My relationship with food was never complicated growing up. My grandma always teased at dinners that I had a ‘hollow leg’ for all that I ate; I was always full of energy, and I could never sit still. A family friend and former dancer recommended ballet as the foundational movement language for dance, and within 10 years, I was awarded a scholarship to a ballet school in the UK at the age of 16. Vocational ballet school was a dramatic shift from the world of dance training I knew. I found myself homesick, far away from the big American family I loved, and one of 17 young men in the year, rather than the only boy in my local school. I struggled to adapt to the pressure I’d put on myself to be successful.

At school, I was never personally told to watch my weight, but the heightened, competitive environment of the final year of school created a sensitive environment for all the students. I had a classmate who everyone said was my twin—we were both gifted with high insteps, flexible ankles and hyperextended knees. Before auditions for professional companies, our teacher told him he wouldn’t get a job at his present size—purely conjecture and just his opinion. Since everyone said we were twins, I took that to mean I needed to be thinner as well.

What began as ignoring my post-meal sugar cravings started to snowball into very unhealthy habits and a mental battle with my body image. Breakfast was a banana and black coffee; lunch was half a turkey sandwich on thin white bread with more cucumber than turkey; an after-school snack was more coffee and a small pot of yoghurt; and dinner was always 100 g of overcooked chicken or fish, with a portion of vegetables, a fist-sized portion of carbs and at least 4 L of water. Instead of socialising at lunch, I did abs in the stairwell; going out to eat became anxiety-inducing; and eating anything outside of my self-prescribed diet plan would send me into a frenzy. I would buy my food just outside school, then walk 2 km home to my flat while bicep curling my groceries, somehow feeling like this mindless overexertion was allowing me to earn my sustenance. A part of me knew that I wasn’t eating enough to sustain the hours of rehearsal I was putting my body through, but my brain and stomach were numb. The diet became more about controlling what I could and couldn’t have, rather than how I looked in the mirror.

The interesting thing with restrictive eating is that—for a while—your brain and body feel good, and believe me, when I started to lose weight, I felt amazing. I felt energised from the endorphins I got from allowing myself the little bit of food I would eat. Hearing from classmates and staff ‘Oh you’ve trimmed down a little’ fed the disordered part of me that perpetuated my restrictions. I was 183 cm and went from 73 to 57 kg in 5 months. The reality is that this invincible feeling isn’t sustainable. Working so long at such a calorie deficit, things begin to shut down.

My road to recovery was anything but smooth. Releasing the tight control I had on my diet was like releasing a kinked garden hose, all the water violently spraying out until you kink it back up again. I’d lost the understanding of what being full felt like, and relearning any skill takes time and patience. Any food outside of what I deemed safe would set off an eating binge. First it would be an innocent chocolate bar after dinner, but this would lead to toast, multiple bowls of cereal, a trip to the grocery for crisps, some nuts, another box of cereal, a pint of ice cream, a packet of biscuits, then another trip to the grocery… Each time I would promise myself this would be the last time I would lose control, but this promise allowed the binge to become more and more uncontrollable. I’d enter the next day filled with guilt, shame and a hatred for myself and my body, along with the need to aggressively exercise the full feeling away.

My body looked stronger, healthier, and larger while I yoyo’d between restriction and bingeing, but I was the furthest thing from healthy mentally. I didn’t learn to nourish my body and listen to what I needed until 5 years after I was at my lowest weight.

In any aesthetic sport, it is easy to become hyperfixated on your body when you spend hours each day critiquing what you do in a mirror and comparing yourself to those around you. Ironically, the reality with ballet, at least, is that when you are a little bit lighter, you feel more powerful and efficient. Neither a change in physical appearance nor a short-term improvement in performance, though, are necessarily indicative of a healthy relationship with food and body image.

The biggest lesson I’ve learnt through this is that you cannot compare yourself to anyone else. You won’t ever have the legs they have, and you won’t ever move, perform or compete the way they do, but that is what makes you uniquely yourself. You can work to improve your craft, strengthen your technique, and hone your approach, but you cannot change who you are. Sizing yourself up to others isn’t an accurate measure of your own achievements.

I’ve also come to realise that what I see in the mirror may not ever be completely accurate, and that is okay. When I’m rehearsing or working in class, a part of me will still see the legs I wish were thinner, the neck I want slimmer, and the bum I wish were smaller, but that cannot take precedence over my work and the strides I’m making in my career.

Lastly, I firmly believe that the road to recovery cannot be achieved alone. I am lucky that I found a community of friends, a therapist, fellow artists and dancers who inspired me and with whom I could talk to feel understood. The complexities of an eating disorder are different for everyone, but allowing myself the space to feel safe and articulate my struggles helped me begin to accept myself and my body (figure 1).

David Donnelly and Natalia Osipova in Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Different Drummer (photo credit: Tristram Kenton).

I want people who have never struggled with something like this to understand that bringing attention to disordered eating must be sensitive, and it isn’t something that can simply be cured. Passing comments like, ‘try and keep that weight off’; ‘you’re looking a lot slimmer, what’s your secret?’ or when a problem is apparent, ‘I need you to eat this’; feed into the obsessive relationship with food. When someone would talk about my appearance openly, it would only heighten my focus on my body and the food I ate.

For those working with athletes, be cautious with your language and actions.

Before broaching the topic, ensure you have developed a strong relationship with the individual, or consider that there may be someone else from whom the support may be better received.

Finally, when addressing the issue, prioritise the emotional safety of the individual above all else.

I was able to turn a corner because I worked with an extraordinary strength coach who developed a genuine relationship with me, understood my goals as a dancer and as a person, and created a casual environment in which I never felt pressured to share what I was going through.

Self-acceptance is easier said than done, and I still catch myself being hypercritical. When my eating disorder ran my life, I would always try to live in the future—‘In 3 weeks I’ll have the legs I want’, ‘by the time this production is on stage I’ll fit into that tight costume’—and I was always dissatisfied and uncomfortable with where I was at the present moment. Letting go of the thoughts that I know aren’t serving me and instead being present in my work, relationships and life is the only way to move forward. Choosing to simply do this one day at a time, that’s recovery.

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I'd like to thank Adam Mattiussi for being the person and coach who helped me get on track, Joseph Shaw and Brian Maloney for creating an environment to share something so vulnerable, and Sarah Eliot Cohen for always being my safe space.