My Disordered Eating Story

My disordered relationship with food and exercise began when I was 25 and living in San Francisco. I was working at my second job out of college as an Inventory Planner at Gap Inc’s corporate office. Right away, I noticed how everyone at work was fashionable. I loved shopping and clothes; it was a dream place to work! But… I wasn’t fitting into my clothes so well anymore. I had gained about 10 pounds since college, and I wasn’t as active as I once was. My office job was sedentary and demanding. I was always so tired after work. I would get home from a day at the office and just want to cook some pasta, relax on the couch with a glass of wine, and watch TV.

Me and my sister attending Outsidelands Music Festival in 2014. Just a few months before I started dieting.

I remember getting my corporate discount card (woo perks of working in retail!) and I noticed that I needed to buy bigger-sized clothes than I was wearing in college. And on top of that, the clothes didn’t “look right on me” with the extra weight. I was so sad and confused! I wanted to be the same size as I was in college, I wanted all my new clothes to look a certain way, and I wanted to feel good in my body again. Everyone at work seemed to be discussing a diet or exercise plan they were trying, and I thought “I should try dieting and exercising more too”.

My first (and last) diet: Tone it Up with Karena and Katrina

I googled “diet and exercise plan for women”. None of them felt right until I found the Tone it Up girls – Karena and Katrina. They sold a nutrition plan with guidelines on what to eat every day and how to exercise. The Tone it Up founders (TIU for short) looked so fit and were always out doing cool things on Instagram. They lived the nutrition plan on social media, making it look so easy and delicious. One of them even had a King Charles Caviler, my dream dog I’ve always wanted. I bought the plan, bought their exercise videos, bought their protein powders, and joined their Instagram community of other women trying to lose weight.

The nutrition plan turned out to be a high protein low carb diet, requesting that I eat 6 times per day. They said to follow a “lean, clean, and green” mantra and exclude foods that did not meet these qualifications. I meal prepped for hours every Sunday night, cooking extravagant salads, snacks, and protein powder-based baked goods. I worked out twice a day, getting my “booty call” workout in every morning, and would do weights in the evening when I got home. I stopped eating all carbs past 12pm, I stopped drinking wine as often, and I gave up toast for breakfast in favor of protein pancakes using their protein powder. I stopped eating out entirely unless it was a salad or soup or something that I could easily adapt to the meal plan. I stopped eating all desserts unless they were low carb low sugar. I was obsessed with their Instagram; I followed the TIU community religiously.

Photo of me actually running the "Bay 2 Breakers" 12k race in 2015 instead of day drinking with most attendees.

The weight started falling off right away. I went shopping and was back in my old size. People at work were noticing my progress and complimenting my determination. Everyone wanted to know how I did it. But I wasn’t satisfied even though I achieved my original goal. I wanted some “insurance” weight loss in case I was to gain some weight back. So, I kept the diet going.

When my innocent diet turned into disordered eating

After a few months, the nutrition plan became harder to follow. I had to work so much harder to keep losing weight. I wanted to eat out and order anything off the menu again, but the nutrition plan strictly prohibited this. I loved baking, but all the nutrition plan baked goods tasted like protein powder. I would daydream about eating my old favorite foods at night before I fell asleep. I found myself just staring at photos of desserts in my spare time. I was very hungry.

The Tone it Up girls had an answer for this, they encouraged you to push through the plateau. Recommit to your goals, understand your “why” to lose weight, and follow the plan. Take a new “before” selfie of you in a bikini and post it to the community so they can help hold you accountable. So that’s what I did. But my “why” I wanted to lose weight was foggy now, did I just like the attention for losing weight? Was I scared to go back to a bigger size one day?

After being on the diet for a while I still wanted more weight loss. I remember thinking the way I looked wasn't good enough. This was my new "before" photo I posted to social media to reaffirm my weight loss goals.

I started to guilt myself when I missed a workout, when I had a normal cookie, or when I wanted to cook spaghetti with regular pasta for dinner. I said, "You better make it up for this calorie splurge tomorrow and eat less”. I would beat myself up inside, saying to myself “You’re weak because you ate that pasta. You should be better than this”.

This is where my restriction really started. I would try as hard as I could to follow the nutrition plan for the day, but I started sneaking candy and eating out non-plan meals despite the salad sitting in my fridge. I would come home every day from work starving and would polish off entire appetizer-sized cheese portions with crackers, make pieces of peanut butter and jelly toast, or basically pre-eat a dinner before eating my actual dinner. I started to drink more water, the Tone it Up girls said hunger was sometimes disguised as dehydration. I started walking during my lunch break to burn some extra calories. I went vegan to try and reduce my calories. I was desperate to continue my weight loss but simultaneously obsessed with what I had cut out of my diet. It was a personal purgatory.

Then my internal thoughts about food and weight loss translated into behaviors. I started talking about weight loss non-stop. I was obsessed with recounting everything I had eaten that day to anyone who would listen. I weighed myself every day, beating myself up when I gained a pound or two or didn’t lose any weight. My negative self-talk was out of control. I was sinking into a deep depression, and I found little pleasure in doing things.

