Lynn Chen faced comments about her weight from her family at an early age. Later, when she became an actor, she heard about her weight from her Hollywood colleagues. She developed an eating disorder, but found an unusual way to get help and heal. The actor, who appeared on Grey's Anatomy, speaking candidly about food, eating disorders, body image, and boundaries.
Back From Broken is a show about how we are all broken sometimes, and how we need help from time to time. If you’re struggling, you can find a list of resources we've compiled.
Host: Vic Vela
Lead producer: Rebekah Romberg
Editor: Erin Jones
Additional producers: Jo Erickson, Luis Antonio Perez
Music: Daniel Mescher, Brad Turner
Executive producers: Brad Turner, Rachel Estabrook
Thanks also to Kevin Dale, Hart van Denburg, Jodi Gersh, Clara Shelton, Matt Herz, Martin Skavish, Kim Nguyen, Arielle Wilson.
BackFromBroken.org
On Twitter: @VicVela1
On Twitter: @VicVela1
Transcript
Vic Vela:
Hey, it's Vic. Just wanna let you know, this episode contains some strong language. So please be advised.
In 3, 2, 1.
Lynn Chen:
Food was really, it was a reward. It was a means of communication. It was a way of letting me know that I was being thought of. Feeling full was a feeling of, you know, being hugged, basically.
Vic:
When actress Lynn Chen was a kid, food was not only something she loved. It was a way of connecting with the people she loved.
Lynn Chen:
So food was everything.
Vic:
Yeah. I can relate in that sense, you know, growing up in a Chicano household. Grandma and my mom making tortillas from scratch, tamales – like, food was warmth in my household. And they wanted you to eat. [Laughter] My family wanted you to eat. What were your parents like in that regard, and just in general?
Lynn:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely the same. Very similar. We would be making, you know, the dumplings from scratch. And there was definitely household gatherings where everyone would gather around the table cooking and then eating. And I just remember a lot of chopsticks reaching for the communal meal and putting them on my plate. I'd finish one dumpling, and then there'd be three more.
Vic:
So Lynn quickly learned to clear her plate. But as she grew up, her relationship with food got more and more complicated, and it started to resemble something that I'm very familiar with.
When I hear the word binge – as you may know, I'm in recovery from drug addiction and binge drinking. And binge drug use is something I know. I lived it, and it's similar. It would be kind of like a covert activity, and you would plan around it. It would both make you feel really good and also cause a lot of pain.
Lynn:
Yeah, absolutely. For a long period of my life, when I was binge eating, you know, in my youth, I really did not believe that what was happening to me or my behavior was anything out of the ordinary.
Vic:
Mm-hm
Lynn:
That was just, you know, how I go about with my life. I think what changes it into a problem is the shame and the guilt, like you said, with the hiding and the manipulation of your entire life, because you're so consumed by the idea of another binge.
Vic:
I'm Vic Vela. I'm a journalist, a storyteller and a recovering drug addict. And this is “Back from Broken,” stories about the highest highs, the darkest moments and what it takes to make a comeback.
On today's episode, you'll hear a story about overcoming an eating disorder. This is an area of recovery we haven't talked about yet. And it's something listeners have told us they're really interested in learning more about. And I'm excited to be exploring it with actress Lynn Chen. You may know her as Dr. Michelle Lin on Grey's Anatomy.
[SOUNDBITE OF SHOW, “GREY’S ANATOMY”]
Unidentified Actor (as character):
Dr. Lin, when you were chief of plastics…
Lynn (as Dr. Lin):
…Assistant Chief.
Chandra Wilson (as Dr. Bailey):
Oh. So if we were to hire you, this would be your first time in this position?
Lynn (as Dr. Lin):
Yes. Like you, when you became chief of surgery here. I know you need doctors.
