Podcast Transcript

Episode 56: From No Diagnosis to Misdiagnosis: An Atypical Anorexia Recovery Story with Laura Maalouf

[Bouncy theme music plays.]

Sam: Hey, I’m Sam.

Ashley: Hi, I’m Ashley, and you’re listening to All Bodies. All Foods. presented by The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders. We want to create a space for all bodies to come together authentically and purposefully to discuss various areas that impact us on a cultural and relational level.

Sam: We believe that all bodies and all foods are welcome. We would love for you to join us on this journey. Let’s learn together.

Ashley: Thank you for joining us on another episode of All Bodies, All Foods. Our conversation today is intended to both educate and advocate for those experiencing the diagnosis, Atypical Anorexia, under the OSFED or Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders category. Were you aware that restrictive eating disorders exist in folks in all body shapes and sizes? While this might sound like common knowledge to us today, this fact was widely missed in the traditional scope of eating disorders. And really it still can be missed today, especially in the medical field. Atypical anorexia and anorexia nervosa share the exact same criteria with the only difference being body size. Even though these are technically different diagnoses, the medical and psychological consequences are just as serious, if not worse, for Atypical Anorexia. A meta-analysis published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders in 2021 found that Atypical Anorexia nervosa occurs more frequently than Anorexia Nervosa in community samples. However, fewer individuals with Atypical Anorexia are referred or admitted to specialized care for their eating disorders. It is also not uncommon for folks with Atypical Anorexia to get misdiagnosed, likely due to weight stigma. Today we’re going to speak with Laura Maalouf, who finally received this diagnosis after years of knowing her relationship with food and her body were not in a helpful place. However, the traditional eating disorders such as Anorexia, Bulimia, and Binge Eating Disorder just did not fit her experience. While we know that every recovery story is unique and everyone travels on their own path, in this episode, Laura shares her road to recovery, including her experience trying to seek support, what worked for her and what didn’t, and all the twists and turns on her journey. Laura Maalouf is a multifaceted individual who had previously battled with her eating disorder and recently published a self-help journal called Not Sick Enough: Atypical Anorexia, available on Amazon. Laura is a seasoned educator with over 13 years of experience working in film, technology and business education. Outside the classroom, Laura serves as the educational director of the Southeast Pennsylvania Teen Filmmakers Showcase, now in its sixth consecutive year. She has produced three audio books through ACX, published a children’s book titled Peanut and earned a certificate in film and television, through NYU Tisha School of the Arts, all while teaching full-time in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Laura, we are so excited to have you here.

Ashley: Hi everyone! Laura, we are so excited to have you and really just chat with you today on this episode of All Bodies. All Foods. So I was curious if you could start us off with sharing a little bit of background about yourself and maybe when you first noticed your eating disorder and then what steps you took to kind of help yourself.

Laura: Absolutely. Thank you guys for having me. This is really nice to be able to talk about something that I feel like can often be very generalized and as a result misunderstood and unintentionally exclusionary. So for me, I noticed that I have this kind of preoccupation and hyper focus and hyper vigilance on what I was consuming to the point that it started altering my behavior. At one point, you know, on its face, certain things like being mindful of what you eat and activity can be, “oh, these are great things.” But when they say everything in moderation, I was definitely crossing a line into something else that just didn’t quite feel helpful or helpful, and it actually felt more chaotic than anything. So I started kind of developing these rituals around meals and having the same things because I already vetted them basically and I wouldn’t have to think about it and when I noticed that starting to disrupt just my usual activities, especially going out to eat, it became obvious to me something was off. So that for me wasn’t due to any sort of major traumatic experience. I’ve led a very fortunate life. I had and still have both of my parents from a very large family and I’ve had really good friends and went to college after high school. Had a little bit of hard times career wise while I found my way to my current position. But nothing that would have been any sort of overt trigger. It’s just something that kind of always bubbled underneath the surface.

Sam: Yeah. I think that comes up a lot where we have clients who are so confused why they have an eating disorder. It’s like, “I don’t think I had trauma. I can’t think of anything that happened to me” and it can be such a confusing experience. So thanks for validating that because I think it’s worth reminding everyone that eating disorders, are very complex. There’s a genetic component and it’s not always going to be connected with trauma. It’s not always going to be connected with some really clear trigger.

