Katie's Year In Recovery (Reheat)

We follow one woman's attempt to recover from an eating disorder and hear what it’s like to wake up each morning and have to fight a battle not only with food, but more importantly, with yourself. It's a rare look inside one person’s struggle. We also hear from her husband and explore her decision, early in recovery, to become a baker.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:43Dan Pashman?

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• 1:15Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone, it's Dan here with a reheat for you, and this one is an all-time favorite episode amongst Sporkful listeners. It's called Katie's Year in Recovery, and it followed a woman named Katie Hacker over the course of 2017. And this reheat actually came at the request of a listener in Seattle.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Hi, my name is Karthika Shankar. I'd like you all to take a certain episode out of the deep freezer. I believe this was the first episode I ever listened to of The Sporkful. And at the time, I didn't realize this, but I was in the deep end of disordered eating. And this particular episode was about a woman who had also gone through the same experience. I think you've since done an update on that one, but it's one that has been very close to home and important to me and has started me on the journey of listening and trusting The Sporkful to represent food and the value that we associate with it and all of that. So, thank you and have a good day.

• 2:16Dan Pashman?

  And before we begin, I do want to make it clear that this episode covers some difficult and potentially triggering topics. It includes detailed discussions about eating disorders, restrictive eating behaviors, and body image issues. So please take care while listening. And make sure you stay tuned to the end because you'll hear an update from Katie from 2020, in which she tells us more about how her recovery evolved a few years in. As always, if there's a Sporkful episode you want us to reheat, drop me a line at [email protected]. Thanks so much and enjoy.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Hi, Dan. This is Katie from Virginia. I have been in recovery for the past seven months from a restrictive eating disorder. So in the new year, I would like to eat a little bit of everything. I want to eat hot dogs and ice cream. I want to have a donut. I haven't had a donut in five years. But more than that, I want to be able to eat the donut and the hot dogs and the pizza without fear and without guilt. I want to be able to go out with my husband and enjoy them. I want to get a pizza and a beer with him because that's what he loves. That's what I want to do in the new year.

• 3:31Dan Pashman?

  I got that resolution from Katie a year ago. I asked her to start keeping an audio journal of her progress. So for the past year, Katie's been sending me updates.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  Today was just one of those days where I looked in the mirror and all I could see was fat.

• 3:46Dan Pashman?

  At times, these messages have been hard for me to listen to. If you've struggled with an eating disorder, they'll probably be even harder for you. But I wanted to understand what it's like to wake up each morning and have to fight this battle, not only with food, but more importantly, with yourself.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  Gosh, it's so overwhelming sometimes to think that I'm going to be afraid of a cupcake for the rest of my life. I'm going to be afraid of french fries for the rest of my life.

• 4:15Dan Pashman?

  Today on the Sporkful, we're bringing you a rare look inside one person's struggle with an eating disorder, and a look at how that struggle affects relationships. Stick around.

• 4:30Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. Katie Hacker lives outside Lynchburg, Virginia. She's 36 now. And I should say, during her recovery, she's gotten help both from a licensed counselor and a nutritionist. She's also on an eating plan. But even with that support, as you'll hear, it's still a long, hard process. Before we get to the past year and the audio journals, let's go further back. How did Katie end up with an eating disorder in the first place?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  I was always a really strong girl, and I always had a ton of confidence. And when I was in high school and college specifically, I was overweight. And the funny thing was, is that I had the best self-esteem. I thought I was super hot and super beautiful. And I just didn't care, and I did what I wanted, and I had a great time. And then, when I became an adult and I was working, I just started losing weight naturally. And I think my relationship with food became mildly disordered a long time ago. I had a friend who had a baby. She was talking about losing the baby weight,

• 5:46Speaker 02

  and she started counting her calories on an app on her phone. And so I started doing that too, for no reason. I was completely happy with the way that I was. And so I started counting calories, and I gave myself something ridiculous, like 1,200 a day or something. I figured that was the correct number.

• 6:05Dan Pashman?

  To be clear, 1,200 calories a day is very low. The right number varies from one person to the next, based on a number of factors. But a 26-year-old woman, like Katie was at the time, should have been consuming approximately 2,000 calories a day.

• 6:20Speaker 02

  I would get to 1,000 calories, 1,100 calories a day, and I would get nervous, so I would have egg whites for dinner. I don't know when I flipped to where it became more obsessive. I started tracking all my calories and everything. And I whittled down my diet, too. Very few things, and only things that I was comfortable eating.

• 6:44Dan Pashman?

  So one thing I'm curious about, and I would never pretend to be an expert on eating disorders at all, but I know enough to know that part of the condition involves a distorted view of how your own body looks. How sure are you that you were overweight before and that you were never visibly underweight at the worst of the condition?