Vic:
Lynn Chen faced many hurdles on her journey to overcome something called binge eating, which, if you're not familiar, is a type of eating disorder where people will eat an unusually large amount of food in one sitting on a regular basis. We'll learn more about what that means and what it meant for Lynn in this episode. Her story says a lot about the resiliency it could take to get better. As she says, having an eating disorder means getting into the cage with a beast three times a day. And for Lynn, that beast started to rear its ugly head at a very young age.
What was your earliest memory connecting food with shame?
Lynn:
Probably my earliest memory was when I was in nursery school. All the kids were given two saltine crackers and a little box of apple juice. And I remember thinking day one, “This is not enough for me.” [Laughter] Like, “I'm getting dumplings at home. I don't know what you people think this sugar and carb combo is going to do for me, but I know this is not gonna hold me off until dinner time.” [Laughter] And I remember after a week or so, I learned to try to make it last, taking tiny sips of my juice and eating the saltines from the sides, very small nibbles to try to make the experience last as long as possible. And one day I saw my teacher – I saw that she had some cookies or some sort of snack that she was munching on in the corner [laughter] while we were all eating our saltines. And I thought to myself, “Well, that looks delicious.” When we were dismissed from our snack, I wandered straight up to that table, and I remember climbing up on the chair to see what was there. And she caught me right away and was like, “What are you doing?” And I think this is when I first learned to lie about food, about like, okay, what am I gonna say? Of course I wanted it. You know? Of course [laughter] I was gonna take whatever it was.
Vic:
I’ll have what she's having. Yeah.
Lynn:
I'm not gonna say that. I'm just gonna say I was just looking. And I remember I didn't get punished by my mom. Maybe I think she nodded her head at this woman. And then, when we came home, she gave me some dumplings and was like, that's that. But I remember being really afraid of her discovering that it wasn't enough. And what, what did that mean?
Vic:
Interesting.
Lynn:
It was definitely something that represented to me – wow. Look at that freedom. Look at that freedom of opening up a bag and just taking as much as you want. Like that to me still to this day, that's something that represents a freedom that I feel like I may never know.
Vic:
And you also liked, uh, Entenmann’s, right?
Lynn:
Oh yeah. [Laughter] Me and Entenmann’s. We have a long history.
[SOUNDBITE OF ENTENMANN’S COMMERCIAL]
Announcer:
“There's a new line of irresistible, fresh baked goods in town. So good, they're leading folks into temptation.” [Product jingle] “Who ate all the Entenmann’s?”
Lynn:
Someone at the Entenmann’s factory knew how to bake something that tasted to me what I imagined a parent who stayed home and baked for their children was like. So Entenmann’s – the fact that you could go into a store and really cheaply purchase a whole entire box of cookies or danish or whatever it was and just consume it and share it – was to me, such a beautiful thing.
Vic:
For me, it was Hostess. Uh, the, I don't know if you remember Chocodiles.
Lynn:
Oh yeah. Of course. Yes. Suzy Q’s. All of it. Twinkies.
Vic:
Yeah. Well they were a novelty to us, you know, because our parents made good food, but they didn't make anything like that.
Lynn:
No.
Vic:
You know, they didn't make Twinkies.
Lynn:
No, they sure didn't. It was also like, kind of like, a superpower, you know, of knowing that I was so small and weighed so little, but yet I was constantly eating. And no matter how much I ate, it didn't seem like I was going to gain weight.
Vic:
Yeah.
Lynn:
That was something that not only others commented about, but my mother really was very vocal about.
Vic:
As Lynn grew up and went to college, she decided to become a Women's Studies major. And she actually learned about eating disorders in her coursework, but binge eating wasn't covered. Lynn says she learned about anorexia, which involves a severe restriction of your own diet, and bulimia, which involves overeating but then purging. These disorders were totally un-relatable to her because Lynn couldn't get enough food. Plus anorexia and bulimia were always described in the context of rich white women. Meanwhile, like a lot of college students, she was also introduced to drugs and alcohol. Lynn says she was always looking for an escape, which was something she could now find in things other than food. And that made her feel like her overeating wasn't really a problem. But when Lynn came home her freshman year, her family felt differently. And it seemed like everyone had something to say about the way she looked.
