ED Recovery Influencers/Vloggers

[treelee]

I love Rebecca Leung everyday more. Her videos are unusually smart in the ED recovery community.

Normally I am a big fan of her but the last video was so not okay for me. I really do not like that she kinda used her mum for her video and forced herself like this and someone sat next to her filming her whily crying a good 10-20-30 minutes. This is just so wrong.

Completely agree. It was almost like comparing an ED to cancer and just something about it completely rubbed me the wrong way. I want to like her but there's something about her that makes me raise an eyebrow. I haven't checked in a while but once I clicked on the link to her 'website' in her YT bio and apparently she offers ED recovery coaching which screams bad idea.

same. her mom should have been the main focus of that video and not her trying to get to 5k calories b.c she wanted to challenge herself for her mom.
i was embarrassed for her after watching and if shes truly offering ED recovery "coaching" then i can't roll my eyes enough. not qualified, how many times do people need to hear this? You had/have an ED, you arent' qualified to help anyone else recover. good god.

OOF she does offer coaching on her website. No just no, she's barely "recovered" herself, as if that qualifies her in any way. Also, does she do anything besides YT and "coaching"? I don't think so. I'm wondering the type of privilege she has to have spent a year or two in residential treatment in the US. She's foreign so no way it was through insurance. I looked through my insurance charges of 6 months of various levels of treatment and that was over 200k. Not that it really changes her, but I think it could explain why she doesn't have much motivation to recover and get on with her life if she's pretty much taken care of. She's somewhat likable but honestly I tire of seeing her try challenge after challenge and the 5000 cal challenge rubbed me the wrong way too. I'm glad people use it as motivation to challenge EDs though instead of these faux recovered people like MerryRose. I think what bothers me most though is that her body is pretty unattainable for most people in recovery (especially at first when you gain a lot of weight around vital organs aka midsection) so I think it'll set up people for a lot of comparisons and bad body image. I think even someone here asked how to get her body... which just nope.

[emlamp10n]

Couldn’t agree more. It makes people expect to have her body after/during recovery but unfortunately it’s just not realistic and it ends up discouraging a lot of people when they see that it’s not the case. Also it may be just me but I kind of don’t believe that she’s not working out... there’s just so much genetics can do.


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[sparda]

Normally I am a big fan of her but the last video was so not okay for me. I really do not like that she kinda used her mum for her video and forced herself like this and someone sat next to her filming her whily crying a good 10-20-30 minutes. This is just so wrong.

I don't know, her mom was an active part in it, unlike someone else's video (cough cough Stephanie Buttermore cough cough), and the crying part wasn't exploited to make views, unlike someone else's video again.

OOF she does offer coaching on her website. No just no, she's barely "recovered" herself, as if that qualifies her in any way. Also, does she do anything besides YT and "coaching"?

As far as I understood she's a theater actress.

Couldn’t agree more. It makes people expect to have her body after/during recovery but unfortunately it’s just not realistic and it ends up discouraging a lot of people when they see that it’s not the case. Also it may be just me but I kind of don’t believe that she’s not working out... there’s just so much genetics can do.
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I don't see particularly wrong with her body. I was more or less the same and I never stepped foot in a gym once in my life (before my ED, that is).

[lunaluvgood]

I can't believe how much weight Christie Swadling has lost now. Its worrying that she was selling that gut reset diet and showing her workout plan. All of the top rated comments on her vids for the last few months have been that of concern.

[RandoPotato]

I can’t stand MerryRose Howley. She triggers me soooo much! That girl has such a restrictive diet and she promotes it as a recovery diet. More like how to obsess over making sure everything that you eat is healthy and plant based and natural and no added sugar and « clean ». I’m sorry but that girl has some serious orthorexic tendencies.

Thank you. I commented probably a year back about that and she told me that my concern was a reflection of my own ED. Never mind I’ve been in recovery longer and can smell bullshit a mile away. I used to sit and seethe about how Unrecovered these “recovery bloggers” are but now I can’t even watch. They’re all the same. “Conquering” the same fear food over and over living their life revolves around food.

