Kerrie Baldwin
Tossing the Eating Disorder Goggles
Updated: May 31, 2019
But how did you do it?
How did you let go of the fear and pressures around food and weight?
How did you finally surrender to hunger and to your body’s changes during recovery?
These are questions I receive frequently. And in them I hear the despair that plagued me, too, before I took the long leap that landed me in remission. Like many of my readers, I had been flailing for the evasive lever that could halt the crushing cycle we know so well: starvation, followed by days- or weeks-long efforts to eat more, and soon enough the inevitable capitulation to anorexia’s mandate to starve.
So how did I finally reach it?
First I looked back—way back. I contemplated my shift from freely eating to anorexia at age 23. If you’re suffering with an eating disorder, you’ve made this changeover, too. If you struggle to recall being a younger person with a self-regulating appetite and weight, consider this this well-known optical illusion of the young and old woman:
