How to be an ally to a friend with an eating disorder
Every week I meet with my friend, Holly, on Monday afternoons to record Rise and Resist podcast. Each week we talk about what we’ve been up to, what we are eating, answer some listener questions, and then usually we meander our way to a topic. Nine times out of ten, we talk about fitness, of course, because that’s what we do on R+R. Deadlifts, burpees, gear. You know- just your average thing 30(ish) year old women obsess over, right?
This week we talked about something a little deeper than our squat (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) We talked about how to be ally to a friend with a (confirmed or suspected) eating disorder. When we finally hit stop on the recorder, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a really long time. Raw. A little scared. And like I knew this was a topic that both needed more attention and needed to be out in the world. I also felt unsure that everything I said was right, and like our opinions were just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what could be a larger conversation.
Here are a few tips Holly and I came up with for how to be an ally to a struggling friend.
If you notice someone’s body has gotten smaller, try not to shower them with compliments. This is perhaps a given if someone already has a confirmed eating disorder, but I want to talk about before that happens.
When I first started restricting my food, it wasn’t because I was necessarily aware that I was about to have an ED. I was heartbroken and unable to eat or sleep, I was a crying mess, and weight was literally falling off of my body. MANY people (doctors, people I was close to, strangers) told me I looked great, and that seed planted in my head and was really hard to get rid of.
I believe we can be an ally to people with eating disorders everywhere by not thin praising, or bringing up someone’s weight loss as if it were their paramount achievement in life. I know a lot of people work really hard to lose weight, but I stand by the assertion that in general, unsolicited body comments run the gamut between downright tacky to just plain damaging. We can do better!
If you see something, say something. This may seem contrary to my previous suggestion, but I truly believe it isn’t, because asking someone what’s up when you notice a change isn’t the same as blindly praising it. I suggest being gentle with your approach, but also using logic around whom you’re speaking with. (IE make sure the level of friendship that you’re at with the person can hold the weight of such a complicated conversation.)
If someone seems to have increased anxiety around food, social eating, or body image, a “hey, how are you doing lately? I’ve noticed XYZ behavior” may be a good idea. Physical changes can be really sensitive to approach, and I often tend to steer clear of them, but my experience has shown me that usually eating disorders can be identified by far more than how a body looks. When asking someone if they are having an okay relationship with food and body, try to be open, honest, and forgiving. Accept that they might not want to talk to you about this thing, but also that they might be waiting for an opportunity to open up to a trusted confidant. When you ask someone about this subject, don’t have expectations around their response.
If someone does indeed have an eating disorder, its time to decide your boundaries. Supporting someone through an ED is an incredible thing to do, and can also be incredibly draining. It is okay to offer support in some ways, and know that you can’t do so in all ways. In my recovery I had friends that would offer to eat with me, but were not willing to listen to me trash my body. That is a perfectly acceptable, reasonable, and okay boundary. We all have to take care of ourselves and our hearts, and having boundaries is a great way to do just that.
Direct communication works best. No one likes to hear that they’re looking sickly through a long and winding game of telephone. If you have concern about someone’s health and well-being, it really is best to talk with them about it directly instead of talking to someone else. (an exception to this would be talking to someone with a confidentiality agreement, like a therapist!) It can totally be difficult to not discuss someone’s situation with others, especially if there is a drastic change in appearance, but I swear that no matter how good your intentions are, its very painful to hear that someone has something to say about your body or your behavior that they haven’t said to your face.
Be prepared for rough days, and be prepared to be forgiving. Eating disorders are physical, sure, but they are also mental illnesses. They trigger depression, anxiety, and PTSD and, alternately, depression, anxiety, and PTSD can also trigger eating disorders. Often, the last behavior to leave someone with an eating disorder is obsessive thoughts about food, numbers, and calories. Those obsessive thoughts can make it really hard to always have good days.
Even when we look fine, ED thoughts can continue to plague us, which sounds scary, but is mostly just something that those in recovery eventually learn to work with. When your beloved eating-disorder-havin’ friend has an off day, it is your responsibility to treat them with the same tender kindness that you would someone struggling with other mental illnesses. You’re friend will get through this, and if you let them know you have their back, it will be all-the-easier (though, still not easy of course.)
Eating disorders thrive on both guilt and shame, so if possible, do your best not to contribute to that. Confronting someone about having an eating disorder may very well trigger shame, and that’s not anyone’s fault. But I think stressing that you are approaching the scenario with love and support and that guilt is not the aim is important.
