Episode 88: Anorexia and Recovery in the Middle Place with Mallary Tenore Tarpley
“I found I wanted to stop time. If I could stay the same size as when my Mum was alive I could be closer to her. So I ended up restricting my food intake not because I wanted to be skinny but because I wanted to feel small and safe.”
Mallary developed anorexia after the loss of her Mum. Some misguided nutritional education at school helped fuel her symptoms and OCD; a time consuming jumping habit. Young Mallary was determined to be perfect.
Many years later when Mallary was teaching journalists how to write restorative narratives and include the forgotten “messy middle/ middle place” she had a lightbulb moment.
What if she explored her own “middle place?” Would this put the brakes on her quest for perfection and open the space up with her ongoing recovery? The answer can be found in Mallary’s book: SLIP: Life In The Middle Of Eating Disorder Recovery.
I recorded this podcast with Mallary the morning after the launch of her debut book SLIP: Life In The Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.
What a pro!
I really enjoyed our chat. It was full of insightful and lived experience wisdom.
Mallary made me think about my own stuff, which is always a plus. Enjoy.
EPISODE TIMESTAMPS:
[00:27] - Mallary's Book and Its Themes
[01:42] - Mallary's Relationship with Food
[02:22] - Struggles with Anorexia
[02:50] - Impact of Mother's Death
[04:02] - Complications of Eating Disorders
[08:56] - Mallary's Teenage Years
[11:07] - College Challenges and Binge Eating
[18:47] - The Concept of the Middle Place
[26:44] - Struggles and Progress in Recovery
[32:29] - Mallory's Book, Slip
[33:06] - Motherhood and Recovery Challenges
[35:11] - Obsessive Behaviours Postpartum
[36:38] - Research and Awareness on Eating Disorders
CONNECT WITH MALLARY TENORE:
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know your thoughts on Instagram @lovethisfoodthing and consider leaving an honest review and rating for the show - we’d be extremely grateful.
WAYS WE CAN HELP YOU:
EPISODE #88 TRANSCRIPT:
Jemma: Welcome to Love This Food Thing podcast. I'm Jemma. This is the place where we explore our relationship with food, be it friend or foe, and how this affects our behavior. Here's today's episode. Welcome back to Love This Food Thing podcast. Today I'm joined by Mallary Tenore Tarpley I have to say, Mallary, one of my most favorite names so far.
Mallary is a writer and assistant professor at the University of Texas, and she's just published her debut nonfiction book, slip Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery. In fact, she's on the, she's the morning after of her launch last night, which apparently went really well. So her um, baby book is a mixture of memoir and journalism and explores the concept of the quote unquote middle place between illness and recovery.
And that's really all I wanted to say. Mallary, apart from a huge welcome to Love This Food thing podcast 'cause I wanted to hear it from you. Welcome to the podcast.
Mallary: Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation. That's my absolute pleasure.
Jemma: So you had a great night last night.
Mallary: I did, yes.
We had over a hundred people who came out for the launch of my book, which was just amazing. I felt
Jemma: very supported. Oh, that's incredible. So obviously we'll have all the information about your book at the end of our, well, we're gonna talk about the book later on in the conversation, and also we'll have all your information on our Instagram and website, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Let's dive in. It's first thing in the morning from Mallary. How would you describe your relationship with food? Would you describe it as a friend or a foe?
Mallary: So I would describe it as a friend that was once a foe, uhhuh and was a friend that I still sometimes get into fights with. Okay. So yes. Um, but now it is more of a friend, I would say, than it ever had been, um, since my adolescence.
How
Jemma: do you manage. When you, let's look at that. The, the fighting with food. What does it look like? Do you kind of regress and go back into old habits and how do you manage it?
Mallary: Yeah, so I struggled with anorexia nervosa pretty acutely when I was a teenager, and it took me a really long time to mend my relationship with food because Uhhuh, certainly when I was a teenager, I just did not want to have anything to do with food, and I was fearful of having any sort of desire around food and I really suppressed that, um, and never ate what I wanted.
Do you know what that was about? Yes, so a lot of it was just in the aftermath of my mother's death. She died when I was 11. I found that I had wanted to stop time, and I thought that if I stayed the same size I was when my mom was alive, I could somehow be closer to her. And so I ended up restricting my food intake, not because I wanted to be skinny, but because I wanted to be small.
Safe. Yeah. And so I thought that the food restriction would make me feel closer to her, but it very quickly devolved into an actual eating disorder. And even when I was in the throes of that disorder. I just felt like I couldn't eat. I felt like I wanted to be sick. I wanted to, um, just be small so I could stay closer to my mother.
And there was this feeling that if I ate food, people would all of a sudden think that I was better. I was really fearful of that. And. I knew that simply eating food was not going to make me better because I had so many cognitive distortions and so much going on in my mind. Um, even when I would gain weight in the hospital, I still felt like I was so tethered to my disorder.
So I was fearful a lot of times that eating food would make people think that I was okay and no longer needed support or help.
Jemma: That's really complicated for an 11-year-old, it's, isn't it? And I'm picking up that you consciously thought, I'm gonna do this because then this will happen and that won't happen.