Laura:  I almost felt like, you know, what do I have to be frustrated with that I would be starting to need this coping mechanism as though  I didn’t really deserve to be complaining because I had so many things go right, but a lot of times I’ll tell this to my students because I teach full time. I’ll tell this to my husband and a lot of times I’ll tell it to myself. You really have no idea what battle somebody is fighting on a day to day basis. It could be that everything’s gone great as far as you’ve seen, but there could be internal things going on and you just can’t, you can’t readily assume that everything is good just because everything looks good. And I think I became so focused on presentation that internally I was just a complete mess.

Ashley: Just to echo what you both have said, I mean, I feel like that can be the experience of so many people in this process. It doesn’t, like you were saying, Laura, it doesn’t have to be this overt trauma or like a thing that activated it and it can be so… And the messages can be so internal and so yucky. And also one of the things that we frequently see with people is that they say like, “well, I’m not sick enough,” right? Yeah, which we’re going to get to in a little bit. But I was curious, could you talk to us a little bit, Laura, about when you noticed that things weren’t right, what did you do with that? How did you reach out? How did you seek help?

Laura: Well, I’m very much a fact driven person, which is really funny because if my husband was here, he’d be like, I’m a very intensely emotional person. I feel things deeply. And I think it’s because of experiences that I’ve had with things like this and mental health in general. But in order to assuage my anxiety, which can be pretty bad sometimes, I try and consume as much information as I can on whatever it is that I’m anxious about, so I can kind of logic my mind into calming down is the only way I’ve been successful. So I researched a lot. I just kind of looked into everything, and of course, you know, you see all of the typical Lifetime movies come up on search results. So what was really interesting is that I was consuming all of this data, while not consuming very much in terms of nutrition, so I kind of became just immersed in everything that was like EDNOS, Not Otherwise Specified, and just trying to make it make sense. And so I did end up making an appointment with my doctor and I said, you know, it just, it doesn’t feel right, it feels like it’s moving from sort of healthy habits into kind of a compulsion. Like it’s “I have to do this, but I don’t feel okay. And I feel like that’s not what it’s supposed to be.” So the first thing that they had me do in response to that was sit on a scale.

Ashley: Oh, wow.

Laura: And I was like, wow. And they proceeded to tell me that, you know, like sometimes people just get intense and they can go through phases and you know, with your current weight, your BMI is actually higher than they recommend, so it’s probably good that you’re being mindful of what you’re consuming. And they just, they just weren’t listening because to me, I felt like I didn’t look the part. I felt like I was not sick enough. Like that became kind of like a challenge to become sick enough, which is just perverse, and it logically doesn’t make sense, but I wasn’t thinking logically. I was thinking very much on internalized emotions about what I thought I needed to be and needed to present to everybody else. And that just kind of became this sort of sinister relationship between my outward presentation. The more healthy I appeared, the less healthy I was actually being in order to sustain what that looks like.

Sam: Your story is so important, Laura, because what you’re talking about is weight stigma in action in the medical realm. And this weight stigma is what causes people to be misdiagnosed, misunderstood, invalidated, and it makes sense to me that you had these thoughts, like, “well, I’m not sick enough. Maybe I need to get sicker,” because you wanted and needed validation and you didn’t get that. And that’s what’s so dangerous about weight stigma is that these very dangerous eating disorders are not being diagnosed and people aren’t getting the treatment they need.

Ashley: And I’m curious, Laura, you mentioned EDNOS, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, was that something that had been given to you or was that something in your research that felt more accurate because maybe some of the traditional Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge Eating, didn’t fully fit.

Laura: Yeah, so it was definitely from my research. I had even proposed that, and you know,  we’re not the best narrators most reliably of our own memories, because I know that a lot of our feelings at the time can influence what we remember and how we interpreted it, but it just, it felt received as though it was almost laughable when I had kind of floated the, you know, “this is something that I have looked into and what’s interesting is that I do have other mental health diagnoses having to do with like depression and things like that.” And it was the same. It was the same, well, “are you sure you’re not just going through a phase,” almost as though you have to prove it and keep proving it. And the thought behind that is exhausting because not all disabilities are visible. And we’re hearing a lot of dialogue around that, that you can’t know someone’s ability to process things or even to do certain things just by looking at them, but that’s exactly what was being asked of me in order to access resources. I had to prove it to them and I couldn’t do that. You know, sometimes-

Sam: You shouldn’t have to do that.

