When Fitting In Meant Disappearing: Intersectionality and Eating Disorders
By Denise Sivasubramaniam · Notes from the In-Between Substack A reflection on neurodivergence, intersectionality, hunger, and the strange choreography we invent to survive being misunderstood.
My body has shape-shifted more times than I can count. It’s hard to imagine, looking at me now, that there was once a time when people looked at me with alarm — whispering that I was far too thin, that I might simply vanish if I turned sideways. For many years, a restrictive eating disorder defined my life.
It was my rhythm and my ritual. Every bite was calculated, every sensation monitored. I believed that discipline was safety and that hunger was proof of strength. Back then, shrinking felt like control — a way to quiet the noise of being too much, too visible, too other.
These days, I have more of a handle on it than I ever have — even if my body doesn’t fit the general consensus of “normal” (I’m classified as morbidly obese). I’ve learnt that health at every size is not a slogan but a survival strategy. I don’t measure myself by weight anymore. My focus now is on not repeating the same mistakes — and because of that, the eating-disorder behaviours that once ruled my life have fallen away.
Eating disorders are endlessly complex, and no two stories look the same. What I’m sharing here isn’t the whole picture — just parts I’ve never explored before, now illuminated by research on neurodivergence and eating disorders that finally speaks the same language as my lived experience.
This reflection sits at the crossroads of my story and a 2024 paper, Neurodivergence, Intersectionality, and Eating Disorders: A Lived-Experience-Led Narrative Review (Cobbaert et al., 2024) in the Journal of Eating Disorders.
The paper notes that neurodivergence increases the risk of developing an eating disorder. When your brain and body process the world differently — when sensory overload, executive dysfunction, or social masking are part of daily life — food can become both a coping mechanism and a battlefield.
My autistic body
My body’s always moved through the world like an instrument slightly out of tune, recognisable but a little sharp at the edges. My joints over-stretch, my shoulders fold inward, my spine follows its own sheet music. In photos I looked awkward, caught mid-gesture, as if my body hadn’t received the same memo as everyone else’s.
When I was younger, I didn’t know it was a big part of why I was starving myself. Back then I thought it was about being thinner, about control. Only now do I realise that underneath it all, I was trying to fit in. Restriction became an act of translation, my attempt to make an unpredictable body speak a language the world might approve of. I thought if I made myself small enough, I might finally fit the frame — that my body might magically become “normal”.
I wasn’t starving myself into thinness; I was starving myself into belonging. And there was an expressive catharsis to disappearance that was never quite matched by anything else.
Restriction as a system
After that catharsis of disappearance came something quieter, almost scientific. I’ve always loved systems: input, process, output. They made the chaos manageable. When I was seventeen, I turned food into mathematics. Weight Watchers gave me numbers, and numbers were clean, reliable, obedient. The fewer points I ate, the more the scales rewarded me.
It was a perfect feedback loop. Restriction soothed me because it made sense. It was logic disguised as discipline — a way to make emotion measurable, to turn pain into order.
For someone wired like me, that sense of cause and effect was intoxicating. Every point withheld was proof of control, every drop in weight an equation that balanced. It felt rational, almost holy — the kind of precision that promised safety.
But safety built on deprivation doesn’t last. Eventually, the stillness cracked.
Then there was the bingeing
Bingeing arrived like a carnival in the middle of my quiet town. Where restriction was a whisper, bingeing was a brass band. One minute I was a monk; the next I was knee-deep in potato chips, chasing the sound as much as the salt.
The crunch crunch crunch was its own language — sharp, rhythmic, predictable. It filled the silence that restriction had left behind. My autistic brain found comfort in the repetition, the sensory certainty of noise and texture, while my ADHD brain thrilled at the fireworks of flavour and motion. Each bite was both relief and rebellion, chaos disguised as care.
The paper describes sensory seeking — the way some of us chase stimulation like a current — and that rang true. My ADHD brain wanted sparks; my autistic brain wanted quiet. They’ve never once agreed on lunch.
The failures of treatment
When I finally reached out for help, the goal was always the same — to fit me back inside the lines. The professionals talked about weight restoration, target ranges, and BMI categories as if I were a data point that had drifted off the chart.
I was told my recovery depended on hitting a “healthy weight”. No one mentioned that the Body Mass Index only became a medical standard in the 1970s, when researchers began applying a formula originally developed for statistical studies of European men. It was never meant to define health for every body — yet somehow it became the rule. A tool of convenience, not care, it turned my body into a fraction that could never quite balance.
The irony was cruel: I was being asked to heal by conforming to a standard that excluded me from the start.
Then came the meal plan. It looked so official, as if recovery could be photocopied.