Mallary: Yes. And it was compounded by the fact that at the time I was taking a seventh grade health class where we were learning about quote unquote good foods and bad foods. Ah. And we were learning about what we should and shouldn't eat. In my mind, I thought that that meant I would be bad if I ate bad foods, and I was also beginning to learn that I could change the way my body looked based on the food that I was eating.
So that was also at play at the time.
Jemma: That's so interesting, and that's so typical of that kind of anorexic position, isn't it? Someone else came on the podcast and, um. She did a class, a similar class at school when she was young and she was obsessed with the good foods and it went on for years and that's what spiraled her into her anorexia.
So it's very interesting to hear that point raised again. Mm-hmm. Did your, I want to be very delicate here 'cause you lost your mum, but did, did it work? Did restricting your food make you feel closer to your mum? Was it a comfort? Because these, these behaviors are comforting, aren't they? Otherwise, we wouldn't stick with 'em for such a long time until it all starts to unravel.
Mallary: Yes. I'm so glad you asked that question because it is really important to look at. What purpose the eating disorder served. Yeah. That can be a really important part of recovery rather than demonizing it completely. Because yes, we do end up falling into these disorders because they give us some sense of control or they give us some semblance of just being able to cope with life struggles.
Hmm. And. For me, it was interesting because my mother had metastatic breast cancer for three years and I watched her body just deteriorate during that time, and I couldn't control what happened to my mom's body, but I realized after she passed away that I could control what I put into mine. Right. And. In many ways.
After my mom died, I put on a happy face and I went to school The day after she died, I read the eulogy at her funeral without crying.
Jemma: Wow. And
Mallary: I seemed like I was okay, and people just praised me for being strong and resilient. But in actuality, I felt like I was falling apart and I yearned some sort of care and attention, even though I had a family that loved me.
They thought I was okay and I didn't know how to tell them I wasn't. And it wasn't until I got sick and started losing weight and started having physical symptoms that I felt like people finally saw me and said, oh, Mallary needs help right running. She needs to have some care. Yeah. And so the eating disorder did serve that purpose in giving me this sense of care, even though it was negative attention and care in the sense that it was all revolving around my eating disorder.
But what was also interesting is that when I was first hospitalized for a time, I did feel closer to my mother, and that had been the whole goal of this food restriction. And the reason for that is because my most accessible memories of my mother. Were of her in the hospital, um, and her not eating because toward the end of her life, she didn't eat.
And I looked back at her medical records when I was writing my book, and the doctors had diagnosed her as positive for anorexia. And they did not mean anorexia nervosa, which is nervous loss of appetite. But, hmm. If you're positive for anorexia, it simply means that you are not. Eating because of an illness.
Because the illness has essentially stripped away your appetite. And that was what happened to my mother. So fast forward less than a year and a half after she died. And there I was with an anorexia of my own anorexia nervosa.
Jemma: Yeah.
Mallary: And a hospital bed with a weakened body. And so in some ways it was like this embodiment of my mother at her worst time.
So those elements of the eating disorder. Did help, but ultimately the disorder made me feel more out of control than ever. Yeah. And farther away from my mother than ever.
Jemma: Yeah, of course. Because it goes in stages, doesn't it? I've got this feeling of it being like a blanket for you, it must have been so painful when you started to recover.
And I also, for an 11-year-old to make that kind of decision is a very, it's a very intelligent. Decision to make. I think it makes complete sense and, and logic, particularly at that time when, you know psychically, you're still not ready to, to leave your mom. Are you okay? Yeah. So, right. Um, so you did get the attention and then you, did you kind of sort yourself out a little bit as a teenager, and then did you spiral out?
Or spiral down again. Did you go in and out of your eating disorder and were you just anorexic? Were you binging, throwing up over exercising? You know, the list is long, isn't it? Anything like that or was it just, I'm not gonna eat.
Mallary: Yes. So for me it was initially anorexia nervosa where I was just restricting my food intake.
But I also struggled with a lot of common comorbidities, including anxiety, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Hmm. And that obsessive compulsive disorder really played out with regard to exercise.
Jemma: Okay. And
Mallary: my form of exercise, which I write about in my book, was jumping, which sounds unusual, but it was this very childlike form of exercising, and I would jump as high as I could.
I would jump just dozens, if not hundreds of times an hour. I would do it in the school hallways. I would do it in the aisles at church. I did it in the grocery store. Wow. I mean, it looked very peculiar, but I was so obsessive about jumping. And about trying to burn calories to the point where I just couldn't stop and I went to the hospital and ended up being hospitalized five times and was in residential treatment for a year and a half, and really in residential treatment, that's where I began to move forward in my recovery.
And left residential thinking that I was fully recovered, but not really knowing what that meant.
Jemma: Mm. In
Mallary: my mind, it was this perfectionistic ideal and so I thought, well, I need to eat perfectly. I need to exercise just the right amount. I've got to get all A's B and all that extracurriculars. Yeah, and I did all of those things.
I stopped going to therapy as well. Stopped, uh, taking medications, um, which my doctor had said was okay, but I thought, well, if this is what full recovery looks like, then I'm getting an a plus. But, um, of course, of course.
