I Saw My Weight Today
I saw my weight today.
A healthcare provider who didn’t take my history of an eating disorder into account put my weight on my visit summary, completely unaware that her subconscious act would terrorize me for the rest of my day.
In a more hopeful vein of my recovery, I finally found a therapist who specialized in eating disorders, ending a months-long search for the recovery holy grail: an ED-trained therapist who also accepts insurance. But today—the same day the number I had been avoiding for decades popped up on my computer screen like an old high school friend peddling her multi-level marketing–sponsored products—this new therapist told me that starting next month, she would no longer accept insurance, which meant I had to fork over more than $1,000 a month to see her once a week.
Tears wasted no time collecting on the cusps of my lower eyelids. The revelation of my weight followed by a denial of care stirred up in me emotions I had felt more times than I could count. Emotions of a young woman who just wanted to talk to someone about her eating disorder and didn’t want to go bankrupt. This familiar punch to my underfed gut was an evocative reminder that my condition wasn’t important enough to warrant insurance coverage. Whoever made this decision somehow still assumed that mental struggles aren’t as worthy as physical struggles. An isolating disease made even more lonely by an entire institution’s big fat no.
It’s no wonder I, like so many others, keep our disordered eating behaviors a secret for as long as possible.
The line between acceptable diet behaviors and disordered eating has become increasingly imperceptible in American culture. Fifteen years ago, as a woman in her early 20s, I never thought I had a problem until I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. My periods had stopped, my weight plummeted, and the energy I used to have for hours-long workouts had been depleted. Left with few options, I paid hundreds of dollars (per session) to see a nutritionist. Her first piece of advice? Toss my bathroom scale into a dumpster. So I did.
Now I ask nurses for blind weights. Some get it and oblige. Some make insensitive comments that I choose not to bring to their attention, keenly aware of the futility of trying to reverse our culture’s entire discourse around weight and dieting.
With an alarming frequency, my weight somehow makes its way into my records, but not just the private records the doctor keeps. They’ll magically appear on a billing statement or a summary of care that the provider submits to my insurance company, a document that eventually arrives in my inbox for some reason. It’s an honest mistake, but it’s something that knocks my recovery off balance—sometimes for an hour or a day, sometimes for longer.
And it’s not just the number itself that throws me off course, but also the greater realization that this healthcare provider was sloppy when it came to protecting my recovery from the country’s second-deadliest mental illness. She hadn’t stopped to think that by viewing this document, I can’t see anything else on the page but that number. And no amount of eye-rolling or self-talk will make it disappear. I’ve already seen it. It’s been etched into my mind. And whether my disorder is pleased or disappointed with the number is irrelevant. Because now, that number is all I can think about.
After I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at age 21, my first primary care physician was diligent about keeping this number miles away from my curious eyes. Once I got rid of my bathroom scale, I stopped performing multiple daily weigh-ins that had dictated my moods, my workouts, my meals, and every other detail of my life. Sure, I could make an educated guess as to what that number is, even right now as I sit here typing. But I no longer see the purpose of knowing this information. It says nothing about me, my worth, or my health. It’s as arbitrary as the number I saw today should be. But for some reason, that number still carries weight.
It’s a reminder that the provider didn’t take my history seriously. It was merely an oversight in her mind. Granted, I wasn’t seeing this doctor for anything related to my eating disorder. And in a perfect world, all providers would take this history into account. But the world isn’t perfect, and neither is recovery.
Weights will materialize. Calorie counts are big and bold on the side of our favorite foods and on menus at restaurants. People will make comments that awaken the voices we thought were buried deep. We can’t educate every single person about the nuances of mental illness. So what can we do? What can I do?
I can steer myself back onto the road to recovery. I can do things to take care of myself when I feel ignored, minimized, or abandoned. I can develop coping mechanisms to navigate a world where weight loss is still glorified and fat is an evil F-word. And I can choose to see this number as irrelevant and inconsequential. And that’s what it feels like to recover.
-Allie Moore
Allie Moore is a writer, editor, and eating disorder recovery advocate who lives in Washington, D.C. Having worked in various editorial roles in three different countries, she thrives in multicultural environments and finds inspiration in the unfamiliar. Through her blog and social media presence, she encourages those in eating disorder recovery to lean into the written word to navigate the complexities of recovery and find hope.