Barbara, NYC, NY

I am 20 years old and I started struggling with food when I was 16. I had always been very active, athletic, and healthy. I remember eating occasionally for comfort, after going through a difficult move and my parents’ divorce. A few months later, under pressure from demanding high school sports teams, I started dieting. I was always a good student and a bit of a perfectionist, and the diet soon became extreme and dangerous until I was diagnosed and hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. For three years after my hospitalization I struggled to continue my recovery. I would restrict for months at a time and fast for a week or two in-between, but over time, the restricting caught up with me and I began to binge between fasts. I became very ashamed of it and felt caught in a terrible shameful cycle of fasting, restricting, and bingeing that I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about. Besides inpatient treatment at a hospital, I worked with nutritionists, therapists, and psychologists. I tried a few different antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications, saw eating disorder specialists, and went to a couple of OA meetings. Through all of this treatment, I was still unable to accept my body or step outside of the disordered eating cycle, and I continued to struggle with talking about the topic openly with the people I sought help from. I would skirt around the subject and give short, vague answers when it came up. After a miserable few months of restricting, three years after I had first began my struggle with eating, I wanted so badly to leave that cycle and just live a normal life. I found the Evolved Eating website online and met Susan.

Susan is warm, kind, and caring. She offers a nonjudgmental and safe place to talk. I finally began talking about things with her that I had not been able to talk with anyone about before. She helped me to realize why I had been using food the way I was and that helped me to lift shame from the subject. Evolved Eating began from a place of kindness and that is something that was different from all of the treatment I had been through. I had been told by treatment providers, what seemed like a million times, that I just wasn’t trying hard enough, that I must not really want to get better, and that I needed to work harder, be stronger, and have more willpower. Susan taught me to look at life one moment at a time and to look upon myself with kindness. She helped me to recognize that I will never be perfect, but I am good just the way I am. She gently encouraged me to move forward even in the times I did not eat for hunger and satiation perfectly, without dwelling on it. The more I kept moving forward, the easier it became, and I was able to continue to eat for hunger and satiation for longer periods of time, without fasting, restricting, or bingeing. In the past I had been told about what is “right” and “good” to eat and weigh, but I had never been taught that I was a good person regardless of what I ate or weighed, and I had never been taught how to eat until I started working with Susan. From our first session, she told me that I did not have to change anything about myself or wait until I was some “perfect weight” to start eating mindfully; she encouraged me to start right then and there. She asked me what hunger felt like for me. At the time, I didn’t know how to answer that question. I had been taught to eat by food groups, calories, grams, cups, ounces, meal plans, time of day…but no one had ever taught me how to eat when I was hungry until I was full. Susan freed me from counting calories and taught me how to be in tune with my body’s needs (including hunger, satiation, what kind of food my body needed, rest, creativity, and activity) by being present in the moment, receptive to my body, and truthful with myself.

After putting my body through the anorexia, my stomach had been unable to comfortably digest many things and would often become very bloated and painful when I ate. This had been discouraging every time I had tried to recover. Susan worked with me to figure out which foods were harder for my stomach to digest and I am now able and willing to make choices based on what will meet my body’s needs and be gentle on my stomach.

In the past, my caregivers had always been concerned with labels like “anorexia nervosa” or “eating disorder-not otherwise specified,” and these titles were intimidating. Susan has never been concerned with these categories. She is most concerned with helping me achieve my goals in recovery and asks what I would like to focus on in every session. She has always been easy to contact and willing to help whenever I need her. She even set up sessions with me when I was out of the country.

Working with Susan has brought a lively, youthful spirit back to me. A friend who has seen me through my work with Susan said that I used to seem like an empty shell, but now I am full of life and excitement. Before working with Susan, similar to how I only knew how to eat according to what a meal plan said I “should” eat, I also didn’t know what things I loved to do- I was guided by what I thought I “should” do. Susan has taught me to be in tune with myself and to embrace and respect my talents as well as my limitations and boundaries. She has taught me to value myself and to take steps to feel peaceful in my life. She has helped me to improve my relationships with people in my life, been a source of encouragement as I pursued my passions, shared recipes with me, helped me work through fears, reminded me consistently of my accomplishments, and has been a dedicated source of guidance and support. I would recommend Evolved Eating to anyone who struggles in any way with food or eating.
~Anonymous