March 19, 2022. It’s a foggy evening in San Francisco’s Noe Valley. I’m sitting at dinner with my dad, his girlfriend, and her daughter; two families colliding for the first time, and there’s a burrito in front of me I cannot bring myself to eat.
I’d been struggling with food for about six months at that point. I hadn’t told anyone. I knew that saying it out loud would make it real, and I wasn’t ready for that. Earlier that day, I’d managed half a bowl of Indian leftovers, food that felt safe, small, familiar. But this? This was a massive burrito in an uncomfortable restaurant surrounded by people I didn’t know, and my body and brain had already decided: no.
Halfway through dinner, my dad noticed I wasn’t eating. He did not ask if I was okay.
He screamed at me. Outside on the street, he told me I was a terrible influence, that I was making everyone uncomfortable, that I was embarrassing. The other girl at the table, a stranger I’d just met, had been quietly struggling with her own relationship with food. Nobody knew. Nobody asked either of us what was going on.
What he said hurt. But what he didn’t say hurt more.
Two girls sat at that table who needed someone to see them. Nobody did.
The Part Nobody Talks About
Here’s something I’ve learned since then: humiliation does not make someone eat. It makes them disappear further into themselves.
Seeking help when you’re a young woman struggling with food is not as simple as people make it sound. When the people closest to you don’t ask the right questions, or worse, make you feel ashamed for struggling, the silence gets louder.
I sent a 38-question survey to young women and got 34 responses back fast. What they said wasn’t surprising to me, but it should be surprising to everyone else.
Some of it was about hiding. One respondent wrote that there are things about her relationship with food she feels like she cannot say out loud. Another said she’s always felt like her struggles were something she needed to keep secret. These weren’t outliers. They were the norm.
Some of it was darker. “I want to have my eating disorder again.” “Starving makes me feel so proud of myself.” “I completely starved myself during finals.”
These are not the words of girls who don’t know what they’re doing. They’re the words of girls who found something that works for them in a world that feels unmanageable. And that’s the part nobody wants to talk about.
Boulder Isn’t a Neutral Place to Figure This Out
Since coming to CU, I’ve noticed how many people around me are quietly struggling with food. Boulder is not exactly a neutral place to navigate that.
Dr. Malia Sperry, founder of La Luna Center, an eating disorder treatment center that’s been serving the Boulder community since 2004, told me that Boulder sees significantly higher rates of disordered eating than the national average. It’s not hard to understand why. Boulder is regularly named one of the fittest and thinnest cities in America, and that reputation doesn’t just attract a certain type of person. It creates a certain kind of pressure.
The message here, subtle but constant, is that your body is something to be optimized. For someone already struggling with food, that message doesn’t land as motivation. It lands as confirmation.
There are also a lot of misconceptions about what an eating disorder actually is. Most people picture vanity as someone obsessing over their appearance. But Dr. Sperry described it differently: disordered eating is the visible symptom of a much quieter, deeper struggle. Contributing factors include family dynamics, major life changes, genetic predisposition, cultural pressure, trauma, and romantic relationships. Someone carrying several of those pieces who then starts restricting, even if it’s just a small diet, is significantly more likely to spiral into a disorder than someone who doesn’t.
The disorder rarely starts with food. It starts somewhere much deeper.
But Food Can Also Be Home
Not everything about food is painful. Sometimes it’s the opposite.
When I asked the survey respondents what food makes them feel closest to home, the answers came back warm and specific, like a collective exhale after everything else.
Pasta, because my mom made it all the time. Cinnamon rolls, because my mom would always make them. My dad’s pasta, it feels safe. Chicken pot pie because my mom made it when I was little.
For me, it’s the wonton noodle soup and mushu rolls at Golden Era in San Francisco. My mom, my sister, and I would park right out front, and walk into a place where the owners knew our order by heart. No matter where I was in my recovery, I was always excited for that meal.
Since coming to CU, it’s one of the things I’ve missed most. There’s something about the way food connects you to the people you came from. When you’re far from home for the first time, sitting in a dining hall surrounded by strangers, that connection is one of the first things you lose. And for women already navigating a complicated relationship with eating, losing that sense of safety around food can be the thing that tips everything sideways.
What Getting Help Actually Looks Like
The part that stopped me for years was thinking I had to know exactly how bad things were before I reached out. Dr. Sperry pushed back on that directly.
Treatment exists at every level, and you don’t have to be at rock bottom to start. Here’s how she broke it down:
Individual therapy is the most flexible starting point. You set the pace, you set the frequency. For a lot of people, it’s enough on its own.
Intensive Outpatient is the most popular option for students: three days a week, a few hours a day, either in person or over Zoom. You get a therapist, a dietitian, and group sessions where you can actually choose between sessions where you learn about different ways of coping, working on your body image, process your feelings with people who are going through similar things, and experiential where you try to find the why. You keep going to class. You keep your life.
Partial Hospitalization is a full-day program where you come in from 9:30 to 3:30 and go home to practice what you’re learning in your real environment.
Residential treatment is the most intensive level. Dr. Sperry described it simply as getting sober from your eating disorder.
Here’s what she wanted me to make sure I said: you don’t have to know which level you need before you reach out. A consultation is just a 30-minute conversation. You don’t have to be ready for treatment to start there.
That’s something I honestly wish I knew. Throughout my life, I always assumed treatment meant someone telling me to eat more. I never thought about how they could dig into the why, why you’re not eating and how to address the trauma underneath before it starts running everything.
To the Girl Reading This
For me, eating has never really been about food. It follows the rollercoaster of my mental health. When I’m doing well, I eat. When I’m low, something shifts; it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like a question I can’t answer.
I’m still figuring out what recovery looks like for me. But, four years later, I can see the progress I’ve made. I can see the slips coming faster now. I can pull myself out sooner.
If you’re where I was, too scared to admit something is going on or scared it won’t get better, I hear you. And Dr. Sperry said something I keep coming back to: recovery is possible, and you can experience freedom.
I believe her. And I think you can too.