Lynn:
I did gain the freshman – I mean, I gained the freshman 20. When I came home I remember it being such a shock to everyone.
Vic:
Really.
Lynn:
But you know, for my friends, it wasn't a bad thing. They were saying things like, “You got boobs,” you know? [Laughter] Or like, “We can finally wear the same clothes.” Like they were happy about it. Also a lot of them were like, “You were too skinny before.” You know, saying that to me. But then I remember my relatives saying to me, “You gotta be careful.” Or they would just say to me, straight up, “You got fat.”
And I remember getting really pissed ‘cause I was studying eating disorders at the time. And I was a young feminist at the time. And I remember saying to them, “You better watch what you're saying because you're gonna gimme an eating disorder.”
Vic:
Wow.
Lynn:
[Laughter] And I remember saying that to one of my aunts and her being like, “You talked to me that way? Excuse me?” [Laughter]
Vic:
That's the thing about recovery. We can laugh about some of these painful things, but at the time it was probably really hard to hear. And then also just the denial, you know, or “You're gonna cause an eating disorder” when you already had one.
Lynn:
Right. Right. And I remember them, like, kind of whispering behind my back. Being like, “Oh, don't say that to Lynn. You're gonna give her an eating disorder.” And then cackling away.
Vic:
Oh no.
Lynn:
But you know, that was also when I first started to see this hypocrisy that existed, that still exists to this day, of “You're getting fat” or “You're too skinny,” you know. That's the thing that comes outta their mouth. And then the next line is, “Eat.” And getting angry if you don't eat. Wanting you to stuff yourself. Wanting you to eat every single thing that's made.
It wasn't until I first heard the words, “You've gained weight” as a bad thing, and then them saying, “Eat,” which they normally say, I realized: wait a second, you're fucking me up. Like, this is not cool, what's happening. And it wasn't until I realized, oh, there's a little bit of pressure on me not to keep gaining weight. But at the same time, you're really not helping. And you've never helped, in fact.
Vic:
Lynn went back to school and finished her degree. And after graduating, she started to seriously pursue her acting career. She landed some small roles on TV shows like “Law and Order.” And in 2003 she got her first recurring role. It was on the soap opera, “All My Children.”
[SOUNDBITE FROM THE SHOW, “ALL MY CHILDREN”]
Lynn (as Regina):
I, um, I really appreciate how big you're being about this.
Unidentified actor (as character):
Oh, please. Don't be gracious. You're actually giving me the grades.
Lynn (as Regina):
But are you gonna let Henry off the hook? I mean, it's not like you weren't equally guilty.
Unidentified actor (as character):
Oh I do not need your play by play.
Lynn (as Regina):
Right.
Vic:
But this wasn't a very good period for body positivity. Lynn remembers reading tabloid headlines about super skinny women who were labeled lollipop heads. And when an actress gained weight, she was also publicly shamed. Lynn watched “All My Children” to prepare for her new role and realized that the other women on the screen were very slender. Plus she was constantly hearing about the way she looked from people in her personal life. So she decided to go on her first ever diet.
Lynn:
I felt like – I need to look the part. This is not just like, “I wanna be an actress,” and just saying it. This is me saying, “Now I am an actress.” And if I am an actress, I have to look the part. For me, also, it was this dipping my toe into, like, “You know what? I'm an adult now. Maybe it's time to put down the Entenmann’s. Maybe it's time to sign up for a gym. Let's just see what this is like.” And just very naturally I did start to lose weight. And I felt like I came to a place where I was pretty comfortable with it and pretty comfortable with where I was at. And I felt like I had a pretty good balance with food and my relationship with exercise and all of it. And then I had an opportunity to audition for the movie, “Saving Face.”
Vic:
Yeah. 2004. That was a big year for you.
Lynn:
Big year for me.
[SOUNDBITE OF THE TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE, “SAVING FACE”]
Announcer:
Wil has a surprise for her mother.
