This is The Inspiring Story of How One Woman Overcame Her Unhealthy Relationship With Food to Become a Registered Dietician

A lot of people struggle with various issues surrounding food and eating. While these might not qualify them for an official eating disorder diagnosis, it doesn’t mean that their personal battles are that much easier.

Every day can a constant challenge to fight off negative thoughts about food being a sort of enemy. Registered dietician Abby Langer is more than familiar with these struggles, making her triumph over them an inspirational one for those going through the same thing.

The Destructive Desire to Be Skinny

drugoenebo/Shutterstock
Women reportedly strive to be thin because they believe it makes them more desirable fitting in what is considered to be the ‘ideal’.

Before Langer became a health professional, she was battling against familiar ‘enemy’: food. She remembers feeling guilty over eating too many cookies during a vacation where she should be relaxing in the first place and trying her hardest to eat healthy only to stay skinny.

This led her to get trapped in a cycle of being strict with what she eats and then ending up bingeing on every food in sight when she ‘breaks’. Langer also talked about feeling envious when she sees her roommates were able to be carefree about eating while she was so consumed by the diet culture that was prevalent at the time.

Although she didn’t really understand why she felt the way she did then, she’s finally come around twenty years later. Looking back, she now sees how she was trapped in a ‘never-ending war’ with food and even against herself. She made food her enemy.

A Years-Long Process

ViChizh/Shutterstock
To change her mindset, she tried to experiment with letting herself eat certain foods that were once felt were off-limits to eat.

Because her negative thoughts about food run deep, reframing them to a more positive outlook took a long time. The process was certainly not easy, Langer said, and actually took years to accomplish.

Commenting on the less than ideal state of things back then, she says that the issue of disordered eating wasn’t a topic that was openly talked about. Still, she feels privileged that she was able to access resources like health professionals and services that helped her overcome her struggles with eating. She cites her dietician, medical doctor, and friends as people who she sought out to get help from.

Seeking Help

Prostock-studio/Shutterstock
Langer believes that she wouldn’t have had some of her breakthroughs about her issues with food without the help of professionals.

In the end, she encourages people who may be going through the same issues to seek professional help to guide them in ‘dismantling’ their hang-ups about food. Doing so surely worked for her and the patients she’s had the chance to see in her line of work.

She also recommends those who may not have enough resources to use the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA)‘s 24/7 helpline as well as its free and low-cost support options.