Openness, honesty, forgiveness and understanding…if your actions fit into at least a couple of those categories, they are likely to help in some way. Sometimes the way that supporting someone with eating disorder helps them is not immediately apparent, but that’s okay. Recovery takes time, and for all the brilliant, amazing, and incredible people I’ve met who’ve also struggled with food, I can almost guarantee the investment will be worth it.
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I’ve had a lot of people in life during my recovery, that have used a lot of tactics to help support me. Just as eating disorders are entirely uncomfortable and complicated, allyship can be too. These suggestions are merely from my experience, and as everyone is different, they might not work for all people.
What did I forget? What would you like to add? What’s the best way you support or have been supported?
That one time I got married and it was the coolest day of my entire life.
So. Sometimes you intend to take a little break, and it ends up being an actually kind of large one.
I never meant to take so many weeks off of blogging, but life happened, and it was really big, and I kind of just had to participate. I have so many things to tell you about (I love my readers intensely, and truly missed writing here) but the abridged version is this:
I got married.
I went to Kauai for a glorious two week vacation.
I got my first book deal, a little something you will see on the shelves in the Summer of 2017.
and
I left my beloved Oakland. I am now an official, for-real Portland resident. 
There is a ton to say about ALL of these things, but first, I want to tell you about my wedding. I have some AMAZING pictures, from what truly was the best day of my life, and I am beyond stoked just thinking about the time we had. This post is long and picture heavy, but I promise, we will hop right back into fitness, feminism, vegan food, and all the other good stuff you have come to expect from my little corner of the blog-o-sphere really soon. I just had to share this first.
So first, let’s talk about getting ready. 
I am not a makeup girl. Like, at all. My face is generally bare, and half the time I sort of think I wanna be all fancy in the face and then I try to go about imagining how that would fit into my life and I feel a tremendous wave of overwhelm. For this reason I was STOKED to have a little help from my very talented friend, Lauren. I’m gonna be real, I felt really pretty on my wedding day, which is not a thing I have in my life a whole lot. (I usually feel more cute-goofy-tough-funny) It was nice to feel like the belle of the ball while people were celebrating my partnership around me. Although makeup can’t be an all-the-time thing for me, it is a definitely wonderful sometimes-accent. 
This is my friend Meg. She was my very first friend in college, and one of the first people to truly see the depths of my personality through very thick and very thin and still come out loving me. This is my crying my eyes out and saying “I am just so glad you’re here!”. 
I love my friends so much. If there are any wedding-day regrets I have, it is not getting a chance to talk to more of them more. 
This is basically just a gratuitous calf picture. I work hard for my gunz and it shows mostly in the lower half of my legs. I’ll take it!
So, have you ever tried to put a dress on with a beehive and a full face of makeup? That shit is HARD. This is my mom and my sister helping me try to weasel my way into my wedding dress, and it very much not working. Laughs were had all around and finally I just kneeled down like a pauper being knighted while they lowered the dress down to the ground. Very classy.
Like I said, more than ever in my life, on this day I felt really fucking pretty. It’s a good feeling!
Now, onto the wedding site!
Kett and I were told we were supposed to do a “first look” to officially reveal ourselves in all of our wedding finery. Both him and I had a hard time wrapping our minds around having to conjure up emotions for the camera so early in the day, and decided that the only right way to do such a thing would be to have it take place in the matrimonial bounce house. I rolled up to the wedding site, waited a bit, and when I was given the okay, climbed my way into the bounciest carousel in all of Oakland. 
Where a very fly dude awaited my arrival. 
In case you couldn’t tell by the carousel, our wedding was super duper fun/carnival/block party themed. We had a bounce off, croquet, cornhole, a strongman high striker, bocce ball, horseshoes, and a potato sack race. Custom trophies were made. 
Table favors were red sun glasses, a button with our emblem (a flag with three hearts containing a barbell and a kale leaf, a cup of coffee, and a pencil and a paintbrush), old McDonald’s toys from the early 90’s, and a comic. Instead of flowers we had hollowed out dinosaurs with succulents.
I immediately ripped my dress, of course, and strategically used my button to remedy the situation. You can paint a lady’s face and put her in a fancy dress, but that’s no guarantee that she’ll keep it clean and rip free!
Costumes were very encouraged , and thus we had such esteemed guests as Boba Fett….
Kamala Khan….
