Tess Holliday, who is working to repair her relationship with food after receiving the diagnosis of anorexia in May, has recently said that she is “regressed” in her anorexia recovery.
In a new essay for Today, the 36-year-old plus-size model wrote, “I didn’t know that’s what it was until last year — but for over 10 years, I have restricted food. That means I don’t eat — or when I do eat, it’s very little. Or sometimes it’s one large meal a day.”
“My dietician, Anna Sweeney, first brought it to my attention. She told me, ‘I’m not licensed to diagnose you, but if I could, I would diagnose you with anorexia nervosa,’” she added. “When she said anorexia, I laughed. I thought, ‘Do you see how fat I am? There’s no way that word could ever be attached to someone my size.’”
Chelsea Kronengold of the National Eating Disorders Association previously told PEOPLE, “Anorexia doesn’t have one look.”
Holliday had to see a psychologist, who confirmed her anorexia diagnosis. Since the diagnosis, she has been managing her eating habits but is struggling.
She wrote for Today, “I feel grateful that I’m tough enough to talk about this, but I’ve since taken a lot of steps backwards in my recovery. I’ve regressed. I haven’t eaten today. It’s 11 o’clock and I’ve had two sips of coffee, and I feel sick. This has been extremely hard on my mental and physical health.”
Holliday said that part of the problem is in accepting her diagnosis. She said, “I still struggle with wrapping my head around, ‘How can I be in a fat body and be starving?’ Then I realized that bodies of all sizes and shapes starve.”
“Recovery for me is messy. It’s lonely. It’s hard to deal with something for which there isn’t enough support,” she continued.” Having a diagnosis has been liberating and it has made me feel less alone, but the confused look on people’s faces when I say anorexia or the stares I get if it comes up in conversation — that’s hard.”
Holliday said she is going to therapy, which has been helping. She is now publicly sharing that she is anorexic because it helps people understand that not everyone with anorexia is thin.
She said, “For folks who claim they actually care about fat bodies and plus-size people and want to ‘help’ us, the way you can help us is by supporting our mental health, and by understanding that there are so many people struggling with what I’m struggling with, but they don’t know it, and they can’t name it, and they can’t get a diagnosis, because our system has never been set up to support folks in larger bodies.”
“One of the bright spots that has come from COVID-19 has been increased access to mental health professionals online,” Holliday added. “I found someone to talk to through just Googling someone in my area. I literally would not have been able to do any of this if I didn’t have that help.”
