BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

Finding Purpose in Eating Disorder Recovery with Alex Sublette

• Kaitlyn Moresi • Season 1 • Episode 16

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Welcome back to the Bite by Bite Podcast.

All recovery journeys are unique but they all end up with the same outcome: the feeling of reward, freedom, and a beautiful life.

In this episode, Alex shares her personal struggle with eating an disorder, the impact COVID-19 had on her mental health, and her path to recovery. She emphasizes the importance of individualized care, emotional awareness, and, for Alex, finding purpose in helping others. The discussion also touches on the complexities of navigating support from loved ones and the ongoing journey of recovery, highlighting that it is not a linear process but one filled with growth and learning.

Episode Topics:

  • Alex shares the impact COVID-19 had on her mental health (7:50)
  • Alex and Kait discuss the importance of individualized care for eating disorder recovery (14:05)
  • How to find purpose in eating disorder recovery (19:52)
  • The growth of emotional awareness during eating disorder recovery (23:27)
  • Alex and Kait comment on navigating support from loved ones (31:08)
  • Alex and Kait reflect on their recovery journeys and their future goals (40:47)

Content Warning: This episode contains brief mentions of eating disorder behaviors that Alex has previously engaged in. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you and your recovery.

Episode guest: Struggling with food since middle school, Alex hit rock bottom after the COVID-19 pandemic and a traumatic event that shattered her world. Over the past 1.5 years, she’s been fighting her way back from PTSD, heartbreak, substance abuse, anorexia, and delayed stomach emptying. With the help of a doctor who changed everything, Alex has learned what it means to rebuild—and how to navigate the “messy middle” of recovery.

Related Episodes

 UNEXPECTED LESSONS: Lessons My Eating Disorder Taught Me About Healing & Self-Worth

A Look Into A Real-Time Eating Disorder Recovery Moment

Finding My Way Back To Myself Through Anorexia Recovery

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@bitebybiterecovery

bitebybiterecovery@gmail.com 

Connect with Alex

@be_well_with_alex

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SPEAKER_02:

Hey there, and welcome to Fight by Bite, the podcast that takes you step by step through the messy, beautiful, and real journey of my struggle with an eating disorder and my recovery. I'm Kate, and I'm here to share my own experiences, lessons, and the wisdom I've gathered along the way. Here, I share it all: the raw, the real, and the unconscious. For those of you who might know, they're not allowed to. And for those of you who haven't felt being disordered or something or before we dive in, we discover that while I call my story about helpful. This podcast is not a substantial. If you're struggling or need extra support, please reach out to applause onmentalhelper.com. And one more thing. This podcast is explicit. Because if I'm gonna do something, there's no way in hell I'm gonna leave my personality outfit. So let's dive in. During this episode, Alex does mention eating disorder behaviors that she used to engage in. Please be mindful and listen to this episode only if and when it feels right for you. Hi, Alex. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast, bite by bite. I'm also very happy that we connected and have been communicating and whatnot. So it means a lot that you're here. Um, so for the listeners, can you just start by telling them who you are? Who is Alex?

SPEAKER_01:

I love that question. And first, let me just say also, I'm so happy that I'm here today, also. I, for the moment, I met you through Instagram. I feel like we just clicked and had this natural conversation going already. And so when we did the collab post on our pages and then started our channel, which I know didn't really work out thanks to Instagram, but we tried. It just, you were such a light through the whole time that we were interacting, and I have just had so much fun getting to know you. So I know that we're gonna ask me a lot of questions today, but I'm excited to learn more about your story in this too.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But who I am, so my therapist always tells me not to define myself by what I do, but who I actually am at my core. So I want to tell you on the surface, I'm a Swifty and I rock climb and this and that. But who I am at my core is I am a kind person. Before that has been mistaken as weakness, but I've learned to set boundaries in that. I'm passionate about helping others. I'm an adventure seeker, am intelligent, but in my own way. And I am just so much more than my disorder. I mean, on the service, I'm a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm a partner, and I'm just a human. I'm a human who makes mistakes and who learns from them. And I'm I have a life behind the screen.

SPEAKER_02:

It's awesome. I really love that. Defining yourself by not by what you do, but who you are as a person because that's my go-to too. Like when someone says, Who are you? I'm like, oh, well, this is what I do. Yeah. You don't answer the question. Well, you in the past, you've struggled with an eating disorder. Um, so looking back, when did you first start noticing like things were wrong, things felt weird, or just in general that you knew something wasn't wrong?

