Fighting my Eating Disorder: Recovery story by Kylie Anderson

Hi! My name is Kylie Anderson, and I’m a nineteen-year-old from Iowa. I am currently recovering from anorexia nervosa. My story begins in October of 2020. I had always been insecure about my body. I heavily compared myself to others in middle school and through high school. So when the pandemic started in 2020, I used the extra time I had on my hands to focus on what I ate and obsessively track my caloric intake. I had also started doing the Chloe Ting “2-week shred” and “summer shred” challenge. I forced myself to do these workouts daily behind my family’s” back.

On top of the Chloe Ting workouts, I was also a competitive dancer, training daily. The obsession with over-exercising developed very fast. If I missed one day of working out, I would be overwhelmed with extreme guilt, a feeling I had never felt before for missing a workout.

I was tracking my food on My Fitness Pal daily, obsessively measuring, constantly checking labels, avoiding foods that diet culture had deemed as “bad,” etc. As a result, my body became malnourished, and I started losing weight drastically.

In 2021 when school had started back up in person again, I was unable to focus on my classes and my grades. I leaned into my eating disorder as a coping mechanism to deal with stress and things I couldn’t control. Being a senior in high school at this time, I was supposed to be having the time of my life. Instead, I spent my senior year in misery, obsessing over food and body image daily. I have always been a good student with good grades, but my grades started slipping as I could not concentrate on school. I was tired, weak, and thinking about food constantly. Yet, I pushed through, graduated high school, and completed all my classes successfully. The summer was just as bad with the emergence of new habits and urges.

I began weight lifting in my college’s recreation center during the summer. I would center my days around working out. I would push myself to get up around 6:30-7:00 am, work out for two and a half hours, and then come home and ride my bike for another hour. I also made it into my college dance team, so I was dancing in addition to the exercises. During choreography week, I remember having no energy for my full days of dance. I was unable to retain choreography and wasn’t executing skills like normal. Things took a turn for the worst here.

I got covid-19 the first week of college. The day I got out of quarantine, I spent the night at my local hospital’s ICU, as my grandma was staying there. The next day she passed away. I used the emotions of grief through my eating disorder. I refused the help my parents offered me until I almost passed out two times. My heart rate was dangerously low, consistently in the low 40’s. I experienced major hair loss, and my labs dropped.

I was taken to my family doctor, and it was there that I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. I started outpatient treatment on October 20th, although I didn’t do very well and wasn’t meeting weigh-ins. On January 5th, my treatment team pushed me into intensive-outpatient treatment. They recommended me for residential treatment, but my parents intended to keep me home, as I would be more comfortable recovering and being supported by my loved ones. I started family-based therapy and was on a strict meal plan. I was put on bed rest and forced to quit dance.

Nothing about this was easy. It was uncomfortable, terrifying, and life-changing. I am currently still in active recovery. I am weight restored, my vitals are back to working at 100%, and I have the freedom to choose my meals and snacks. My heart rate is stable, back to my healthy bpm, and all my labs are back to normal. My body is functioning at 100%. I got my love for dance back, a passion I grew up with, and something my eating disorder took away from me for a while. I finally feel like myself again; I have endless energy, I’m not cold all the time, and I can finally focus. I am attending in-person college classes this year, and I am still seeing my treatment team regularly. In addition, I advocate for eating disorders and mental health on my social platforms: Instagram and TikTok. I have met mutual friends through this, including one of my closest friends in recovery, Avery. We text each other daily and are seriously recovery besties.

Recovery is scary, uncomfortable, and challenging. But being stuck in your eating disorder is scarier. Choose recovery. I promise it’s worth it, and you can do it.

Instagram: @foodwith.kylie