• 7:07Speaker 02

  That, yeah, that is a good question. Um, I mean, I think that I know that I was, when I was overweight, I knew I was overweight because I would go to the doctor and like I knew how much I weighed.

• 7:19Dan Pashman?

  Did a doctor ever say you should lose weight?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  No, no. I think that was just kind of a me thing. When I was my smallest, I thought I looked great, right? And Todd would always look at me and say, you're so ribby. And like the funny thing was, I would take that as a compliment, but I don't think that he meant it as a compliment. Like, I don't think that your husband ever looks at you and wants to see your ribs sticking out, right? But I felt good about that.

• 7:50Speaker 03

  One of our first dates, I invited her over for a luxurious meal of corn dogs.

• 7:56Dan Pashman?

  This is Katie's husband, Todd.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  Corn dogs were just a subtext to get her over here. I wanted to hang out with her. And I love a corn dog. So it works on two levels.

• 8:05Dan Pashman?

  Katie and Todd first started dating when she was 28. At that point, she was obsessively counting calories, but she wasn't so far along that she couldn't eat a corn dog.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Oh, I remember everything. I even remember what I was wearing. I remember we went to the Food Lion and got the corn dogs and then was the first shooting star I ever saw and he brought blankets out and we laid on the deck. I knew I was gonna marry him. I think that night, it was like a month in. He, he had me.

• 8:34Dan Pashman?

  Soon after that date, it was Katie's turn to pick the food. She told Todd she was taking him for the best fish tacos ever. He told her if the tacos proved to be that good, he'd officially call her his girlfriend.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  And they were good. So she got, she got the job as a girlfriend and...

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I officially won you over with fish tacos?

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:54Dan Pashman?

  Had you already decided you were gonna say that before you ate the tacos, Todd?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was just a very good excuse to say that, though. And the tacos were good, so.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  He was running his first ultra marathon that Saturday, and so I made him chocolate chip cookies and chocolate milk. So basically, our relationship was built on food.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  A good portion of it is.

• 9:17Dan Pashman?

  At various points in our conversations, I'd ask Katie or Todd, "When did this happen? When did that happen?" But it was hard for them to pinpoint exact moments. The changes were so gradual.

• 9:27Speaker 03

  We would go out to eat and she's always ordering a salad, or she just was full and didn't want to go out to eat with everyone else. Or if it was a restaurant that didn't have a salad, we just wouldn't go. And it just kind of slowly became that. If there's not something Katie can eat there, we won't go. And occasionally Katie would always, after dinner, just disappear and go to the bathroom. And it's just one of those things that just bounced around in the back of my mind. And I was like, surely, she's not going into the bathroom to throw up.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  How embarrassing is it that you throw up all your food, just to stay skinny? So it's one of those things that I didn't like doing, but I couldn't stop doing, and then I had to start hiding. I think the first time Todd caught me was, this is so gross, I'm sorry. The first time that I threw up in the bathroom, and I flushed the toilet, and everything didn't disappear, it didn't go down. And so he came in and asked me if I was sick. And I was like, "No, I'm not. No, why?" And he said, "Then why are you throwing up?" And I was like, "Oh, I was just way too full, and I was just uncomfortable. I ate too much at dinner." And I remember him being like, "You ate a salad?" And I

• 10:42Speaker 02

  was like, "Oh, I just ate too much salad." And I'm lying over something that's, at the time, I felt like, "This is so silly. Like, why am I doing this? This is so silly." But I couldn't stop.

• 11:07Dan Pashman?

  So Todd was suspicious. He was asking questions. But Katie was still insisting everything was fine. Until one day, she couldn't hold out any longer.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  She went to the bathroom and came back, and I said, "Did you just go in there and throw up?" And she just point-blank said, "Yeah, I did." I said, "Why did you do that?" She kind of broke down and started crying and said, "I don't know why I did it. I think I'm not good."

• 11:33Dan Pashman?

  Then, on Katie's 34th birthday, eight years after she started the calorie counter, she hit rock bottom.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  So my birthday is December 19th, and for my birthday, Todd took me to Washington DC to go to see the National Symphony do Handel's Messiah. And so, we went out to breakfast that morning, and the place where we went to brunch wanted to bring me like a cinnamon roll with a candle in it, and I was, I turned it down. I couldn't, I couldn't have it. And so they brought me a grapefruit. And like, I thought about that all day, how I had a grapefruit for my birthday. And then, we went out to dinner at this amazing restaurant. And I remember, I had dinner, and then, we had dessert. And my husband was like, "You have to have dessert, because I love bananas foster." And they had it, and it was my birthday.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  And so, we had dessert, and then, went to the Kennedy Center, and I, I went to the bathroom, and I had to throw everything up. And, like, I'm in a beautiful place with, you know, dressed up nice, and lots of beautiful, you know, women in this beautiful bathroom, and I'm throwing up in, in the Kennedy Center, because I couldn't stand the thought of that bananas foster sitting in my stomach. And I thought, "This is crazy." Now, I look back and I say, "I've thrown up in some of the nicest bathrooms in America." But, like, what was I doing? And, like, I was wrecking my teeth, and, and I was lying, and I was, I was sad, and I was hungry all the time.