Jemma: Yeah.
Mallary: Yes. But the pressure of that really felt insurmountable and after two years of that, when I was in my freshman year of college, I alone in my dorm room one night.
Binge ate for the first time. And that had never happened to me where I was just eating copious amounts of food and feeling incredibly out of control.
Jemma: Okay.
Mallary: And in that moment I felt like I was failing at anorexia and failing at full recovery. Yeah. And I vowed to just quote unquote, do better the next day.
And by that I am. Restricted. But that night really set off this decade long pernicious cycle of binge eating and restricting. Um, and during that time, I continued to tell people I was fully recovered of because of course I was shamed and afraid to admit, of course, that I had fallen back into the disorder and.
It was confusing too, because it wasn't the way that I remembered my disorder in that I wasn't merely restricting. I was sort of bouncing back and forth between the binging and restricting.
Jemma: Absolute nightmare. Yes, and I'm intrigued. Yeah, it's just awful, isn't it? And then the shame that keeps you just shut down and locked.
Unable to move forward because, well, it's just too shameful and goodness me, what do we do with our shame? You know, unless we have someone to guide us through. Um, I'm, I'm struck by the fact that you, you didn't get rid of the food or you thought you did. By then restricting was that your getting rid of the food and then maybe exercising more?
Yes, exactly.
Mallary: So that was my form of purging, if you will. Yeah. Um, was really the over exercising and then the restricting. I never fell into, um, bulimia. I was so afraid of. Just doing that one time and then never being able to stop. And so I was really scared of that because I knew that if I started, I would fall into something, um, quite toxic and it'd be one more thing that I would have to try to climb my way out of
Jemma: with the binging, because I used to, I was very bulimic for a long time and I couldn't bear the feeling of food inside of me.
I'm curious, did you feel. Nourished and satiated, or did you then just have nerve wracking hours where you used to, where you'd have to sit with the feeling of the food in your stomach and you couldn't wait to exercise and restrict, and then were you kind of caught up on that, you know, Boyd up on that.
The hope of like, I can start again. It's okay. You know, once you've kind of dealt with your grief about failing. And not being good enough and not being perfect. I mean, this could all happen in 10 minutes or 10 seconds or an hour. Then you boyed up with the optimism of like, yeah, here we go again. I can start again.
You know, that kind of narrative hook. Did that. Mm-hmm. Did you experience that?
Mallary: Yeah, so for me, I felt while I was eating discomforted and oftentimes I would eat alone in my dorm room at night when I was trying to work on a school assignment, I was over always an overachiever, always worked really hard, and to be honest, I had missed quite a bit of high.
Well, when I was in and out of treatment, but while I was in treatment, I did take classes, but they were very rudimentary. Um, but they did enable me to still get credits and return to, um, high school my junior year and, and graduate with my class. But that being said. It made college that much more difficult because I hadn't really gotten the education in high school that I would have had I not been in treatment.
So I put so much pressure on myself, and often I would just eat in these moments of trying to finish a deadline or eat in these moments of editing the college newspaper, which I was editor of. Okay. And when I was doing this, it was comforting, but immediately after, I would feel this deep sense of shame and remorse, and I would just feel.
So disgusted with myself. Yeah. And with my body. And often this was at night, and so I would try to exercise in my room, but I would be so exhausted and I would think, okay, I need to try to go to bed. But often I would just have these sleepless nights because my body would be overheating. I would be so anxious, and my mind would be racing, and then I would vow to do better the next day.
But every day felt like a broken promise.
Jemma: Yeah.
Mallary: And so for me, in those moments doing better, the next day was restricting my food intake,
Jemma: right? And I
Mallary: can now look back on that and think, well, doing better would've been to try to normalize my eating the next day. But I just was not in a place to be able to do that at the time.
And so that felt incredibly difficult. In some ways, there was this feeling of, ugh, I don't have to be perfect at my recovery, but more so than anything. I wanted to get out of this cycle and I couldn't, and that felt very imperfect. It felt messy in a way that I didn't like. And um, yeah, and it really kept me stuck and that disconnect between.
The narrative that I shared with everyone, which was that I was fully recovered. Yeah. Versus the narrative that I was living out behind, closed doors alone in my dorm rooms at night, felt incredibly inauthentic. Yeah. But I didn't know how to bridge the gap between those two narratives.
Jemma: I did exactly the same.
Told everyone I was great and I wasn't. Uh, and also you, you spoke about, um. The extreme nature of it. It's, it's, so, it's almost impossible to find the middle ground, isn't it? Because you swing between. One extreme to the other. And it's become such a habit and that way of thinking and of being and cont continually trying to kind of exert yourself.
And as you mentioned earlier, find some control. Uh, it's. It's just impossible. Did you, when you were a kid, did you ever have one of those, um, what are they called, those slinkies? Do you know what a slinky is? Yes. I had many of those. Do you know when a slinky just goes bonkers and just spirals down the stairs?
It's like that. It's just like continually falling, falling, falling. We're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna pick this up immediately. Okay.
