BITE BY BITE | Honest Conversations About Eating Disorder Recovery

My 10-Year Battle with Anorexia and My Journey to Eating Disorder Recovery

• Kaitlyn Moresi • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Welcome back to the Bite by Bite Podcast.

For over 10 years, your host Kait, carried a secret so heavy that it consumed her from the inside out. In this deeply personal episode of the Bite by Bite Podcast, Kait opens up for the very first time about her 10 year journey with an eating disorder. 

From high school to college, formal treatment, relapse, and eventually finding her voice in recovery, Kait walks through each chapter of her story. She shares how keeping her eating disorder a secret affected her relationships, health, and sense of self, and what it’s like to finally speak the truth after a decade of silence.

If you’re navigating your own recovery or supporting a loved one, this conversation offers validation, hope, and a powerful reminder that you’re not alone and recovery is possible for everyone

Episode Topics

  • The beginning: 2010 (2:36)
  • College years: 2011-2015 (5:04)
  • After college (5:46)
  • Kait goes to formal treatment: 2016-2017 (9:42)
  • Post discharge form formal treatment: 2017-2018 (14:05)
  • The eating disorder is back in full swing: 2019-2020 (15:25)
  • The eating disorder takes a back seat: 2020-2021 (16:19)
  • The eating disorder is back again; even louder: 2022-2024 (17:44)
  • Kait asks for help again: 2024-2025 (21:32)
  • Kait’s present days: 2025 (24:26)
  • Kait shares her current reflections (28:24)

Content Warning: This episode contains brief mentions of eating disorder behaviors that Kait has previously engaged in. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you and your recovery. 

Connect with Kait

@bitebybiterecovery

bitebybiterecovery@gmail.com

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FROM HIDDEN TO HEARD: Reclaiming My Voice in Eating Disorder Recovery