• 13:20Dan Pashman?

  That moment in the Kennedy Center was two years ago. Katie began her recovery soon after, and sent me that New Year's resolution one year ago. Which brings us to the past year in Katie's life, and the audio journals I asked her to record. They started arriving January 5th. And at first, Katie sounded like she was doing great, especially for someone still so early in the recovery process.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  The other thing I want to talk about real quick is egg yolks. I mean, can we get an amen for egg yolks? I hadn't eaten an egg yolk in probably five or six years, and... Now they are literally one of my favorite things.

• 13:56Dan Pashman?

  I was excited to hear that Katie was getting so much pleasure from food. But just two weeks later, I got a very different message. Katie and Todd went to a birthday party and she had a bit of cake. One note, when Katie refers to ed behaviors, ed is like ED, an acronym for eating disorder.

• 14:13Speaker 02

  After I ate my small sliver, I just obsessed over it and obsessed and obsessed and obsessed until I finally was able to get away and I actually fell back into my ed behaviors. And then I guess most disappointing is that I didn't tell my husband Todd. And then yesterday I was having, I guess, a little bit of a meltdown. And he said, well, you're still okay. Did you throw up today? And I said, no. And he said, did you throw up yesterday? And I had to say yes. And he got so sad and he said, why are you doing this alone?

• 14:57Dan Pashman?

  After hearing about that big setback, I found it hard to open Katie's next message. Her journal entries started piling up in my inbox. The ups and downs were just excruciating. As winter turned to spring, I got this.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  My husband and I had corn dogs last week and they were amazing. And I just came to this realization that the weight that I've gained doesn't represent a lack of control. The weight that I've gained represents the fun that I'm having.

• 15:31Dan Pashman?

  Then, just three weeks later.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  This is so hard. I'm forcing myself to eat breakfast. It's like 11 o'clock. I literally have to force myself to swallow. And I feel like, how did I get back here?

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Some days I just feel like this this cycle is just never gonna end. Like on Saturday, I felt great. And then I told my husband, you know, I I feel like I finally think I look great. But then today I have, you know, my clothes don't fit. And I just wanna give up, but I remind myself that like if I go back, I could die. I don't wanna die.

• 16:38Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, we'll continue to follow Katie's efforts to fulfill her New Year's resolution. Plus, early in her recovery, Katie switched careers and became a baker. Now, that may surprise you, but it turns out people who struggle with eating disorders are often drawn to careers in food. And there's a famous experiment from the 1940s that explains why. We'll tell you about it. Stick around.

• 17:15Speaker 05

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• 19:54Speaker 07

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• 20:27Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Passion. Hey, if you want to hear what I'm eating and reading every week, you should sign up for the Sporkful newsletter. I'll give you my weekly recommendations, and so do our producers and the whole rest of our team. We also share announcements about exciting things happening with the show, when there's special discounts on my pastas. And on top of all that, if you subscribe to the newsletter, you're automatically entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show, as long as you live in the US or Canada. There's literally no downside. Sign up right now at sporkful.com/newsletter. I promise we won't spam you. We're only going to send you really good stuff. Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks.

• 21:04Dan Pashman?

  Now, back to Katie Hacker.

• 21:08Dan Pashman?

  There were two things about Katie's story in particular that, at first, were surprising to me. One, she listens to this show. Two, she's a baker. Not only that, but she decided to make that her career just as she was beginning her recovery. And actually, I've heard from a lot of you who are loyal listeners, some of you even work in food, and you've struggled with eating disorders. Now, it could be my own ignorance, but when I first heard that, I thought, if you have issues with food, maybe don't listen to food podcasts and cook food all day. As I learned when I talked with Katie, though, it's more complicated than that.

• 21:44Dan Pashman?

  What was your relationship with food before all this started?