Michelle Krusiec [as Wilhelmina]:
You talk to your mother about us? Does she know we have sex?
Lynn [as Vivian]:
No, Wil. She thinks we conjugate Latin verbs.
Announcer:
Her mother [voiceover of mother character speaking] is not listening.
Lynn:
So when I got the audition for “Saving Face,” the part was for a ballet dancer. And the first time I went in and read, right away I was informed, “You are on our radar. We definitely want to see more of you.” And they also said to me, “Hate to have to do this, but she is a ballet dancer, and you do need to look like a ballet dancer in order to play this part. Would you be willing to do that?”
I just weighed the pros and cons. To me, it was gonna be a movie that was produced by Will Smith, starring Joan Chen. It was a lead role. There was very little for Asian American actresses back then. And I mean, what else is there to think about during that time? So if I had to step up the exercise routine and consume fewer calories, then let's do it. And I did it. I spent the next few months slowly losing weight. Uh, I did it the quote-unquote “right way.”
Vic:
Okay.
Lynn:
And I lost the weight, and I did the movie, and all was well, and everyone was happy until we weren't – [laughter] until I wasn't. And that came in the form of the anxiety around food did not go away just because I looked a certain way.
Vic:
Were you still binging at this time?
Lynn:
So what was happening was I would binge like once a week. And what I found was, you know, to me that was, I guess, the equivalent of what some people call their cheat day. You know?
Vic:
It’s innocent.
Lynn:
Yeah.
Vic:
It's a nice way of putting binging. Right? It's not binge day. It's just cheat day.
Lynn:
Exactly. And it was my first movie ever, my first feature film. And so it was my first time being around craft service on such a regular basis. So I partook in some of that every now and then. But inevitably what would happen was just a small handful of trail mix turned into like half a bag of trail mix, turned into oh my God I'm so bloated the next day. And then feeling so guilty about that, that I'm unable to even concentrate on my scene or what I'm doing, because I'm feeling so upset with myself for eating half a bag of trail mix the day before.
Vic:
Oh no.
Lynn:
And that's when that started. I'd say that is when that started of the guilt and the shame that came around that. And it was pretty much, I would say, under control until the movie came out and people were saying things like, “Here are Hollywood's two new Asian American ingenues on a silver platter. Take them.” I felt that pressure of, like, I've got to deliver. And what happened was, you know, it had been from wrap to when the movie came out about a year and a half. And I had gained a lot of my weight back – not a ton of it, just like five or 10 pounds, but enough so that I felt self-conscious. And enough so that when fans saw the movie and then saw me in person, they would make comments.
I had a lot of fans from Asia who felt – I think that, um, I represented something, especially to the lesbian community because this was the first movie that had two Asian lesbians in the leading roles. And I think that for a lot of older lesbian Asian women, the first time seeing themselves represented, they felt like they were my aunties in a lot of ways. And a lot like my own aunties and a lot like my own mother, they would say to me, “You're fat now.”
Vic:
Yeah. How do you reconcile that?
Lynn:
It was horrible. It was horrible.
Vic:
Because, you know they love you.
Lynn:
Yeah. Exactly. But…
Vic:
…Why are you saying this?
Lynn:
I think that they were trying to do me a favor. Like, “Hey, we love you. We wanna see you in more films. We wanna see you on TV more. So you need to look like you did in this movie. You can't be what you are right now.” And I mean, it wasn't constant. It was, you know, just a comment here or there that would just like infiltrate all my thoughts in between all the wonderful things people were saying of course. And during that time, it's definitely when my weight began to really fluctuate because the binge eating was starting to become this monster.
I knew it was getting very much out of control where I would binge at least once or twice a week. And that feeling of guilt would take up the rest of the week.
Vic:
We'll hear about what a binge was like and how Lynn ultimately overcame her struggles with food after a quick break.
Lynn, could you walk us through what a typical binge was like and, you know, what you would eat and how you were feeling, that kind of stuff.
