My book about my eating disorder is finished. It’s not entirely necessary to wait for the moment of publication. Below, I’ll share a snippet from each chapter to give you a little insight into my story.
The Introduction
Having an eating disorder has been one of the loneliest and most hopeless situations I’ve ever found myself in. Being constantly preoccupied with how my body looks has been the norm for many years. A day without extensively examining myself in the mirror or not having thoughts about it for several hours in a row is something I can’t really imagine. It’s been too long to truly remember what it’s like to live without the characteristics of an eating disorder. I’m still not completely free from it. I still have my eating disorder. I deal with it daily. I’m still dissatisfied with my body every day. I consciously focus on eating and exercising every day. I began writing this book with the idea of ​​describing an eating disorder that I HAD. However, as I progressed further and further, I realized that it’s not ‘had.’ It’s not gone yet. In various aspects of my life, it’s still evident that I have an eating disorder and that the underlying causes are still present. It’s not gone, and I wonder if it ever will be. The awareness I’ve developed about my body, eating, exercising, and much more, I won’t lose. I’ll never look at a pizza or a donut, a glass of coke, or even a slice of bread and just see it as food. It will always evoke certain thoughts in me, and then I have to make a choice: act on those thoughts or not. Putting it down on paper like this sounds exhausting. It is. Utterly exhausting. But ironically, that feeling of exhaustion and acknowledging it has been the first step towards my liberation.
This photo was taken in the first year of my battle against an eating disorder. Within a year, I had lost about 30 kilograms. I exercised every day and ate very little. My mindset was that everything I ate had to be burned off again. What I completely forgot for a long time was that nutrition is essential to be able to live your daily life. Even during your sleep, you need energy. I completely ignored this for a long time, causing me to rapidly lose one kilo after another.