Eating Disorders, Body Image, and Evangelicalism

The things that happen when you learn the body is sinful and shameful

Mar 22, 2024

I’m guessing the title of this post gives you all the content warnings you need, but one more disclaimer: if you know the topic of today’s post is going to be too much to take in today, I invite you to close this email and do something restorative instead! Also, if you want to share thoughts but not in public, you can always reply to this email or send me a direct message. I empathize: this is the first time I’ve shared much in public about this sensitive topic.

I shared in a post earlier this year that I am training for a marathon that I’ll run on my birthday. (The things some of us think are fun! We’re nuts!!). Training has been going fairly well — I’ve found ways of managing little injuries before they develop into full-blown injuries, and though my husband and I don’t have a lot of free time to spend together, we’re making it work. Last weekend though, I had a horrible training run, which served the important purpose of knocking me upside the head with an essential piece of knowledge:

you need to eat enough to fuel your body for the massive efforts you’re asking it to undertake.

You see, I’ve been here before. In today’s situation, I have been semi-chronically undernourishing my body, and it’s showing up in the form of low energy availability: runs feeling harder than they should, general fatigue, irritability at home (where I usually forget to eat). The cause is different today than it was fifteen years ago: today it’s because I’m doing the classic mom thing where I forget to eat enough because I’m taking care of the kids, or where the crusts of the peanut butter sandwiches is lunch. Also because of my ADHD-like symptoms of executive functioning issues with meal planning and creating1, along with boredom around eating.

bread on white platter — PBJs are an entire food group in our house. Photo by Freddy G on Unsplash

But fifteen years ago, in my peak evangelicalism era (including the progressive kind that I talked about in this post), it was a different story. I was in college, having just put on the freshman 15 that so many students do. But instead of this being a sort of normalized thing to chuckle about, it felt horrible and shameful.

Part of this shame was family dynamic related: in addition to my father’s stick-straight frame, I also inherited his scrupulosity about weight gain. It’s not just him of course; we see this judgmentalism everywhere in culture, especially directed towards women. Weight is made into a moral issue, where you are “good” if you can abide by current standards [whatever that means] of looking the right way, and where fatness2 is thought of as “bad.” Much of the dynamic, though, I directly attribute to religious trauma.

person standing on white digital bathroom scale — Ugh. If you have a less-than-healthy relationship with a scale, I recommend throwing it in the trash and freeing yourself. Photo by i yunmai on Unsplash

[if you have suffered an eating disorder yourself, this is the part that may be more triggering — you can skip to the next section.]

I was terribly self-conscious about my body, or the idea that people were even noticing the size and shape of my body. Enter: the years of disordered eating. What began as a simple “diet” (ugh) turned into an obsessive, compulsive relationship with food and exercise. I learned you could trick your body into feeling full after eating a giant plate of vegetables. I learned coffee, modified with Splenda and skim milk, staves off hunger. I memorized the calorie amounts of the prepackaged food in the mini-mart.

Exercise was not joy; it was compulsion. This was when I initially took up running — a sad start to what is now my favorite hobby. I would dip my precise amount of 3 Wheat Thins into the tiniest amount of peanut butter before dragging my tired body on a 3-mile jog around the perimeter of campus. I would hope that no one would notice how stringently I had to stick to my exercise routines.

Turns out I was “good” at “dieting.” I lost weight and I lost it quickly. And at some point — pretty early on — a switch flipped in my brain. I was no longer in control, just trying to lose some weight. I was out of control, and the eating disorder had taken over.

I remember a couple of people close to me making some off-hand comments: “you look anorexic!” I don’t know if they knew they were correct, or maybe they did and that was their way of testing the waters. Characterized by abnormally low body weight, intense fear of gaining weight, and preoccupation with body size, anorexics typically severely limit their caloric intake and often also use other means to burn off or eliminate calories they do intake.

I visited a doctor once in this era; I think it was about my missing periods (called ammenorrhea, which can happen if women’s body weight drops too low). She casually suggested I try gaining about 5 pounds. This was a terrifying idea for me. She might as well have suggested a fish try walking on land. I was silently screaming for her to notice that I had A Problem, and that someone with My Problem could NOT just “gain five pounds.” We were too sick, mentally. But she didn’t notice, or she didn’t know enough to ask more questions.

It took years, but I did eventually emerge out of the nightmare that is an eating disorder. You might be surprised, but regularly running is a thing that helps keep me grounded. You cannot be a good runner while constantly undernourishing your body. I have a much healthier, more relaxed relationship with food. But I confess: the eating disorder that has gone latent in a cave deep inside me might be tempted to emerge if I were unable to engage in my regular exercise routine. I hope not, but it’s hard to know.

Once I emerged, I was able to reflect more about what psychological factors made me fall into the trap of shame, self-hatred, and sense of not belonging to my physical body. I realized that my religious background set me up for a terrible relationship with my body.

Original sin holds that we are all sinners, fallen from birth. There are verses in the Bible that talk about how the flesh is not to be trusted. We were not to gratify the desires of the flesh3; we were to live by the Spirit and not by the flesh; our flesh was weak and easily tempted. It wasn’t a far stretch to conclude that it was sinful to crave food, sinful to take enjoyment in fleshly delights4; sinful to want.

I felt guilty about anything I partook in that didn’t seem absolutely necessary. I felt guilty that I had access to a college cafeteria while there were starving people around the world and unhoused folks just outside the campus perimeter.

Then of course, purity culture told me that it was my duty to protect men from lusting by making sure my body was not a temptation. My body was a source of shame. Was my butt making their eyes stray? Well then… let’s just get rid of that problem. Hiding inside my now-baggy clothes was a solution. I could become invisible. Nothing to see here.

I felt guilty for taking up space, for existing. So I made myself as small as possible.

If you are told that your very existence is sinful, if you are unredeemable until you accept that Jesus died for your sins, if your female body is viewed as a temptation and a danger — then of course it makes sense to come to such hateful conclusions about one’s own body.

I think about what aspects led to my healing. There was learning to run more seriously, which required proper fueling and nutrition. There was entering a relationship with someone who liked cooking and with whom I would share meals. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as I climbed my way out of the eating disorder, I was also climbing my way out of evangelicalism.

“Eating disorders aren’t about food; they’re about control” is a refrain you might have heard (which I think is at least partially true). As I was able to drop some of the rigidity of high-control religion, and then perfectionistic deconstruction, and perfectionistic spirituality, I dropped some of my rigidity around food.

I used to be a ball of anxiety walking around, though I would never have called it that. Everything had to be right, I had to prove to myself I was good enough, I had to work hard to please the god I still believed in. I had to be in control of myself, my thoughts, my longings, my desires.

Thankfully, at some point I stopped caring so much. There was a tiny bit of space to just “be.” I decided I could skip church on Sundays. I (slowly!!!) decided it wasn’t a crime to spend money on myself. I let go of the guilt of not engaging in specific spiritual practices5. And I realized — I’m still realizing — that feeding myself, and feeding myself enough, is a really important part of being human.

And being a human, with all our needs and wants and foibles and quirks and the things that make us weird and delightful, is an amazing, miraculous thing. And it’s enough.

Thanks for being witness to a vulnerable part of my personal journey: I was overwhelmed with a sense of being loved and held by this community in some recent newsletters, so it felt safe to share this here. Feel free to share your reflections or your experiences in the comments. Also, side note, this is a sort of condensed version of a chapter in my book manuscript… and I’m getting closer to feeling like I actually do want to publish it. Eep?!!

Eating Disorders, Body Image, and Evangelicalism

The things that happen when you learn the body is sinful and shameful

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