Why Did I Tell the Whole World About My Eating Disorder? By Ronni Robinson

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Jeyran Main

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Why would anyone want to put in print some of the most embarrassing moments of their lives? Why bare your soul, sharing your secrets for anyone to see?

I wrote my memoir, Out of the Pantry: A Disordered Eating Journey, which does exactly what I said above, for a few reasons.

The first is that I want to pay my eating disorder recovery forward. I want to show anybody who is struggling with a food obsession that there are ways to get out of it. I am nothing special; I’m just an average person. If I can recover from being a slave to food for 30 years, anyone can.

Everyone’s past trauma and eating disorder are different, but the basics are the same. No one’s road to recovery is the same, but one commonality is that we all need to dig into our past to determine how and why the eating disorder began. It’s essential to understand the eating disorder is not our fault and that we did nothing wrong. We need to find healing so we can move forward in our lives with this new understanding and thereby not being powerless over food anymore.

The second reason for publishing my secrets is to bring eating disorder awareness to readers. Having an eating disorder, whether it is anorexia, bulimia, or compulsive overeating/binge eating, is a very secretive disease. If you are even slightly concerned that a friend or family has an eating disorder, please take the time to do some research to learn what the symptoms look like so you can try to help the loved one.

I hope that by reading my book that not only will the stigma about eating disorders get reduced, but if readers have a loved one with an eating disorder, they will be more likely to recognize it and urge the disordered eater to get help.

The more people who know about eating disorders and the less shame people who have eating disorders have, there will hopefully be more healing.

Written by Ronni Robinson