Welcome back to Love This Food Thing, podcast. Do you know what, Mallary completely forgotten what I was gonna say because we always have these little breaks and it'll chat and I'm like, that's it. I was talking about a slinky. That's again, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Okay. Did you say that you did, you lived like that for 10 years, telling people that you were fine, but you weren't.
Mallary: Yes, exactly. It was a little over 10 years and yeah, it was a very difficult stretch.
Jemma: Awful, awful, awful. And it just breaks your spirit. Oh, it does. I can't even think about it. It's just awful. So I'm imagining that takes you to your late twenties. Exactly. Okay, so what happened? Did something pivotal happen?
Did you have a moment? Did you, how did you, 'cause this is what's important. I mean, it's great to share our experiences and then people hear it and they don't feel so alone. But what's really important, if you do want to get well, you wanna know how other people do it because it seems impossible. And as you expertly pointed out, you just couldn't.
It couldn. Move away from what you were doing. So how did you pivot outta it? Um,
Mallary: so for me it was really interesting because I am a journalist by trade. Mm. And in my late twenties, I was running a small nonprofit and was helping journalists to tell what we called restorative narratives.
Jemma: Yeah.
Mallary: Restorative narratives are essentially stories that show how people in communities are making meaningful pathways forward in the aftermath of trauma, tragedy, illness.
And so I was helping journalists to tell stories about these messy middles because F often fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. So often in journalism we hear this. Story about the tragedy, and then journalists move on because of the news cycle and they're telling other stories, and maybe they'll return to that story on the one year anniversary, for instance.
But we see this too with eating disorder coverage, where there's half a story that talks about someone's illness and then all of a sudden in the next paragraph it jumps to the present day where they're all better. And so often I think, well, what about, how did they get from point A to point B without that messy middle?
Jemma: How do they do that?
Mallary: Yeah. Yes. And so part of this is because we simplify storylines over time. Mm-hmm. And we don't tend to really talk as much about the messy middle. And journalists aren't always trained to ask questions around that. So. I really wanted to help journalists think about how they could tell stories that revealed a fuller arc from heartbreak to hope.
Okay. Um, and from struggle to renewal. And as I was working with journalists on telling these restorative narratives, it occurred to me that this could be a really helpful for framework for my own thinking around recovery. And it took me almost a year to really. Think that through, but I realized that I needed to be able to think of recovery less as this perfectionistic ideal and more perhaps as a work in progress.
And as I started to think inwardly about this. I began to come up with this term that I call the middle place, which is essentially this name I've given to this liminal gray space between acute sickness and full recovery. Yeah, and I thought about how when I was in college and beyond, every time I would.
Slip I would slide. So if I ate point of ice cream for instance, I would think, well, I blew it. I might as well eat the bag of chips and the cookies and all the things in the mini fridge, and then I would end up in a slide and then the next day I would restrict, which was sort of perpetuating that. Slide.
Mm. And so as I started thinking about this middle place, I thought, well, what if instead of looking at slips as ground for failure, I tried to instead normalize slips as an important part of the recovery process. And what if I looked at those slips as opportunities for growth? And so no one had ever told me one about the possibility of slipping in recovery.
And certainly no one had ever told me that slips could be okay. In my mind, they were always something to be ashamed of. Once I began to remove that shame, it actually helped me to get out of this vicious binge restrict cycle because I could look at what I did, what choices I made, and say, okay, I had this slip that was really hard.
Why did I have this slip? Um, who can I talk to about it? And how can I try to get back up now, not next week, not next month, but now, and all of this coincided with me meeting my now husband. Okay. And so the timing was very fortuitous because suddenly I was in this relationship where I couldn't really hide my behaviors as much.
Mm-hmm. And so. I had to be really vulnerable and make the choice to tell my partner that I was in recovery and in the midst of, you know, trying to move forward but was still having these slips. But that honesty and vulnerability I thought would draw us farther apart, but it actually drew us closer together.
Jemma: Yeah. And
Mallary: he was then the person who I was able to start talking to about those slips.
Jemma: Wow. So there wasn't a therapist in the background, it was your now husband. Yes. That's incredible. What a guy. What a guy. Because not everyone can handle it. I've had exp, ma. Ma. Wow. Congratulations. Good choice. Brilliant.
It's just like heart lifting. Um. There is no other way. The, the, I love the slip and I love the slide. There's no other way to look at it other than opportunities for growth. And one of the things that I hang on about now that I'm a couple of years, well, four years into the podcast, is that if you do recover from an eating disorder or various behaviors, you have to get to know yourself and you have to unpick yourself because food is life by definition.
We have to eat to survive and. I always think of that Socrates, they, it's attributed to Socrates, but that quote of like a life unexamined is a life unlived. And the rewards when you do unpick yourself and get to know what's going on. In those moments when you're slipping and sliding and you're like, okay, so that didn't work out, but I can pick myself up are just fantastic because it's about how we pick ourselves up, isn't it?
It's not about the falling down. It's like, can we get back up right on our feet and carry on?
Mallary: Exactly. And for me that word slip has become really powerful and it's why I titled my book Slip.
Jemma: Yeah, I
Mallary: remember there was a clinician at one point who said, well, I wouldn't title it slip because that word has a really negative connotation in the eating disorder field.
