From Disordered Eating to Chef
How cooking saved my life and led to my career
When your entire identity disappears overnight, you do not just move on. You scramble. You look for something, anything, to grab onto. For me, that thing was control. Specifically, controlling everything I ate.
It did not start right after I was medically disqualified however. I was depressed for months. I could barely look at my teammates and friends without feeling immense jealousy. I kept to myself, sleeping long hours and trying to avoid the world. But I am a busybody, so this got boring pretty quickly. I figured that since I could not really control anything happening to me, I would control everything going into me.
I developed a lesser known eating disorder called orthorexia, which is basically an obsession with eating perfectly and looking perfect. I developed a fear of anything unhealthy. I cut out sugar, fried food, baked goods, high calorie foods, and pretty much anything fun. I also became obsessed with working out. I realized my brain was fine enough to exercise, it just could not involve anything with a volleyball. So I started doing HIIT and running five miles nearly every day. And I fucking hate running. It was miserable. In a way, I was punishing my body for not being good enough to come back to volleyball.
Within two semesters I was skin and bones and knew I had gone too far, but I could not stop. It was the one thing I could control in my life and frankly the only thing getting me out of bed in the morning. I traded my addiction to volleyball for an addiction to perfectionism and health, and it was quite literally killing me. The irony of orthorexia.
I finally sought help after my nutrition class covered eating disorders. We watched a movie about someone suffering from anorexia and it disturbed everyone in the class. I have always been painfully self aware and knew I had issues with eating. I was not in denial like many people with eating disorders are. When I saw how disturbed my classmates were during the documentary, I thought, wow, this is so embarrassing for me. They probably look at me that way. After that lesson I asked my nutrition teacher for resources to get help.
Recovery
I worked with a nutritionist and therapist to get back on track. The nutritionist encouraged me to add more foods to my diet. To incorporate more variety, I started cooking for myself since I was still too scared to eat out. I bought cookbooks and began learning how to cook. Every night I would cook a full dinner on our illegal hot plate in the dorm room, from pan seared chicken breast to sautéed zucchini to caramelized onions. I started to cherish these nights alone, cooking and trying new foods.
The more I enjoyed cooking, the more food I wanted to eat. Over the next six months I became more adventurous, learning how to roast a whole chicken or pan sear a steak. I also started eating foods again that I had not allowed myself to eat before, like carbs. It is crazy to think I did not eat rice for years.
By my senior year of college, cooking was all I could think about. It was cathartic to fill the empty void that volleyball had left in me. It also filled all the extra time I suddenly had. Most of my friends were still on the volleyball team, which left me alone for much of the day. But I was no longer truly alone. I had cooking. Slowly, through cooking, I felt less depressed and cared less about being the pinnacle of health. Every day I cooked, I moved further away from my orthorexia until one day it was not even a thought.
I think people assume there is one moment that makes you snap out of disordered eating. They imagine there is a rock bottom where enough finally becomes enough. For me that was not the case. I did not really want to be done with orthorexia at first. I sought help mainly because it was becoming embarrassing. I was resistant to seeing my nutritionist and therapist. I did not want to face the reality of a new life where I no longer knew my identity or my place in the world. But when I started cooking, everything changed. It felt like I discovered a part of myself that I did not even know existed. It was a lightbulb moment. Oh, this is what I am actually supposed to be doing. It was never going to be volleyball. Volleyball was only leading me to cooking.
My Mission:
Cooking means everything to me. It is the thing that helped pull me out of my disordered eating and ultimately saved my life. When I decided I wanted to make cooking my career, I knew I did not just want to work in restaurants or become a caterer. I wanted to make a real impact because cooking had made such a powerful impact on me. The kitchen became a safe place for me, and I wanted to help others create that same sense of safety in their own kitchens. My goal has always been to show people how to cook in a way that feels easy and fun. Cooking can be intimidating and boring for some people. It used to be for me. But there is real magic in creating something in the kitchen.
I told you in part one I am not one of the ten percent who grew up dreaming of being a chef. But maybe that is the whole point. Every wrong turn, every detour, every moment I thought I was lost was just the long way to get here.