It didn’t work because it was too rigid. My plate had to be divided into thirds — protein, vegetables, carbohydrates — or I’d have a meltdown. I had to eat at exactly the same time every day or I’d have a meltdown. If the vegetables touched the fruit, I’d have a meltdown. Basically, it was a meltdown plan.
I believe the rigid meal plan’s being questioned now as a long-term treatment. It assumes the goal’s compliance when what’s really needed is connection.
Recovery doesn’t come from perfect compliance; it comes from being understood.
Cobbaert et al. (2024) note that many treatment programs for eating disorders fail because they’re built for neurotypical minds. When sensory distress’s mistaken for defiance, or executive dysfunction for laziness, the result’s shame disguised as care. I followed the plan perfectly, and still it missed me.
Masking and the hunger to fit in
After years of trying to recover the “right way”, I learnt that pretending wellness can be its own kind of sickness. Fitting in has always been my most exhausting performance. Smile. Nod. Edit. Try not to say the wrong thing. Fail. Try again.
By the time I entered treatment, I’d already been masking my whole life. I knew how to imitate normalcy — how to appear steady while splitting apart inside. The review calls this masking and links it to identity loss. Reading that, I felt seen and slightly exposed, like someone had finally traced the outline of my camouflage.
My restriction was never about beauty. It was about safety. I thought if I could mould myself into the outline of acceptability, I’d finally stop standing out. It was the same logic that had shaped my hunger — disappear enough, and no one will ask what you need.
I wasn’t starving myself into thinness; I was starving myself into belonging. And for a while, it almost worked. Everyone applauds a girl who looks “better”. They rarely ask what she’s lost in the process.
Intersectionality and the person who doesn’t fit
For a long time, I thought my disorder existed in a vacuum — a personal flaw, a private malfunction. But eating disorders and intersectionality are deeply entwined. They bloom in the soil of the world we live in. Cobbaert et al. (2024) describe how racism, ableism, sexism and other social pressures overlap and intensify risk.
When I read that, something clicked. Of course my hunger had layers. Of course my longing to disappear was shaped by more than control.
Growing up brown in a world that prized whiteness, female in a culture obsessed with thinness, and autistic in a society that worships normalcy, my body always felt like a negotiation. Too much. Too visible. Too foreign. I was a puzzle with no picture on the box. Every piece of me seemed to contradict the image of who I was supposed to be.
Sometimes it felt easier to erase myself than to keep redrawing the lines — to make the body smaller, quieter, simpler, easier to digest.
But that’s the lie, isn’t it? That erasure equals ease. That silence equals safety.
Recovery as translation
Eating disorder recovery for me isn’t about returning to some earlier version of myself. It’s about learning how to stay — in my body, in my life, in the noise of being human. It’s not triumph; it’s truce.
My new dietitian doesn’t hand me meal plans. She helps me learn my body’s native language — the small signals I once silenced beneath systems and shame. It’s part of a neurodiversity-affirming, Health at Every Size approach — one that measures alignment, not compliance.
My GP, dietitian and specialist doctors still monitor the health indicators that matter: blood tests, scans, energy levels, and the way my body feels day-to-day. Together we focus on symptoms, not size — on evidence, not appearance. It’s science and self-trust in equal measure.
Some days that language feels foreign. Hunger still frightens me. Fullness still surprises me. But I’m learning to listen anyway.
Belonging, I’ve realised, isn’t fitting in. It’s being understood — awkward, sensitive, still learning the steps.
And maybe that’s the real translation. My body, once a battleground, now speaks in quieter dialects — presence instead of perfection, curiosity instead of control. Some days I still hear the echo of old rules, but now I recognise them for what they are: ghosts, not guidance.
There’s a quiet kind of freedom in feeding yourself without apology — in realising that survival isn’t about shrinking; it’s about staying.
Because in the end, recovery isn’t a return. It’s a beginning — the moment you decide that taking up space is its own form of grace.
Author’s note
Writing this piece is, in itself, an act of not apologising — for my voice, my size, or the space I take up.
I’m aware that Australia saw more March for Australia rallies on Sunday. If you’d like to read what I had to say when they first began, you can find it here: Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride.
Beyond that, I’m sitting quietly in peace — with great thanks to those of you who reached out to support me after writing that piece. Your messages reminded me that taking up space, in words or otherwise, is never wasted.
Reference
Cobbaert, L., Millichamp, A. R., Elwyn, R., Silverstein, S., Schweizer, K., Thomas, E., & Miskovic-Wheatley, J. (2024). Neurodivergence, intersectionality, and eating disorders: A lived-experience-led narrative review. Journal of Eating Disorders, 12, 187. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-024-01126-5
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"Starving myself into belonging." What a powerful piece, and beautifully written. Thanks for being so open.