Laura: And sometimes we do see people that are in the midst of really unhealthy restriction and they’re maintaining what looks like a normal weight. Like it really depends on how your body reacts to things. So-

Sam: Right.

Laura: It just became kind of defeating. Like I would do this research. Sometimes I’ll say to people, it’s really hard being smarter than a lot of other people because you have to be patient with them while they figure out that you’re right. And as soon as I saw the DSM this year and it said Atypical Anorexia, I was like, “I told you so!” I knew it. I knew something wasn’t right, but the medicine hadn’t really caught up to what was happening yet.

Sam: Right, right. I’m curious, Laura, and I think this is a common experience for a lot of people who eventually are diagnosed with Atypical Anorexia, but were you misdiagnosed at any point in your journey?

Laura: Oh yeah, absolutely. I was told, you know, if I wanted to give you any sort of eating related, I’d probably say it’s more Binge Eating, because I did have periods of time where I would be like, “oh, I’m just so tired of all of this,” and I would just not think about it. And I would just, you know, whatever. And so they said, you know, I don’t think it would be anything other than binge eating. And they actually gave me information on support groups about binge eating, which is where they talk to you about being mindful and eating less. And I’m like, but.

Sam: That’s harmful.

Laura: I know it was just really awkward. I just felt like again, my weight was being looked at, a judgment was being made, and that was it.

Ashley: Yeah. So Laura, one of the reasons that we were really excited about having you on here is that one, the story of atypical anorexia, you know, kind of what we’ve already said, like it can get misdiagnosed, it can get overlooked. We’re really, as a field, even a medical field, we’re really just now starting to acknowledge this as a diagnosis, and so one of the things that came out of this process for you is that you published a self-help journal titled Not Sick Enough, Atypical Anorexia, and I was curious if you can share with us more about this journal, what prompted you to create it and where we can find it.

Laura: Absolutely. So I actually, I lost my copy today and then I found it like 10 minutes ago, so it is here. It hides in plain sight, you know, it’s got this little binding. I thought it was a stack of printing paper, but I was looking online because, like I said, I do a lot of research. I like just getting information and knowing what’s happening as a way to diffuse my anxiety attacks, prevent them hopefully altogether. And so where do you go when you want to find books on something like Amazon, obviously, so we went onto Amazon and I typed it in and one of the books I already had and it was actually pretty helpful, which was Intuitive Eating, because the concept behind it, I like learning how to listen to your body. It’s like, okay, cool, cool, cool. But then I typed in Atypical Anorexia and I found like one thing, maybe something else, and it was all a lot of it was very doctor language. I wasn’t looking for something peer reviewed as helpful as that might be. It kind of wasn’t what I was after I was looking for more of a workbook or a journal, just to connect with somebody having a similar experience and not feeling like, gaslit every time I look for a search result. So I was lamenting to my husband about it. “I can’t find this” and he’s like, “then make it.” I was like, hmm. That’s a very effective way to get me to shut up. The next like three days, I’m just like feverishly writing things and some of which was already written because I did take writing classes in college and I do write and I have been writing for a while. And some of it was just, I was noticing a theme in all of my previous writing, and I used almost everything that I’ve ever written in this book, so it goes a bit between my experience, it’s a little bit of a dialogue, and then places just for people to take a minute and plan out their priorities. It’s blank so that it can be any 12 months, but it’s set up to be 12 months, where you just kind of check in with yourself, sort of like reflective exercises, box breathing, yoga poses, like all the things that I felt were almost like a toolbox of the most useful things I found, just put into one spot because I could not find that for the life of me searching up, down and sideways. So what’s really interesting is as we were getting ready for this rescheduled date, I was looking online and I got a notification that I actually had sold three more of these in June, and I was so excited because they were unsolicited purchases, which means it wasn’t my sister, so to me, that just felt super validating that like somebody out there is accessing this and that was my main hope. And I did put it under my actual name, which, you know, as an educator, it is kind of like a risky move at times, but I felt like it was very honest. It was very truthful. It was, it was very useful to people, so I was very proud of that and was happy to attach my name to it. But, it does kind of bounce back and forth, and the first page literally says trigger warning. There’s a lot of things in here that, you know, if you’re not in the head space to be processing it, it might be too soon for you, and I do encourage people that like, I am not a health practitioner at all. I am just a person and absolutely, this is something not to substitute therapy, but like maybe it’s something that you bring to talk to who you’re talking to and can be part of how you kind of process things on your own. But it ended up being very cathartic writing all the passages that weren’t yet created and it helped me figure out that this did not start when I was in college. The first time this happened was when I got my menstrual cycle for the first time when I was 10, and I’m like, oh my gosh, every time it happens, it’s usually some sort of big change in my life, whether it’s, you know, good, bad or indifferent, even if it’s a good change, I just, I respond to change in a way where I use this to cope with that, and I didn’t realize that until I wrote the book.