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Hey everyone, and welcome to Bite by Bite. the podcast that takes you step-by-step through the messy, beautiful, and real journey of my struggle with an eating disorder and my recovery. I'm Kate, and I'm here to share my experiences, lessons, and the wisdom that I've gathered along the way. Here, I share it all, the raw, the real, and the uncensored, so those who can relate know they're not alone in the tough moments. And for those of you who haven't battled an eating disorder, your attention is just as important in helping to educate Before we dive in, please remember that while I hope my story and reflections can be helpful, this podcast is not a substitute for professional treatment. If you are struggling or need extra support, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing the full timeline of my eating disorder. I'll be starting at the very beginning, all the way back to about 2010, and taking you through to the present day. I'll also share how I kept the eating disorder a secret, the cost of keeping the secret, and the eventual shift that morphed into a realization that led to my commitment to recovery. Hiding and maintaining the eating disorder was a full-time job, and I ultimately learned that it forced a kind of silence that didn't just hush my voice, but ate away at me until it totally consumed me. Now, I'm breaking the silence. Before we begin, a quick content warning. This episode includes brief mentions of eating disorder behaviors I have previously engaged in. I don't go into specific details, but please listen only if and when it feels right for you. And one more thing, this podcast is explicit, because if I'm going to do something, there's no way in hell I'm going to leave my personality out of it. So let's dive in. I don't even know exactly when it started. There is no specific day or time. I can only measure this by the year and month. It's one of those things that you quickly become so entrenched in that you find yourself looking back saying, oh shit, how did I even get here? It took me many years to realize when my eating disorder first manifested and the full timeline of it. For most of the time that I have been dealing with the eating disorder, I thought it started in 2015. As I began really reflecting in the past years so, I realized that wasn't entirely accurate. Looking back, I can now see that it slowly started to emerge in high school, starting in 2010. So in 2010, I would get up and get ready for school, and there would be mornings that I wouldn't eat breakfast. At first, this was kind of normal in the sense that I was a teenager and I was rolling out of bed at the last second, and I wouldn't have time to make breakfast or I would be late for school. This very quickly became a routine, and after a few mornings of breakfast not That was no longer a thought. It was just an automatic thing that I was not having breakfast. On the weekends, I would likely have breakfast due to being around my family. During this time, I would say that I wasn't really engaging in behaviors aside from not having breakfast during the weekdays. But I do remember having a negative body image and I didn't like the appearance of my body. There would be times I would be sitting at my desk in class and just being anxious about the thoughts I was having about food and my body. I was very athletic, so I wouldn't eat normally for the most part to fuel myself to be able to perform. In middle school and high school, I played softball at a very competitive level. That means lots of practicing, lots of games, lots of traveling, lots of tournament, which ultimately leads to needing lots of fuel. Over time, I internalized that food was a reason I either played well or didn't play well. This was not really the message that was directly portrayed to me, but more of how my brain interpreted and internally my performance in games and eating. If I had a bad game, I would get food, talk about the game, and then if I played well at the next game, I thought, oh, it was because I just needed to eat. Eventually, I think that switched to the belief that I had to earn food. Overall, I don't think I was fully in the depths of my eating disorder at this time or even aware of these thoughts and beliefs that were slowly emerging. This continued through 2011, and then I graduated high school and went away to college in the fall of 2011. During the first year of college until 2012, I don't recall any eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, or anything of the sort. I went away to college, and this was exciting. Everything was new, and I personally think that all of that was able to mask the eating disorder enough to where it wasn't there. In 2013, I remember slowly starting to go to the gym, but not in a routine or in a rigid way, just when I felt like it or had some extra time. There was also some guilt around food consumption, but it wasn't debilitating, and the thoughts seemed to pass relatively quickly. I was eating normally, I was doing all of the college things, including pizza at 3am on the weekends, without any guilt or shame. Looking back, it seems that this was the time when the ad fully started to slowly emerge. I felt like common anxiety that was manageable, annoying, but manageable, and it wasn't really impacting my life outside of just having some thoughts. The anxiety and guilt was only really present during the weekdays. On the weekends, it was almost like I was free of the thoughts and allowed to consume whatever I wanted without consequence from the eating disorder. In early 2015, I was continuing to go to the gym, but it still wasn't in a maladaptive, rigid, obsessed way. I did notice that my thoughts were picking up a bit. The anxiety and guilt were occurring after almost every meal, especially during the weekdays. Restrictions started occurring Monday through Friday. I would sleep through lunch, sleep