SPEAKER_01:

So I've struggled since middle school, and I truly hit rock bottom a couple of years back after a traumatic incident in my life. I've been graced with many diagnoses over the years, which doesn't make me any less of a person, but just offers a different way of navigating the world. So one of my earliest was ADHD, and to stay focused on my schoolwork, I'd have to be doing something else physically. And this was before the poppets and the fidgets and all those fun things that they had. So I'd snack constantly for that little dopamine hit and reward for doing my work. So when I hit puberty, I started gaining weight. And out of this, I started hating my body. And I'm very much a solutions-based person. So I saw my friends and family, those who exercise, looked in better shape. And I also knew that the high school I'd be attending had summer training for their cross-country team. So the summer before my freshman year, I was at the school every morning at 5 a.m. ready to run.

SPEAKER_02:

5 a.m. That's dedication.

SPEAKER_01:

5 a.m., yes.

SPEAKER_02:

That is early. You were snacking just naturally as we changed. Gained weight, and then that in your mind, your brain had perceived that as a negative thing. And this assuming you were on the cross-country team. So did you ever kind of develop a negative relationship with exercise or movement from that?

SPEAKER_01:

I did. So once I started running cross-country, I lost weight and I became Demor toned. And at first I was actually a lot healthier compared to my earlier habits. Until in high school, we had to attend a health class, our freshman year, where I learned how many sugar cubes are in a Gatorade and how many steps you need to burn off a donut, and all those silly posters that they have up on the walls in high school that they think are doing good, but can do more harm than good. So, as someone who spent years bullied in middle school for my heavier weight to now gaining positive attention from my new glow-up, I had a very impressionable mind and I started cutting out all foods that society deems as bad. And it's really developed into an obsession with portion control and counting macros until I was at an underweight BMI, which was very unhealthy with how many miles I was averaging a day. And luckily for me, I did find weightlifting in college, and that kind of pulled me out of that because I decided to quote unquote bulk up because I got tired of people calling me chicken legs, because you really can't win when it comes to these sorts of things. People will always comment on your body. So I kind of grew out of it from there when I entered college.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's kudos to you for being able to somehow dig yourself out of there. And I do just want to touch on what you said about the health class and then the silly posters that were around your school because I think the difference is, and I don't think people who don't have the experience that we have really think about it this way or even understand it. You could have 25 people look at a poster that says how many, like you said, how many steps it takes to work off a donut. And 24 of them can walk away and never think about it again. But with with someone who has the predispositions through an eating disorder, we're never gonna forget that. We're gonna think about that every day. We're gonna, every time we see a donut, that is exactly what we're gonna think.

SPEAKER_01:

So I think that's the difference there. I never thought about that before, how people could perceive that differently. I mean, some people, you know, they work their whole lives trying to lose weight and they might look at that poster and feel discouraged because they're still not able to do it. Whereas someone like you and I, we might see it and be able to take unhealthy steps to get to a point where we're at an unhealthy weight. So it is interesting how there's different perceptions that go into play there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's wild because you never, you just never really know unless you're actually actually experiencing it yourself. So over time, you so you got you're in college now, you're bulking up, and it kind of sounds like movement was better for you. Um, you looked at in a better way, wasn't something you despised and you were doing it for better reasons. So did you around that time did you notice a shift, like a positive shift?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, there was definitely a positive shift with food to where I wasn't thinking about it as much anymore. I really liked my body in college. What really happened was after college, when COVID hit, something about that period just really messed me up mentally. I'd virtually graduated college. I was in a new city trying to make friends while most places were still shut down. And I very quickly found out that adulthood is hard. And what really did me in was I had an accident that I'm not ready to fully talk about yet. But from there, my life just blew up in my face. So suddenly I was buried under feelings of guilt, shame, disbelief, heartbreak, and I just I didn't want to face them. I couldn't face them. So I started numbing myself instead through restriction.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Became the restriction and the eating disorder, it became your coping mechanism. Which I think is while what we're coping with is never the same. But I think for a lot of people with restrictive eating disorders or even the other way too, any eating disorder, it becomes a way to cope with something, whatever that something is for that person. So you mentioned previously that you hit rock bottom and that was the COVID time.

SPEAKER_01:

It was, yes. So I would say after the accident was really when I hit rock bottom. COVID, I started developing a deep depression. And really after I had the accident, I was just so upset by that incident that I the depression deepened and I lost my appetite. And at first I thought it was harmless. I just wasn't eating as much because of that loss of appetite. And then I started just not wanting to be here anymore, like on this earth and not really care if I was here or not anymore. And with that, I essentially almost stopped eating altogether and I lost over 30 pounds in under a year uh just out of that depression. Um, so I was I don't really know what my my goal was. I don't know if I was quote unquote suicidal or if I just really was just so numb to the point where I just didn't find pleasure in food anymore. But I that period was just a really, really hard time in my life. And so food just went out the window.

