I Worked Hard To Recover From My Eating Disorder. Then Ozempic Came Along.

It has been a decade since I have written about eating disorder recovery.

I got tired of writing about it — mostly because I thought it had been solved. I thought we had all embodied the body positive ethos and were ready to feed not only our hunger, but our passions and curiosities. Collectively, we had decided that we are more than how our bodies look and that diet culture wasn’t relevant. We had learned by now that we could be healthy at any size.

And then, a “miracle drug” was introduced, and it began to feel like everyone who had claimed to love their body or embrace body positivity was willing to empty their bank accounts to become thin.

I can’t help but think, “Was I the only one really trying to divest from diet culture?”

I was a competitive figure skater from ages 5 to 18, and so my coaches, mother and nutritionist all demanded that I shrink. From the age of 8 years old, my body became the problem. If I was going to ice skate, I was going to have to shrink. The nutritionist, who I visited weekly, weighed me and told me what I was allowed to consume.

By the age of 12, I was eating either one 100-calorie pack or half of a Think Thin bar as a snack, and never daring to eat more than 1,200 calories a day. Warm protein shakes or fat-free cheese for protein. When it wasn’t time to eat— which was all I could think about, when I could eat next — six cans of Diet Coke felt reasonable.

Ice skating was no longer about love or passion — it was about dedication and discipline. So many implicit rules that still ring in my head today: Egg yolks were determined to have too much fat; so did avocado. As my body was starting to move through the motions of puberty, the elements that my body needed to survive ― carbs and natural fats ― were deemed my enemy.

Figure skating was not the only thing dedicated to the cult of thinness: Tyra Banks called size 6 women fat and People Magazine looked at Jessica Simpson in disgust when she was the same size, claiming she had let herself go. No social media, but celebrity tabloids were loud enough to claim their space. One particular article in Star sticks with me to this day: “What Mary-Kate Olsen eats in a day.” One crab cake for lunch. I couldn’t help but admire her brilliance: how decadent, how protein-packed. I wanted to whittle myself down to bone.

By the age of 12, I lost the weight that everyone around me was insistent that I…