Here's What Nobody Admits About "High-Functioning" Eating Disorders, As A 20-Something Who's Sick And Tired Of Having One

Posted 8 minutes ago

Editor’s note: This post contains discussion of eating disorders, body image, and mental health.

Hey! My name is Abby, and I have long accepted that I have body dysmorphia. Although that has been a fact since I was 20, even younger, it was never the whole truth.

As I reach my mid-twenties, I acknowledge that I am currently fighting a brutal war with my body. I am living with a secret shame, one I have kept hidden until recently. It has never consumed me as much as in the past two years, robbing me of my ability to enjoy my life to the fullest.

And now, I’m going from zero to 100 by sharing that shame on the internet, including all the nasty, horrible parts that nobody seems to talk about.

How it all began

They say perfectionists and type A personalities are more susceptible to eating disorders and body hyperfixations, and that rings true for me. But my catalyst was a long-term relationship where my partner showed little romantic interest in me for months on end and refused to communicate about it, resulting in my slashed confidence.

I was no longer sexy, I assumed. My appeal had vanished, and my subconscious convinced itself that I was to blame. Once I began working out to cope with the chaos of my life, subsequently lost weight without even noticing it, and then had my first heartbreak, my control mechanism was bound to be food and my body.

Living with the monster

A new greatest fear shot to the top of my list: gaining weight. I loved being fit, and it was never about my appearance, but the aesthetic benefits of my new routine sure didn’t hurt, and I felt a surge of dopamine and pride emerging from a spin class and seeing the calories burned on my Apple Watch. And whenever I’d go on vacation, I could no longer immerse myself in relaxation, because I was suddenly crippled by the fear that I’d come home two weeks later two sizes bigger from my “reckless” habits.

But my relationship with exercise was normal and healthy compared to my newfound, toxic love-hate relationship with food. There is no word to describe this all-consuming obsession — every other thought in my brain could be categorized into either “I love food” or “I feel guilty for eating this.” Every mention of a meal would send my brain into a spiral; eating became both the highlight of every day and my biggest source of anxiety and fear.

I paid excessive attention to my meal choices, ensuring they were healthy enough but also very substantial, to hold me over until my next sacred meal time. I took up my COVID hobby of intermittent fasting, starving myself until 12 p.m. every day — until my dietician I started seeing later on when I lost my period made me give it up.

I despised eating around other people, making excuses not to go for dinner with friends, and internally beating myself up viciously when I saw or even heard of a friend not eating as much as me at a given meal. I hated myself for finishing my plate, but I couldn’t help myself. Many moments, I wished I had the self-control to avoid food entirely, feeling jealous of the stick-thin girls with oh-so-"glamourous" anorexia or bulimia. I just like food too much for that. Shame on me.

A trap of my own making

Being present was never possible, especially when food was in the equation. And my friends and family had no clue. While I was this bubbly, happy persona sitting across from them over a table of appetizers, it was all a facade. Internally, I was 100% focused on the never-ending conversation I was having with myself about the food on the table, or how my body looked, or how much I’d eaten that day compared to the person across from me.

I could not claw my way out of this narrative, as much as I tried, although I feared if I ever stopped listening to that voice, I’d become fat. So I remained stuck in this horror story of my own making, my joy and life dictated by this monster in my brain that terrorized me into prioritizing my fears over the people that mattered most to me.

And what sucks was, I looked great and I knew it. Sure, I’d always look sideways in every mirror I passed to ensure I looked “thin enough,” and made a habit of sucking my stomach in whenever I could — but I still never felt so confident in my body’s physical appearance and strength. On the outside, I was healthy, with normal eating habits and an average BMI. That reinforced my obsession and strengthened my fear that my body would change if I loosened the reins on this evil control.

Nowhere to escape

To top it all off, this obsession was born at an awful time in the world: during the rise of ultra-thin celebrities and the alarming craze of GLP-1s. This worsened my already-awful relationship with my body, as I’m sure it did for thousands of other women. I literally couldn’t sit through certain movies without fixating on the stars’ weight, and subsequently feeling huge in comparison.

Sure, it was unrealistic to hope for a perfect world of body-neutral content and an explore page full of encouragement. But I certainly didn’t expect pop culture to initiate such damaging levels of “thinspiration,” which was essentially force-fed into the brain of anyone on social media. It seemed like every other conversation was about GLP-1s, and every celebrity was getting smaller and smaller, which only reinforced my terrorizing worry of weight gain.

Opening up...reluctantly

I was terrified the first time I spoke any of these thoughts aloud — I hated myself for having them, partially because I knew it was a hideous part of me, but also because admitting I was obsessing over my relationship with food felt like shouting “I’m a pig!” from the rooftops.

But my period was now gone for over six months, this voice was alive in my head for 1.5 years, and my dietician encouraged me to tell my therapist about it. So I did, my fear of judgement never higher, even from a licensed professional who has certainly heard worse than a 20-something woman with eating problems and body dysmorphia.

I was never more honest than in those sessions, finally elaborating on my intrusive thoughts in detail instead of jokingly chalking it up to “body issues” like I’d been doing thus far whenever the topic came up. And something surprising happened: opening up left me feeling lighter. It was subtle, but apparent.

My therapist began challenging me to exposure therapy tasks, like getting rid of my Apple Watch (scary), going on vacation without any guilt-induced workout sessions (scarier), and always saying “yes” to dinner invitations from friends (terrifying). Finally, the vicious voice in my head had an external challenger. I practiced catching my thoughts about food and comparison, counteracting them with reminders of how irrational, untrue, and unhelpful these criticisms were.

Confiding in friends and loved ones was one of the biggest challenges, and not just because most couldn’t comprehend the gravity of the issue until I delved into details. Why? Well, because “everyone has body issues.” I knew their intention was to make me feel seen, but instead, this left me feeling misunderstood. Sure, everyone has body issues, but have you ever not attended a dinner with your best friend for fear of eating in front of them? Didn’t think so.

Still, they tried, and I found much relief and solace in opening up to the ones who really did get it, the people who ensured I not only felt seen, but deeply understood.

The here and now

And now I'm putting these words on paper, something I certainly couldn’t have done a year ago. I still struggle with everything I’ve described thus far, but now I have a growing annoyance with this crippling burden. I recognize that it’s destroying my ability to enjoy my life, and I feel a strong desire to get past it.

I view the voice scrutinizing my body and food in a negative light. Though it still holds power over me, I now wish to dethrone it, recognizing that no consequence or body change is worse than continuing to be controlled, self-shamed, and debilitated.

And the truth is, I know I will overcome this. I have always been strong, and committed to bettering myself. There is nobody who can do it besides me — good thing, because I wholeheartedly believe in my ability to change. And there is nobody I’d trust to fight this battle more than myself.

• Abby Zinman

  BuzzFeed Staff

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