One Year Later — When Healthier Is Still Unhealthy :

Relapse was something doctors always warned me about and maybe even expected from me. When I left for my sophomore year at Brown, my Eating Disorder treatment team required that I be seen weekly to get my vitals and weight checked in order to ward off a potential relapse. As the months went by and recovery seemed like less and less a part of my life, everyone stopped worrying about a potential relapse. I was in a safe zone in everyone’s mind, including my own. Dietician, therapy, and doctor’s appointments all seemed like an annoyance rather than a necessity and eventually, I stopped going. I wanted to be a “normal” college student and forget about my eating disorder history. Now, here I am, after another hospitalization, trying to figure out what “normal” is going to mean for me.

After I wrote my first blog post one year ago, I received a tremendous amount of support from people from all corners of my life. Some told me my recovery story was an inspiration and I received messages from people from all around the country connecting with me over the similarities in our experiences. At least a few times a month following my post, I received emails or Facebook messages from both friends and strangers asking me for advice on ways to help their friend, their roommate, their sister, or themselves. I answered them all eagerly and invested my energy in trying to give them any advice I could. I spoke at a number of eating disorder awareness events and was interviewed by people who wanted to hear my recovery story. I felt like people viewed me as a role model for eating disorder recovery, but more than that, I felt like if I ever began to restrict again, I would be a hypocrite.

I had a wonderful sophomore year at Brown. I was able to compete gymnastics again which I had been told, at one point, would never be a possibility. I loved all of my classes, had fun weekends out with my friends and enjoyed traveling and competitions with my team. Though I was able to maintain my weight and stay healthy for the whole school year, the eating disorder thoughts never fully went away. They certainly were not at the forefront of my mind like freshman year, but the voice in my head still made it hard for me to eat freely, order in restaurants, or be 100% present with my friends. Yes, recovery brought me more happiness and relief than I ever imagined and there were many days and even weeks, where I felt like I could take on the world. I truly did believe I was almost entirely recovered but the voice in my head was always there — I just learned to fight it. I felt like everyone expected me to be completely recovered, so I didn’t feel like I could tell people how much food still consumed my mind.

As the semester came to a close and the stress of finals began, I could feel my urges to restrict becoming stronger. As this was happening, I also began to actively seek out answers for the cystic acne that I had been battling all year. The acne was a side-effect of recovery and was essentially caused by my body going through puberty all over again at age nineteen. I had seen a handful of dermatologists throughout the school year and tried every prescription imaginable. As a last resort before going on Accutane, I got an appointment with a skin specialist for the day I arrived home in California. That skin specialist told me that my acne was being worsened by my diet and told me to eliminate dairy, peanut butter, soy, and processed foods from my diet. Desperate for any remedy, I discussed with my mom ways to eliminate these foods and find comparable substitutes without having their absence from my diet affect my weight. I had been doing so well keeping my weight stable for almost a year that I felt confident I could handle these types of dietary restrictions.

I was home for one month before going back to Providence to take a summer course and I spent it coaching gymnastics and working out. I was eating exactly as the skin specialist had advised me and was fixated on maintaining a diet that would help my skin. At the end of June, I flew back to Brown where I lived off campus. I was interning for two organizations related to women’s empowerment and was working hard to get ready for preseason in the fall. I felt like I was in the best shape of my life and my skin was beginning to improve. Within a week of being back at Brown and living on my own, however, I began to lose weight unintentionally. Losing a small amount of weight was all that my body needed as a trigger and my judgment quickly became compromised. I began to restrict all over again. I was so afraid of making my skin worse that I had become completely obsessed with trying to eat “healthy”. I re-downloaded “My Fitness Pal”, became fully engulfed in restricting, and began back down a dangerous road.

The effects of restriction took a toll on my body faster than I even thought possible. I was not weighing myself, but had somehow become convinced that I only needed to eat 1,200 calories a day. I worked out everyday and tracked the number of steps I took around campus. To be honest, I was not even sure why I was doing half the things I did, but I felt like I couldn’t stop. I was dizzy every time I stood up. I had trouble thinking clearly. The hair I worked so hard to grow back started falling out again. I couldn’t sleep because I was so hungry, but my mind wouldn’t let me get out of bed to eat something. I had bags under my eyes and my fingernails had started to turn purple. And as glamorous as all this sounds, I was also peeing every five minutes as a result of poor nutrition. I started to get scared. Every morning, I would tell myself that today I was going to try and eat more, yet every night I still went to bed hungry. By the time I told my mom that I was restricting again, I didn’t realize that it was already too late. I made an appointment with my nutritionist who made me get my vitals checked. My heart rate was low enough that I had to go straight to the hospital.

I was admitted into the same hospital where I was treated last year. I was placed on bed rest and had to go through the re-feeding process all over again. Luckily, my mom and brother were already coming to the East Coast to look at colleges and were able to stay with me in the hospital. It was a long eight days and I watched more episodes of “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” than I am proud of. Although it was comforting to have the nurses know me from last time, I also realized that being a twenty-year old in a children’s hospital is absolutely not something I wish to endure again. I was discharged with the plan of staying off campus with my mom so that she could continue to help me maintain the high calorie meal plan and minimal activity that I needed in order to keep my vitals stable.

I lost ten pounds in a month and though some people might be able to lose weight like that and stay healthy, I simply can’t. My body is sensitive and the reality is, I will always have to be careful that I maintain my weight. As an athlete and someone with a fast metabolism, my body cannot handle yo-yo dieting of any sort. What may be a normal amount of food for some of my friends, is extremely unhealthy for me. We all have very different nutritional needs and I am slowly learning to honor mine, rather than ignore them.

I finished my summer course this week and am now headed back to California before the fall semester starts. Rather than trying to pretend my eating disorder history is over, I have come to realize that this is simply a part of me. This past year, I was so focused on labeling myself as “recovered” that I neglected to remember that in actuality, recovery is more of a constant. I am not sure if my urges to restrict or always pick the lowest calorie food on a menu will ever fully go away, but in the meantime, I have to learn to work around them.

As I think about the fall and talk with my treatment team about what is the best way for me to maintain my health in college, I realize that there is no such thing as the normal college experience. It’s been said a thousand times before, but everyone has something that makes them different and everyone has something they battle internally. Maybe normal for me means that I have to go to the doctor’s fairly often and can never skip a meal. Maybe normal for me means that my purse is actually filled 50% with snacks at all times. Maybe normal for me means that I am going to need someone to eat with me and help me pick my meals during my first few months back at school. Rather than worrying about what qualifies as the normal college experience, I’m going to find what works.