I opened up a little bit.  Dallin, carefully, pressed further.  We both were left sobbing. Dallin finally expressed, "Katie, I think you have a problem with eating.  I think that might have something to do with this."
     I was in denial about the eating thing, but I was very embarrassed and ashamed of what I had shared with him.  Scared that he would feel trapped, that he would feel like he was was stuck dating this out-of-control girl who he couldn't leave if he wanted because I was too emotionally unstable, I tried to offer him a way out.  Since he had to leave the next morning for spring break in Arizona, I told him that we wouldn't talk for a week, and that he could do WHATEVER he wanted {including go out with other girls} for that time.
    Looking back, I realize that was my Starved Brain talking {it's actually a thing}.  Of course Dallin wasn't going to leave me and date around just days after I had admitted some very vulnerable things to him.  It probably scared the living freak out of him that I suddenly didn't want to talk.  He respected that wish for a little bit, but he called me not longer after he had left Utah to make sure that I was OK. I was happy to hear his voice. Still, even though I had brought this upon myself, it was a very long week with him away.  I was relieved to see him again and to realize that none of his feelings for me had changed during the ten days that I had given him to think through the situation-- that he was dating a girl who was out of her freaking mind.  

     At the same time though, Dallin wasted no time to get me help.  Since I refused to do anything myself, he {in his loving wisdom, bless his soul} called BYU counseling against my will and literally walked me to my emergency session. After my first-ever session with a therapist ended, Dallin was waiting on the couches and went with me to the BYU store to bye himself a snack.  He split the banana in half and tried to offer it to me, but I wouldn't take it. 
     "I already had lunch," I replied defensively.
     He cocked his head, knowing without a word that my "lunch" couldn't even count as a meager snack.  "Did you tell the therapist about the eating thing?"  
      "Dal," I protested.  "No, I told him about the other stuff. He said I have depression.  Look, I'm just trying to deal with one thing at a time here."
       "Gosh dang it Kate, I'm going to march you right back in there!"  He tugged at my hand, but I planted my feet. 
     

     That was in March.  In April, my weight dropped to its lowest as I prepared for finals.  I was no longer in denial that I had a problem with eating, but I didn't want to do anything about it because honestly I liked not eating, in that sick and twisted way.  Although I pretended to be freaked out by it, I was admittedly proud of myself for "finally" getting my weight down into the 80's.  Dallin, on the other hand, was actively seeking ways to help me.  He figured out my "safe" foods {trail mix and protein smoothies} and offered them to me almost every time I came to his house.  Heaven knows I needed any calories I was wouldn't blatantly refuse. He talked with his friend Nicole, who herself had dealt with anorexia as a teenager and had talked about her symptoms and experiences with all of his roommates a few months prior.  Dallin had picked up on some of the symptoms that I had in common with Nicole-- tearing my food with my fingers and eating it slowly...constantly baking and giving all the food I made away... 
     One day, Dallin arranged for Nicole and I to talk privately in a bedroom.  
     "I know you won't want to listen to me because you think I'm fat now." When I tried to shake my head, she called my bluff. "Trust me, I used to think exactly the same way."  
     She told me that now, her weight didn't matter as much as being healthy and being able to enjoy a brownie with her friends without stressing about it. "Katie, have you thought about what it would be like to be happy again?"  
     I honestly didn't think that was possible.  Nicole shared some very personal experiences with me, and eventually I had to sit down on the floor. 
     "You're lightheaded," she noticed, and just when I started to think that it was weird because I had eaten dinner, she added, "you haven't eaten enough." 
     Nicole was kind but blunt with me. As she talked about the possibility of getting checked into an in-patient therapy, I was mortified.  "I don't want my parents paying for my therapy!" I defended.  
     She shook her head. "Either your parents pay for your help, or they pay for your funeral.  It's that simple." 
     The statement hit me like a ton of bricks, and tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized that I was so so sick and had no idea how to change something that I didn't even want to change. I was so depressed that it made no sense for me to make choices based off of my own future well-being, because I didn't really care about my future anymore.  Nicole knew that. She'd been there.  
     "I'm here for you," she said gently.  "I know you don't want a hug, because people like us don't like touch--" {that was mostly an emotional truth, but recently I had become so physically fragile that when my boyfriend and I kissed, it felt unnaturally like I might just break} "--but I'm here for you.  And you have to promise me something.  What do you want to name your first daughter?"  
     "Vienna," I answered, eyeing her warily.  
     "The next time you have a cruel thought about yourself-- you try to tell yourself that you aren't beautiful, or that you aren't worth it-- I want you to replace your own name with Vienna's."
     "I could never say something like that to her!"
     "Exactly."




   It's not like Dallin and I always had this perfect relationship.  In September, we broke up, too anxious about the future to be able to stick together.  I relapsed a bit, yet in that entire month and all the nights I couldn't sleep, I couldn't help but think about how the way Dallin had dealt with me and my trials was such a reflection of how great a father he would be to his future daughters.  In a world where everyone is flaunting something for money -- a tiny waist for a swimsuit brand, a bubble butt for a YouTube workout channel, a lowcal entree for a trendy diet-- I realized how valuable it was that Dallin had always seen through the bulls**t that the world pushes on women.  He had always emphasized my health above ALL ELSE, and yet all the while {no matter what I weighed} always made me feel like the most beautiful girl on the planet.  When I really thought we were broken up for good, I wondered if I would ever find another guy that treated me like that.
     When he came back a month later, that was one of the reasons that I knew just as strongly as he that I wanted us to be together.  When we got engaged three months after that, that was one of the reasons I was able to shout YES so emphatically. He had always made me feel worth it. He never demeaned me or made me feel like a crazy person despite all the mental ups and downs that resulted from me starving my own brain tissue. He saw my potential and talked about it, like I was meant to be a strong and composed mother-figure somewhere down the road, I just had to figure myself out first.   

     Now, I am doing leaps and bounds better.  Something clicked after I had a mild relapse over Christmas break, and now for whatever reason I have suddenly felt completely motivated to take care of myself and my body, no matter how much food and rest it takes.  I tell myself that my eating disorder is in the past, and while that may be an illusion, it's been incredibly empowering to to put that label behind me and really focus on feeding my needs.  Dallin always keeps a close eye on me, and he is more aware of my unhealthy thoughts or decisions that I am.  He will always bring me an extra granola bar or stop what he's doing to make me an egg because he knows I'm often too hesitant to get myself another snack after a meal, even when my stomach is grumbling.  He is ALWAYS positive regarding my body, but he expresses excitement at me continuing to gain weight for my health's sake...and honestly because what man doesn't love a little more womanly shape! 

     One of my biggest fears is not being able to set a good example for Vienna and my other future daughters, and sending them the wrong message about their relationship with food and their body.  Heaven forbid they ever go down the path I took, but regardless of what trials or struggles they may face, I hope they can have people in their lives like Dallin and Nicole who truly make them feel like they deserve every ounce of health, happiness, and self-love. 

     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