• 21:47Speaker 02

  I mean, it was just something that you had to do. I never thought of food like I did, like, once I got sick. Once I got sick, though, that, like, that was when I became obsessed with food. I would, I would listen to all the food podcasts. Like, I listened to yours, and, like, we had the Food Network. Like, when I would get, like, Southern Living, or, you know, different magazines, I wouldn't read any of the other articles besides the recipes. And I would think, why am I reading this Southern Living magazine? It's not like I'm going to cook anything in here. But the sicker I got, the more obsessed I became with it.

• 22:23Dan Pashman?

  What do you make of that? What do you make of the fact that that became such a big part of your life?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  I think I was so delusional that I convinced myself that I just loved food and I loved learning about food. And I think it was just like, I was just really hungry all the time. So I was probably like trying to feed my soul so I didn't have to feed my belly. I don't know. I started baking. So now I actually do that as a job. But before, like I would bake and I would take it in to people at work because I think I, I always thought I liked making people happy. I told people that food was my love language, which was completely false. Like I hated it. But I would never eat it.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  And it was so funny, like I was reading a book once and it said that like people who are anorexic will make like elaborate dishes and give them to people just so that they can feel good about themselves that they're not eating it. And I thought, oh my gosh, that's me. That food isn't my love language. Food is my way of like controlling other people. So that was terrible.

• 23:30Dan Pashman?

  Katie says since her recovery began, she's less obsessed with food media. But what she describes going through is pretty common.

• 23:37Speaker 08

  People who have eating disorders are often in a state of deprivation. Deprivation can lead to obsession.

• 23:47Dan Pashman?

  This is Claire Misko. She's the CEO of the National Eating Disorders Association.

• 23:51Speaker 08

  I got into this field because I struggled with the needs for myself. And so I can relate to this. I used to take great pleasure in baking and making recipes that I never actually, I never ate any of the food that I was cooking. So I, in a like cautionary way, I would say that it's important if people are obsessed with recipes, obsessed with food media and food, social media, that can be a warning sign. But if it's coming from a place of wanting to heal your relationship, so getting back

• 24:34Speaker 08

  to a place of connecting around food, that's a positive sign.

• 24:41Dan Pashman?

  In the 1940s, there was this seminal study called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. A group of men were voluntarily subjected to a semi-starvation diet. And over time, they developed elaborate and obsessive rituals around food. One participant said, "It made food the most important thing in your life." And here's the part that really struck me. After the study ended, many of the men changed careers and got into the food industry. So even after the deprivation ended, some part of the obsession remained.

• 25:12Speaker 08

  The food industry, there are a lot of chefs, a lot of people in the food industry have talked about having unhealthy relationships with food. And I would love to see more advocacy from your industry around this.

• 25:30Dan Pashman?

  There was a piece in BuzzFeed a couple of years ago by Kristi Harrison. She was a freelance food writer who eventually landed a job at Gourmet Magazine. She says at first, working in food exacerbated her eating issues, led her to realize she had an eating disorder. But over time, because her work forced her to interact so often with food and people, it was her job that helped her overcome her eating disorder. So careers in food can be like food media. If you're getting into it because you're deprived and that's making you obsessed, that's a problem. If you're connecting with people through food, that can be therapeutic. Katie says her decision to get into baking as a career has been a crucial part of her recovery. And it was supported by her counselor, who's also struggled with an eating disorder.

• 26:14Dan Pashman?

  In Katie's old job, she wasn't treated well. Her self-esteem suffered. Now, she's made new friends in town through her work, and she's good at it.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Over the weekend, I did a really cute like rainbow drip cake. And it was just like so pretty and it was all these colors. And I don't know, it just made me so happy that it turned out correctly and the colors were swirled together. And it was just, I thought, I'm an artist.

• 26:40Dan Pashman?

  What are the unique challenges of being a professional baker while?

• 26:47Dan Pashman?

  Struggling with an eating disorder. I mean, like, just in terms of the tangible day to day of, like, doing the job well.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, that, that is really hard on, like, when I have, like, a, like, a large order. I think on days when I have to taste things over and over, my stress level does go up. So that is a challenge, but the benefits outweigh the cost.

• 27:18Dan Pashman?

  Katie talks a lot about how psychological this battle is, how often the biggest struggle isn't putting food in her mouth, it's dealing with the voice in her head. And she's given that voice a name. She calls him Ed, like E D, eating disorder.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Instead of just always saying, like, my eating disorder, it was just easier to kind of give him a personality, you know, just the bad boyfriend that I'm just working on breaking up with because he wants to kill me, you know?

• 27:46Dan Pashman?