through breakfast when possible, and for lunch, I would have an iced tea or some other drink like coffee if I wasn't having a full meal. On the weekends, I was normally eating, but the anxiety and guilt of consumption over the weekend would always hit on Sunday evenings. The eating disorder was emerging more, but it still didn't seem debilitating yet. In May of 2015, I graduated from college and moved back home. During the initial summer months, everything was about the same as my senior year in college, but the thoughts were increasing. The restriction was the same, watching what I ate Monday through Friday, but eating normally on the weekends with the anxiety and guilt setting in on Sunday evenings. I did not exercise on the weekends, but I only ran during the week. The running picked up and I was running multiple times a day to compensate for consumption, anxiety, and guilt. If I wasn't doing that, the eating disorder wasn't happy. In the middle of the summer, I noticed the eating disorder thoughts and behaviors remained the same, but I continued to run harder and harder and more and more. And it was now before and after I ate. At this point, it almost was no choice. It was just automatically what I did. If I ate a good food, I didn't always have the compulsion to run again. If I ate a bad food, I always had the compulsion to run. And if I didn't, that will lead to debilitating anxiety. This cycle continued and became more rigid as the weeks of summer went on, to the point where I was not eating if I knew I wasn't going to be able to exercise. This felt very good to my eating disorder brain, and not eating simply became automatic too. In the spring of 2016, I started my first semester of grad school. So being busy, having to study, and being in class all the time made it very easy to have excuses not to be around for meals at home, which resulted in being easier to engage in the eating disorder behaviors. This entire pattern continued until a random day in August. That day, I remember just being really anxious, so I decided to Google, and I quote, something is wrong with me, I can't stop exercising, and I am afraid to gain weight. As I said that, I pictured the letters appearing in the Google search bar. That's how vivid that memory is. I remember seeing eating disorder in all of the search results. I clicked the first option. I don't remember what site it was, but it gave a list of common eating disorder behaviors, and I remember seeing laxative use listed as a behavior for purging. That's all it took. I closed my laptop and immediately went to Walmart and bought a boatload of laxatives. At first, I will admit, I was afraid of taking them, but my eating disorder loved the idea, so I took one. And then after that day, it quickly turned into taking multiple a day, sometimes even a full box. This cycle continued all the way through mid-October 2016. It had gotten to the point where I would have to switch up the stores I would purchase the laxatives from because I was paranoid one of the cashiers would notice. Self-checkout would wasn't really a thing where I lived at the time. One day, I was at work, and I was on the verge of tears. I remember staring at the minuscule amount of dry cereal I packed for lunch that day and thinking, I can't do this anymore. I think I need help. But even though I thought I needed help, I was mostly just looking for a quick fix for the anxiety and the guilt, not exactly the eating disorder. So I went back to my good friend Google, searched for treatment, called, and I had an intake the very next day. Looking back, I can't really explain why or what happened that triggered my calling and taking this step other than simply knowing that it's what I needed. I couldn't take or live with the guilt or the anxiety anymore. That day, I had to tell my job and I had to rush to my PCP to get blood work taken. I handled this all by myself because I thought I had to. I thought I deserved to. And I was also embarrassed and ashamed. There was a special kind of loneliness in being seen in the ways that I only allowed and not really seen in the ways that I was hiding. I got so good at that performance that no one would have guessed anything was wrong because I didn't let them. The part of when I told my family is still a little foggy, but I know I didn't tell them until early that evening that I was going. So the very next day, my dad and I drove to the treatment center for the intake. At first, I was in the intake alone. It was just me and the clinician. She took my vitals, my weight, asked me lots of questions, which quickly led to the clinician stating that I had an eating disorder and needed treatment. I immediately burst into tears when the clinician recommended residential treatment. I was still alone in the room with her when she first recommended it and I remember begging her up and down and saying that I would do anything but go away from home. She finally agreed and then my dad came into the room and she told him what was going on and that she was recommending partial hospitalization and I had to start that following Monday but if I missed a day I would be going to residential. On the way home, I decided that I was going to commit to recovery, but not until Monday. So I continued the pattern of the eating disorder over the weekend until I was dropped off at treatment Monday morning. During the intake, the clinician did tell me that I was struggling with an eating disorder, but I was not formally diagnosed with anorexia neurosa until about two weeks into treatment. My first day of treatment was October 24th, 2016. I am not going to elaborate too much into this because there is likely going to be a full episode about my experience with formal treatment, but I will briefly touch on some aspects here for the purpose of explaining the timeline. So on October 24th, my dad drove me and picked me up. Treatment was about 90 minutes away So he would spend his day