My best friend, ED: Evolution of an eating disorder from childhood into adulthood

Eating disorders fester in the shadows, feeding on secrecy, stigma and that polite discomfort that sends conversations skittering sideways. People lower their voices, change the subject, or wrap brutal realities in pastel language so no one has to look too closely.

When I started writing this book, I reached out to more than 30 specialists, begging for guidance on telling this story responsibly − without harm, with nuance and with guardrails, so I didn’t accidentally glamorise or present new, counterproductive ideas about the very thing that almost killed me. I sent careful emails, long messages, voice notes with my heart in my throat. Three replied semi-willingly. Three. Out of 30-plus.

For an illness boasting one of the highest mortality rates of any mental health condition, that silence felt wildly disproportionate. It was like screaming “Fire!” in a crowded theatre and watching everyone calmly eat their popcorn, their attention still lost in the film. Deadly and inconvenient, apparently.

ED doesn’t just kill: he gets ignored. He’s the crisis people look away from because it’s wrapped in thinness and willpower and compliments. Anorexia gets dressed up as a “quest for control”. Sounds almost empowering, right? A fierce young woman grabbing the reins of her chaotic life, sculpting ­herself into a disciplined masterpiece. Instagram would be so proud.

Let me shatter that myth clean through. It’s not empowerment. It’s a child death-gripping the steering wheel of a speeding car, screeching, “I know how to drive!” while the road blurs and everyone else screams. It’s terror dressed as triumph. I was that child − tiny hands locked, eyes wide with panic, wearing the costume of devoted disciple.

But here’s the part everyone misses: Eating disorders don’t crash through the door like an obvious intruder. There’s no dramatic entrance, no villain music, no neon sign saying, “Hi, I’m here to ruin your life.” He doesn’t announce himself with fanfare. He arrives as a slow, insidious fade; a quiet planting of seeds in fertile soil, harmless whispers that bloom into thorns when you’re not looking. One skipped snack here, one “good girl” compliment there, one too-tight uniform and an offhand, unsolicited comment that lodges in your chest.

The first seed was planted at eight years old. Picture my primary school: fluorescent lights humming, tiled floors too cold, and nurses presiding over ritualistic weigh-ins like high priests of some unspoken cult.

We lined up in our starched uniforms, barefoot and fidgeting, stepping one by one onto the cold metal scale. Numbers flashed. Weights were recorded in stern notebooks. Sometimes − God help us − they were announced aloud, echoing off those unforgiving walls. You’d hear a number and, without anyone saying it, you knew where you ranked in the hierarchy of “too little” and “too much”. I was always the heaviest girl in class. Not by a fraction, in my mind, by a landslide. Always hyperaware. Always stripped bare under those clinical eyes.

Childhood, that supposed Eden of carefree play, reduced to a public verdict: too much. Too big. Too heavy. Too visible. The seed planted wasn’t pride.

It was shame: raw, creeping, corrosive. A shame that didn’t scream at first, just whispered: something is wrong with you. The gnawing belief that my body was a flaw, a problem demanding urgent repair.

Through adolescence, that shame germinated deep. My body changed, as bodies do, and every shift felt like confirmation that the scale had told the truth: I was a problem.

Physical training morphed from fun into militant penance. What started as cartwheels and running races turned into “No, I can’t eat that, I’m being good” and “I’ll just burn it off later”. Exercise stopped being joyful movement; it became punishment doled out in endless reps. Discipline twisted into devotion; an altar I built brick by punishing brick.

From the outside? It dazzled. Commitment. Grit. Iron willpower. Adults nodded approvingly. Coaches praised my “dedication”. Friends rolled their eyes and said they wished they had my “self-control”. Soldiers train to protect a cause, a country, comrades. Me? I trained to disappear − erasing myself inch by sweat-drenched inch.

By adulthood, ED’s roots had burrowed unbreakably. What had started as a coping mechanism now ran the whole show. I didn’t decide when to eat, what to eat, how much to move. He did. I just followed orders.

Then, in my early twenties, my first serious relationship imploded, a heartbreak that didn’t create the disorder but supercharged it. The breakup was the match in a room already filled with gasoline. What had been a sly whisper swelled to a deafening roar, shaking the foundations of everything stable. Any scrap of self-worth I’d managed to duct-tape together scattered.

ED doesn’t mellow with age. He doesn’t bargain. He doesn’t listen to reason or love or threats. He’s relentless, a vice grip tightening by the day.

That wide-eyed eight-year-old on the scale? She never imagined she’d still be haggling with those numbers decades later, still letting them decide if she deserved kindness or punishment.

The shame echoed like a bad dream that refused to fade at sunrise. And through it all, my parents tried. As young adulthood hit and I staggered like a shipwreck survivor washing up on strange shores, I didn’t just lean on them − I collapsed onto them entirely. Independence? Laughable when your brain runs on fumes and frayed fear. Try making adult decisions when you can’t even decide whether you’re “allowed” a slice of cheese.

That breakup only welded me tighter to their support. I wasn’t choosing dependence; it chose me. Survival came with strings, and all of them seemed to lead back home. My mother turned into a one-woman search-and-rescue operation. She scoured Google at midnight, scribbled names on notepads and phoned every specialist under the sun: psychologists, dieticians, nutritionists, therapists, healers, life coaches − even a woman named Linda who’d once cracked open a self-help book on feelings.

If you had a qualification, a certificate, or even a mildly convincing tagline, you were on her list. Strangers and specialists casually dropped doomsday verdicts: “She’ll never recover. Probably die.” Sometimes the words were gentler, but the meaning was the same. Statistical. Clinical. Detached.

Mothers don’t take that lying down. So she doubled down, tripled it, refused to tap out. Home meals devolved into high-stakes diplomacy: gentle coaxing at first, then ­strategic manoeuvring, finally teetering between negotiation and full hostage crisis. “Just one more bite, Katherine Fiona.”

I’d choke it down with the enthusiasm of a prisoner eating gravel, then launch the performance: exaggerated chewing like a cow on parade, deliberate nodding, theatrical swallow. I knew every angle of the show: the right amount of eye contact, the perfectly timed sigh of, “Fine, I’ll eat it.” All the while, my brain orchestrated the great escape.

The kitchen bin: silent accomplice.

Napkin: sly co-conspirator.

Family dog: under-table ally, ever-loyal, discreetly overfed, never snitching. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of DM168 is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click on the cover of the newspaper below to access the e-edition.