SPEAKER_02:

That's un I I when I say that that's understandable. I mean it like I I get you. I know exactly what you're talking about, and it's not it's one of those things too, especially when your appetite is net is lost for whatever reason, it makes it that much harder to kind of even realize that not that you're doing something wrong, but that you're doing something that's hurting you because you're like, oh, I'm not hungry. I'm not doing anything on purpose, essentially. So that only in my experience has always just made it even more difficult than already in. So you're smiling now, you're very just through our banter outside of this, you're very happy-go-lucky, very hitting. So how did you get here? Like what so from the really bad state that you just kind of described, what was the time or moment or something someone said or something just clicked that you were like, okay, like I have to do something, something needs to change. Like I'm not okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. I knew I looked sick, but I had just taken up a new job in Orlando where I'm from and was absolutely loving it. And that gave me a little bit of happiness back. And I remember repeating to my parents, this is the only happiness I have right now, is this job. I put all my eggs in that bucket. But I when I started trying to eat again with that job because I wanted to perform well, I realized that after a few bites, I was just getting incredibly full and it was hard for me to gain the weight back. And so I try on my own, trying on my own. And finally, my parents were like, enough is enough. You need to get help. We don't know what to do for you. So you need to go into a facility. And I was absolutely petrified and ashamed and just again in in shock and disbelief that this is where my life had headed. So luckily, my job was so great. I told them that I had to go out on leave and they could see it. They could see me getting smaller and smaller, and they were concerned too. And they were nothing but supportive of that part of my journey. They were like, take all the time that you need, help comes first. And so with that, I felt a little more comfortable. And I ended up going into an inpatient facility for a couple months. And the hard thing was with that facility was it was very generalized. I didn't have a lot of individual help. And so, with all the stomach issues I was having, I did need a little bit more support and some tweaks to my meal plan that just weren't occurring. So I was meant to be there because I met a doctor there who helped me form an at-home care team for my individual needs. And she told me point blank, she even said, she's like, You, you're struggling here too. I think you can do this at home with these resources. So if you're willing to put in the time and the effort, you can get there, but this is what you're gonna need. And she kind of gave me the building blocks to form that team at home. So when I got out of the facility, I regressed again for a little bit. And then once I had my care team in place, that's when I started seeing my weight go up.

SPEAKER_02:

That's awesome. I've just like where I'm from and people I know personally, and even from my experience and just general stuff that we come to know about treatment, you know, that's few and far between. So that's awesome that that person could identify that yes, you're struggling, but you also don't belong here because we can't give you what you need. That's so once you were home and you were you said that you were doing everything you needed to do. So at that point, you were fully committed. You were like, I will do kind of whatever I need to do, whatever it takes to get myself back.

SPEAKER_01:

I was absolutely committed. That doesn't mean it wasn't hard though. It was extremely hard in the beginning, and it wasn't linear at all. I really had to have a lot of trial and error moments to figure out what worked for me. And I felt so hopeless, and that was like, oh, nothing's working. And I would be crying at the dinner table. My boyfriend would keep telling me, it's okay, this didn't work, we're gonna try something else. And eventually I found that regimen that works for me, but that's why I preached today. Recovery for one person is not gonna look the same as another person, and nothing has to be perfect for you to get started because it's gonna be messy and you're gonna fail at some point. It's just inevitable. So the quicker that you can get yourself out there and start failing and then learning from your failures, that's what's gonna get the ball rolling in your recovery.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I learned I agree with that wholeheartedly because I learned when I went to Fermal treatment 10 years ago, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna do a right, I'm gonna do a perfect, and that's it. Almost it doesn't I mean, maybe it works for someone, to some people, but it doesn't it didn't work for me because I didn't learn anything because I never made a mistake or I never allowed myself to really quote unquote fail at recovery. Even though I kind of did. But what I'm trying to say is that you really do have to just go in there and say, I'm gonna recover, I'm gonna mess up, it's gonna be hard, there's gonna be days and it'll be terrible, but that's where you learn. It's almost in my opinion, it's almost better to have those slip-ups or those mistakes because then you can identify and know what to do the next time.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think you it takes you out of that perfectionist mindset too, because in our eating disorders, we did want everything in our lives to be perfect and under control. We were very black and white thinkers. So the less rigid that you can be, of course, outside of following whatever meal plan your dietitian has for you, the less rigid you can be and the less, the more you can think in the gray, I think the better it's going to be for you. So that's I have to be very careful about that because even in my meal plan now, I can get very rigid now that I even have more freedom and more flexibility to to work with my meal plan. And I'm trying to use that flexibility because I don't want to be stuck in that perfectionist mindset anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I hear that. My perfectionism from my eating disorder like kind of transitioned to my recovery, where my mind was like, okay, well, we're not gonna have the eating disorder anymore because you want to recover. That's okay. We can just be perfect at recovery. Yes. And it's I always like kind of it's not really a joke and it's not really funny. It's just kind of dark humor that I would say to my own personal nutritionist when she put me back on a meal plan last year, I was like, you can put me back in a meal plan and I'll follow it to a T. Like that's I will. That's not the issue. The issue is without the meal plan, what does like what does someone do? And the more that what helped me was thinking in that gray area and areas of life that were just mindless to me. So outside of my eating disorder, like work stuff or social stuff or little things. Like I was very rigid about picking up my clothes for work the night before. And then there would be days that I would purposely not do that just because that's very rigid in black and white. So I would apply it to little things like that that don't really matter until I felt comfortable enough to start applying it to the bigger stuff.