going to the movies, the mall, finding other things to do around the area. He drove me for the first week. The first day that I got dropped off, I felt like a kid again, getting dropped off on my first day of school. I felt weird, nervous, scared, but in a way, I almost felt relieved. After the first week, I was finally trusted enough to drive myself to treatment, and I didn't miss a day. During this time, I felt like I was just taking a simple time out from life. Treatment was my only activity. I would go to treatment, I would go home, and I would stay home until I had to go back to treatment the next day. On the weekends, I to read books, watch movies, hang out with the dogs, take naps, and I always followed my meal plan to a tee. This continued from late October to early February. In January, I started being prepared for discharge. And I remember my discharge conversation starting off with, insurance won't cover this much longer. So I started going three days a week instead of five for a few weeks until my outpatient team was set up. Once my outpatient team was secured, I started going for three half days a week for a few weeks until I was formally discharged. My last day was a half day, so I left after lunch and I remember getting into my car in the parking lot and just sitting there for a second and I burst into tears. I remember being so happy to be done, but also terrified to go back to life at the same time. My clinician came out to my car and gave me a hug and some advice, and I specifically remember what she said to me. It was a quote by the author Sierra DeMulder. Your body is not a temple. Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground? After discharge in early 2017, I went back into grad school, and I was still living at home, still attending my appointments, and following my meal plan. Looking back to discharge, I can remember feeling good, and I went without any thoughts or behaviors for about a year At the very end of 2017, early 2018, this same cycle as high school and end of college re-emerged. The thoughts and mild anxiety around food and body image were slowly creeping in, but they weren't yet debilitating or impacting my life. The thoughts passed just as quickly as they came. I was not having any compulsions to exercise. I was not having any compulsions to exercise. In early 2018, the feelings of anxiety and guilt around food increased. The feelings weren't yet debilitating, but the thoughts and feelings were getting more frequent. There were some thoughts around exercise, but I still wasn't engaging. In August of 2018, I graduated with my master's degree, and I spent the remainder of the year studying for my board exam. No changes in thoughts or feelings, but the eating disorder was still on the back burner for a few weeks until early fall. Around October of 2018, I could look back and identify that my eating disorder came out of nowhere. I felt like it went from being very mild to just about absent to full force. I was still not exercising, but I was restricting or completely skipping meals. In 2019, I no longer lived at home. I had moved out and was living alone in my own apartment, and it was as if the eating disorder knew that and knew I would be able to get away with more without any eyes on me. I continued restricting, and I did start exercising again, but I wasn't engaging in cardio. I was focusing on weight training. I remember my brain justifying the exercise because it wasn't the same form as before I wasn't going to the gym consistently, maybe a few times a week, but this is when I started to manipulate what other people saw. I was eating normally and dealing with the mental warfare silently when other people were around. When I was alone, I was restricting or skipping meals. I guess you could say that my restricting was circumstantial. I only restricted or skipped meals if I was alone or Monday through Friday. Again, weekends were allowed. This pattern continued into fall of 2020 when I moved out of my apartment and purchased my first home in September. When I purchased my home, I felt the eating disorder take a backseat for a few months. During this time, it became quieter, and the feelings of anxiety and guilt were either not there or they were really less intense. I was in the process of getting a new job too, so it was a pretty big transition in my life, and I think that transition distracted me from my eating disorder. In the fall of 2021, once I settled into my new job, I noticed the eating disorder coming back. And as I look back now, this is the time that the eating disorder came back harder and louder. I started going to the gym again. Thankfully, I never started running again. I fucking hate running. And I ironically also hate going to the gym. Every day became a mental battle of anxiety. I have to go to the gym, but I don't want to. I should, but I don't really have the time. It was a mental conversation. It was actually more like an internal argument that I was having with myself. There were times that I would literally drive in circles. I would drive to the gym, drive by the gym, and not go in while mentally having the argument. It didn't really matter because the eating disorder always won and I always ended up at the gym anyway. So the whole argument and the driving in circles, big waste of time. In early 22, I finally got the great idea to stop going to the gym, but I purchased a Peloton bike. And let me tell you, giving someone with an eating disorder and an addiction to exercise a piece of workout equipment for their home is the worst fucking idea ever. So the Peloton was delivered, and at first it was normal. It was fine. I was doing it once a day, a few times a week, and I thought I was good. I thought I finally had it figured out and I had a good relationship with exercise. After a few My brain started to be heavily reinforced again by working out and restricting. My addiction, my rigidity, and my anxiety