Ashley: Wow. That’s like light bulb moment, because even when we were talking at the beginning and you were like, “well, really, I kind of noticed this in or after college, kind of around that time frame.” While you may have noticed it in that time frame for yourself, but looking back and doing the work, you noticed that these were patterns that have evolved since you were quite young.

Sam: This is one of the reasons why we encourage clients to try journaling or even creating a timeline. It’s sort of like once you really start going back and reflecting, you start to notice the patterns and the themes that are popping up and transition, change, loss, all of those things are usually pretty big triggers in eating disorder recovery, so thank you for normalizing that. I also had another question about your book, if we can sort of get into the specifics a little bit. I know that you write about movement in your book, and I was really curious what your relationship with movement was like when you were struggling, what’s your relationship like with it now and what helped you along the way?

Laura: Probably the thing I struggle with the most consistently is that when I was not doing well, the biggest areas of me having physical activity and me getting up and doing a lot of consistent exercise, like sustained cardiac activity for like however many minutes a week was the most fitness focused I have ever been, was the most unhealthy I have ever been. So I’m working with my therapist and my psychiatrist to kind of figure out how can I divorce that behavior from relapse behavior and how can I kind of incorporate movements while not triggering myself into bad habits. That’s a very fine line to walk. That’s very hard to do, but what I was noticing is that it had control anyway. By not exercising, because I was afraid of triggering a relapse, I was becoming unhealthy in the other direction. So regardless, this fear was still controlling what I was doing. I was just doing something else or the lack of doing things, so I’ve been trying to focus on just incorporating more movement in terms of what I do. Right now, exercising for me is still hard because I get really nervous. I do a lot of like self-sabotage as soon as I start to notice that I’ve, you know, done something a certain amount of times a week or a certain amount of times a month even, and then I’ll just kind of back off and shut down and it freaks me out because I remember how it snowballed into that ritual. And I’m very untrusting of myself when it comes to that, and that’s also something that I’m working on is, you know, you can’t be driven by fear. And while I’m saying, “ah, it’s not going to let me do this ever again to myself. I’m never going to be in that position,” it’s still controlling what I’m doing with my resistance to working through that and being able to exercise, hopefully. I don’t know what that looks like for me because I’ve never done that. So it’s, it’s been very tricky. I think lately, working on my house, like there’s so much physical activity that you don’t even think about, just be like running up and down the stairs, like doing the laundry, getting the vacuuming done, finding a project, like build something, move around. And so I’ve been trying to infuse more of that as a way to kind of, I guess, get my endurance up, so that way, when I start doing more things, I’m not like, “okay, I got to stop. It’s been four minutes,” but I also am working on giving myself permission to only do something for four minutes. I think it was a physical trainer that I met once and she said to me, “the people that come in here lifting 300 pounds didn’t start with 300 pounds. You have to start somewhere.” You can’t just avoid starting and I think that I’m still working on. It’s been tricky but thankfully I was thrust into a lot of movement recently, and I had referenced rescheduled before my, my father-in-law passed, one month today. He was a, a very health focused man who is a, a doctor pharmacy and that abrupt, very out-of-nowhere, kind of prompted us to refocus our priorities on health and making sure that we’re doing what we can to keep ourselves healthy. And I think shifting your motive can be really helpful. And that has helped me a lot in the last month. But my motive is to not put my husband through what he went through suddenly losing his father to a heart attack. My motive is to make sure that I can be engaged and around for my family as long as I possibly can and not waiting until too late to rectify things. So I think finding a different motivation that’s not just about you can really help integrating that movement for people like me that might be afraid of kind of going back and backsliding into that behavior. As  they’ve done in the past.

