Healing From Disordered Eating: My Personal Story

In this talk, Skylar shares a deeply personal reflection about her journey with disordered eating. With unwavering honesty, she shares the challenges faced, the lessons learned, and the path forward that she’s found to more inner peace and self-acceptance. Through Skylar's vulnerable narrative, listeners gain a valuable reminder that many of our life-lessons are a continued journey and that it’s important for us to stay connected to our truth each step of the way. Note: The content of this talk makes explicit references to disordered eating and may be triggering for some listeners. This talk is not a substitute for professional help, nor is it making any scientific claims.

Transcript

I'm Skylar Liberty-Rose and today I'm sharing with you some of my personal story with regards to disordered eating.

I realize this content may be triggering for some listeners as I make explicit references to my experience of having had an eating disorder,

So I lovingly invite you to honor your own needs and boundaries if you'd like to proceed with listening.

Please know that I'm a coach but I'm not a therapist and this isn't any kind of substitute for professional help.

I'm not making any scientific claims,

I'm simply sharing some of my own story.

There's a pair of khaki linen pants in my closet with a waist that's a little higher than I'd like.

Before I bought them I kept going back and forth as to whether or not to make the purchase.

I hadn't yet eaten that day and they were already slightly snug when I tried them on in the fitting room.

But you can lose a couple of pounds and then they'd be perfect.

Anyone who's ever had a history of disordered eating knows that voice.

The one in your head that's always readily available to offer not-so-wise words.

The one that steers you away from self-acceptance,

Dangling a future vision of who you might yet become as some kind of prize.

At 49,

I'm of the opinion that every woman has or has had some kind of disordered relationship with food.

From counting carbs to earning dessert with extra exercise,

From food tracking apps to stepping on the scales each day,

Diet culture has done a number on us all.

I was 11 when a friend and I first decided to go on a diet.

I don't think we even knew what the word diet really meant,

Either in the medical sense or the popular one,

But we had an understanding that we'd somehow be bettering ourselves because of it.

I was 18 when I realised that I could binge eat what I wanted and then purge the contents from my stomach as though nothing had ever happened.

All I had to do was wipe away the mascara that would leak from my lashes while vomiting,

Clean my teeth and then ta-da!

I was good again.

Bulimia was part of my life for years.

It stemmed from a space of fear and a desire to control,

But in many ways it felt like freedom.

I got to indulge in whatever foods I wanted,

Without seemingly paying the price.

As I entered my twenties,

I struggled to feel good about my appearance.

I had never been one of the pretty girls and I constantly searched for ways to improve how I looked,

Hoping that by doing so I'd be more likely to win approval from other people,

Usually men.

I was so afraid of not fitting in,

Of not being accepted.

In those days I didn't have the confidence or the awareness to recognise how warped the societal pressures for women are and who really wins when we bow down to them.

By the time I got to my thirties,

I was newly divorced and spiralling in a very unhealthy relationship.

As soon as I left that relationship,

I tumbled straight into another one.

I had no idea how to set a boundary for myself,

Or even what I enjoyed doing outside of seeking approval from men.

I drank too much,

Smoked too much,

And I was regularly at my doctor's office with a stubborn UTI that wouldn't shift.

Everything felt out of control,

But my weight was something I could control.

Bulimia allowed me to simultaneously seek pleasure and punish myself.

I'd binge eat cookies and chocolate,

Sometimes melting them together in the microwave.

I'd cram the sugary blend into my mouth and then force it all up again minutes later.

My biggest fear was that someone would be in the house with me when I needed to purge,

And then I wouldn't be able to make myself sick.

It didn't occur to me that I had an eating disorder.

Those girls were stick-thin and emaciated.

I didn't look that way.

When I wasn't binging and purging,

I was restricting or tracking my food intake.

I bought Weight Watchers meals and diligently added up my points each day.

When I was hungry,

I'd eat cherry tomatoes and cucumber slices from their approved list of zero-point foods.

In the evenings,

I'd take a long bath to stop myself from snacking.

I'd weigh myself every single morning.

The number on the scales was a way to measure not only my weight but my worth.

I'd stare down at the dial and hold my breath in anticipation.

My weight had plummeted,

But it wasn't enough.

A work friend told me that a colleague of ours thought my weight loss had gone too far.

I was thrilled.

There was no hard or fast stop to the cycle of disordered eating that had become my norm,

But by my mid-thirties,

A number of things began to shift.

I had sessions with a therapist,

Arranged for by my employers who were concerned about my health.

I started to see a link between the way I spoke to myself and the way I harmed myself.

I began taking yoga classes and found solace in having a spiritual practice.

For the first time in my life,

I felt a connection to my body in an entirely different way.

I was also hospitalised with severe pancreatitis and hooked up to an IV for a week as my body tried to repair itself.

All of these things collided and became an awakening for me.

It was hard to practice kindness and compassion to myself on my yoga mat and then punish my body with restricting or binging food afterwards.

It didn't make sense to make progress in my therapy sessions and then have no boundaries in my relationships.