And I thought, well, that's precisely the point, right? Yeah. Um, that slips are happening and for many of us. They don't just happen in the early stages of recovery. They may happen throughout our lives, and certainly that's been the case for me, not for everyone, but as I've thought about that word slip, I've thought about the fact that it really suggests some sort of forward movement because you can't slip if you're standing still.
And so rather than demonizing every slip I have. I often think about the fact that many times when I'm slipping, it's because I'm doing hard things. I am making choices in service of recovery. I'm trying to get outta my comfort zone, maybe by trying new foods or by just really trying to listen to my body more.
And inevitably that can be really hard. And so sometimes I do slip in the midst of that. But for me to be able to reframe my thinking about what it means to slip has been really powerful in terms of recognizing that slips and progress can coexist and they don't have to cancel each other out.
Jemma: I had a fantastic therapist who introduced me to the notion of letting yourself and everyone else off the hook, and that's exactly what you've done with slip because you've opened up the space.
For something else to happen. Different conversation, different internal dialogue, different behavior. It's you and you've, you've opened up that space, which is fabulous. Two things, before I forget them. Do you describe yourself as someone who is in recovery? Three things. And do you think that you will always describe yourself in that way?
Hmm.
Mallary: So I do, I say that I'm in recovery because, right. Yeah. That language feels more true to my own lived experience. Hmm. And I certainly have interviewed people who are fully recovered, and I don't wanna discredit that because I think people can fully recover and we each can define that on our own terms.
Yeah. But for me, when I think about full recovery, I can't relate to it as much because I still have it in my mind that it is this perfectionistic ideal and that it's somewhat of a finish line. And I much prefer the language of in recovery because it keeps me grounded and it helps me to realize that.
This is something that I need to work hard at, and I acknowledge that. Um, and I'm not in this middle place for lack of trying, right? I mean, I try so hard at my recovery, but it is still so hard. So I don't know that I will ever reach full recovery, but in some ways. It feels refreshing to have a different way of looking at my recovery and to not think of it as only existing in these extremes of acute sickness or full recovery.
There's really this huge expanse in between, and my goal is not to reach full recovery so much as it is to continue to try to make progress in the middle place.
Jemma: Beautiful. Beautiful. It's what works for you, isn't it? What'd you think about? That was my third thing, by the way. What'd you think about mental health parlance and how we speak?
I have a, an issue with it. Maybe it's 'cause I'm not a professional in the field, but no, it doesn't. I just have an issue with some of the terminology and how particularly eating disorders are spoken about and the phrases. Do you have any feelings around it?
Mallary: I do, I think that there are terms that we've used in the eating disorder field that can be quite toxic, and one of them, for instance, is quasi recovery.
Sometimes it's also referred to a pseudo recovery uhhuh, but these terms essentially describe people who are in the middle place, people who have not, uh, gotten over their disorder, but they're better than they once were, and those terms can make people feel like they're faking their recovery. Or that it's somehow not real.
And we need to really be careful about the language we use because words do have power. And I know that those two terms in particular were really stigmatizing for me to the point where I was so afraid to admit that I was still in recovery or in this middle place because I was. Scared. Scared and fearful of what people might think, and so we really need to consider that.
We also need to really think long and hard about what we mean when we say fully recovered, because in researching eating disorders, when I was writing my book, I realized that there are about as many definitions of full recovery as there are studies about it. Yeah. So there are some studies that define it simply by body mass index, and even the body mass index measures will vary from study to study.
Other studies look at cessation of behaviors. Some do take into account the cognitive aspects of eating disorders. If you look at the ranges of people who fully recover based on this research, the ranges are so wide as to be comical. And I mean, it's so hard to compare data across studies when we have so many different definitions of full recovery.
So that is problematic because as a field, we are pushing for full recovery for everyone, and yet we haven't really come to a consensus definition. Now, I think individually we don't need a consensus definition. We can each define what recovery looks like on our own terms, but from a research perspective, we really need to get some more clarity on what that means to fully recover.
And if we can't get clarity, then maybe we should think harder about how we're using that term and whether we should use it.
Jemma: Fascinating. I feel very strongly that we need to use the language that suits us and that feels authentic. And I think it's about how you feel. I describe myself as fully recovered.
I pay no attention to BMI or my weight. I haven't been on scales for years. And it's so interesting what you are talking about because everyone's experience of an eating disorder is gonna be different, isn't it? Even though there are commonalities because everybody's fundamentally unique and. I had this, uh, someone came on the podcast a, a psychotherapist and she said, I've never met an eating disorder, but I've met lots of people and it just summed it up brilliantly for me.
And I'm gonna sit after this podcast and reflect and think about how I feel about using the term fully recovered. So thank you for that. I think I am though. I feel like I am. We're gonna take a quick break.
Welcome back to Love This Fooding podcast. So of course we just had another chat in the break and I said to Mallary that because I'm no longer, I no longer binge, I no longer, I'm no longer sick, I no longer strict my food and I, whatever I wanna eat, I eat. If I don't wanna eat it, I don't eat it. And I kind of define that as my recovery.
