By David Griswold
This story is a first person account of struggling with an eating disorder as a young man.
It’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that I “was” anorexic. Anorexia, as I think is the case with many diagnoses, feels like a helpful box I can tuck a certain set of symptoms into. But just because some of these symptoms have disappeared or faded over time, does that mean the disease I suffered from is gone? My sense is that the answer is no. My sense is that my anorexia runs more deeply than the eating habits I recall, or the relentless drive to “perfect” myself when I “was” anorexic.
Growing up, I think it’s safe to say that I was a hungry, healthy, and athletic kid. I was actually notorious for my appetite. I distinctly remember walking up and down the bus on 5th and 6th grade school trips, hands outstretched like a monk awaiting alms. Somehow it had become acceptable that my classmates could give me their unfinished lunch items, and I would gladly consume them: the last six inches of a Fruit by the Foot, a leftover slab of cardboard oats from a Nature Valley sleeve. Anything really.
So I don’t know what changed. But one day, around the time I was entering 8th grade, I began to pinch my forearm, and anything caught between my finger and thumb was suddenly “extra.” When my parents looked at me, bewildered, I’d say “Look,” and pinch my arm again. Somehow, in my mind, it had become a foregone conclusion that anything I could point to that wasn’t muscle was more body fat than I needed.
And from that moment on, somehow a lack of fat became a way I measured my worth as a human being.
Part of the problem for me was my penchant for mental math. I had grown up doing multiplication problems with my dad on the way to school in the morning, and I remember the immense satisfaction I felt, walking home from the bus stop in second grade and successfully multiplying 99 times 99 in my head (9801 for those interested).
When this newfound need for fat burning reared its ugly head, my brain was all too eager to begin the insidious process of tabulating the calories I consumed at every meal. I remember counting out my pretzel sticks before school, having memorized the serving size and the number of calories each contained. I remember drinking Diet Pepsi religiously. I remember allowing myself a single slice of turkey on my sandwiches, a scientifically applied dollop of honey mustard, and the constant summation of calories throughout the day. I had memorized the number of calories contained in individual grams of protein, carbohydrate, and fat, and I rarely, if ever, ate something that didn’t have a nutrition facts label attached—something I couldn’t readily quantify.
I say I remember these things, but truly, these are surface level recollections, as I have trouble connecting with my memories from this time. What I think is hardest to reconcile now is how, back then, it never struck me that there was anything wrong. It was my mother who had to sit me down and say, somewhat desperately, “David, I need you to see through my eyes.” Because something about what I saw was clearly broken, or skewed. Something inside of me had adopted these self-destructive pursuits as if they could carry me towards some perfect, Platonic form—some ideal that really only existed in my head. I don’t think I ever even really considered where that path was taking me. I just knew that when I pinched my arm, there was always that “extra” to deal with.
I remember I went to therapy. I remember seeing a nutritionist named Jill. I remember her telling me that if I didn’t start eating more, it might impact my development: I might be unable to have kids when I grew up. Somehow that statement pierced through the fog and woke me up. I still don’t know why. I can only speculate that it gave the horrible critic inside of me pause to think that I might be hobbling my future self. How could I be “perfect” if I couldn’t have kids?
Before that turning point, besides my mathematical asceticism, I used to run up and down the stairs in my house as a way to burn calories. I used to do push ups and sit ups whenever I was watching TV. There was rarely if ever a moment when I wasn’t “doing” something—I would even flex my abs and muscles compulsively to avoid the feeling that I was “just sitting.” I can only imagine how at first it seemed harmless. My parents would joke with me about training for the Olympics. But over time, I have to imagine it was horrifying. It got so bad that I would even do push ups in the middle of social gatherings when others were just hanging out. I think most of my friends knew this wasn’t “normal,” but none of us had the language or understanding to engage with it. The only people who used the word “anorexia” were my mom and Jill.
Somehow, thanks to my mom’s constant efforts and Jill’s harrowing predictions, the fog began to clear. I began to drink Ensure shakes on a regular basis (I still remember their otherworldly taste, like something out of Brave New World). I began to allow myself to eat doughnuts and cookies, and other things that didn’t come with calories listed. I began to gain weight. Over time—maybe it was months, or years, I honestly don’t remember—the habits of calorie counting faded.
In retrospect, what’s strange about so much of this was the remarkable lack of agency I felt in the process. It was as if this was all just happening to me, and I was just along for the ride. And just because I ceased counting calories and began to regain weight isn’t to say I developed healthy eating habits. Instead, I returned to my former ways—eating whatever I wanted, and treating my body as if it was some refuse heap or machine, designed to digest whatever I put into it and do my bidding. If my eating habits hung from a pendulum, I swung wildly in the other direction in high school. I remember eating as many as six glazed doughnuts and two chocolate milks on a regular basis at snack time, until a science teacher told me he was concerned I might develop diabetes. I hadn’t even known that was possible.
And while I shifted my eating, I essentially never let go of my relentless dedication to fitness. If anything, this dedication only intensified when I got to high school. I had joined a gym when I was 13, and by the time I was a junior in high school, I was regularly lifting weights. I used to do 600 crunches every other night, a habit that continued up through college and into my early twenties. For my efforts, I was rewarded with attention and praise. I still remember the looks I got from the girls around me when I played the pharaoh, shirtless, in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. So much around me reinforced that what I was doing was desirable, that it made me “better” or “worthy.” But none of it was ever enough.
Even now, at 35 years old, I don’t know if I can say I “was” anorexic. Because I still look at myself and hear the old judgments muttering in my ear. I unconsciously twist sideways when I pass by a mirror and prod my stomach, as if to chastise myself for the extra that “shouldn’t be there.” I often will work out before I go to the beach, or even before meeting up with friends, because I still feel better about myself when my arms and chest are swollen from a set of pullups or dips. I notice the way that my sense of worth is still tied to my physical shape. And any time I feel down on myself, my first instinct is to work out.
So, yes, has it gotten better? Certainly. And I imagine most folks wouldn’t peg me as “anorexic.” But the voice that surfaced all those years ago as a set of symptoms called “anorexia” is still there—the subtle, slithering voice that tells me I’m only as good as my accomplishments, that I should be working harder, that I should have a six pack, that I should be able to do 20 pullups and bench the same amount I did when I was 23.
Learning to love my body, and by extension, myself, is a process that, in some ways, I am only just at the beginning stages of. Because I haven’t yet learned to love my body as it is and as it changes: to appreciate it as something more than a machine or rock to be sculpted. There is still some part of me that views my body as subservient to the mind that it carries, and feels frustrated when it is “weak” or in need of support. And I am only now waking up to the way that I have internalized these messages my whole life. Messages that come from a society that commodifies our bodies and feeds us unrealistic, unhealthy images, selling us an endless path to an externalized sense of worth.
I am working towards the day when I can care for my body, and with each breath, thank my body for all that it does. When I can feel a sense of love and appreciation for its function. When I can look in the mirror and judge, not what I see, but how I am choosing to care for this beloved body that mediates my engagement with the world. I am working towards that day when I can embrace myself, and know that my worth is fundamentally independent of the shape of this changing body—this body that will inevitably begin to falter and fade and break down.
Perhaps I am anorexic and always will be. And perhaps that is the spiritual path I am being asked to walk—one that runs, hand in hand, with the scared little boy who began to doubt his intrinsic worth around 8th grade. Perhaps the path is greeting that voice with another: a voice that says, just as relentlessly, you are worthy. You are loved. You are allowed.
If you ever feel as though you need support for an eating disorder or just need to talk, call
1 (800) 931-2237 or (310) 855-4673
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