There are mixed opinions when it comes to sharing one’s personal story. Some are adamantly opposed, believing it crosses professional boundaries. Others are an open bag, leaving nothing out. I fall somewhere in the middle.
Sharing our story is an opportunity to say “I get it! I can relate to your struggle, you’re not alone.” It can communicate the why behind what we’re passionate about and pour our time into It’s also an opportunity to proclaim God’s goodness, faithfulness, and work in our lives. I recently heard “Our mess is God’s message.”
But too many details can fuel comparison. And women, in particular, are experts when it comes to comparing and measuring ourselves against one another.
So I fall somewhere in the middle. I want you to know that I get it! I really do. To know why I do what I do. To better understand why I so strongly desire for women to think about and experience food and eating differently.
I know what it’s like to have a severely unhealthy relationship with food. To be consumed with good and bad, healthy and unhealthy. To grasp for control through food. For food to elicit feelings of guilt, anxiety, and fear.
I also know what it’s like to journey away from this. To walk the very long and difficult road of reframing how you think about food and your body. To come to the place where you never want to go back to where you were, and don’t want anyone else to be stuck in that same place.
So before you think that dietitians have it together when it comes to food or that I couldn’t possibly understand where you’re at with food and your struggles with eating, here’s a little of my story and what I’ve learned along the way.
“Our stories are opportunities to proclaim God’s goodness, faithfulness, and work in our lives.”
The backstory
I recognize that so many eating disorders, disordered eating, diets, and body image struggles stem from childhood or adolescent traumas. This isn’t my story, and I’m deeply sorry if it is yours.
But I, like you, wasn’t deaf to culturally normal views of food and bodies. I read magazines that talked about food and exercise, I heard the comments from women around me, I had friends who struggled with their weight, and I received comments about my body.
As most of us do, I started to think of food in terms of good, healthy, bad, and junk. In high school I adhered to a self-imposed rule to eat only good and healthy foods during the week, and whatever I wanted on the weekends (you can imagine how this went). I started to dabble in the world of dieting, although I would never have thought of myself as being on a diet.
It was also in these high school years that my fascination with physiology and curiosity about nutrition grew. Paired with a growing preoccupation with food and my own body, becoming a dietitian seemed like the perfect career choice. However, dietetics is a competitive program that starts by pummeling you with science. I was busy and stressed, striving to achieve. It was during this season that those seemingly innocent food rules morphed into an eating disorder.
Eating challenges are complex
I say this because I can’t point to something specific that “caused” my struggle with food and the war against my body. I certainly have traits that lend themselves to developing an eating disorder – perfectionism, desire for control and order, black and white thinking. But not everyone with these traits ends up struggling with food. And people without these traits do.
Personality plays a role, genetics factor in, and environment is important (social ideals and personal experiences). There isn’t just one root cause. Eating disorders and disordered eating are not simply a byproduct of vanity, the desire for thinness. They aren’t simply gluttony, where individuals just can’t stop eating. They also aren’t just mental health disorders that we are powerless against.
But I can confidently say that they are the result of sin and brokenness. They are part of living in a broken world where:
- We don’t love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, souls and minds
- We worship the created instead of the Creator
- We look for fulfillment apart from the one who truly fulfills
- We grasp for control instead of trusting our Creator
- We place our identity outside of Christ
- We experience broken health, which includes mental health disorders
I became consumed with food
In my first two years of post-secondary, when I wasn’t labouring over some form of chemistry, I spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about food. When I could and couldn’t eat. What I could and couldn’t eat. What I weighed and how the number changed. Food was a source of stress and anxiety. It was a means of control and order, of manipulating my body. Food was certainly not received with thankfulness or appreciated as the good gift it is. My health plummeted- mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
But here is where I think less detail is best. I don’t think it matters that you know if I met diagnostic criteria for an ED, how much my weight changed (up or down), the diets I tried or didn’t, etc. These details won’t help you in your journey towards a healthy relationship with food.
Even more, we need to acknowledge that eating disorders don’t fit a specific mold. Yes, there are specific diagnostic criteria regarding anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder and other specified/unspecified feeding and eating disorders (OSFED). But you can fall short of these criteria and still have a broken relationship with food that wreaks havoc in your life. You don’t have to reach a certain level of sickness, thinness, or fatness to finally take disordered eating seriously. If you have a preoccupation with health, weight, what you eat, etc., it is worth seeking help.
You don’t have to reach a certain level of sickness, thinness, or fatness to finally take disordered eating seriously.
The learning I didn’t sign up for
While I was busy studying to become a dietitian – acquiring knowledge en masse on nutrients, digestion, food in the prevention and treatment of disease – I booked my first appointments with a psychologist and RD, both Christian women who specialized in eating disorder treatment. I met regularly with these women for years. We worked through irrational thoughts and fears, the physical and spiritual aspects of my eating disorder, anxiety and more. It was hard and messy. And it took a long, long time.
But I’m recovered. I don’t have an eating disorder anymore. It is amazing to consider God’s faithfulness through these years, the work that He was doing. And not just related to food, because it’s never only about food.
Now, do I ever have untrue thoughts about food? Yup. Do I continue to work through incorrect ways of viewing food? I sure do. Do I look at myself in the mirror and see myself incorrectly? Mm-hmm. Again, I get it. But I also believe that we will see more and more clearly as we set our eyes on things above and not on things below. This certainly isn’t a linear process, but we can continue to make progress until Jesus comes back and makes all things new.
This is a process worth engaging in. Not simply to stop thinking about food incorrectly or to think about it less, but to view and treat food in a way that glorifies God. Because it is a gift from Him and we are called to glorify Him in how we receive it (1 Co. 10:31).
This is why I do what I do
I pursued dietetics for the wrong reasons. But along the way, my reasons for continuing in this line of work have changed. The initial change in my thinking was to spread the message about Intuitive Eating, the anti-diet revolution, and Health at Every Size® so that women could be rescued from the throes of unhealthy relationships with food. And this fueled my passion for many years.
But my heart for this work has evolved. I still see value in the principles of Intuitive Eating. I think dieting is unhelpful in most, if not all, situations, and focusing on size as an indicator of health misses the mark and is based on shaky evidence. But, for those who would like, I have found incredible value in weaving the truth of the gospel through this work.
So here we are
I have a four-year degree in Food and Nutrition, an internship that taught me practical skills, and ten plus years of experience fueled by the fact that I’m a bit of a nerd and really do find nutrition fascinating.
I have my own experiences and live in the same broken world that you do.
I have a desire that we start to think about food, eating, and nutrition differently than we currently do. In a way that celebrates what God has given us rather than fears, regrets, second-guesses, overthinks, or judges what we eat.
And this has culminated in a private practice that serves women with eating disorders and disordered eating, women who struggle with chronic dieting, and those who want a more peaceful relationship with food.
