28.8 million Americans will have an eating disorder in their lifetime. A new book by two St. Louisans shares the journeys of two women brought up in different generations as they heal their relationships with food and their bodies. "Full: Overcoming our Eating Disorders to Fully Live" by Missy Kelley and Alayna Burke came out in October of this year. The authors sat down with Carol Daniel to talk more about the book and their experiences with disordered eating.
"What's unique about this book is that it's a multi-generational perspective on the onset of the illness, the process of recovering and all the issues that fed the eating disorder," Kelley said. "In the 70s and 80s, when I was growing up, mental health was very taboo, no one talked about it, there was not a lot of information on eating disorders, my parents were at a complete loss as to what to do… Alayna growing up in the 2000s, during the social media age, I can't even imagine."
Both the women said that their disordered eating habits stemmed from negative body images at very young ages.
"My earliest memory of despising my body was at about 10 years old. I was at a doctor's appointment, and the doctor was analyzing my growth charts like they do at every visit, and my growth percentile was maybe in the 60% for weight," Burke said. "My doctor took a deep breath, and he said, 'You might want to lay off the snacks.' I have a very perfectionistic personality, so I took that as, okay, well, bye bye snacks."
She didn't have an eating disorder until she was 16, she said, but she "always kind of used food and exercise as a way to control my life."
For Kelley, it started when she was ten. She said she has a very distinct memory of the moment she realized she felt "big."
"I looked at my parents' full length mirror and had this terrible, overwhelming fear that I was big. And I was very small," she said. "I felt like if I was big, I wouldn't be safe. And I mean, that's my very first memory. I remember exactly, I was wearing my school uniform. And I was like 'I'm big, and that's not okay.' And so that started my body dysmorphia."
Kelley said it can often be difficult for people who haven't had experience with eating disorders to understand why people would put themselves through something so difficult. "From a rational perspective, it often doesn't make sense when they're looking at someone who's often dramatically underweight, or who looks perfectly normal, and they can't figure out why they are, 'doing this to themselves,'" she said.
Kelley said, "We're hopeful that this helps people understand what goes through the mind of someone who's dealing with an eating disorder, as well as how we were able and are able today to manage those thoughts in a way that we don't go back down that dark path."
Hear the full interview with Alayna Burke and Missy Kelley on KMOX:
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