It was humbling to be critically ill in hospital and realise that I had been hurting myself in many ways for many years.

Over time,

I tried to mend my relationship with food.

The instances of binging and purging became less frequent.

However,

I was still monitoring my food intake and I was still weighing myself every morning.

It wasn't until I was planning a six month trip to India and my yoga teacher gently asked me whether I planned to lug bathroom scales around with me that I realised how terrifying it felt for me to be in my body without knowing what it weighed.

The next decade saw me do a lot of self-inquiry and self-nurturing.

As a writer and coach whose work was focused on helping women,

I began to understand how many of us are caught up in a web of what the rest of the world wants.

It doesn't occur to us to centre our own needs because we've never been shown we can.

As I started to lift the veil on diet culture,

I became much more aware of how deeply ingrained it is within our societies and how we've normalised commenting on weight to one another.

Like the way I'd been almost repeatedly congratulated for weight loss,

Even when I was at my unhealthiest,

Physically and mentally.

The conversations with friends about how we were being good by opting for low-fat or sugar-free versions of food.

The friend's mum who sympathised about the recent bout of gastroenteritis I'd had and then smiled and said,

Great for weight loss though,

Isn't it?

The acquaintance who warned me against getting a cortisone shot to try to relieve intense sciatic pain saying,

Be careful,

You can put on weight with those.

Our obsession with weight,

Which is not a world away from our obsession with youth,

Has us constantly chasing an imaginary idea of ourselves that we'll always be better than the body we're in.

We're never allowed to simply be.

There's always something to strive for,

Slim down for,

Minimise,

Eradicate,

Erase.

No wonder we are so tired.

Which brings me back to the khaki pants.

I was going through my closet the other day and when I came across the pants that I hadn't been sure about buying,

I decided to try them on again.

The tags were still on them,

A testimony to my uncertainty about purchasing them in the first place.

And as I went to button them up,

I noticed they were even more snug than they'd been in the fitting room last fall.

My heart sank and my brain scrambled to find a solution to this perceived problem.

And just like magic or muscle memory,

The answer was right there.

You can restrict your food again.

You can eat less.

You can take up less space.

And then,

No,

We don't do that anymore.

I'm not sure why I refer to myself in a plural sense when my compassionate inner voice rises up to meet my critical inner voice,

But I do.

Maybe because I'm speaking to my body and my mind.

Or maybe because I'm speaking to me at 49,

33,

18,

11 and every other age that the world convinced me I wasn't good enough.

I might not have a complete handle on my relationship with food or my body image,

But I know one thing for sure.

I'm not going back.

I've managed to mend some things.

It's been a very long time since I've made myself sick.

A decade,

I think.

Although the thought still crosses my mind from time to time,

Like it did two weeks ago when I ate a Hershey's bar,

Marshmallows,

Popcorn and cookies as I tried to satisfy a sudden sugar craving.

The shame snuck up on me afterwards,

Catching me off guard,

Offering me a way out.

We don't do that anymore,

I reminded myself,

And I went for a walk and called my husband instead.

I still weigh myself almost every day.

It's not something I'm especially proud of,

But I refuse to be ashamed of it either.

That's what diet culture does.

It has us measuring and pressuring ourselves in every possible way,

And then it has us hating ourselves for getting stuck in such a miserable cycle.

I'm not sure that I'll ever reach an entirely peaceful place when it comes to my body or the food I put in it,

But what I care about most is that I'm honest with myself,

And kind to myself,

And patient.

I'm the young girl who thought she had to look a certain way in order to be accepted.

I'm the middle-aged woman with half a century's worth of conditioning about my body.

And somewhere between the two,

I'm figuring how to meet myself with love.

P.

S.

I'm getting rid of the khaki pants.

Thank you so much for listening to this talk.

I hope you found some value in it.

Perhaps you have some personal experience of some of the things I've referenced,

And if so,

Once again,

I encourage you to seek professional help if you're struggling with your relationship with food.

If there's anything you'd like to share with me in the comments,

Then I'd love to hear from you.

Take care,

And go gently with yourself.

Reviews

So raw so real and beautiful. I resonated on so many levels. I also broke free from disordered eating with the help of yoga. Thank you for sharing your story. May your words be a tonic to anyone going through the pain shame and burden of an eating disorder.

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating my whole life, I appreciated this insightful and heartfelt talk. There were many points that resonated with me. Thank you

Thanks for sharing your story 🙏for me also yoga has been my main path to self acceptance and compassion. With yoga ( in all its aspects ) it has become obvious to me how my anorexia was a symptom and a coping mechanism - today at 60 I feel very good about myself and hope to be able to help others 🤗🐴

Thank you for sharing your story, Skylar! I can empathize with struggling with an eating disorder, as I went through a battle with anorexia. It's important for us to share our experiences to show others that they are not alone in their struggles. I believe that with support, anyone can overcome this serious illness. While I do not like to claim I am fully recovered, as that implies perfection which I am far from, I can confidently say that my disorder no longer controls me.