But of course that's just a tiny, tiny bit of having. Uh, uh, eating disorder symptoms because mine were a manifestation of my internal distress. And partly I still have something to say about this man. Partly some of my, I think one of the reasons I use the term full recovery is 'cause I have learnt to, and I'm, you know, quite old now, but I've learned to accept myself and my neuroses and my anxieties and.
Kind of work with them, and in that I kind of feel recovered. Can I just tell you the phrase that I cannot bear? Yes. Weight restored? Mm. Yeah. So anodyne, honestly. Yes. Terrible. We're gonna move on. I'm gonna think about it. We're now gonna talk about Slip Mallary's book. So we've touched on what it's about.
It's about the middle place. So you've met your husband, you have been vulnerable and open with him, which has given you a lot of space. I am imagining that a few years pass, everything's lovely, and then you find yourself firmly back in the middle place again. Yes.
Mallary: So much of my life has been just this series of ebbs and flows.
Yeah. When it comes to my recovery. Yeah. And I was in a really pretty good place, um, when I sort of got married and once I got pregnant with my first child. Mm-hmm. And so pregnancy was this period where I really was taking care of my body and I was actually quite fearful that. The weight gain would just send me spiraling and I would really be in a tougher place.
But I found that finally when having a child I or getting pregnant, I was taking care of my body. I felt better about taking up space. Yeah, I sometimes would conjure up these images of me binge eating and then drowning my baby. In food from the womb. Wow. Um, or pictures of me restricting and then seeing my unborn baby shriveling up.
Hmm. And those seem like these really kind of graphic images, but at the time when I would think about them, they actually motivated me to really try to nourish myself because I did not want to pass this disorder onto my children. Even from within the womb. Absolutely. Yeah, that was really interesting to see how pregnancy shaped my recovery, but I wasn't expecting.
And also what what,
Jemma: sorry to interrupt, but also what type of mother you are very conscious and very careful and fully aware that we pass stuff onto our kids and you didn't wanna pass that on.
Mallary: No, I really didn't, and that has just been something that I think about every single day. Multiple times a day.
Yeah. As a mom. Yeah. My kids are now seven and nine, but yeah, because pregnancy was so great for me, I thought that once my children were. Born that maybe I would fully recover, because in my mind I thought, well, these could be the two beautiful bookends of my story where I developed my eating disorder after my mother died, and then I fully recovered once I became a mother.
Sure. But it turns out that that ending was a little too premature, too tidy. Okay. Um, and I ended up really experiencing struggles postpartum that I had not anticipated. So. I was breastfeeding my children and began pumping breast milk as well, and found that I pretty quickly just descended into this obsessive compulsive, um, behavior around pumping.
And so I have this line in the book where I talked about how I had moved from jumping as a year old to pump Yes. To now pumping ob. Yeah. You took the words outta my mouth. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And I was doing this, I would get up late at night, I would pump quietly, secretively. And I wasn't telling my husband about it at the time because I thought, oh my gosh, I am a mother.
I should be better than this. What is going on? But I just kept pumping and was trying to burn calories, was trying to kind of lose that baby weight, as they say. Um, but that was this really difficult stretch that happened with. Both of my children, interestingly, I wrote a whole essay that was published in the Dallas Morning News.
Mm-hmm. A big paper in the state of Texas. And I talked about how I had donated 10 gallons of breast milk and the, the story was sort of lauded and I was praised from donating all this breast milk. But if you had looked sort of behind those words, you would've seen a woman who was very much struggling with this, um, obsessive behavior.
And fortunately, once my children. Weaned off of breast milk, then I was able to get out of that behavior and um, and normalize things. But that was really challenging. And as I did research for the book, I looked and I could only find two studies that talked about the fact that this can happen for women who have lived experience with an eating disorder.
And I talked with the researchers behind those studies and they said, yes. This is such an under-discussed topic, partly because societally we really push for this idea that breast is best. Mm-hmm. So to suggest anything other than that, um, can very much be looked down upon. Right. But we have to sort of talk about these things, and this was important for me to talk about in the book, not so that it would be triggering for folks or give them ideas about how to be better at their eating disorder.
Right. Because I was very conscious about not wanting to do that. Yeah. But more so because we need to have awareness. I wish I had known that this could be something that could happen because then maybe I would've been able to anticipate it more. Um, but yeah, this is, this was an example of a time where I was very much in this sort of slipping mode and slipping and sliding, but fortunately was able to get out of it.
Jemma: And did you just naturally move away from that behavior? Did you speak to anybody? Were you able to pick yourself up basically, is what I'm asking?
Mallary: Yeah. I was able to get out of it. Yeah. I really, I mean, my children sort of just gave me the cue in the sense that they no longer needed or wanted the breast milk.
Yeah. And so I didn't really have a need to pump anymore. And fortunately that was enough to get me to stop. But I also was thinking about what I wanted for my children and how I wanted to mother them, and I thought. I don't wanna be in this place as my children are getting older and as they're becoming more cognizant of food and what I'm eating and what they're eating.
So that was important to me in terms of thinking about what choices can I start to make that are in more service of recovery?