around my exercise routine was worse than before. I could not have a day where I didn't work out, and if I did, I was literally on the verge of a panic attack. My routine for exercising quickly became rigid. Monday through Friday, I was awake at 4 a.m., and I was doing two to three Peloton rides before getting ready for work. And of course, I wasn't picking easy, chill rides. I was picking the hardest rated. After work, on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I would do one to three more rides. Wednesday after work was an arm workout only. On Saturday morning, I would do the two to three Peloton rides. Sundays were my only rest days. This rigid schedule continued until 2023 when I started doing more strength training. My exercise schedule and rigidity didn't change, I just replaced a cardio workout with a strength workout. Instead of doing 2-3 rides a day, I was doing 1-2 rides a day and a strength workout. I was so obsessed, I was putting my workouts out by the week. Around November of 2023, I started to realize I was not eating enough in regard to my physical I was physically and emotionally tired all of the time. I barely had the energy to get out of bed in the morning, and I was struggling to stay awake past 6.30 at night. The rational decision would have been to stop working out at this intensity, but that didn't even cross my mind. That wasn't even an option. I was actually understanding the fact that I needed to consume more, and I was actually willing to do it. Under one condition, I didn't gain weight, and my body didn't change. This lead to my horrific and short-lived experience with a macro-tracking online business. I was very upfront with them, and when I met with them, I told them about my eating disorder and my history, and that I felt like I wasn't eating enough but wasn't sure what to do. What led me here is that I have never had a normal experience with food that I can remember, so I was totally, and sometimes still am, unsure what an actual meal or snack looks like for someone who doesn't struggle with an eating disorder. Looking back now, I know that this experience with macro tracking only exacerbated what was already going on, but going into it, my intentions were good. I was looking for a way to feel better. I was just looking in the wrong places. I was put on a macro plan and an exercise split. I was using TrainerEyes and MyFitnessPal to log everything. I was using a food scale and legit weighing out everything I ate and everything I drank. This lasted about a month or so before I had a mental breakdown and cried on my kitchen floor for about 45 minutes. I am so thankful for that mental breakdown because I do not know where I would be today if I didn't. I was quickly heading down the wrong road. I quit the macro tracking and because I signed a contract that cost me about$2,000. That wasn't my best moment, but I do like spending money, so. And this also led to me quitting Exercise Cold Turkey and selling my Peloton bike. In 2024, things started to get real intense, but in a good way. This is when the weight of all of this started to crack me open. But it wasn't in a cinematic breakthrough kind of way. It was a slow, messy, crying on my kitchen floor a lot kind of way. I didn't have any big moments where I decided to get help. I knew I just couldn't keep going this way. I don't know if it was a look on a family member's face. I don't know if it was me realizing I didn't recognize my own reflection. I don't know if it was the day I ate a full meal and felt both proud and terrified. I really don't know. I think it was a lot of things built into one. But something shifted in 2024. I started silently saying tiny truths to myself, like I'm struggling, or I think I need help again. Each one felt like ripping a stitch open, but also like breathing for the first time. I quit macro tracking in mid-January of 2024, as I said. And that same day, I sent my nutritionist an email begging for help. Although I did say in the email I was willing to eat more and do what I needed to do, but again, under one condition, I didn't gain weight. Looking back, I can assume that just by reading that email, my nutritionist knew that I was in a really bad place again. Yes, I wanted help, but the fear of weight gain persisted, and trumped everything else. So I started working with my nutritionist again in mid-January, and that has continued to present day. I also started working with a new therapist who is amazing and she keeps me in check. I also continue to see her presently. From the time that I started seeing my nutritionist in early 2024, I was still deep in the eating disorder. I was eating, but I wasn't eating much, literally the bare minimum. This continued for a few months until I finally agreed to start taking pictures of what I was eating from my nutritionist. When I was taking pictures, I knew she was going to call me out, so I automatically started eating a little more. However, it was still nowhere near what I needed. Throughout spring of 2024 and all of summer, I continued to meet with her weekly, but looking back now, I was being untruthful. I was taking pictures, but I wasn't finishing the meal or the snack, and it wasn't until November that I admitted it. I continued to meet with her weekly and do the hard work in trying to dig deeper into what was going on, but I was still not able to eat what I should have been. After some deep discussions with my nutritionist, I learned that I wasn't intentionally being untruthful. I was so detached from reality and consumed by my eating disorder that what I was doing or wasn't doing was automatic. I thought I was telling the truth based on my perspective. In 2025, I had an OBGYN appointment and ever since I went to eating disorder treatment 10 years ago, I have never let a medical professional weigh me for many reasons. This day was different. I let her weigh me and I looked. I will not share my weight, but I will