SPEAKER_01:

Smart. That's something I'm working on in my own life. My career is very easy to do that because I work in business solutions or human resources. And so you have to work in the gray. Nothing's really black and white in that industry. But I would say when it comes to my own life, if I'm not having control over, say, my food, I find my mind trying to control something else just because it scares me to be in the unknown. So I hear you.

SPEAKER_02:

100%. 100%. We just always wanna. And the funny thing is, is like we're not controlling people. No, it's just we would never, we would never like the control that we have over we want to have over our life, we would never project that into someone else's life or into someone. No. And I think that is huge to say because that just speaks to how much how personal and how internalizing is what it really is.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I I completely agree with that. I feel like a lot of us are, and maybe I'm generalizing here, are more people pleasers, and we want others around us to feel comfortable and do what makes makes them happy. But you're right, when it comes to us, we're like, okay, no, you have this plan, you have to follow it.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like we put ourselves on this pedestal, and it's not a good pedestal because the expectations that we have for ourselves are outrageous. But yeah, we wouldn't we always worry about putting other people first before our own needs, but at the same time, we want to have a lot of control. So if that makes any sense, which it doesn't, that's exactly what a fucking eating disorder is. Eating disorders make zero sense. So as you start to recover and get stronger recovery, time goes on. Did you notice internally, just for yourself, like a shift? Like you started to feel like Alex again, you started to feel just back to yourself and a little less each time, each day, consumed by the eating disorder. What was that shift like?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't think I noticed it myself right away. I think those who are dear to me noticed it first. I the two people in my life who are very special are my mom and then my boyfriend Austin were the closest to me in this process. And I'm not gonna live leave out Bill Sub, my dad. Billy boy, he's great too. But he's just, I think he gave me the support as well, but he was not as good on the emotional side. He tried his best because he didn't really understand it. Whereas my mom and Austin were the ones behind the scenes doing research, understanding what they needed to support me more. And with that, as I started recovering, they definitely saw me laughing more. That was the first sign because I hadn't, I'm not being dramatic here. I rarely laughed within the year that I was at my lowest. I was always either crying or just had no emotion at all. Like you wouldn't see me mad, sad, nothing, just numb. And so when they started seeing me laugh again and even seeing me cry um cry, but more show different types of emotions, like cry when I'm angry or stressed, then they were like, oh, okay, she's becoming animated again. I was not animated for the longest time. And then I started realizing it myself. I would go outside, and this might sound dramatic too, but it truly, it's true. I would go outside and the sky looked bluer and the grass looked greener, and I would just get happy just by seeing sunlight. And I was like, uh, this is what it feels like to live again. And it was just an amazing, surreal feeling.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and it's it doesn't sound silly when you say I went outside and the world looked different because it it's true, and it's what it and I think what you mean by that, because I know exactly what you're saying, is like it's not that anything changed. It's just that we are more aware, we're more alive. We first of all, we're we're eating. Yes. So we're doing ourselves. So we're we have the energy to like just be aware. And I think that that automatically allows everything in our minds. Um, I remember being numb to my emotions too. Like I at the time I wasn't dreaming, I lived at home with my dad and my stepmom and my stepsisters, and my dad would always, he wouldn't always say that's misspeak there, but we were, I remember we were in family therapy about 10 years ago. And he said, he just said a part as part of the conversation, like she'll come home and she won't even look at anyone or say hi when she comes to the door. And it wasn't and I never thought about that because it wasn't like I ever walked through the door and said, Oh, I'm not gonna say hi to these people. It just wasn't a thought. Like it I wasn't even aware that like people were there. I wasn't aware that people wanted to talk to me. I just wanted to go up in my room and not come back out until I had to go to therapy the next day. Same. Like and I think as small as that is, that was like a wake-up moment where like, wow, I'm really, I'm really disconnected. I'm just floating around and not aware.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. I isolated myself from everyone. I was the same way. I would go to work, maybe I'd go to the gym after work if I had the energy for it, and then I'd just go home and lock myself in my room until work the next day.