I saw her anorexia story videos yesterday, and I knew I recognized her name from this thread. She said her worst relapse was in 2018, so she only very recently had her lowest point with her ED, and thinks she's had enough time working on serious recovery effort (IP, IOP, continuing therapy, plus monitored weight restoration while she was in, and continued monitoring for a long time afterward) to he "helping" anyone else? Most of the commenters pointed out that if she was recovered she wouldn't still be demonizing the hospital, she'd be understanding of their methods, and why they had to treat her so seriously in regards to keeping her there, especially the NG tube.

She sounds like right now she's right were she was at after her first hospitalization, she's still got the same patterns, mindset, restrictive tendencies,a nd rules (except at least then it looked like she had restored more weight than she is now).

You need to restore weight just to have your brain function well enough to work on the therapeutic process, the process as a whole takes more than just a year. Deciding to hop on the internet, pretending everything's fine, putting yourself at the mercy of public youtube comments, instead of focusing on yourself and your health is a horrible idea.

[treelee]

Anyone here watch ED vloggers back in the day? Like 2009-2012ish era? It's hard to list them because so many have unlisted all the ED videos or even their whole channel. One of the cool ones is I used to watch Magical Charlotte and she still makes videos and some of her old ones are still there (under a new name now) and she's such a different person and obviously so much more vibrant now than when I found her way back. She's vegan and I remember I was skeptical when she went vegan but she doesn't seem overly orthorexic like some other vegans we know. Kind of shows how recovery can take a bloody long time but you can eventually get to a good place.

[wilmadawn]

I can't believe how much weight Christie Swadling has lost now. Its worrying that she was selling that gut reset diet and showing her workout plan. All of the top rated comments on her vids for the last few months have been that of concern.

can't stand her. and also, gut reset??? give me a break.

[RandoPotato]

Well shit, ignore my last post/rant everyone. I just realized I had another YTer's ED story videos mixed up with MerryRose somehow, so nothing I said made any sense.

[treelee]

Well shit, ignore my last post/rant everyone. I just realized I had another YTer's ED story videos mixed up with MerryRose somehow, so nothing I said made any sense.

MerryRose still has a long 3 part waxing anorexia story videos about how skeletal she was and how extreme her ED was as if that actually helps anyone. And she checked herself out of IP asap to go back to being vegan. So actually, I thought you were talking about her and I'd just forgotten some of the points she made. Her recovery is still pretty short term so far and her obsession with HCLF vegan and potentially even raw foods is pretty sketch Who's the other YTer? I should really stop watching these fools, but for some reason it kind of draws me in. Also reminds me how much I don't want to go back to thinking about food 24/7

[joyshan13]

Full disclaimer: I'm in ED recovery. And one of the worst things to do to myself on any given day was to watch other people with EDs/in recovery on YT or Instagram. Maybe it motivates other people but it very much put me back into that horrible mindset. I don't get how watching Elzani crying over food or saying teary-eyed to the camera she's doing "full recovery" over and over again is in any way therapeutic.

Having an ED is incredibly isolating enough. But what I've found (and others may disagree) is that the "recovery warrior" community that's sprung up around it online can often be just as narrow-minded or laced with underhanded competition. There are definitely Queen B's/mean girls of the recovery community who have an obviously large following but seem so alone - no pictures or posts of anything except for how they're recovering.

[treelee]

Full disclaimer: I'm in ED recovery. And one of the worst things to do to myself on any given day was to watch other people with EDs/in recovery on YT or Instagram. Maybe it motivates other people but it very much put me back into that horrible mindset. I don't get how watching Elzani crying over food or saying teary-eyed to the camera she's doing "full recovery" over and over again is in any way therapeutic.

Having an ED is incredibly isolating enough. But what I've found (and others may disagree) is that the "recovery warrior" community that's sprung up around it online can often be just as narrow-minded or laced with underhanded competition. There are definitely Queen B's/mean girls of the recovery community who have an obviously large following but seem so alone - no pictures or posts of anything except for how they're recovering.