…And a fantastically revealed Superman.
Everyone basically looked amazing nailing the high striker.
The bounce-off was so intense it was kind of hard to watch. 
But nothing beats the potato sack race. NOTHING.
This dude managed a double somersault and STILL came out victorious.
Have I mentioned how amazing my friends are?
Okay, so here’s the deal.
Kett and I didn’t know the exact moment we were to be wed. We entrusted our best friend with a wedding horn and asked her to give it a long and loud toot when she felt it was time for some sweet words and legally binding contracts. An hour or two into the ceremony, Monica blew the horn and Kett and I darted to the vista where we were to be officially wed.
While Kett and I got a head start, our MC, Nishat, waved the flag and assembled the troops.
A parade was lead up a little hill….
where we waited, trying not to cry. 
Then, maybe the best part of the whole day, I got to talk about Kett.
I love this man.
I love that he is patient, and has integrity and makes me laugh. I love that he supports me, and calls me on my shit, and let’s me cry when I need to. I love that we make art together. I love that I plan to become an old ass lady by his side, and that we can seal the deal with a tremendous high five.
And a smooch, of course.
HUZZAHHHH!
Neither Kett nor I drinks or really likes cake, so the whole dessert thing was kind of a conundrum. After trying multiple non-cake dessert ideas, we came to what seemed like an obvious answer: coffee and donuts. Nothing says “love” more than donuts, especially when they are vegan and gluten-free.
So, we broke the donut…
We dined…
And speeches were enjoyed.
Of course the day wouldn’t have been complete without an epic group photo. 
And a few nice solo ones, too. 
Thank you so much for sticking with me through the long break, and the immediate schmoopy love fest. I am very much ready to be back in action around these parts, and can’t wait to write all the things that have been swimming around in my head for the past 8+ weeks.
Until next time!
(All photos by Holly Feral )
On peanut butter, emotional eating, and taking a break.
Leeeeet’s talk about emotional eating.
When people talk to me about eating disorders I am quick to let them know that I’ve had ’em all. Anorexia. Bulimia. Compulsive exercise. Body dysmorphia. General freakiness around food, numbers, and tabulations that don’t exactly have a name, but also aren’t exactly “normal”. I have struggled with food and my body in every way possible. From starving to binging, I know just exactly what it’s like.
Despite this, something I haven’t talked so much about is emotional eating. It’s not because I’m ashamed of it, or because I think it doesn’t feel important. It’s just that emotional eating is just so fucking normal, so culturally ingrained, that it feels strange to wax poetic about it. I feel that most people, in some way, eat emotionally. Holiday dinners, birthday cake celebrations, going out to dinner on a date, bringing casseroles to the gathering post-funeral. These are times when messages are directly conveyed via food and because we have been in these situations again and again and again, they are habit. Food is many things, and a conduit for feeling is definitely one of them.
While in recovery, I generally had a lot of judgements about myself and my food. I judged my inability to just “be really healthy”, instead letting various restrictions whittle me down to a bag of bones in an inconvenient husk of a body. I judged the rage I felt when I couldn’t get on an elliptical machine every single day. I judged the purging, how disgusting and violent it seemed. I was a feminist for fuck’s sake. What was my head doing in the toilet?
Paradoxically, I also had a lot of judgements around the actions that were necessary to take in order to physically recover. For every time I chastised myself for my restrictions, I also felt waves a disgust when I consumed sugar, oils, breads, or baked goods. I judged when I couldn’t deadlift more weight on a particular day. I judged overeating, even without the purging.
Slowly, I began to realize that I was truly setting myself up for failure. I was a perfectionist about my recovery, as I had been about my eating disorder, and truthfully, it was keeping me from restoring mental clarity, fixing my overtaxed immune system, restoring my metabolism, and just generally having a cool life. I was keeping myself in eating disorder jail even in my recovery, and- lucky me- I realized that in order to truly feel good and in order to completely recover, I needed to change. I let myself off the hook with occasional overeating, I took months of only walking and doing yoga. I stopped weighing myself and I stopped counting calories and I stopped generally being such a dick to myself. Basically, I unlocked my own cage.
I’d love to say it was beautiful and I felt 100% satisfied and free, but that’s just not life. It waxed and waned, as most things in life do. My body changed a lot, and very quickly. I still didn’t like what I saw in the mirror, but I did generally have a free-er and more full life, which was enough for me, even if just for a minute. (Nothing is perfect, in recovery or out. Body feels are usually constantly shifting for most people, but especially for those in recovery).