SPEAKER_02:

So as compared to your worst, whatever day or second that was as to where you are now in this little moment, what is the besides the obvious like your mood and things you've already talked about, but what for you is the biggest shift that you appreciate the most? And I know there's probably a million in every single one of them, but there's so many.

SPEAKER_01:

I would say the biggest shift is I've found purpose today. And that purpose is helping others recover from this. And even if you don't have an eating disorder, just things that you can either find on my page or things that I want to speak with other people about is very uplifting. And I want to just have a positive impact on people's lives and help them realize that if you're in a dark place, there is good in the world. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I know it's hard to get there. But that has really just changed the course of my life because now I have a reason to wake up every day. And the reason is not me, it's other people. Because in the need disorder, it was me. It was me, me, me, me, me. And now it's I want to help other people. So that's been a really great shift. Um, the other shift is like I mentioned before, just feeling again and allowing myself to feel feelings because I had learned that if I numbed myself, I was safe. I couldn't hurt myself because I wasn't feeling anything. And I don't want to live that way anymore. But emotions are hard. Like some days I don't want to feel them and I just want to go back to old unhealthy habits and numb because they hurt. Some of them are painful, most of them are painful. But I'm really making myself open up to them today and not just feel them, but think, okay, why am I actually feeling like this? Because sometimes what you think on the surface isn't actually why you're having that emotion. Sometimes it's just I'm on my period and I'm emotional, but other times there's a deeper, a deeper meaning.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, for sure. Um one thing that I was actually reading a book last night and I don't have the book in front of me and I can't remember the title, but it was talking about how to not let your emotions like consume you, but also not avoid them. And it was talking about how instead of saying like I'm angry or I'm happy, I'm sad, or whatever the feeling is, say I'm feeling or I'm noticing that I'm angry or that I notice I'm feeling angry. Because then if you say I'm mad, sad, happy, your brain automatically puts you two together as like one thing.

SPEAKER_01:

I like that. I've never heard that before, but I'm gonna start thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's from a book. I'll have to put it in the show notes, please. Yeah, yeah. Um and I think that that's huge too because feeling some feelings aren't fun and they are painful and they suck. And what I have found that if you just let yourself feel them and like kind of for lack of better explanation, like get over it and get through it, it ends up being better because that because then it'll just come out later on in a very unexpected ten times out of ten awful way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, like instead of experience where you're crying in the bathroom at work or something.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, or someone who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're upset. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, why didn't you buy more peanut butter? Gosh.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like it's not about um so we can talk about recovery day in and day out. We can talk about eating disorders day in and day out simply because we lived them, we experienced them. But if when you think of someone who has not had this experience and can't really relate to recovery or having an eating disorder, what is something that like you would want them to know? Whether it's someone who supports or loves someone who has an eating disorder and is trying to recover, anything like that?

SPEAKER_01:

So many things. The first one that comes to mind is you hear this all the time, and it's not just a stereotype for a reason. I mean, I heard it from my own father just because, again, he didn't know a lot about this disorder in the beginning. The just eat a burger, just drink a milkshake, or why won't you just eat drives me crazy. I just want to scream, it's not that simple. In the beginning, my stomach and my digestive system were so wrecked that I had to start at all liquids. So I can't even fathom starting with a large burger or fries. And the physical and mental aspects of an eating disorder go far deeper than the average person realizes. It literally changes the way that your brain and body function, and you can't just reverse that overnight. It takes time and support to build up to foods that maybe someone fears, and that fear is real. Even if you don't comprehend it yourself, you can Google or chat GBT or whatever the kids are doing these days, anorexia and brain food, and you'll see that there's actually a fear response when anorexics, for instance, are in front of food. So it's a it's a very real fear and real emotion. I think it's really hard to comprehend that if you don't have an eating disorder yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