Ashley: And I think something that you highlighted a little bit ago is that you’ve also maintained going to therapy, and so this process, you are able to like talk about with your therapist, bounce ideas off. Like you have a support system that helps you when the voices become too much. Like when you were saying like, yeah, just when you were talking about like the, “I don’t want to go too far this way, you’re too far this way, ” like I was just envisioning like a ping pong battle, you know, happening back and forth and you’re like, where are my guys? And I’m just thinking that like having support would be really helpful to help kind of like you navigate this process.

Laura: Yeah, and for me, therapy has been tricky. There was a good period of time where I just would not do it because it just felt weird. It felt like I was just doing something for the sake of saying that I did it and I didn’t really feel like I was getting a lot out of it, and I think there’s definitely periods in our life where it can be extremely helpful, but if you’re not in a space for that, like maybe you need to do something different. And so what I did for a bit before I returned to therapy recently, was I went and I found a dietitian and I hated him, and then I found another one, did not like him either. And then I found another one and I gave myself permission to kind of, you know, look for someone that understood where I’m coming from, from a health perspective. Like I just wanted it to be about data, you know, what could I do that I’m going to enjoy that’s going to give my body fuel that’s not going to focus on calories? And a lot of dietitians want to focus on calories, so it took a lot of searching to find someone. And our sessions ended up being part dietician part therapy, which is kind of manifested into this like dialogue of, you know, where are these feelings coming from? And I think a lot of times dietitians can be underestimated as to how helpful they are in navigating food issues and kind of divorcing, you know, feelings of self-worth from food. One’s not connected to the other, we’ve made it connect and we have the power to separate that as well. And she was instrumental on a lot of the things that we’ve adopted, like as a family, going to support system, I think my husband’s learning therapy language because he hears it from me all the time. I went into the kitchen and we had like one popsicle. And I was like, “oh, my goodness, someone ate all the popsicles.” And he’s like, “hey, your dietitian said we don’t make it about blame.” Instead of someone ate all the popsicles, Oh, we need to get more popsicles. Yeah, because we don’t realize that our language is making things almost accusatory, like, how dare you? And people internalize that. Right. And they’re like, “I’m bad, I ate.” And I’m like, “oh my goodness, I’m so sorry.” So just monitoring how we speak to each other has been really helpful. And also I think it comes with a little bit of a burden. Having a good support system and then encountering people outside of that system is very different. And I’ll find myself trying to gently educate people. Don’t just tell her, “oh my god, you lost weight, you look beautiful.” Why can’t you just say, “oh my god, you look beautiful?”

We need to stop assigning things to, “you now have worth because…”, to “you have worth,” and that’s it. And I can sound a little preachy sometimes, and I’m trying not to, but I’m also a teacher, and I think I try to teach about everything, but, I’m very thankful that I do have the support system that I do and access that I do. Not everyone has health insurance. Not everyone can afford to be able to make multiple appointments with different doctors, and I think that that’s an access issue that I know a lot of organizations are working to bridge to get resources to people that are not able to access them, and I think that’s incredible. But definitely just honest and open conversation, and when I find myself not doing something, like yesterday, I forgot to have anything to eat until noon. And my husband said, “Hey, you want to come volunteer at this food bank with me?” And I’m like, “No, I haven’t eaten all day. I’m going to go home and I’m going to have lunch.” And he looked at me, he’s like, “Good job.” Like he wasn’t mad. He appreciated that I was honest. Having that support system that you feel like you can talk to I think has been everything for me.  A large credit to my husband on immense amounts of patience. Because you need patient people in your corner. It’s definitely something that’s cyclical and frustrating for you, so I can only imagine how frustrating it is to see someone you love dealing with all of these things.

Ashley: What was it like when you, you know, you said, you said like, there it is. I knew it was Atypical Anorexia when you saw the DSM. What was it like when you finally got this diagnosis and then you were sharing it with your family or your support system? Like, what was that experience like for you?