  Personifying an eating disorder is fairly common. Some people call their anorexia Anna, or their bulimia Mia. The idea is to separate the illness from the person suffering from it, to say, this thing is not who I am, to make it feel like you're fighting someone else instead of fighting yourself. Of course, no one approach is right for everyone. This technique gained popularity after a 2003 bestselling book by Jenny Schaefer called Life Without Ed, which Katie read. And Katie's husband Todd has gotten pretty familiar with Ed, too.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  I can see it on her face sometimes when he's, when he's in her head talking to her. You can kind of see in her eyes the fact that she's questioning her decisions. You know, if we're out somewhere and we're at a Halloween party or something and she goes to get a little miniature Twix out of the candy bowl and, and then put it back. That's clearly Ed.

• 28:39Dan Pashman?

  Katie, you've described Ed as an abusive boyfriend.

• 28:45Dan Pashman?

  How does he sound when he gets especially abusive?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess like if I'm getting dressed, you know, today, like I was especially loud today, you know, because I'm doing this. So he was saying, your pants are too tight. The producer that's coming to your house is going to look at you and, and think how fat you are and that you probably should be on a diet. Later, he would say, people won't believe that you had an eating disorder because, you know, you were never so skinny. You're just faking it. You're kind of a fraud. It makes me think that people notice me and care about what I look like a lot more than people really do.

• 29:25Dan Pashman?

  And Todd, if Ed was a real person and he was sitting in front of you right now,

• 29:31Dan Pashman?

  what would you say to him?

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Um, I would kindly ask him to leave.

• 29:45Dan Pashman?

  As the year progressed and Katie continued to send me messages, she and Ed kept fighting it out. Katie went to brunch one day and she really wanted the shrimp and grits. So she told the server, that's what she'd have. Then Ed got into her head, started telling her what a mistake that was. She quickly changed her order to something healthier. Katie described the incident in her audio journal.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  I just was so sad that I let Ed win again and it was ridiculous. So anyways, she came back with our drinks and I, I don't know what came over me, but I said, hey, have you put our order in? And she said, no. And I said, okay, then I want to go back to the shrimp and grits. So I know I was a complete pain in the tail, but I did it and the eggs were perfectly runny and the bacon was salty and the shrimp was amazing. And it was a culinary victory in my mouth. But, but even more so, you know, it was, I was stronger than Ed that day.

• 30:45Dan Pashman?

  As summer approached and the weather warmed up, Katie was able to check off some pretty big items from her New Year's resolution. They had friends over and the couple brought doughnuts. Katie ate half a doughnut. It became a regular thing, Friday doughnuts. Then there was this.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  There's this soft-serve ice cream truck that's here in Lynchburg where we live. So now that I'm not necessarily afraid of ice cream anymore, you know, it's been a really good time to return to that fun where, you know, on a Sunday afternoon, if the weather was beautiful, we sit in the back of the bed of the truck and we'll go have ice cream for lunch. I sat there and the sun was shining on our faces and I'm looking at this man who I love more than anything and who takes such good care of me. And it was, I just felt this amazing sense of hope. We're getting there.

• 31:48Dan Pashman?

  Then, in the fall, another breakthrough. One year earlier, Katie and Todd had gone on a road trip. They picked out a lot of special restaurants to stop at, but Katie really struggled. They went for barbecue in Kansas City and all she could eat was a salad. She says she wishes she could do that trip over again. But this fall, they went to Cleveland and Katie ate. Smoked salmon crepe, taco with fries. She and Todd took a cooking class on how to make a bento box and mochi. Then they went straight from Cleveland to Katie's parents' house for Thanksgiving. When she's home, it can be stressful because everyone in the family knows about her eating disorder. So they're constantly watching to see what she eats.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  Right before we had gotten there, my sister sprung it on me that my dad wanted to take pictures, like go and get our family portrait taken. And I don't know why that upset me so much that I kind of like had a little bit of a freak out. And I was just like, I can't, Kelly, I just, like, I think it was just I was at the end of the week and I had like been as strong as I could be and then I was just spent. It was just one of those, like, I wasn't happy looking in the mirror that day. So I didn't want that emblazoned forever, you know? On Thanksgiving, my mom was like, okay, well, we're gonna go get pictures tomorrow. And I said, I, you know, I really don't want to, Mom. I just not, I'm just not feeling it. And she was just so insistent upon it

• 33:07Speaker 02

  that we just left the next day instead of staying for the whole weekend, which...

• 33:13Speaker 04

  Looking back on that, like I regret and I'm sad that I let Ed take that away from me.

• 33:21Dan Pashman?