say that during my next appointment with my nutritionist, this came up. She happened to ask if I knew my weight and I was honest. I told her my weight. and she was shocked and she was concerned. I, however, was not. This resulted in a conversation with my nutritionist that maybe I needed a higher level of treatment again. I told her I wasn't opposed, but what I was opposed to was taking that time out in life again. I wanted to do recovery parallel to what was going on in my life. I think partly the first time I failed because I removed myself from life and didn't really have a plan to reintegrate myself. So I started the search again and I found a treatment center that finally accepted my insurance. The Stramas Center offered virtual sessions in the evenings, and I was doing it three times a week based on the recommendation. At the intake, I was very honest and I gave the clinician the kind of state I'm at and what I'm looking for. I share that I'm on a meal plan already and that eating isn't really the problem. It's the consequences and the guilt and the shame and the anxiety and the aftermath after I consume food that I really needed help with. So I started treatment and I didn't make it more than 15 minutes in the first group. Everyone was so much younger than me, significantly younger than me. They were in high school and I felt that I did not fit into that group. I was very kind of frustrated with the clinician who I did my intake with because I didn't really understand why I would be paired with a group like that. But I understand sometimes it's hard. Anyway, I dropped out of treatment and I decided that I was going to take my recovery into my own hands. I knew what I had to do. I knew what I had to do to commit. I knew what I had to do to stay on track. I I already had the tools. I already had the skills. I just needed to hold myself accountable. I needed to make a promise to myself that life is going to be better on the other side. So I'm doing treatment and recovery all on my own with my outpatient team. For so long, I thought my life and recovery had to be separate and that hasn't ever worked for me. So now my biggest focus is to have fun, find joy, be spontaneous, make plans, enjoy life while also doing recovery. Looking back, it is so scary how wrapped up in my eating disorder I was and how detached from myself I was. This resulted in me agreeing that I needed a meal plan again, even though I hate meal plans because my perfectionism takes advantage, and I agreed to being blind to weight again. On March 3rd, my nutritionist gave me a meal plan. I wrote myself a behavior contract and promised myself that I was committing to recovery. I took a picture of that behavior contract and sent it to two of my closest friends to hold myself accountable. On March 22nd, Bite by Bite Recovery was born for the reasons I discussed in the first episode. Presently, as I am recording this, I am in a much better place. I am much happier, I am committed, and I am finding joy in life that I withheld for myself for so long. This second attempt at recovery has not been perfect, but it has been worth it. Yes, there have been slip-ups, but I do not let those slip-ups deter me from the end goal. I have finally gotten to the place where I do not want to rely on, use, or listen to my eating disorder anymore. I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I am sick and tired of listening to something that literally wants to ruin me. So in addition to the timeline, I want to share a reflection on a couple of things. I didn't realize something was off until the late summer of 2015 when I googled how I was feeling and what I was thinking. At this time, I didn't take it as serious as I do now or as I should have. I was in denial. I didn't want to admit what was really going on. And I also wasn't aware of how much the eating disorder was in control. The episode title references a secret. So what was the secret? Obviously, you know by now that the large-scale secret was the eating disorder. But within the eating disorder, secrets were also how I was lying about eating, lying about exercising, the behaviors I was engaging in, the thoughts and feelings that I was having, and overall, what was really going on with me. It was just a constant state of hiding, isolation, and I was constantly painting a picture that wasn't accurate, and it took a while for the weight of it and the guilt of it to build up because I was so entrenched in my eating disorder, I didn't even realize how much I was hiding and keeping secrets until I looked back. I was numb. The isolation of carrying the secret didn't feel bad at first. It didn't feel bad to hide the secret or isolate myself because of it because the eating disorder was convincing me that this was the right thing to do and that it was keeping me safe. While I was deep in my eating disorder, I didn't think of it as hiding and I didn't think of it as isolation. It also didn't feel like it either. It felt good, almost like it was an achievement. It was discipline. The feeling of isolation was actually reinforcing to my brain. Everything that was going on with my eating disorder didn't really become apparent until I started looking back and realizing, oh fuck, everything was so unaware. Everything I was doing was so automatic, so routine. It wasn't really a choice. It was just what I did, how I was, how I went about life. With the eating disorder comes emotional toll. Shame and anxiety over not exercising enough, eating too much. I was constantly planning ahead around food and how I was going to avoid it. The isolation and the loneliness occurred because the eating disorder was what I prioritized. I'm ashamed to admit that, but it is true. The eating disorder was important to me for so long. And because of that, my relationships, my friendships, there was neglect on my end because I always prioritized the eating disorder by canceling plans, not making plans, or