Jemma: And it's really great that you didn't then find another behavior, another thing to be obsessive about that was completely random. Clearly you held onto it.
Mallary: Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I will say I wish I had had more support during that time.
We know that medical doctors typically get about zero to two hours of training on eating disorders. And, um, obstetricians are no exception. And so I very clearly remember going to my six week postpartum appointment at my obstetrician's office and she said, wow, girl, you're already down to your pre-pregnancy weight.
Mm. And that comment just made me think. Well, maybe I could lose a little bit more. Right. And I could hear the anorexia knocking at the door. Yeah. And was trying not to let it in, but it just barged its way in and really sort of showed up in those nights when I was pumping obsessively. But there were these moments where I thought, huh.
I had revealed to my obstetrician that I had an eating disorder, that I'd had OCD, but there were no sort of questions around, how are you doing with that? Um, no conversations around how that could be triggering postpartum. So that speaks to a larger systemic issue that, uh, that we need to try to change at some point moving forward.
Jemma: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So tell me the, the book is, as I said, part memoir and part. Research and part people's stories. That's, is that, uh, is that how it is? Yes, that's exactly right. Okay. Good. Um. Just briefly before we talk more about the book, what's your favorite time of day to write? So
Mallary: I wake up incredibly early to write.
Yeah. I get up at 4:00 AM Yeah. Uh, no. Lovely. Perfect. Yes. It's just my quiet time.
Jemma: Yeah. And then will you do two or three hours and then, and then stop and get on with your day and then write the following day? Or will you pick it up throughout the day if you can?
Mallary: I usually write in the morning, and then I typically have a hard stop at 5 45 because I need to get myself and my kids ready for the day.
Yeah. And then when I was writing the book, I was doing a lot of reporting and interviewing, so I would schedule those interviews for during the day, um, and then the next day just get up and start writing again.
Jemma: Yeah. Fantastic. It's such a special time, isn't it? If you, I get up early to write as well. So what would you like to say about the book?
What's your. Yeah. Do you have, are you on a mission? Are you just wanting to bring all your stuff together in one place? You obviously want to help people. You obviously have something to say, and clearly the, the kind of concept of the middle ground has been with you for such a long time. It must, but God, it must be really something that you launched last night.
Mallary: Yes, I've wanted to write a book since I was five years old, so, okay. It's not an exaggeration to say that. Yeah, that's great. This is a dream come true. Um, yeah. And yeah, and for the longest time, I mean, I knew even when I was 13 and struggling with anorexia, that I wanted to write a book someday about my experiences and.
I kept these journals and would write in them day in and day out, and they were really a gift to my present day self as I was working on the book. But for a long time I thought, well, I'm gonna write an, an iteration of this book, but I can't publish it until I'm fully recovered. Ah, but that day never came.
And, and all the books that I read, though very many were very helpful. They were all written from the perspective of people who were fully recovered, right? And so I felt like there was this lack of a mirrored image that left me feeling really misunderstood. And I thought about five years ago, I got back, um, and went back to school and got my master's in fine arts.
And when I was in that program, I was working on a thesis that essentially would be the foundation for what would become my book. I was really beginning to grapple with these questions of what does it mean to be better, but not all better? And what does it mean to live in this world knowing that your disorder remains a vulnerability?
And I thought, maybe I can write this book and explore those questions and write this through the lens of someone who lives in the middle place. And so that was really important to me because I think when we only hear stories about people who are fully recovered, then we miss all of the people who are in this middle place and we silence them.
And so with this book, I wanted to help people to feel less alone in this middle place and to help them to feel seen and heard. And in many ways, I fit the stereotypical mold of someone with an eating disorder and that I struggled with anorexia. I identify as a woman. I live in a smaller body. I mill middle to upper class.
Yeah. And so while my own narrative is really at the heart of this book, I didn't want it to just be my story alone. So I ended up surveying over 700 people from 44 states and 37 countries. Wow, all of whom had lived experience with a variety of different eating disorders. And then I interviewed 175 survey respondents, clinicians and researchers, and that was really important to me so that I could broaden the story beyond my own narrative and really include diverse perspectives with the hopes that readers of all kinds can find points of relatability in the book.
And so that they can learn more about eating disorders because there's so much fascinating research that I wasn't aware of before I started working on this book. So it really is this true blend of my own story alongside other people's narratives and research, which I really try to describe in a way that is accessible and easy to understand.
Jemma: Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. So it's for everybody who has any kind of interest or experience. I want to ask you, I'm obsessing about this middle place, this middle ground this. Does it have a look for you? Does it just look like your life or if you were to film it and create a scene, does it look like somewhere or is it just empty?
Mallary: Yeah. So I mean, for me, it, it really is my life. I mean, it is the backdrop of my life and it's where I take up space. It's, I mean, as you were talking about that, it did make me think a little bit about just the ocean. Um, 'cause it is this. Vast space where, um, I don't necessarily see this finish line. I can look out and see the horizon.
Um, but I don't know that that is necessarily full recovery. But there's this horizon that I'm always sort of working toward and sometimes the waves pull me under. Um, but sometimes I have to tread water. I'm always sort of swimming forward and moving forward and I'm now in much gentler waters than I was years ago.
