Eating Disorders: 5 Stories of Recovery

This is Rachel Coverston from Phoenix, Arizona.

She has suffered from anorexia nervosa for
roughly 4 years. The first picture on the left was
taken when she was 22, and the one on the right
was 2 years later at age 24. Her anorexia started
when she was 20 years old as a result of
cyberbullying. She has a large following on
instagram and posts a lot of pictures of herself at
a variety of places. She had started getting
negative comments on her body, and anorexia
was the result. She found her way out of it with
support from family and friends. Working out and
muscle strengthening has helped her cope with
her eating disorder as well. She is still on the
path to recovery, but she is doing great!

Say hello to Amy Donaldson from Portland,

Oregon. She has suffered with anorexia
nervosa for 8 years, and is finally happy with
herself and her body. The left-most image is
about 3 years into her eating disorder at age
17. The one on the right is a picture of her now,
age 22, and recovered from anorexia. Her
eating disorder started her freshman year of
high school as a result of bullying. Her peers
would tease her about being overweight. She
finally heard enough about it and stopped
eating. She would starve herself, only eating
one granola bar and a banana or apple each
day. She went to a treatment facility and spent
8 weeks there. After she was released, she worked very hard to return to a normal and
healthy food plan. She now is a fitness coach at a gym near her home.
 This young lady is Sarah Maybel. She was
born and raised in Riverside, California.
Growing up her and her friends would go to
the beach often. Sarah envied her friends
and others because they seemed to have the
perfect bodies. She wanted to look like
everyone else did. She unfortunately
developed a binge and purge eating
disorder. She also had a mix of anorexia in
there. She would starve herself. In addition,
whenever she did eat, it would be a lot and
then she would force herself to vomit it back
up. The first picture was taken roughly 2
years into her disorder at age 16. She came to the realization that every body is different
through the help and support of family, friends, and a therapist. The most recent picture, the one
on the right, was taken at age 19. She is still working to improve her self image.

This is Alec Dunmick. He is from Little Rock,

Arkansas. He is currently 26 years old. When he
was 19 years old, he fell into a bad depression. He
felt like the only thing he could control in life was
food and his weight. He developed anorexia
nervosa. He used the feeling of being hungry as a
coping mechanism. He started to crave the feeling
of hunger. The picture on the left was taken at age
23. That is when he decided that he needed to turn
his life around and get a grip on things. Instead of
using hunger to cope with his depression, he started
working out. He worked out to make him feel better.
He realized that depriving his body of what it needs
was only going to make the situation worse. He found that working out actually made him a lot
happier, so he is continuing on this path to recovery. The picture on the left is him now, at age
26 and recovered from his eating disorder.
 This is Sammy Davis. She is from Chicago, Illinois.
She grew up raised by her mom and 4 siblings.
They were not very well off financially. She has
been bullied all her life and teased about her weight.
She finally snapped her junior year of high school.
She stopped eating, and if someone forced her to
eat, she would force it out of her system by means
of induced vomiting or laxatives. She was very
extreme in all of this, losing over 50 pounds in just
six months. The sudden weight loss landed her in
the hospital. The first time, they gave her an IV and
then sent her home because it was not apparent
that she was anorexic. A year later, she had
collapsed while at work. Her coworkers called an
ambulance for her. When she arrived at the
hospital, she got a feeding tube in place. She then took the picture on the left. She was 21 years
old. She was sent to 3 different eating disorder treatment facilities until she wanted to get better.
Three years later, at age 24, she has found a love for herself and her body. This is what the
picture on the right is showing. She is going to school to become an eating disorder therapist.