Lynn:
What it would look like would be me being in the house, starting off the day, feeling like, “Okay, it's been at least three or four days since I've binged. I think I got this now. I think this is the week that we're gonna go without one binge. I think we're doing really, really well.” I didn’t allow myself to keep foods that I binged on in the house. So everything was pretty empty. And my husband often had his own food that he would always ask, “Is it okay if I have this?” And I'd always be like, “Yeah, sure. If you wanna have your hummus and your crackers, it's totally fine. If you wanna have your Kashi GOLEAN cereal, great.” These are healthy things, right? They're marketed as healthy. So this is fine. I wanna be the type of person who can live in a house with Kashi GOLEAN cereal and hummus and not feel like I'm in trouble.
Right? This is what I had said to myself. Inevitably, what would happen – I'd open the fridge, I'd see the Kashi and the milk. And I'd say, I'm gonna be a normal person today and have just one bowl of cereal. I’d sit, eat it, try not to have any distractions as they tell you not to, chew my food thoroughly, feel like I got this under control. And then I'd be done with the bowl. I'd wash the bowl. I'd go do something else. And then 20 minutes later, I'd want another bowl. And I thought, “You know what? I – that’s fine. ‘Cause I see that in movies all the time people do that. People go back and they have their second bowl of cereal. That's totally normal.” [Laughter] So I'd go, and I'd have my second bowl, do the same thing. And then the hunger would come back one more time.
Vic:
Mm-hm.
Lynn:
And I think to myself, “Shit. Okay, I can have another bowl of cereal, but if I have another bowl of cereal, now the cereal is, like, almost empty. And that means I'm gonna have to buy another package for my husband. Ugh. Well I might as well just do that. I'll just buy him another package. No big deal, right? Yeah. No big deal.”
So by this time I'm no longer pouring it into a bowl and adding milk. I'm just Hoovering it straight from the box into my mouth. And that's when it hits me: “you are going to binge. And if you're going to binge and you're gonna go to the grocery store and buy other things, well then while you're at the grocery store, we might as well see what else is there. Maybe our old friend Entenmann’s is there. Let's see.” Then I would cancel the rest of my day because I was like, “I'm definitely gonna be sick later on, so whatever dinner plans I have later on I am going to cancel now, so I can just be splayed out on the couch.”
Vic:
You're off to the races.
Lynn:
I'm off to the races. I'd go to that grocery store. I'd buy the Kashi. I'd buy whatever else I wanted. While I was out on the street, I’d – why not? Let's, like, go get some pizza and ice cream, eat it on the street as I was walking back. Come home, eat everything I had bought. Plus finish off the Kashi to the point where my husband wouldn't – couldn't tell anymore.
At this point I would definitely start to feel sick. It wouldn't even be noon or 1:00 p.m., and I'd already be feeling very sick. But by 2:00 p.m., I'd start to feel, like, an opening again, much like one does on Thanksgiving after you've gorged yourself and then two hours later, you're like, “Ooh, here's some room for pumpkin pie.”
Vic:
Yeah.
Lynn:
So then I would go eat by myself at a restaurant, and I would take so much pride in, like, wow – I’m like here ordering French fries, just a plate of French fries, and eating them like a civilized person. When really what I wanna be doing is like eating the entire plate, plus, you know, a grilled cheese sandwich, plus some pancakes. But I'm being very civilized by ordering these French fries and only eating half of them.
Vic:
I think this is such an important conversation because it helps us understand. Like, I did not fully understand what binge eating looked like. And so much of it sounds like my own addiction. Like, you know, you start the day saying, “You know, I've been good. I haven't used cocaine in seven days. I deserve a reward. Let's do this. It'll be fine.” And then it's one line, and then it's two lines, and then it's a gram, and then it's an eight ball. Right? It just doesn't end. And I could see – I have so much empathy for you and how you described all of that because, you know, we just con ourselves into this stuff, right?
Lynn:
Yes. It's a lot of not only self-talk and self-soothing, but self-manipulation.