  By this point in the year, the ratio of good days to bad days had definitely improved. But hearing about setbacks like this was still so disappointing, even for me, an outsider. Imagine how it feels to be Katie or Todd.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Going through this, you certainly go through the gamut of emotions. Anger is one that comes up quite a bit from time to time, at least on my end. You know, it's sounds somewhat selfish to say it on my end that, you know, I could help you get through this because I realized my role in this is minimal.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  I don't like that he says that his role is minimal because his role is crucial. Like without him, I wouldn't have wanted to get better. I didn't want to get better for me. I was happy, but I didn't want to die. I didn't want to leave him by himself because he would be a hermit with a giant beard in the woods.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  I mean, I understand that a support system is important, but I can't push her away from an eating disorder. But I can be there to help her get there.

• 34:25Dan Pashman?

  Todd, what's the aspect of this that makes you feel angry?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  It's maybe it's the monotony when it's every day. Do I look fat in these jeans? No, you don't look fat in those jeans. What about these jeans? No, you don't look fat in those jeans either. The redundancy of trying to combat those, those negative feelings that she has. And in those moments of rage, you just say, well, fine then go, go throw up again. And it's a horrible thing to say, but it's just, it's just the emotion that you have.

• 34:57Dan Pashman?

  Do you ever resent it?

• 34:58Speaker 03

  The eating disorder?

• 34:59Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, to see someone that has the, a disorder like that, that causes them to think that they're horrendously obese. There's no amount of anything I can do that can take those thoughts out of her head as much as I want to. It's like agony watching someone go through that.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  I just feel tired, like I'm just tired of fighting this constant battle, you know, with my brain. I get very nervous and very worried that it's just gonna be too much for my husband one day. Emotionally, it's getting a lot better. I'm just, I just want it to be over. Like, I just want, I just want to be better now.

• 35:44Dan Pashman?

  What toll do you feel that this struggle has taken on your marriage?

• 35:50Speaker 04

  I think maybe it's taken away like fun things, really good burgers, or different things that he wanted me to try. I don't think it's, will be detrimental. I think that it has made me love him so much and be so thankful for him. He knows that I'm trying so hard. So, 20 years, we'll look back at that silly time in my life where I was afraid of corn dogs and we'll, probably won't laugh, but we'll be thankful that we took care of each other and, and that we're better people because of it.

• 36:42Dan Pashman?

  As the year drew to a close, Katie and I talked one more time. I want to play for you now, the resolution that you sent to me a year ago.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Hi, Dan. This is Katie from Virginia. I have been in recovery for the past seven months from a restrictive eating disorder. So, in the new year, I would like to eat a little bit of everything. I want to eat hot dogs and ice cream. I want to have a donut. I haven't had a donut in five years. But more than that, I want to be able to eat the donut and the hot dogs and the pizza without fear and without guilt. I want to be able to go out with my husband and enjoy them. I want to get a pizza and a beer with him because that's what he loves. That's what I want to do in the new year.

• 37:31Dan Pashman?

  What are your thoughts hearing that now?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  I think it's great. Like, I feel like I kind of ticked off most of those. Ice cream, I had the donuts. Yeah, I mean, I think that I think I was pretty successful. I think that I'm getting to the without fear and without guilt. Right now, I think it's still like, I would be lying if I said it was unencumbered. But it's definitely easier, much, much, much easier. And there's definitely like much more enjoyment. Like even last night with dinner, like we had dinner and, you know, I had a glass of wine. So like, I could normally, I would sit there and add up like glass of wine and chicken and a baked potato, which whatever, but then, you know, it was my father in law's birthday, so we had to get dessert.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  And he ordered bananas foster, which to me is like, it's like Jesus made that just for me. Like, I think bananas foster is amazing.

• 38:26Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, I'm right there with you. Bananas foster, so good.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, it's just one of those things that I was like calories schmalleries. I think it was the first, you know, this is so gross, but it was the first time I'd had a bananas foster that I kept it in my body and it was awesome. Like, it was just like, win. I would eat it again today if I could.

• 38:46Dan Pashman?

  Well, and, and I'll remind you, Katie, that in one of our earlier conversations, I asked you when you hit rock bottom and you told me the story of throwing up bananas foster at the Kennedy Center in DC.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's, that's, that's a nice little, little coming home. I like that.

• 39:05Dan Pashman?

  And what's your New Year's resolution for 2018?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Oh, I wrote down a couple. Three years ago, when I was really sick, my mom got me a pasta maker attachment to go on my mixer. And it was like, does she even know me? Like, I haven't eaten pasta in years. So one of my major goals for this year is to break out my pasta maker and like make pasta and like love it because I'm sure it's going to be awesome. Another food resolution I have is to work harder at making sure that I'm not trying to make myself earn food. So not exercising more on like a birthday or a party or when I'm gonna go out to dinner. And next summer, my goal, my biggest goal is to find a really

• 39:51Speaker 02

  good lobster roll when I'm in Portland, Maine. That's a really important one. I want it to be a butter one, not a mayonnaisey one.

