Eating Through the Pain
Hello my name is Brady Johnson. I am a 200 pound, compassionate, burly man who has gone through eating disorders in my life. The reason I decided to describe myself like that is because of the stigma attached to eating disorders. When most people think of an eating disorder they think of it as something the female gender goes through. No matter the gender, we all have our demons that we try to battle everyday, and for me, as different as it might seem, my battle has been with food.
I’m hard on myself, I always have been, and my body image has always been something that I have critiqued. It started during my early years of high school. I was working out, losing weight, and I felt confident. That was until I got injured during my sophomore year of football, a hematoma in my left leg and a torn patellar tendon. I was unable to indulge in my vigorous workouts. I gained weight fast, and once I stopped playing football after my junior year of high school, I lost my competitive edge, leaving me with a lot less motivation to workout. This is around when the eating disorder began to come into fruition.
Nobody wants other people to know that they are going through an eating disorder and they certainly do not want to give the signs that they might be. So myself, like I am sure many others, went about my practices in a very secretive way. I would wait until my parents were asleep, then I would sneak down into my kitchen and gather food. Again, I didn’t want anyone to know what I was going through so I would take a little bit of each snack. Maybe a handful of chips and a handful of cookies and plate them all together so no one would know anything was missing. Then I would sit in front of a TV show that made me comfortable like The Office and I would eat. After I was done eating, most nights, I would feel terrible about gaining weight and waking up in the morning not feeling good, so I would purge. I found myself looking in the mirror most nights with my eyes bloodshot red, wondering if there was a way out.
The reason I did this was because food made me happy, it released serotonin in my mind, even if for only 20 minutes, it made me feel good. But that happiness did not last long, the food just fed the emptiness in my soul. Waking up in the morning feeling skinny also made me feel good about myself, I kept trying to justify why it was acceptable, when in reality I was a couple bad days away from really hurting myself. I don’t like to say I grew out of this “habit” because I didn’t, it took a lot of writing, talking, and growing to do. But eventually when I went off to school in 2020, I learned how to manage my eating disorder as we had mostly grab n go meals and I had a lot of time in my dorm room to self reflect. I don’t want to make this story too long so I am going to stop around here. But I will say that if you want to learn more about what I went through or how I learned to combat my illness please reach out to me.