Yeah, I'm closer to shore. Yeah. Um, when I was very sick, I was in this ocean, but I was in the deep end and drowning. Um, whereas now I can really sort of see that shore. I can touch that sand. I can feel safer in this space because. It really makes me think about how just sickness and recovery does exist on the spectrum.
I think sometimes we say that so often it can feel cliched, but Yeah. Um, but you know, it, it is true. And so for me it's sort of this ebbing and flowing of the tide and, um, and it is where I, I live my life and in many ways it feels courageous to say that I wouldn't have been able to say that I live my life out in this.
Space, um, years ago. But wow. Now I own that because it's part of who I am as a woman in recovery.
Jemma: Yeah. And this is, this is the life we live, isn't it? This is, you know, this planet that we live on and what goes on and everyone else. It's um, it's quite something ebbing and flowing. Beautiful, beautiful.
Before we wrap up, 'cause I have one final question. Is there anything else you want to say?
Mallary: So I just wanna say that, um, I really hope that this book reaches people with eating disorders, but it's also my hope that this book reaches people who don't think that they need to read it,
Jemma: right?
Mallary: Because very often we may pick up a book like this, which has the word eating disorder on the cover, and think, well, I don't know anyone who has an eating disorder, or I've never had an eating disorder.
But chances are you probably do know someone who's had an eating disorder, um, or you will know someone who does. And so, yeah. Part of what we need to do is really raise awareness around eating disorders because as you well know, there are so many misconceptions about them. Yeah. And we need to learn more about them so we can work on more preventative measures and so that we can really help people and have more honest conversations around what the recovery process looks like.
So I do hope that people will pick this up, um, even if they don't feel like it's necessarily going to be relatable at the onset.
Jemma: Well, so many people. Have disordered relationships with food that just hum in a, in a, in a, in the background and disrupt people's lives without ticking the boxes of like, oh, you know, I have an eating disorder.
So yes. With that in mind then your book is. Perfect because, well, I've got this. You know how you are with food is how you are with life and lots of people, lots of people have a terrific relationship with food or a functional relationship with food, but lots of people really struggle. It's where they put their stuff.
So, um, yeah. By Mallary's book, it's out now in all good bookshops and online, et cetera. Yeah. And audio book version, is that done? Yes. There's an audio book version as well. Amazing. Amazing. You've been so busy. You need to take the weekend off.
Mallary: Yeah, that's my busy, but I'm about to go
on
Jemma: tour, so, okay. After tour, take a holiday.
Go and lie in the ocean. That's my prescription. Okay. Final question, question that foxes everybody. If you are on an island, any kind of island, you have a store cupboard, olive oil, seasoning, maybe some chili powder, and you would take five favorite foods with you. What would you take?
Mallary: Hmm. I would take trail mix.
I find satisfaction in just sort of eating trail mix and having Oh, trail mix pictures. Okay. Yes.
Jemma: Do you have it dry?
Mallary: Uh, I do, yes.
Jemma: Okay. Delicious. Yeah. Salty or sed, I mean, salty or sweet?
Mallary: Um, more sweet than salty. Okay. Trail mix. Okay. Yes. And then I would take Mac and cheese, which is just a comfort food of mine.
Yeah. Um, I would take Tarka Tarka is a restaurant that my husband and I go to, but they have this amazing You're taking
Jemma: the whole restaurant?
Mallary: Yes. I would love to take the whole restaurant, but they have this wonderful Indian dish called Corma that's a creamy cor dish. It's cashew based. Yeah. And it has paneer cheese and vegetables and.
It is the one meal that leaves me feeling full. Um, but that I let myself eat and enjoy and that is very hard for me in recovery to feel full. Yes. But it's feeling of fullness. That actually brings me some semblance of joy. 'cause I love the way it tastes and I love the companionship of eating it with my husband.
Jemma: Beautiful. Okay, so you've got trail mix and you've got. Cole, and you've got, I've just forgotten the, the second one. Mac and cheese. Mac and cheese, of course. Yes. Mac and cheese. That was two more, two more. Mallary. And
Mallary: then I would say ice cream. Okay. What favorite ice cream? Uh, coffee, chocolate chip.
Brilliant. Oh, I used to eat it with my mom and I remember very distinctly sort of eating it for the first time in my recovery, and I actually write about that in the book. Okay. Beautiful, beautiful. And one more. Yes. And the last one I would say would be, um, raspberries. I dunno, it's the delicious sort of the one fruit that I just feel always comfortable eating.
Jemma: Lovely. You've got a sweet thing going on so you can come to my island and eat salt and I'll come to yours and eat sugar. It's perfect. Yes. Thank you so much for coming on. Love This Food Thing podcast. It's been an absolute joy and I can hear the dog growling in the background going, come on, come on. I need to go out for a walk.
Huge congratulations on the publication of your, of your book. Did you hear her Mark then? So rude. Thank you. Yeah, it seems the dog is congratulating me as well. She's clapping our pauses together. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Mallary. Thanks for having me. Pleasure.
If you'd like to learn more about the mission we're on today and who we help, simply head to love this food thing.com to see all the details.