It’s treading a fine line to say that my eating disorder was caused by an Asian heritage, yet my most vivid body-related memories stem from my summer in China before high school. I was 14 and miserable as my grandmother harped on about her surprise that the dresses she made for me (and had my 90-pound aunt try on beforehand) were too small. Never mind that the dresses were hideous and my aunt was tiny – it was pure humiliation to buy clothes one size larger than what I wore in the U.S. and to receive constant nagging from my family. I was never truly “fat,” whatever that means, but my mother commenting that she weighed 20 pounds less when she was my age was not helpful, nor were my friend’s deadly fear of weighing triple digits when I had surpassed those long before her. My Asian heritage in no way predisposed me to fall into an eating disorder, but I was surrounded by its cultural expectations: that Asian girls were always tiny. Always being around slender people gave me pressure to conform.

by Mandy Yeh for MochiMag.com

The other causes for my anorexia were a myriad of tiny, common factors: that horrible feeling in the dressing room when a pair of jeans didn’t fit; the constant admonition of my dieting mother (“If only you lost ten pounds you would be so pretty…”); the seemingly innocuous comments of my father, who always wondered why I was eating “so much.” These comments made me want to put down my chopsticks and stop eating until everyone begged me on their knees to please consume something.

The irony is that I loved food, but it seemed better to be sad and thin.

In the beginning it was about good looks, but in the end it was about a good life. I went from thinking that losing 10 pounds would make my dress fit better to thinking that losing that same 10 pounds would allow me to ace my calculus midterms and win awards. It was ludicrous logic, but it made perfect sense then. It was the fantasy of being thin, which meant weighing less, which meant being prettier, which meant being more popular – which would mean I was happier, and that everything from my grades to my relationships to my fashion sense would improve. That was the power that weight and numbers had over me.

The lower the scale plunged, the higher my expectations soared. My original goal weight started at 100 pounds. Soon it was 70.

That summer I exercised for over 10 hours a day, fueled by only a quarter loaf of French bread. My knees hurt and my hair fell out, but all the negative effects on my body were buried under the praise I received – it seemed to make sense to everyone that I would want to lose weight. I was at my thinnest that year and should have been at my happiest, but looking through photo albums, that period is devoid of all photographs.

I chose working out over hanging out with my friends, and ignored the disgust they expressed when I was no longer “fun.” I didn’t want to do anything except go to the gym, unless the suggested activities involved strenuous exercise. Birthday parties were the bane of my existence due to the presence of food, and all outings were causes for agony. When my journalism class attended a convention, everyone else rejoiced over the excitement of travel while I felt paralyzed with fear, because that meant I would be unable to exercise and control my food intake for the duration of the trip.

Anorexia is the most life-changing event I have ever experienced. I became fluent in what I call anorexia-speech, adopting an entire dialect where I knew instinctively what the words 23.1 meant, what a trigger was, and given a person’s height and weight, intuitively knew their BMI. I can identify almost all models by sight not because of a love of fashion, but because of years of ‘thinspiration’ websites.

I knew how many calories per hour were burned during different activities, from running to mowing the lawn, and today, I can pinpoint the calories in any food item to within 50 calories of accuracy, and I still know more about diet and exercise than anyone I have ever met. I miss the days of eating carelessly, when a cupcake was a cupcake, not a 300-calorie hydrogenated bomb of fake ingredients and preservatives.

Anorexia changed me mentally, physically, and socially, and I am still affected by it today. I can pinpoint the day it began, but never the day it ended; there was never any clear-cut intervention, no dramatic counseling. I had quite simply reached the limit where I could not feasibly spend one more hour at the gym or eat one less calorie; what seemed like defeat and submission then was the beginning of recovery for me.

I no longer exercise excessively, but I can’t silence the calorie counter in my head, nor can I resist stepping on the scale every day.  There are many small indicators that remind me that my relationship with food is not wholly normal, but in all of this I have discovered one constant: I eat when I’m happy. When I’m genuinely, truly, in-the-moment I realize that I don’t need to be 70 pounds to feel the exhilaration. I believe happiness may be the best cure and sometimes the only thing to do is to surround yourself with things that make you feel good no matter what.

I’m a freshman in college now, with the freedom to control my own intake in a way I have never been able to before. Before arriving I was afraid of the repercussions, afraid that with no one to watch, I would stop eating and spend my days at the gym. Now that I’m here I’ve realized that going out with friends is better than eating ramen in my room, that an occasional late-night snack session won’t be the end of me and that the prettiest girls aren’t the happiest ones.

Once upon a time I lived by one mantra – nothing tastes as good as thin feels. But now, I do know one thing: so many things taste better than ‘thin’ feels. Cheesecake for one, and pasta. But mostly friends, feeling good about myself, and having a life measured by the people around me and my experiences – not the number on the scale.

Editor’s note: We asked Angela to share this story because we hoped it would show girls that those who feel what she felt are not alone, that eating disorders can happen to the most “normal” of girls, and that it is possible to move on. If you or anyone you know needs help, visit nationaleatingdisorders.org or call 1-800-931-2237 for a 24-hour information and referral hotline.

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