Laura:  It was really weird, because I think they thought that was over. Like “ Why are you telling me about this? This was so many years ago.” They didn’t realize that it was something that kind of kept resurfacing, just kind of bobbing up and down. I’m like, “okay, no.” My husband likened it to whack-a-mole. So they weren’t really aware that it was a consistent issue because I didn’t talk to them about it. I would talk to my husband, you know, and to my medical team. But when I found it, I actually called The Renfrew Center. It was my first call. And the conversation I had, I was specifically wanting to see, you know, like, how are they going to respond to the same thing I said to somebody 10 years ago? And I kind of gave the spiel on how I was feeling and my focus and that preoccupation. And the first thing they said was, “I am so happy that you called. We can absolutely help you.” And I was just like, oh, like my heart kind of melted a little bit. It was just the sense of relief that not only was it there in black and white, but like, I felt visible. I felt like I exist now. And apparently that caught, I think, my mom off guard more than anyone. And I think sometimes parents can be worried that they caused something, and once there was a name to it, it was like, “oh, but this is just the name for something that we already knew was happening.” Butut for some reason it felt different now that there was a title attached, so, they were relatively responsive. They said, “Oh, okay. Like we know not to say certain things around you.” But I will get preachy every now and then when they say to my sister, “Oh, you lost weight, you look beautiful.” Maybe let’s not do that. But sharing it with my family actually resulted in me learning that one of my family members had experienced the exact same thing, with this pressure of just feeling like they needed to measure up or down, as it were, in a certain way for appearances. And they felt like they could only do that by engaging in harmful behaviors to maintain that presentation, and I would have never known. And they would have probably pieced together- I’m very loud and vocal and talkative- but the fact that they felt comfortable enough to tell me that in response was really nice. And I’m like, “Oh, my goodness, like, I’m sorry if I contributed to that.” And it kind of led to a much healthier dialogue. I did, however, disclose it to someone I work with. That was the most nerve wracking one because like this person has no obligation to love me at all. They might think that I’m the biggest pain in the butt at times. They might think I’m the best person in the world. I don’t know. You don’t know what people really think. And it was on the advice of my dietitian. She’s like, “well, what’s a barrier for you to maintaining healthful behavior once you go back to work?” When I’m at home in the summer, it’s easier. I have more control over what I do in my day. And I said, “you know, I feel like I don’t have the materials for that.” I feel like I want like a plate and a bowl and a cup and a drying rack, but I want to have like a little bit of a routine and then be able to do what I need to do. So I went over to my coworker and I said, “would you be okay if I brought a couple things in to put in this space, because just so you know, I have a history of Atypical Anorexia, so I have to be a little more vigilant with certain things, and I think it would be helpful for me. Things that would be mine.” And he was like, “oh, go ahead. Like that’s totally fine.” And complete coincidence, another male coworker that I worked with years and years ago, I had mentioned to him, I’m like, “I’m losing a little bit of weight, but don’t say anything.” I’m like, “I can’t handle it. That’ll freak me out. There’s some feelings in my past, and I just don’t want you to bring attention to my weight, even if you think it’s a compliment, but just don’t mention it.” So in both times it was a male coworker. I find it interesting that I was more comfortable keying people in, but it was never female coworkers, because I don’t know for that, like for some reason, it freaks me out a little bit more. Because you know, kind of that compare and despair mindset. So it definitely, it was an interesting experience. People surprised me and they were responding more positively than I would have expected them to. And they also forgot about it quicker than I thought they would. I thought I’d be alienating myself and they’d be looking at me weird. I was like, two weeks later, “did you see her bathing suit?” And I’m like talking about someone on TV and I’m like, “oh, we’re just, we’re just, we’re good. We’re just normal. Oh, okay, cool.” Like it wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it was going to be, and it wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be. So in my head, it was going to be terrible, and then once it was actually done, I’m like, “oh, cool, ” so it was very interesting experience.

Ashley: I’m so thankful that you can share that, Laura, and just like talk about the different experiences you’ve had with like different people in your world, because I’m just thinking about our listeners and anybody that might be listening that either has recently or, you know, has been diagnosed with Atypical Anorexia or think that they might have that or think that they might have a loved one that has that, like I just feel like this is like, your story is validating their experience too, and it’s allowing space for them to show up and for them to be seen. And just hearing you say throughout this chat that you felt unseen, that is one of the most yucky feelings that we can feel is that we’re showing up, but that we’re invisible. We’re showing up, but nobody is seeing us for who we are. And so I’m really thankful that you came to this space to be able to talk about your experience and that you also created material to support others to talk about their experience because I just think that your story is going to help a lot of people.

Laura: Thank you. And I did want to give credit where credit is due. I only felt comfortable doing this because of the single poem that I found that I wrote in a poetry class in college. And I only felt comfortable writing that poem because someone else in class wrote about their eating disorder when they were 13. I don’t even remember her name, but if it wasn’t for that one person, I don’t think this book would have happened. And if it’s all right, I just wanted to read that poem just as a shout out to her. Who knows? Maybe she’ll remember it because I do quote her in it from her original poem.