Couldn’t agree more. Pretty much all of the online recovery personas through all the various outlets over the years have been not so helpful imo. Usually they’ve just replaced the Ed obsession with a recovery obsession. Even people I met in treatment I have to be careful about following on sm/seeing irl. It’s weird because I was with a lot of them 24/7 and bore my heart and soul and vice versa. But outside of an ED we don’t always have much in common. And some post/talk about downright triggering stuff. Now that I’m years into recovery I can roll my eyes at it, but that wasn’t always the case. I honestly think it’s more helpful to follow or surround yourself with relatively healthy people than people who get your struggle. Not saying you can’t have those people and they can’t help you, but if you let yourself wallow in how hard it is and thinking about recovery 24/7 you’ll never get past that quasi recovery phase. I really don’t watch these people anymore I just check in or go watch when they’re brought up here because they piss me off or bore me with explaining how it’s okay to eat a sandwich. Like of course it is!


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[RandoPotato]

MerryRose still has a long 3 part waxing anorexia story videos about how skeletal she was and how extreme her ED was as if that actually helps anyone. And she checked herself out of IP asap to go back to being vegan. So actually, I thought you were talking about her and I'd just forgotten some of the points she made. Her recovery is still pretty short term so far and her obsession with HCLF vegan and potentially even raw foods is pretty sketch Who's the other YTer? I should really stop watching these fools, but for some reason it kind of draws me in. Also reminds me how much I don't want to go back to thinking about food 24/7

Her name's Emily Kempe. Wasn't even close to MerryRose, lol, I have no idea what my brain was doing when I got that confused.

I get kind of addicted to these too, mostly the my ED story type ones, but I also watch a lot of Supersize vs Superskinny, My 600lb life, etc, so a lot of disordered eating shows/videos.

[tt96]

I can't believe how much weight Christie Swadling has lost now. Its worrying that she was selling that gut reset diet and showing her workout plan. All of the top rated comments on her vids for the last few months have been that of concern.

her eating disorder jumped out when she couldnt go a week without exercising after getting a breast augmentation. she sends a very problematic message

[lunaluvgood]

I can't believe how much weight Christie Swadling has lost now. Its worrying that she was selling that gut reset diet and showing her workout plan. All of the top rated comments on her vids for the last few months have been that of concern.

can't stand her. and also, gut reset??? give me a break.

I used to like her but she just seems to have replaced anorexia for orthorexia now. Plus she switched veganism for keto.

I can't believe how much weight Christie Swadling has lost now. Its worrying that she was selling that gut reset diet and showing her workout plan. All of the top rated comments on her vids for the last few months have been that of concern.

her eating disorder jumped out when she couldnt go a week without exercising after getting a breast augmentation. she sends a very problematic message

For real. Its shocking and I wouldn't be surprised if she gets some sort of infection. I'm also pretty sure her boob job was sponsored...someone commented that that same company has been working with influencers a lot lately. Nothing against surgery but I hate how influencers get it done for free as it doesn't give an honest account.

[babysnowflake]

Christie swadling's new boobs clash with her bony figure. Also her tan is absurd and she has so much skin damage and aging for being so young :/ she looked so much healthier with some more weight on her.

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[jwishy]

Following!


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[lunaluvgood]

Christie swadling's new boobs clash with her bony figure. Also her tan is absurd and she has so much skin damage and aging for being so young :/ she looked so much healthier with some more weight on her.

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I know they're still healing but they look HUGE here. Like, mid 2000s glamour model huge. I'm not hating but I don't think she really had enough breast tissue for a boob job to look natural to begin with - she lost it all with this weight loss.

I'm shocked that she's a few years younger than me. I know she's Australian so its kind of hard to avoid the sun, but it seems like she tans on purpose and constantly.

[majaxxxx]

How old is this chick? She looks 45, but I have a feeling she's younger than me.

[jaenerys]

lookin' a bit too leather-y

[majaxxxx]

Holy shit, someone on her IG said she is 22. Well ... this is what starvation and excessive tanning does to you.