The past two years have been super transformative for me, because after loosening my reigns and staying there for awhile, I took the next step in my recovery. First, I just tried to learn to eat and to restore my weight. Next, I put effort toward learning to actually like myself, which is where I believe the big shifts happen. My goal became not only about my body, but also about my mind. I wanted to feel proud of my accomplishments and to assume that on a base level, I was a good person. The more I practiced eating enough with eating mindfully, the more I listened when my body said yes, the more I figured out about what foods actually work for my body (as opposed to what foods I thought should work for my body)- the more I felt actually good. In turn, I also started to like what I saw in the mirror. My metabolism returned to what felt normal for me (with consistency around eating enough years. This change doesn’t happen over night.) Today, I genuinely like and respect what I see in the mirror, which is nothing short of a miracle.
Despite the peace and satisfaction I feel with food and my body, I’ve felt something uncomfortable creep up in the past six months or so, and that uncomfortable thing comes from good ole’ reasonable and normal emotional eating. Peanut butter is my one true love, for reals, and I had found that the way I was eating peanut butter was making me hate it.
Let me explain: When I was restricting, I had a mortal fear of fats. I did not eat peanut butter for most of my 20’s, and when I did add it in, it was by the carefully measured teaspoon. When I finally gave up the crutch of measuring, I had a complete and total peanut butter liberation, eating it happily and with abandon. On apples, on carrots, in smoothies, whisked with some rice vinegar and tamari as peanut sauce. I loved that I felt free to eat this food that I had so feared, and let’s be real- I loved the way it tasted.
Even with all the love, I noticed something unpalatable happening over the past few months. I was stressed out about work. I was stressed out about passing my personal training test (which I did!) I was stressed out about planning my wedding, getting my training in, being a good friend, recording my podcast, and the upcoming move to Portland. I was stressed about what relocation meant for my identity and my life and my finances. I was stressed out about the details of just about everything and my stress marched me, pretty much on a nightly basis, straight to a jar of peanut butter.
There is something about slicing up a nice crispy apple, spooning some peanut butter onto a saucer, and slowly enjoying the awesome goodness that plant-based snacking provides. There is also something about standing in your kitchen at 11PM in your pajamas, feeling exhausted but somehow unable to sleep, and dipping your finger again and again into a peanut butter jar, eating it really quickly. One thing is extremely pleasant, and the other feels straight up bad. I bet you can guess which is which.
The gist of this story is that I started eating so much peanut butter before bed that my stomach was hurting. I was tossing and turning with a gut ache, and returning to the peanut butter jar-thinking just a little more would help me fall to sleep. My relationship with peanut butter- something I loved!- had turned into something that was stressing me out. On top of all my other stress. When I was just trying to soothe my stress.
My body is curiously smart and curiously consistent. Although I was going through more than a whole big jar of peanut butter per week, my weight stayed the same, and my clothes continued to fit. I was uncomfortable with what peanut butter was doing to me not because it was making me gain weight (which I think is important to say given my history) but because eating it all bleary eyed until my guts ached just seemed like a punishing move on my part. Emotionally eating peanut butter wasn’t the celebration of birthday cake or even soothing like ice cream after a bullshit day. It was sad, and annoying, and taking the joy out of something I loved. And so, with great hesitation, I decided to take a break. From my beloved peanut butter. For thirty whole days.
Despite being a very even-tempered, let’s-find-the-middle-way health coach, I can still be prone to black and white thinking when it comes to myself. When I do something, I do it with enthusiasm (ahem, crossfit) and when I don’t I have tended to have a “never again!” attitude about it. Taking a break seems like a simple and obvious reaction to a scenario that was making me uncomfortable, but I have to say, I am impressed that I thought of it for myself.
I’m not having peanut butter now because it has occupied an uncomfortable role in my life, I am going to take a month to utilize some other coping tools (writing-in this blog even!, meditating, reading, etc.) , and then I will likely have peanut butter again. How novel! How simple!
So that’s what’s new lately.
Here are some things that have informed my decision:
Matt Cutts: Try something new for 30 days
Why I’m NOT an Intuitive Eating Coach by Isabel Foxen Duke
Is Emotional Eating Really So Bad? by Golda Poretsky
And with that:
How do you cope with stress?
Seriously, please tell me! I want to learn your skillz.