It’s called Math.

“Don’t pay attention to the numbers dancing in my head

obsessing constantly venting about how they’re never low enough.

Confidence, self respect and security are never high enough

to counteract the add subtract have to get those numbers low enough

inside my head almost dead and my will to stop is low enough.

Enough with the counting carbs, calories, grams this mathematical life is more than I can stand.

on the scale that balances beauty and numbers hand in hand,

when will I be well enough?

Answer, never.

But I was asking the wrong question.”

So entirely in response to a complete stranger, feeling like they could be open about themselves, kind of open this door for me to do the same thing, so if anything that I’ve put out there can kind of have that kind of snowball effect, that’s the whole intent.

Ashley:  That’s awesome, thank you.

Sam: What an amazing reminder of how vulnerability can bring on the vulnerability of others. It’s like this contagion effect, which I love to see it in group therapy. You know, you have a really quiet group and all it takes sometimes is one person to open up. Like, “I’ve been having these thoughts, I’ve been having these feelings,” and then everyone feels safe to say what’s going on for them. And I know your book, I mean, the workbook, the fact that it even exists, the fact that someone can go to Amazon and see a book written by someone who has had Atypical Anorexia. It’s like that in and of itself is so validating.

Ashley: Yeah, yeah.

Sam: You know, your experience of going online and you couldn’t even find anything that you connected with. So it’s just amazing what you’re doing. Your vulnerability is really inspirational. I was hoping we could shift gears a little bit because Ashley and I talk a lot on this podcast about leaning into emotions. Probably in every episode because we really believe it’s one of the most important components of eating disorder recovery, and I would love to know more about the emotional work that you did as you recovered.

Laura: I think for me at the beginning, there was this absence of, there was just kind of this sort of like emptiness or apathy, and I knew that something was off, but I didn’t feel worried about it. So I kind of led with my logical mind first, because I also recognize that I should have felt something about it. I should be having some sort of emotion right now, and I wasn’t having anything, it was just complete absence of any sort of reaction. It was just…

Sam: Yeah. Like numb?

Laura: Yeah, just… I almost felt like I was just idling. It was doing like puppeteering almost. Like I didn’t feel like the actions were from me. And so connecting those actions to myself and like taking ownership of it and understanding it more, was extremely upsetting that I could have seen signals for myself so much earlier, but I didn’t know what to look for. And that’s why educating yourself and your triggers is so important, because sometimes you can only see that in retrospect. And I know with everything everybody went through in 2020, the phrase hindsight is 2020 took on a whole new meaning, but I needed to see that trend of behavior and those kind of Easter eggs that things were going wrong to be able to recognize them in the future. And it was just, it was kind of a defeated feeling because I felt dumb. Like, how did I not see it the first time? Like, what’s wrong with me that I didn’t understand something was wrong without needing to go through it? Like there was some sort of like character defects and just innate of who I was, was just inept, because I didn’t see it the first time around. So I think for, you know, giving myself a little bit of grace that I always hear people say like, give this person grace, give that person grace, how to give yourself some grace. And just allowing myself to, to be mad when I felt mad and just having the emotions as they came back. And knowing that, you know, it’s something that I’ve gone through, but it’s not the only thing that I’ve gone through. It’s not because I deserved it. It’s not because I did anything wrong. Just everybody has their own challenges and this happens to be one of mine. So it was a lot of working through those feelings of just insecurity surrounding all of it and not having noticed it sooner.

Ashley: Those moments of judgment can really like keep us stuck in that kind of like yucky cycle, and the self-fulfilling prophecy that nobody will understand. And, and if I was dumb enough to not see this, like nobody else will, right? And like, when we, you know, Sam mentioned, we talk a lot about emotional education at Renfrew, I’m just thinking like, one of the pillars of what we do is  mindfulness. And we say that mindfulness is present focus, non-judgmental awareness, and so when we, it is such a normal thing, I would say, for us to have experiences, have an emotion about that experience, and then to judge ourselves for having that experience and having that emotion about that experience, and again, that just keeps us trapped. And so practicing mindfulness, practicing being in the present moment, without judgment, whatever that is, can give us so much more awareness, and you mentioned just like when you started to feel your emotions again, just that it was really, really hard. And I’m thinking that like, you know, recovery, treatment, all of this that we’re going through, healing, it’s not about feeling better initially. It’s about getting better at feeling, and that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an easy ride. You know, that does mean that when those emotions of anger come up, that we can acknowledge them and sit with them, even when it’s really yucky and frustrating.

