My Mother Gave Me an Eating Disorder

BY: DANIELLA ATKINSON PHOTOS: SARAH REESE

CONTENT WARNING: THIS ARTICLE DISCUSSES EATING DISORDERS, AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL READERS.

It wasn’t until I moved out of my family home and into my independent life as a student that I realized I had grown up in a food toxic household. At home, I was taught a lifestyle that, now looking back, can be seen as disordered, obsessive, and restrictive. My family loves food, but when and how we indulge in it has strict rules and regulations I wish I wasn’t taught.

For as long as I can remember, I have lived with the idea that eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner is an overindulgent way of living. Although considered healthy and necessary for a sustainable lifestyle, the thought of three-square meals a day in my household is considered “so North American.” Can I blame this disordered way of thinking on growing up in a European household? Or did my mother’s own issues with food lead me to adopt the eating disorder that I now struggle with? My mother weighed less than me when I was just 15-years-old, and I was constantly reminded of that by my family, which led to mental health issues and resentment towards them. I never knew that the food behaviours I was being taught from my mum, and hearing the things she used to say to me, would lead to the daily battle and eating disorder that I now live with.

Over one million Canadians have been diagnosed with an eating disorder, yet, millions of people go through the majority of their childhood and early adulthood undiagnosed. Beauty standards from social media have a huge impact on many young people, but having those standards be created by and forced upon you by your own mother leads to a different painful experience.

We are raised to respect the decisions and lessons made by and taught by our family, and if you are used to seeing their daily interaction with food, it is hard to know if what you are seeing is healthy and normal. At school during lunchtime, I’d watch my friends with jealousy as they ate their big lunch, while all I had was a simple granola bar after not having breakfast. In my house, eating a big lunch ends with a comment like, “so you won’t be having dinner then?”. By the time I’d come home from school, I would be starving, but it’s hard to eat when you see your mum going about her day only drinking a Red Bull or Diet Pepsi. Although I would be envious of how everyone else was allowed to eat so much in the first half of their day, I often kept it to myself and remembered what my mum looked like. I was under the impression that if I ate the way that she was teaching me to eat, I would one day look like her.

Fast forward to my second year in university, when I moved out on my own and lived with people who grew up in different households than I did. Although a shock to the system, I was forced to eventually stop my judgment on their eating habits, which I viewed as overindulgent and completely foreign. As I continued to live around this new way of eating, I struggled with wanting to eat more, and wanting to eat the way my mother did. This internal battle led to my eating disorder. I decided to take to the Internet to search for my own eating habits and found myself going down a rabbit hole, looking into restrictive 1000 calorie diets, 3-day fasts, and Keto. Two years of restrictive eating led to rapid weight loss and increased health issues. I was losing clumps of hair every day, I was dizzy every time I stood up, I was on my period all the time, and although at that moment I thought I was still fat, my friends closest to me thought I looked frail and sick. The worst part of it all was the congratulations and compliments I was getting from my family; my mum would tell everyone, “Dani finally lost her baby weight,” and would make an effort to show how happy she was that she could finally share clothes with me. I was constantly compared to my mother, which was all I ever wanted. But at what cost did I want to look like her? On the inside, I felt like shit.

I still struggle to understand and remind myself that food is fuel, and I don’t have to skip dinner just because I went out for breakfast, or I can enjoy a drink and sandwich at the same time from Starbucks without feeling guilty. I feel so grateful to have had the opportunity to move out of my family home early on in life. It has allowed me to step out of this toxic cycle and learn to have a better relationship with food, and above all, with myself.