I always knew what that meant because I loved it like you have, but I always struggled to put it into words. And I think you just did a nice job, but I didn't really have that aha moment with okay, this is how I can explain it to someone until I read Epitheta Ferrar's book, Rehabilitate, Rewired Recover. Because she talks about that fear that you just talked about being a phobia. So if you think of all the phobias in the world that the average person has and the other person thinks they're silly, like elevators, heights, like the other person who's not afraid of those things laughs, right? So when you think of someone with anorexia and they're afraid of food, that's the same type of fear. It's just what what we're afraid of. And if that we are literally afraid to eat it because of the reasons might be different. Like I'm I'm still afraid of food, but the reason my reason why might be different than yours or whoever's. But that fear is so debilitating. It's not even just I'm scared of the dark and the light on. It's like a phobia, like a debilitating fear.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, like I have some RFID sprinkled in. And with RFID, my main fear when I was in early recovery and was starting to eat again is whenever I got super, super full, I was worried on how that would impact my body. I was worried about getting sick, and that was really my fear versus someone else who maybe looks at food, their fear is more about. The waking and the body image piece. So it might be different for two people with two different disorders, but that same fear is still real. And that same fear is still valid.

SPEAKER_02:

Well yeah. No matter I truly think and believe that it doesn't the reason doesn't matter, but the if the reason's different, the level and the intensity of that fear is still the same. It's it's awful. It's something that I still struggle to put into words when I'm trying to like explain. I'm thinking of my dad right now because he's very supportive. He's from what the little things that you said, he's probably he's very similar in the sense to your dad. Like he wants to help so bad. He just wants me to be better and not feel like this. And so and he has no idea what to do or say. And he'll just say he would say things like that, like, oh, why don't we just give a pizza? It's like it's like I will get the pizza with you and I will eat the pizza with you, but it's the mental warfare that I have to deal with that you can't even see through that whole process. That's a great way of putting it. And then the aftermath, too, like when I go home and like for days after. And like now, his last, his most recent thing, when I told him I was struggling again about a year ago, he would I kind of was a little hard on him saying, like, don't talk to me about it. You don't understand it. I don't need you to understand it. It's okay that you don't understand it, but just let me do what I gotta do. And like his thing was like every time he would see me, did you eat today? Yes. Yep. And like it would irritate me to no end, to no end. But then like one day I was just like, you know what? He probably doesn't have us no idea what to do, and that's all he can think to say to be gentle enough to check in on me. Like, I can do better about honoring that, and just saying, Yes, I did. And without made him a brat.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. And I think that's a universal experience for parents too. Like, I will go over to my parents' house and they'll be like, You look good today. Am I allowed to say that? Am I able to say that? I think parents they kind of walk on eggshells because they don't want to make things worse, but at the same time, they care so deeply. It's hard to know what to do or say. I actually have a lot of moms reach out to me on my page, and they're one of them had a daughter who was just she's in an inpatient facility right now, but she's just very quiet and she the mom isn't hearing from her at all. And she's like, Am I being too overbearing if I send her a text every day? And I'm like, no, just let her know that you're there for her. And I know it's scary, you know, when you hug her and you just want to say, Oh, you're beautiful. I just want to show you you're a beautiful, but instead just say, I'm there for you. Whenever you're ready and you want to talk, I'm here and just know I'm never going anywhere. So you're still showing her that you're there for her, but maybe to her, it doesn't feel as overbearing.

SPEAKER_02:

But it's hard to be coherent and navigating. So hard.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think now that I'm on the other side of it too, like I can see like there's loss of power in both ends. Like you haven't the person has an eating disorder, they don't know what the hell's going on. Parents hate to see their child suffer from anything, they don't know what the hell is going on in what to do. So it's it's a loss at both ends. I've had a lot of people ask me too, like, oh, what can I do? Let me change. It's such there's really no answer because everyone is so different, each other is so different. Or ask somebody. But sometimes a lot of day ignore. That's a very good thing. Then they'll come to you and they're ready. And you can say things like, you look great, beautiful, all that, but it doesn't mean anything to the person who's struggling because if they don't believe it, it doesn't mean anything. Exactly. I just think that's a tough question because there's no right answer. And there's really no wrong answer too, because it just depends on the person.

SPEAKER_01:

And on that too, the whole time throughout my recovery, I had no idea what I was doing. I feel like I didn't blink because it took a long time to become weight restored. But I feel what like one day I just woke up and I was weight restored and I was like, how do I get here? I don't even know. All I knew is I I did what people told me to do on my support team and I just ate. But it's just the whole time I was like, am I doing like what you're saying, am I doing this right? Is this how I'm supposed to be doing this? But just follow what your professionals are saying, do what feels right, and do the next right thing each and every day, and you'll get there.

