Huntsville woman shares journey with eating disorders in hopes to help others
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — According to the National Eating Disorders Association, around 28 million people in the U.S. will experience an eating disorder in their lifetime.
February 26 – March 4 is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, a week dedicated to recognizing the often unseen, deadly mental illness.
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Anorexia and bulimia are both eating disorders, that differ based on food-related behaviors. Huntsville resident Gracie Knight has struggled with both since she was a teenager.
“When I was about 15-years-old, that’s when I first developed anorexia. By the time I was in college, I had bulimia,” Knight stated. “I started to have a bad relationship with food in my body because I was a dancer for so long. You’re in leotards, tights, and your body is (kind of) on display for everyone.”
For some time, Knight says her family and friends had no idea she was struggling.
“There are those identifiers for food as ‘bad’ and ‘good.’ If you’re only eating good foods, you get praised for that but you’re actually deeply sick,” Knight said.
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Eating disorders are very common, they survive off of secrecy.
Huntsville Hospital Registered Dietitian Anna Key says there are some signs to be on the lookout for, like “trips to the bathroom following meals, high anxiety during meal time…maybe just isolated and disengaged with the conversation, pushing the food around on the plate.”
Key is a registered dietitian at the Becky Streetman Center, which opened in 2021. The center provides nutrition evaluation, counseling and hands-on coaching to support children, teens and adults struggling with eating disorders.
“It’s really a physical, medical, emotional…just really all-systems disease,” Key said. “It is definitely an underfunded area and we do need more research in this area since there are environmental, biological, and genetic causes to this diagnosis.”
Knight is 25 now, and tells News 19’s Lynsey Smith she started to heal her relationship with food about three years into college. She had the following message for anyone going through a similar experience:
“There shouldn’t be something that you’re scared to eat because someone says, ‘this is healthy’ or ‘that’s not healthy.’ Also, don’t allow people to comment on how much you eat, when you eat, what you eat,” Knight said.
The National Eating Disorders Association says eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness behind opiate addiction.
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