just keeping to myself because my eating disorder convinced me that, again, that was what was safe. In addition to my eating disorder, my exercise routine was always priority. The same thing with my family, although that was a little worse because during the time I went to treatment and a few years after, I was still living at home, so I had to be even more secretive, which definitely put a strain on the family dynamic. My health? Thank you so much for watching. The eating disorder took my identity away. My eating disorder was my identity. It became so much of me that for the longest time, I did not know who I was without it or what I would even do without it. I would constantly dictate my life by saying, people don't go to places if they have eating disorders. They don't wear this. They don't do this. They don't eat this. They don't drink this. Something interesting happened to me this year, actually, that really put my moments of awareness and honesty into perspective. Just because some with an eating disorder is being honest doesn't mean they are aware. This became apparent for me when I was meeting my nutritionist and we had a conversation that made me realize that I was being honest for what I truly thought. I wasn't being honest about what was actually going on, but that's because I was so distorted about my behavior, my thoughts and my perspective were so distorted that I literally thought what I was saying was the truth. This made me motivated to become more aware and to really continue to commit to recovery because I was so far detached from reality. If we think about the past, when I was googling my symptoms and looking for treatment, I obviously was admitting that I had an issue, but I wasn't aware of the extent of it at all. It took a long time to fully understand and even admit what I was dealing with. When I named the secret for the first time, I was numb. I was scared. I thought that because I admitted it and I agreed to go to treatment, that that would be it. The eating disorder would be no longer. At that time, I don't think I was really available to see the full picture of the truth, which I think why the relapse occurred so quickly. This most recent time, it was like a weight was off my shoulders. Like it opened a door to a feeling of less hiding and less secrecy. Once I spoke up about it, it motivated me because it was like, okay, this is the thing that we're dealing with. What do I do next? It was very scary at first because I feared what my family would think. Oh, she's here again. Looking back, I think I was so scared because I didn't really understand it myself until the past few years. I definitely knew something was wrong, and even when I was diagnosed, I still didn't understand how deep it went. The second time around, I feel as though I am more mature in regard to being able to admit and accept what is going on, being able to finally do what needs to be done as opposed to just going through the motions. There was both fear and relief in telling the truth. I had fear of what people would think. Once they knew, I would have fear of them watching me eat and judging how I look, and there was also fear of losing the eating disorder. There was relief that didn't come until recently. Even though this is my second time around, I definitely feel as though I understand my eating disorder a lot better. The more I talk about it, the more I'm open and honest, the more I chip away at the eating disorder. No longer carrying the secret is very freeing. Even though parts of my eating disorder still try to linger, it almost makes it easier to deal with now because I'm not spending It can be hard when I'm around people who know because I have that feeling that they're watching me just to make sure I'm okay. I can now turn this secret into something positive by not only healing myself, but by helping other people feel less alone while also being able to educate and spread awareness. The biggest thing I learned at this point is that an eating disorder is not something to be ashamed of. Labeling what it is, accepting that it's there, is sometimes half the battle. Because once you're aware of it and speak up about it and against it, I find that it releases a lot of power that the eating disorder has. This journey I've walked you through, it has not been linear and it definitely hasn't been clean. It was quiet for a long time, then loud again, then quiet again, and loud again. But underneath it all, there was always a secret, one that shaped how I saw myself, one that shaped how I lived, and one that shaped how I connected with the world around me. Naming it out loud even now sometimes still shocks me. But I've learned that telling the truth, even when it's messy or hard or not fully figured out, it loosens the grip of shame. And for me, that's what recovery is really all about. Not just eating more and exercising less, but reclaiming my voice. One word, one choice, and one bite at a time. Stay tuned for episode 3 as I will be discussing where I'm really at in present day with my eating disorder and my recovery. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Bite by Bite. I'm so grateful to be able to share this space with you and I hope today's conversation brought you some insight, comfort, or maybe even a sense of community. Remember, no matter what you're healing from, healing isn't perfect and every step you take does matter. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone who might need it, leaving a review or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. so you never miss an episode. And if you want to connect more, you can find me on Instagram at Bite by Bite Recovery. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Your stories are just to say hi. Until next time, let's keep taking life by bite. See you later.

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Kaitlyn Moresi

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