SPEAKER_02:

The biggest part of that is finding, which can be tough, finding just the right team that you can trust and that you know they have the the best interest for you. And then if you truly do the outlandish things that they ask you to do in recovery, and I say outlandish because I once thought they were outlandish. Like I'm not in. I would look at people and I'm like, you want me to know what? Yeah, they are. Agree with you. But if you just do it, you will get there. It'll take time, it'll still be days, it'll suck, but it will be just like you said, and just like how you got into your eating disorder. There was, there's no day that you got your eating disorder. It wasn't like you woke up on July 1st and were like, okay, I have an eating disorder now. It's just one of those things where you look back and you're like, oh, this how do I even get here? When you are in recovery, in not even recover, but when you are in a good place in recovery, that's exactly how you're gonna feel. You're gonna look back and you're gonna be like, I'm here. Like I'm almost there. I you just you look back and you're like, wow. And I think that that is powerful because a lot of everyone wants to know when they're gonna be recovered, right? I wanted to know, I was like, can you just give me a date, please? My disease, no.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you can't. Um, yeah, I completely agree. You nailed it, and I mean, I rem still remember the day they label labeled me as an anorex, and I was like, uh what? What do you what are you saying? Because I would have never imagined that for myself because I didn't feel like I was anorexic. I was like, I'm just depressed and I lost a bunch of weight. But then I started having these experiences that other girls were experiencing, and I was like, oh, okay, I can relate to these girls a lot on a very deep level. So yeah, you're right. The day that you get you uh find out that you have an eating disorder, it's a shock. And the day that you find out you're recovered, just an even better shock.

SPEAKER_02:

Right, I agree, yeah. It and it's really a great feeling once you get there. And there's there will still be times that negative things creep in. Like for this is actually a positive share, but it happened this morning, and so I'll just stay here. But I just had that experience literally this morning when I was showering about oh wow, I didn't I used to think about food all of the time. And so what am I gonna have for breakfast? What am I gonna have for lunch? What am I gonna have for dinner Friday? What am I gonna all the time my thoughts are about food? And when I started recovery, there were some negative thoughts about food, but because I was like, okay, I'm gonna recover, I'm gonna do this, my thoughts were turning almost obsessive because I wanted to eat so badly, because I wanted to get to recovery quicker. And then I learned that if you're thinking about food all of the time and you have a restrictive eating disorder, you that's good evidence that you are malnourished. Because your body is trying to tell you, because you haven't listened to your hunger cues, so it's not gonna send you the needs to figure out a different way to try to get you to listen to it. And so I literally said to me thought to myself in the shower this morning, I was like, wow, I haven't had a day or even an amount of time in a day where I was just thinking about food all the time. And that's the type of stuff that will happen solely, not every day, not all the time, but you'll just it'll just hit you.

SPEAKER_01:

And I hope a lot of people get hope out of that because I know the food noise is it drives you crazy sometimes. I know it did for me too. Same thing. When I was in recovery, I thought about food all day, every day. Unfortunately, I don't have regular hunger cues yet, and I'm working on that with my E therapist. It's kind of hard because I don't know if I've ever really had those because with RFID, sometimes you don't get hunger cues. But I definitely still relate that now. Whenever I think, oh, I'm really looking forward to lunch. I'm like, okay, I think it's time for lunch. And then I get up and I make food. So I have like the thoughts around the time, so I'm getting hungry now, which is positive. And I don't have the food obsession all day, every day, but I'm hoping one day I'm the same way and I get those hunger cues back. I really hope I do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they um they'll come back harsh. You'll you will literally feel hungry all the time, just because once you start refeeding your not that you aren't at this stage, but you were like say you were at the beginning, just for purpose of this, once they come back and you eat, your body's gonna be like, okay, she's listening, so I'm just gonna hound her with all these hunger cues. And I think that that is one of the hardest humps to get over. And I say that because it was a very hard hump for me to get over. And I think that just on my page and other people's page, people reach out and they want to know like hunger cues, tell me about hunger cues, they tell me about I'm gonna always be this hungry forever, and I'm I feel like I'm never gonna be able to stop eating. And you are not until your body is ready. Yes. Your body needs to trust you, your body needs to be maybe restored in some way. But once you kind of get your body kind of gets it full of what it needs, you will stabilize. Because I have those same thoughts. I was like, am I ever gonna like not be hungry?

