This is Me.
My experience with eating disorders comes not through professional training, but through personal struggle and experience. My journey into the world of eating disorders began about a year ago, when my wife (then fiancée) began to restrict her calories to progressively smaller and smaller amounts, spiraling downward into an eating disorder that had lain dormant for many years and was all but forgotten. In my fear and panic, I did the only thing I knew: I read, I learned, and we talked for countless hours on end. This began my crash course on Health at Every Size, Intuitive Eating, fatphobia, and the entire world of eating disorders and their treatment.
I subscribed to every podcast, and I read every book I could find. I’ve tried to document the path that I found and the authors, podcasters, and activists who helped me find it. You can find them all on the site. I joined Instagram exclusively to tap into the vast and wonderful network of body positive, HAES, and anti-diet humans who exist and thrive on the platform. Together, my wife and I attended the Body Trust Summit. We join every zoom call and live event that we can find (send us any you find!). I went straight into the deep end like my life depended on it – and my wife’s very well did.
My Beliefs
It’s important that we each know where the other stands. I strive to live my daily life in a social justice and HAES-informed mindset, and to bring what I have learned to every interaction that I have, both in eating disorder-specific contexts and everyday conversation. I believe that all people in all bodies deserve respect, and that size and shape are not indicators of health, morality, or character. I am passionate about fat acceptance, social justice, and ending diet culture. And most of all, I want my struggles and my experiences to be of use to others.
As far as I am concerned, you are the expert of your own experience. You know far more than I do about what it feels like to be in your head. My role is to actively listen and reflect back what I hear from you, to share my experiences and knowledge wherever it’s applicable, and to remove shame so that self-discovery and empowerment can flourish. The people I find myself pulled towards on our own journey of recovery have been those who are able to connect not just as experts, but as humans. They are the ones who care deeply about the person underneath the disorder – not just the disordered and its outcomes. And that’s who I will be for you.
I have found in my journey that there are very few partners of adults in the world of eating disorder recovery, and very few men. I wish that I had been able to find peers early on to guide me, and I want to be that peer for others who are trying to find their way.