• 39:58Dan Pashman?

  Why?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Because mayonnaise is kind of the worst when it's too gloppy. But butter makes everything better.

• 40:19Dan Pashman?

  So that was our original story, which came out nearly three years ago. Last month, before I connected with Katie and Todd to record an update, I asked them to make one more audio diary. This one as they re-listened to our original episode.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Oh, Todd and I think that it's really important that we let you know that we are listening to the podcast over pizza and beer. So we're at about seven minutes and 45 seconds, and it was talking about going out to restaurants. And I think that that's something that I've been really successful at. We found this great burger restaurant near our house, and it was the first burger in a long time that I had eaten on a bun.

• 41:09Dan Pashman?

  Katie says she continues to make progress. Occasionally, she does still hear ED. Remember, that's the name she gave her eating disorder. That happens most often at night when she's tired after a long day. She still sometimes feels anxiety around the way her clothes fit. But there are a lot more good days than bad. And the bad days now are actually more like bad moments. You were gonna say something about ruining your teeth.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Oh, so this is super exciting. For years, ever since my recreational throwing up and ruining my teeth, I have had cavities and root canals. But this past week, I went to the dentist, and for the first time in years, I didn't have a single cavity.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Like that means.

• 41:58Speaker 03

  I think she called me like four times at work to tell me.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  I did. I was so happy about not having a cavity.

• 42:05Dan Pashman?

  Katie continues to work with a support team, a counselor and a registered dietitian. They've helped her make a variety of positive changes.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  One thing that I think was really helpful is I got rid of all my old jeans. I wasn't trying to fit into something that I wore with my sick body.

• 42:24Dan Pashman?

  Another change, Katie no longer refers to her old body before she started treatment as her skinny body. Instead, she calls it her sick body.

• 42:36Dan Pashman?

  So Katie is moving in the right direction, but the wounds from everything she's gone through are still pretty raw.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  I think it should be sad we're at minute 1358 and we're listening to me crying and we're both sitting here crying.

• 43:01Dan Pashman?

  Katie, are you there?

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, hi.

• 43:03Dan Pashman?

  Hey, how are you?

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Fine. How are you?

• 43:06Dan Pashman?

  All right.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Hey, can I ask you a question?

• 43:08Dan Pashman?

  Please.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  How did you feel when your governor made the decision about a hot dog being a sandwich?

• 43:15Dan Pashman?

  I felt vindicated, Katie.

• 43:21Dan Pashman?

  Katie's referring to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's announcement back in July that the state would enforce the old law that requires places that sell alcohol to also sell food. And a bag of chips doesn't cut it. Cuomo said the lowest level of substantive food allowed is a sandwich. And according to the state of New York, a hot dog counts as a sandwich. Thank you very much. Anyway, back to Katie. She's now been in recovery for four and a half years. As Todd reminds her, when she began the process, she didn't really understand what she was in for.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  I think when you first started, like way back when, and you first went and met with your first counselor, you came home and you were resolved that you were going to beat this thing in two months.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  And then a couple, a couple of years go by and you

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  had a different counselor and you came home and said, I'm gonna beat this thing in two years. In two years, I'm not having an eating disorder anymore.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  I still have a year left on that. I said I didn't want to have this when I'm 40. I didn't want to be a 40 year old woman with an eating disorder. But when I am frustrated, my counselor, Sandra, reminds me that the average eating disorder takes between four and seven years to get over. And so she reminds me that I'm at the very, like, low end of recovery.

• 44:43Dan Pashman?

  We did a show years ago about eating disorders. We interviewed the comedian Margaret Cho, who has been open about struggling with eating disorders throughout her life. And one of the things that she said was, it's a chronic condition. That the eating disorder can go into remission, but that you're never cured. Now, I, I'm no expert, so I trust what your counselor says over anything I say. And obviously, there's no one right answer. But I wonder if, if there's part of you that has considered that, that this is gonna be something that hopefully on a small, a lower level, less frequent, but something you may struggle with from time to time for the rest of your life.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Um, I personally don't believe that I'm going to have to. I think that it will, you know, be like for any person where you have like bouts of, you know, flashes or thoughts of body displeasure or dissatisfaction, but like, I don't, I don't anticipate that I'll be dealing with this for the rest of my life. I, I, I personally believe that full recovery is possible. So, that's my goal.

• 45:59Dan Pashman?

  According to the National Eating Disorders Association, while everyone has the potential to fully recover, for a wide range of reasons, not everyone will. And relapse and backsliding during the recovery period are very common. Todd's understanding of how eating disorders work has also evolved. He says that before Katie got sick, he felt like the whole idea of eating disorders was kind of overblown.