Laura: Yeah, and I think too, like, I try not to underestimate what I think are like little nudges from whatever you believe in. I believe very much in a higher power, and I call that higher power God. And I do think that even if it’s not someone that’s in that lane as their job, like there’s certain things that people will say, and I’m like, “I hear you.” And that personal trainer, she said to me, she’s like, “well, if you’re going to be like down on yourself about this, that and the other thing and not really wanting to kind of process through things.” I was talking to her about this being my history and my hang ups and all that. And she said, “well, it’s like if somebody came in and they look like Steve Rogers before the super serum, and they look like these tiny, tiny little muscles, and then they go over and they try to lift 100 pounds and they’re like, I can’t do it. It’s too much. But they don’t do the work to build up to be capable of handling the big things first. Like you can’t handle the big things unless you do the work to be able to handle them. And then hopefully they’re easier to handle the next time they happen.” And I just looked at her I’m like, “okay, that was really insightful.” And this is a person that you like, their job isn’t to counsel people with eating disorders, they were just, they were just talking person to person, and I think those interactions that you don’t quite expect to have can be extremely meaningful and extremely lasting, because that person didn’t have to take that time to talk with you about that. And it just makes you do you feel seen on just a human level with someone taking a moment for you because they think something they have to say will help you. So I try to keep that in mind so that maybe at one point I can do that for somebody else. My sarcasm might get in the way a little bit here and there, but I just, those little interactions, I feel like we don’t really appreciate them as much as we should.

Sam: Laura, last question for you. And this is sort of a three-part question, but I know there must be people in our audience listening who are struggling with the symptoms of Atypical Anorexia. What would you like them to take away from this episode? And how can our audience connect with you and get your workbook? So three-part question there.

Laura: The first thing is that if you or someone you love is dealing with this, is that there is nothing wrong with you. Your body and your mind are responding in a certain way. And now that you know, you can choose to do something with that information. And any bit of a step forward is a step forward. Like there is no, you must get to this point by a certain time. Every person is different, just like if you were exercising in a gym and your muscles were tiny, you wouldn’t be thinking that you were going to be able to get to the same point as someone who had been there for years, in a week. And I think we take psychological things and put a lot of pressure on ourselves in terms of being at a level where you’re getting better, faster. So just not to focus on that, just the next right decision. Like what’s the next thing that I can do to help myself move forward?

In terms of me, I am very much available through the contact page of my side hustle. My side hustle is Boardwalk Peanut Productions. It is a teacher-owned video editing company, and if you go to boardwalkpeanut.com, there’s a place to get in touch with me on there. And even though it’s for film and things like that, you can reach out for any reason. I also have a personal website, laramaalouf.com, but I don’t think there’s a contact page on the map, so I’ll just throw you to the other one. And the book is on Amazon, because when I was searching, I was searching Amazon, and I know there was somebody like me that was going to be searching too. And I wanted them to find me. So I get so excited every time I get an email that there’s been a sale in your Amazon store. And I’m looking and like, where do they live? A lot of like US sales, so that just means a lot to me that somebody thousands of miles away or maybe even down the street is picking this up because they think it might help them, and that’s so the reason why I wanted to do it. It started as a novelty thing, but the more I wrote, the more I realized I’m like, I’m really invested into this down to the cover art. I was getting proofs in and readjusting where the paper was five or six times and I learned a lot about book margins. The first proof was terrible, but I started, I didn’t expect to be great at it right away. I just gave myself permission to start and permission to suck at it. And I think that that’s also recovering from anything. You need to give yourself permission to start and to not be great at it and then finding your way from there. This book in a nutshell is exactly what my experience has been with the eating disorder, is that it’s still a process. I still find myself going back to this book and doing some of the prompts, because I’m like, “I need this today.” And it’s become something that’s continued to help me long after it was published.

Sam: Well, thank you so much, Laura, for sharing your story and letting us know about your workbook, and I have no doubt there are so many people listening today that will find your story so valuable and inspirational. So thank you so much.

Laura: Thank you, guys.

Ashley: Thank you for listening with us today on All Bodies. All Foods. presented by the Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders.

Sam: We’re looking forward to you joining us next time as we continue these conversations.

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