I Worked Hard To Recover From My Eating Disorder. Then Ozempic Came Along.

It has been a decade since I have written about eating disorder recovery.

I got tired of writing about it — mostly because I thought it had been solved. I thought we had all embodied the body positive ethos and were ready to feed not only our hunger, but our passions and curiosities. Collectively, we had decided that we are more than how our bodies look and that diet culture wasn’t relevant. We had learned by now that we could be healthy at any size.

And then, a “miracle drug” was introduced, and it began to feel like everyone who had claimed to love their body or embrace body positivity was willing to empty their bank accounts to become thin.

I can’t help but think, “Was I the only one really trying to divest from diet culture?”

I was a competitive figure skater from ages 5 to 18, and so my coaches, mother and nutritionist all demanded that I shrink. From the age of 8 years old, my body became the problem. If I was going to ice skate, I was going to have to shrink. The nutritionist, who I visited weekly, weighed me and told me what I was allowed to consume.

By the age of 12, I was eating either one 100-calorie pack or half of a Think Thin bar as a snack, and never daring to eat more than 1,200 calories a day. Warm protein shakes or fat-free cheese for protein. When it wasn’t time to eat— which was all I could think about, when I could eat next — six cans of Diet Coke felt reasonable.

Ice skating was no longer about love or passion — it was about dedication and discipline. So many implicit rules that still ring in my head today: Egg yolks were determined to have too much fat; so did avocado. As my body was starting to move through the motions of puberty, the elements that my body needed to survive ― carbs and natural fats ― were deemed my enemy.

Figure skating was not the only thing dedicated to the cult of thinness: Tyra Banks called size 6 women fat and People Magazine looked at Jessica Simpson in disgust when she was the same size, claiming she had let herself go. No social media, but celebrity tabloids were loud enough to claim their space. One particular article in Star sticks with me to this day: “What Mary-Kate Olsen eats in a day.” One crab cake for lunch. I couldn’t help but admire her brilliance: how decadent, how protein-packed. I wanted to whittle myself down to bone.

By the age of 12, I lost the weight that everyone around me was insistent that I lose. It felt like I had won a silent war. My skating peers and the mothers at my school asked me how I had managed to shrink. The glory of having done what no one else could: disappear in plain sight.

It wasn’t until my second semester of college, no longer figure skating and removed from my childhood context, that I came to on my hands and knees in front of my childhood toilet after purging eight times in one day. I could no longer ignore the ways in which I was making myself sick. I went back to school, got a therapist and began eating disorder recovery in earnest. I was 19.

Once I could name this invisible war I’d been waging against myself, I couldn’t help but feel the rage I had once vomited up. I was furious at all of the cultural forces that were endorsing and supporting my, and all women’s, destruction. I realized that convincing women that their bodies are the only project worthy of pursuing keeps them too hungry to pursue anything else.

On the cusp of my adulthood, I could no longer ignore that my hunger kept me silent and hyper-focused on something other than pursuing my interests or making an impact in the world.

The body positive ethos of the 2010s felt hopeful to me, not unrealistic, and it became the foundation of my eating disorder recovery. I learned that I could be healthy at any size. The idea that people are concerned about another person’s health when they bring up their weight is not only damaging but wholly untrue — size is not always an indicator of health. I knew that no one really cared about my health, they cared that I looked thin, pretty.

My therapist once told me that you should give yourself at least the length of your eating disorder to get over your eating disorder. Seven years. I held onto the number seven, as if it were the release date from my self-imposed prison.

Body neutrality, a practice that is more akin to my practice of body positivity, taught me how to remain neutral about my body. When I stopped dieting and just let myself pay attention to what my hunger felt like, I could learn how to not only nourish my body but my soul. When I looked at the mirror, the self-hating thoughts would float up, but I did not engage. And slowly but surely, after over a decade of not engaging with those thoughts, they disappeared.

It is rare for me to have a bad body day. And when I do? It is because there is something I do not want to name, and I am falling back on a well-worn defense mechanism: My body is the problem. Which, of course, keeps the real problem alive longer.

Thirteen years later, my body is not a prison but a safe-haven. My weight has been up and it has been down. I am fine either way. With a childhood history of extensive, intensive dieting, my body is still recalibrating.

After I got sober in 2021, I lost 20 pounds solely because I had stopped taking bong rips and ordering three slices of cake to my door. And the way in which people reacted — the celebration at my shrinking body — reminded me of what it felt like to be 16 again, enlivened by the way in which people were celebrating my disappearance, not admonishing me for putting food in my mouth.

It felt dangerous to name the glory I felt — accomplishing the fantasy I had long dreamed of, without trying. But with a decade of eating disorder recovery under my belt, I had to pause and reflect on what was really happening: After a traumatic ending to an engagement and hitting rock bottom, my body was traumatized. If I ate past full, I instantly felt the need to purge, an impulse that I thought long dead that was still alive and well in my body. I had to listen to my body, for my physical, spiritual and emotional health, for the first time in 11 years.

But this is the thing about weight loss: The weight comes back. It always does. Every time you diet, your body’s natural set weight actually gets higher, so you will gain it back and then some. This is just the science of dieting, it is just how it goes.

So of course, with more time sober, I gained the weight back. I found myself mourning this moment when I lost weight without even thinking, despite it being one of the most traumatic periods of time in my life. The times I was the thinnest always coincided with my most miserable.

My second year sober, while walking through the Atlanta airport, every advertisement shouted “LOSE WEIGHT, GLP-1’S.” I opened my Instagram, and strangers seemed to halve themselves overnight, all while shouting, “I thought you all were supposed to be body positive,” when people said anything but praise. Influencers who had built careers off of the idea of body acceptance were electing to change their bodies, to become the very thing they said their audience did not have to be.

No one is willing to name it: That if granted the chance to be thin, we will pay. We will pay $500-$1,000 a month. We will stomach the nausea if it means shrinking without trying. That gallbladder removal and pancreatitis isn’t that big of a deal if you are finally thin. That as long as we can be the thing that the culture has claimed will make us be the person we wish we can be, we will pay any price.

Let me be clear: Losing weight CAN be a body positive choice. A sustainable effort that takes time, not an instantaneous click of a button. Changing your diet, incorporating exercise, negotiating the reality of a healthy lifestyle can be a body positive choice. But it takes time — it is not an overnight transformation. Because what happens when the drug stops and your hunger comes back? The cycle continues, up and down, up and down.

I watch as the new Ozempic-bodied people shame pictures of their bigger bodies and highlight their current state. No one is willing to say: I am willing to do anything to be thin, even if it impacts my future health. Or worse: I will do anything to be thin because that is all I have ever wanted to be.

And the worst part? If you aren’t willing to take the miracle drug, you are seen as doing a disservice to your health. But I refuse to be gaslit. This isn’t about health, it’s about vanity. They are just regurgitating the toxic messaging that we have all been force fed.

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