• 46:22Speaker 03

  I think I'm probably, I would say, on par with what most Americans probably think. They're like, yeah, the really, really skinny people, where their bones are showing that that's an eating disorder. And aside from that, it doesn't really exist. It's not a thing that I see from time to time. But when you are living with someone that's going through that, you kind of get exposed to all those nuances that wouldn't really affect you. You know, you listen to people talk about diets just casually, you know, what they're doing, what they're not eating, or just these little things that kind of pop up on my radar now that when you look at it through the lens of an eating disorder, I could see how that could be upsetting to someone that's going through it. And it kind of gave me a lot more insight into what Katie's actually feeling and thinking.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  So for instance, you know, somebody here in the town where we live got COVID, and they ended up in the hospital. And as a result, they ended up losing quite a bit of weight. And then we just happened to see them later talking about how they were in the hospital and how they lost so much weight and they can't believe it. And they think they look great now.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  And we were just like, you almost died.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  But when you-

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Like, that's so disordered. Like, that's such a-

• 47:30Speaker 03

  When you- When you look at that through a different framework, it's like you're celebrating the fact that you got a contagious disease and you lost a bunch of weight.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Because you were in the hospital.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Because you were in the hospital.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  Like, I'm at the point in my eating disorder where I look at things and I just get so angry when people like soft dabble with like disordered behaviors, like things that, like, especially when my friends do it. Like, haven't you seen what the last four years has been like for me?

• 48:10Dan Pashman?

  Of course, we couldn't do this update without hearing how Katie did on her New Year's resolution that ended the original episode. She says she never got into pasta making just because she got too busy, but she does now eat and enjoy pasta. She's also done better at not exercising to earn food. Last year, she took four months off from working out and deleted the fitness app off her smartwatch. She says she used to overexert herself just to get a good score on the app. Now, her exercise is more moderate. As for that lobster roll...

• 48:40Speaker 02

  When we went to Maine, some of your lovely listeners recommended that we go to Eventide, and it was the very best thing that I have ever eaten. Like, it was the first time that I probably ate with abandon. Like, just remember being so happy that day.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  It was like a scene out of a movie. We got there and there's like a 45-minute wait, and so... Did we have oysters?

• 49:08Speaker 02

  We had oysters and drinks. I had that blue cheese martini, and then we had these lobster rolls, and then we ordered another lobster roll, and then I told the waiter my story, and I was crying. Even to this day, I think about it all the time, and I... Just one of these days, I'm gonna order the lobster rolls off Goldbelly and have them delivered.

• 49:29Dan Pashman?

  So Katie checked a lot of items off her list. Most importantly, she's getting better and better at just enjoying food.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  One of my favorite things that we do is we go out to this awesome brewery called the Blue Mountain Barrel House, and we'll just get french fries and beer and sit in the sun and let our dog Denver roam around and interact with other dogs, and it's just... I don't know, it's just normal life. Like, it's just a lovely, normal life.

• 49:59Dan Pashman?

  Well, Katie and Todd, it's been great catching up. I'm glad to hear that things continue to move in a positive direction for you, and I hope that continues to be the case. We'll be thinking about you and pulling for you.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Well, congrats on 10 years. Thank you so much.

• 50:13Dan Pashman?

  Thank you very much, Katie. Take care.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  Bye.

• 50:24Dan Pashman?

  Katie Hacker lives with her husband Todd near Lynchburg, Virginia. Her baking company is called Katie's Sweet Treats. If you're in the area, order a cake. We'll have a link to our website at sporkful.com. And wherever you are, you can follow Katie on Instagram. Her handle is K the number eight E S Sweet Treats. Earlier in the episode, we also heard from Claire Misko from the National Eating Disorders Association. If anything in this episode sounded familiar, if you or someone close to you needs help, remember that you are not alone. There are people who can help you. Please go to N E D A dot org. This episode was originally produced by Anne Sannie and me. Editing help from Margaret Kelly and Peter Clowney. Music help from Black Label Music. Special thanks to Dr.

• 51:08Dan Pashman?

  Jennifer Sance and Matt Abel, LCSW. The update was produced by Emma Morgenstern and Andres O'Hara, edited by Tracy Samuelson and engineered by Andrea Kristin's daughter. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 51:25Speaker 09

  And this is Charlotte in Cologne, Germany, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 51:39Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. And senior producer Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the Sirius XM app? Yes, the Sirius XM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the Sirius XM app by

• 52:21Dan Pashman?

  going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 52:32Speaker 10

  Fall never arrives all at once.

• 52:35Speaker 10

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• 52:46Speaker 11

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