Am I Recovered Yet?Exploring young women's stories of disordered eating and recovery in a biopedagogical society

Andrea LaMarre, MSc. PhD StudentDepartment of Family Relations and Applied NutritionUniversity of Guelph

@andrealala89

Dr. Carla RiceCanada Research Chair, Tier II, Care, Gender, and RelationshipsDepartment of Family Relations and Applied NutritionUniversity of Guelph

Disclosures

This research was funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long Term Care through the Ontario Women’s Health Scholars Program

Introduction

Defining eating disorder recovery: A difficult task

Biomedical definitions of both eating disorders and recovery may conflict with critical feminist readings

Centralizing participants’ lived, embodied experiences of recovery

Objectives

How do young women’s stories of having and recovering from eating disorders challenge or reinforce dominant discourses about eating disorders?

Might external standards for and articulations of “full recovery” be experienced as alienating and/or overwhelming to some in recovery?

Methods

Participants: 10 young women (20-31) “in recovery”/

“recovered from” eating disorders

Diagnoses (not mutually exclusive) 8 diagnosed with AN 3 diagnosed with BN 2 never diagnosed (1 self-identified BN, 1

self-identified EDNOS)

Methods

Narrative interviews (10): Conversational, collaborative

meaning-making (Riessman, 2004) Probes related to experience of

having/recovering from an ED: e.g. “What did having an eating disorder

mean to you? How did it feel, to you?” What does the word recovery mean to

you?”

Methods Digital Stories (3)

3-day workshop

Curriculum: Socio-cultural & historical representations of

eating disorders & recovery Final Cut Pro

Deep engagement with participants: “community of inquiry”

Narrative thematic analysis

Results

Doctor’s Orders: Standards for Recovery Meal plans, weight standards, etc. could be

useful as participants began recovery These may be experienced as rational,

logical, and easily measurable Used as proxies for recovery, these can be

experienced as problematic Standardized “recovery” indicators may not

be cross-culturally sensitive

Results

I think I had been malnourished for quite a long amount of time and one of my friends who is in med school and she’s a

psychiatrist […] also had an eating disorder at one point; [she] sent me some research articles which were actually saying that

being malnourished can actually start or perpetuate [eating disorders] so I’m like, well that kind of makes sense! They always

said to us no matter what after treatment we just had to keep eating and I always questioned why, and they said it affects your

brain.

Results

When they served baked potatoes and pork and beans and I put my

applesauce on my baked potato they called it a weird food combination, and

we weren’t allowed to eat weird food combinations. And I was like how is that weird, we put applesauce on latkes, and

latkes are made of potatoes, and everyone said what’s a latke?

Results

A Biopedagogy of Recovery Biopedagogies stem from Foucault’s notion

of biopower, a diffuse and internalized form of power

Often applied to concerns about the “obesity epidemic”

Instructions about how to “live healthy” Grounded in technologies of cure designed

to be life saving

Results

It’s like you have to be ok with eating everything [...] and for other people it’s like some level of “oh well that’s kind of oily I don’t want to eating that,” but for you it’s like “that’s your eating disorder talking.”

Results

I no longer want to put pressure on myself to live up to the definitions of those

concepts, whether externally or internally imposed. That’s kinda the point.

- Margot

In saying I had “recovered” from my eating disorder, did it mean I had succeeded?

Was it a way of naively reassuring myself that I could not and would not ever struggle again?

If I did struggle, did that mean I was never recovered in the first place?

- Isa

Limitations

Small, “homogeneous” sample

Self-defined ED and recovery

Different levels of engagement with participants

Implications

Imperatives to recover in one set way: “recovery pressure”

Centralizing the voices of individuals with lived experience in defining recovery

A Digital Story

Margot’s story

Questions?

Thank you to the Ontario Women’s Health Scholars Award, who provided the funding for my research, to my advisor, Dr. Carla Rice, and to my participants, for sharing their stories

alamarre@uoguelph.ca