At this point, I started to recognize that I had a problem and started seeing a therapist specializing in eating disorders. I still wasn’t ready to let go of my weight loss progress though. I was stuck in limbo… But the therapist tried her best, I would leave the conversations behind thinking I could take her advice and give up the diet while still being on a diet.

The comments from my coworkers, friends and family members started to take a turn at this point. People thought I was sick. I remember walking into a big meeting at work a little late and my boss commenting in front of everyone “Wow Mallory you need to eat more, you’re too skinny now”. This boss was once my biggest champion of weight loss. I was so embarrassed. My friends started noticing too, commenting that they think I look unhealthy now and all the fat had gone away from my legs. But isn’t this what everyone wanted? To be thin like me? I was stuck in the mental jail of dieting for 4 years: I wanted to eat the foods I loved, but I was so scared to gain weight.

Me in London trying to enjoy the food and culture of Europe while not obsessing over how everything I was eating was not "plan approved".

The science behind starvation: So, what is happening within the body?

The first and most well-known experiment trying to understand the physiological and psychological effects of starvation on live human subjects is called The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. Thirty-six young, healthy, “above average intelligence” men were selected for the study in 1944 during World War II. The study’s protocol required the men to participate in a carefully supervised diet and exercise regime. During the first 12 weeks of the study, participants were fed a 3200-calorie control diet. In the next 24 weeks of the study, the participants were fed a semi-starvation diet consisting of 1570 calories per day in the hopes of losing 25% of their body weight during that 24-week period. Then finally, there was a refeeding process for another 12 weeks where the calories per day were increased steadily from 2000-3200 calories. During the study, the men had to work for a period in the lab, walk 22 miles per week, and participate in educational activities for 25 hours per week. Obviously, this study was very extreme for human subjects. Not surprisingly, four participants dropped out of the study. There is no way that this experiment would ever pass an ethics approval board of a research university today!

The results were astonishing. First, let’s discuss what happened physiologically. During the semistarvation period of the study, the participants appeared with gaunt faces and body muscles. They reported decreases in stamina, sex drive, body temperature, and heart rate. To save as much energy during starvation, the human body will reduce all non-essential functions to preserve as much lean body mass and organ tissue as possible. It’s interesting how the diet industry, popular culture, and the media love to praise gaunt-looking bodies as healthy. When in reality, your body is in this triage state trying to keep you alive if possible. During the refeeding process, the men overate and regained extra weight beyond what they weighed prior to starting the diet.

Next the psychological side effects of starvation: mainly obsession with food! The participants would dream, fantasize, read about, and talk about food non-stop. They would savor the meals they were given. They reported a decrease in mental ability, they were more irritable and depressed. Before this study these men had very little interest in food or eating, it was simply another bodily function. The human body needs food to fuel its cells, and without adequate food, humans become obsessed with it. It’s a survival mechanism.

Tying it all together: what all people on diets have in common

Do you notice the similarities between my story and the men who participated in this study? We basically had the same exact outcomes! We both looked sick, we became depressed about our diets, and we were obsessed with food on the diet. The only difference being these men opted for a scientific study and I chose to put myself through a diet to shrink my body. As it turns out, people who can’t keep a diet going are not weak-willed or lazy. They are merely human beings who have evolved to stay alive, if possible, without food. Our bodies have all these mechanisms in place to keep us alive, both psychological and physiological. Both I and the people who participated in this study became obsessed with food because we couldn’t have it.

When you take away one of the most basic needs for our body, in this case, food, we’ve evolved to become super focused on finding food. If you look back at what I was doing later in my dieting journey, I started “sneaking” candy and daydreaming about dessert. “Wellness culture” could claim that I’m just addicted to sugary treats, and I should overcome this craving and stay on my diet. All our cells are fueled by carbohydrates (glucose), and in my semi-starvation state, my brain is hyper-focused on finding the densest form of carbohydrate I could: candy and other easily absorbed sugary treats.

I don’t want this post to sound like a smear campaign against the Tone it Up nutrition plan/workout videos. The workout videos were safe and well designed. They helped me strengthen my muscles and improve my race times (I was participating in half marathons at the time). Some of the recipes from the nutrition plan I find satisfying today too. It was the extreme nature of the workout videos and nutrition plan together that were problematic. I shared more about my experience to point out how developing healthy habits can be taken too far and become eating disorders.

I ditched the diet! Oh and I finally got my dream dog, Sammie.

My goal for all my clients is to build a healthy relationship with nutrient-dense food as well as food that we eat “just because” it’s satisfying. I will never recommend a strict plan or a strict exercise goal. I want to get to know you! What are your food preferences or foods that are culturally important to you? How do you enjoy moving your body? How can we find ways for you to enjoy nutrient-dense food that doesn’t cause restriction? These are the baseline questions we can work through together and build long-lasting behavior change with food and movement.

Book a free 15-minute consultation with me to learn more about my aproach

References:

Keys, A., Brozek, J., Henshel, A., Mickelson, O., & Taylor, H.L. (1950). The biology of human starvation, (Vols. 1–2). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.