SPEAKER_01:

I think it's a good example of just because you're weight restored doesn't mean you're fully recovered. Like I still say I'm in recovery because I am weight restored and I don't have a lot of the earlier symptoms that I once had. There's still a lot of things I'm working on and a lot of physical uh cues that I don't have yet that I want to get back. So I'm still in recovery today, even if I'm weight restored.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I agree with that 100%. I am in a very strong place in my recovery, but I'm not not close to saying I'm recovered. And that's not because I'm not continuing to do what I do, but I think it's kind of similar to what you're saying, is like you just you just know that you're not there yet. It's not really something you can explain. You just you just know you're not there yet. Like there are little things that still pop up for me, and I still struggle with the recovery perfection and things like that. And even though those come off as positives in a way, like, why wouldn't you want to do recovery perfect? Like that is kind of isn't that kind of the point? But no, because that's not what life is, right? Um and I think my recovery coach actually gave me this example one time when I was like, because we have I have texted for like one week a month out of after my appointment. So I like turbo turbo texted her one day. Um, it was like a Saturday, and I got caught up doing something. I was volunteering for an event and we were setting up and we ran into a lot of issues, and I didn't have my phone on me and I didn't know what time it was. So when we came back down and I got my phone, it was two o'clock, and I went into panic mode. I was like, I didn't eat lunch, I restricted. Oh and she was like, first of all, settle down. But then she was like, think about it, did you restrict? Did you say to yourself, like, I'm not gonna eat lunch? No, you didn't even realize what time it was. You came down and you you were mad that you didn't eat yet. That's not restriction. Yeah, restriction is intentional. So that's where things that you don't expect in recovery can be tough because those are mainly because those are things you've probably never struggled with before. And that you probably shovel with it the opposite way. Um and it's all about intention. If I could tell anyone about recovery and that is short and sweet, it's about your intention. If you made a mistake, not who cares? What was your intention? Like as long as you're going towards that goal, it's gonna get easier, but then you're gonna start encountering things like I just described that. Send you for a lube and something you left about a couple weeks later. Amen to that, sister. You have a Instagram, I will put it in the show notes. You have a page very different than mine, but similar in the sense of what you're kind of trying to do. So find Alex on Instagram. He's got some really good content. We will probably do more collaborations in the future, I'm sure. Um, and then one last question, put Alex on the spot. If you knew that someone who was struggling with an eating disorder was listening to this episode, what would you want their last thing to hear be?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, first of all, I'm sending you a virtual hug right now because I know it's really hard. And there are times when you're gonna feel hopeless, but just keep going. Know that you have support out there through my page, through Kate's page. You can reach out to either of us anytime, and we're more than happy to chat with you. Sorry, Kate, I'm speaking for you, but I know that you're open as well. But there are people out here there who really care about you. And I know it's hard to wrap your mind around that, even if you don't really care about yourself right now. But, you know, you're it's kind of like having faith. You're just gonna have to have to trust the process and just keep going through the recovery process to actually reap the rewards of it and see that this thing does work. And so, you know, I can talk till I'm blue in the face about recovery's so great, recovery's so great, but you're gonna experience it for yourself. I know you are, and just keep going and let us know. Let us know how it goes. Because I love, I love a good success story. But if I can help you get there, let us know that as well.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I also want to say, too, just to piggyback on that, is yes, you can obviously, of course, reach out to Alex or I. We've lived it, and I personally feel like that's the best help because we know exactly what you're talking about when you say like when you preference something. But there's also, and I just learned this through making my page, there's a huge community out there of like minded people, whether they're certified recovery coaches or whether they're just everyday people like Alex and I just legit and want to know. Don't be afraid to say or ask whatever it is, because if I was afraid, I'm hearing them now talking about it with people who I just met. And whether you get the exact thing you want or not, even just the things that you have to say, or asking the exact things you want to ask, and just talking about your shit. Yeah, and itself is so powerful and thank you, Alex, again, and I'm sure she'll be back soon. Yes, I'm speaking from her.

SPEAKER_01:

I would love that, and we will definitely do another collab soon as well. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Bite by Bite. I'm so grateful to be able to share this space with you, and I hope today's conversation brought you some insight, comfort, or maybe even a sense of community. Remember, no matter what you're feeling from, feeling isn't perfect, and every step you take does matter. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with us if you like video or subscribing to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or I think Facebook Podcast, tweeting. If you want to subscribe more, I'll be right.

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Kaitlyn Moresi

Host
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Alex Sublette

Guest