QUESTION: I was just curious...do you still struggle with anorexia? I watched the video on the page and you seem very very thin still.

ANSWER: No, I don't still struggle. Not in the way I think you mean anyway. This is one of the questions I am most frequently asked – and I am always glad for the opportunity to clarify that recovery is a daily choice – it is for me at least about quickly pushing the ‘STOP’ button whenever that old tape recorder in my head starts going with the old eating disordered thoughts and ideas. After almost nine years of solid recovery work, I now have strong, enduring coping skills to tune out those old tapes, and in place of my eating disorder I have built caring friendships, intimate relationships, fun activities, a wonderful career and, most importantly, self-respect and self-love. So it depends on how you define ‘struggle’ – but for me, the days of battling with myself over whether I want anorexia or my life more are long since gone.

In regards to your comment about my individual appearance….the subject of physical appearance is a very important question and I am glad to address it for the Good News community. It is SO crucial for all of us to realize that appearance is relative to the actual presence of the disease of anorexia. I will give you an example from my own recovery - when I was sick I was 20 pounds thinner than I am now. I had reduced my weight to 85% of my ‘ideal body weight’, thus meeting the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa. So, for me, regaining those 20 pounds I had lost put me back within the range for what my body requires in order to be considered healthy for my height, bone structure, gender and age category. There is a difference between a thin bone structure/natural slim or slightness and anorexia. My whole family is naturally slim in the way I am naturally slim now, but I progressed far beyond 'slim' when I was sick. However, I have friends who are naturally even slimmer than I am now at my healthy BMI, and these friends have never struggled with an eating disorder.

All that to say, anorexia is not a disease that always 'looks' a certain way. It is true that some anorexics are easy to spot. And yet there can be anorexia raging in a person who doesn't genetically look the part. If we forget this, we put at further risk those who don’t present as ‘anorexic’ and yet are in danger from the disease. I facilitate a weekly support group for an inpatient treatment facility near Houston, and in the more than a year we have been meeting I have seen women who look anorexic, and women who do not look anorexic, diagnosed with anorexia and admitted for treatment. So thank you again for your excellent question - it gets right to the heart of seeing beyond what we expect to see to the truth of what is going on in each individual person who struggles. It is so important not to judge a person’s relative health based on our visible expectations or assumptions, but on a thorough medical evaluation made by a competent physician.

Shannon

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