Interview With Jenni Schaefer, Author of Life Without Ed

Jenni Schaefer first met Ed when she was 4 years old taking a dance class. From the very beginning he badgered her about her weight, telling her she was the fattest girl in class and criticizing her because her thighs rubbed together in her leotard. And thus began a long relationship of abuse. Ed controlled Jenni’s every move, forcing himself inside her head to control even her thoughts. But Ed isn’t a man who can be locked up behind bars, preventing him from ruining countless lives. Ed’s impact is far more prolific than that of any one man. Ed is an acronym for Eating Disorder — an illness that takes on a life of its own, and becomes greater than its victim, repeating abuses as damaging as physical abuse brought on by an actual person and often as hard to escape from.

But Jenni did escape from Ed and lived to tell about it in her book Life Without Ed — How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too, and her follow-up book Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life due out in September of this year. I met Jenni last fall when she was in town speaking to congress about the severity of eating disorders and the lack of proper access to help because of insurance for those who suffer from it. The first thing I noticed about Jenni was her was her black shirt which stated boldly in white letters “recovered.”

I was curious about the proclamation because my understanding was that eating disorders were like alcoholism in that one is never completely recovered, but instead always in a state of recovery. So when Jenni agreed to do an interview with me, that was the first thing I wanted to know about. Asking her how she defined ‘recovered’ and at what point she considered herself  to be fully recovered, she reminded me that Life Without Ed came out in 2002 and a lot has happened in the time since then.

Even at the end of her first book, while Schaefer delcares her divorce from Ed, she still battled with him from time to time, suffering from the occasional relapse. In retrospect, she defines herself as having been “significantly recovered” at the time, and only through more years of being in recovery did she finally reach a point where she actually felt fully recovered. Period. But she admits that some are fearful of the word ‘recovered’ because it may allow them to let down their defenses making them more vulnerable to relapse. To Jenni, the idea that you will never be recovered “is a hopeless message.” She added, “I didn’t want to have an eating disorder forever. I wasn’t born with an eating disorder. You learn an eating disorder and you can unlearn it.”

Concerned about the power Ed can have on those who are vulnerable to him, I asked Jenni if she worried that someone reading her book could actually end up empowering the Ed in their lives. Though she wrote the book with that in mind, avoiding the inclusion of obvious triggers like pictures of her during the height of her anorexia, or low and high weights, she also reminded me that Ed will use whatever tools he has available to maintain control over his victims, and she even reminds readers in the book that as they are going through the book, Ed too is there with them, possibly trying to twist the words into something that will make him stronger. The important thing to remember is that by the time someone is ready to read this book, they are already questioning the authority Ed has over them, and that in itself can be the starting point for beginning the separation process from Ed.

Wondering about those who are teetering on the edge of an eating disorder, Jenni and I talked about how women can avoid letting Ed into their life in the first place, even after he’s been knocking at your door. A big component of her own recovery was body image counseling and coming to the realization that the ideals she was trying to live up to — ideals created primarily by the media — were in large part based on manufactured images. A good example of this is the video created by Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign entitled “Evolution” where an ordinary woman has a team of people from make-up artists, hair stylists, and eventually Photoshop experts create her into a new, fictitious woman plastered on the face of a billboard. Though eating disorders develop from more than just trying to meet society’s standards of beauty, the idea that we need to be something beyond what we are biologically programmed to be can create a vicious cycle of failure and self loathing that makes one more vulnerable to an eating disorder.

Speaking of society’s standard of beauty, we discussed the obsession of celebrity weight battles, and in particular, her choice of Cindy Crawford as a model for a healthy body while Jenni was in recovery. When reading the book, I had to admit that I was a bit put off by her choice of a supermodel as someone whose figure represented her new “healthy” ideal. But she pointed out that at the time, Cindy Crawford was criticized for being fat next to her peers. “If she’s overweight, all of us are … we need to look at people who are at their natural size whether that’s naturally thin or a little overweight according to societal standards … if you’re at your natural weight, you’re a role model. If you accept your natural healthy weight that’s a role model … and what’s strange about that is that it’s going to be all shapes and sizes.”

But Schaefer added, “The paradox about eating disorders is that it’s completely not about food and weight at all on the other hand, when you look at it from the outside, it’s completely about food and weight”  Ultimately, however, eating disorders are about control. When you can’t control other elements of your life, it’s easy to believe that controlling food puts you back in the driver’s seat. Of course, it’s also about avoidance. The endless cycle of binging, starving and otherwise being focused on food and your body 100% of the time doesn’t allow much time for dealing with life’s other difficult issues. And when you have a low self esteem, an eating disorder can give you a sense of “being unique, feeling special, having a boost of self esteem by being the thinnest person in the room … because you’re the one who gets patted on the back … and it’s an instant boost to your self esteem,” as Jenni felt. But she added, “eventually I had to find new life coping skills … we need to look at the underlying issues.”

So I asked Jenni what made her feel ready to deal with the underlying issues and begin her seperation from Ed once and for all. She had the tools before and chose not to use them. But eventually she was “sick and tired of feeling sick and tired” and Jenni realized that the pain she had been avoiding through her eating disorder couldn’t be any worse than the pain she suffered because of her eating disorder.” It was time to walk through that pain. Not that healing was ever easy. “I thought the eating disorder was painful, but the truth was, life in the beginning without the eating disorder was more painful because I didn’t know how to deal with feelings and I had never dealt with things so intensely.” Jenni even asked her doctor if it was normal to feel so sad. Eventually she did learn how to cope, and of course a lot of the tools she finally implemented are outlined in her book. She recited her favorite Japanese proverb: fall down seven times, stand up eight. As you go through recovery, you might keep “falling down, but you just have stand up again and keep getting better.”

Breaking off her relationship with Ed has allowed Jenni to finally pursue her dream of becoming a musician in Nashville, Tennessee. I asked Schaefer about the pressures she must face in the entertainment industry, where success is often directly linked to beauty and body size. But after having been through the seriousness of an eating disorder, she realizes that ultimately it comes down to a life or death matter, and that she can’t “play those games anymore”. Further, being at a healthy weight has given her the energy to follow her dreams and she fully believes she would not be where she is today if she was still chained to Ed.

Whether or not you have had a relationship with Ed, Jenni’s story leaves you with a sense of hope that we can all overcome the most difficult of life’s challenges and be all that we were meant to be. She encourages everyone to “find a passion in life and follow it, putting energy into who you are instead of who you don’t want to be.” She has learned to believe in herself, and I hope that you can too.

Recommended Reading:

Life Without Ed: How One Woman Declared Independence from Her Eating Disorder and How You Can Too

Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works

Body Wars

Goodbye Ed, Hello Me: Recover from Your Eating Disorder and Fall in Love with Life (Due out in September)