Vic:
Yeah.
Lynn:
Comparing it to, like, the perception of what? The perception of how it might look to others? But really like, no one's looking. [Laughter] So it's like, just this voice in your head that's telling you it’s something that everyone's looking at, but really knowing full well that the only person that's living with it is you.
Vic:
Lynn knew that she needed a change. She says when the binge became a familiar friend who would visit her at least once a week, she tried seeing an eating disorder specialist, but that just wasn't doing it for her. Even in therapy, Lynn was really struggling to overcome her binge eating. And she says part of what made it so hard to overcome the binges was the feeling that she was getting away with it. Outwardly, she still seemed like she had it all together. Until things changed in her career.
Lynn:
My manager called to tell me that my agents had dropped me. And then in the next sentence they said, “And we're gonna drop you too.” And that, that double whammy at the same time – I remember I had just booked a few jobs, small jobs, but a few jobs, and I had been like maybe binge-free for two weeks, so I really was feeling good about myself. Like I was on the right track. And to have them say that during a time when I felt like things were going well, I felt very much like, “Oh no, I don't know if I can, like, keep this up if I don't feel like I have something to keep it up for.”
I decided, I'm not going to go look for another agent and manager. I know I can get one, but I also just am feeling super burned out, and I want to see if I was not to be in an industry that was so focused on the way I looked.
And also, I was at the age where I was feeling like, oh, I think I need to start thinking about having children, if I really want to have children. All of those things coming at the same time said to me, I need to have some sort of a life change. And if that's the case, then I don't want it to be my career that I'm trying to get healthy for. If I'm going to be a mother, I wanted to get it under control beforehand. I didn't wanna, like, use pregnancy as an excuse to start to solve my binge eating disorder. So I wanted to start it then and there. And I wanted to see what it would feel like without the pressure of the industry. So that's when I started to blog.
Vic:
And this was “The Actor's Diet” blog, right?
Lynn:
Yeah. I started this blog where I started to take stock of every single thing that I ate on a regular basis, photographing it, sort of like a journal, an everyday journal of every bite that I took. And when I started doing that, I stopped restricting what was in my house. I allowed myself to have the hummus, the Kashi, and the Entenmann’s, all of it.
Vic:
And the blog was also helping to keep you accountable. Right?
Lynn:
Yeah. A lot of that honestly was not only to keep myself accountable, but to let the other people who were worried about me know that I was okay. Especially my parents. In their minds, I think that they were like, “Okay, we don't have to worry about her.” And it was my way of communicating to them that I was okay.
Vic:
It was your way of communicating to them on a subject that it was hard to talk about before.
Lynn:
Yeah.
Vic:
I mean, there was therapy there.
Lynn:
Absolutely.
Vic:
Finally her clinical therapy started to make a difference too. Lynn learned to change her relationship with food. She stopped labeling things as good or bad. And she started eating intuitively. She got in touch with what it felt like to feel full, both in her stomach and in her life. And her blog ended up being one of the most important tools she had.
Lynn:
It was during the time when hardly anyone was blogging. So it was really the Wild Wild West of the online community. This is before people even had camera phones. So if I wanted to take photos of food, I had to, you know, actually whip out a camera and do it. And people were like, “What is going on?” when I did that [laughter].
But at the same time, it completely changed my relationship to food because suddenly it became this exciting subject. And rather than having an obsession over the calorie count of something, it suddenly became, oh – how can I photograph this? Or make a dish that has never been done before, or that I've never seen done before? How can we make this happen? And the more that happened, the more opportunities started to arise where I was eating food for free. Companies started sending me food to blog about. Suddenly it was this crazy overabundance of food.
Vic:
Lynn finally had the breakthrough she needed with her binge eating. It didn't happen overnight. She says it took a long time to finally feel like she had really overcome it. But the progress she was making was exciting. Unfortunately, she could never stop other people from commenting on how she ate or what she looked like. And in the early days of the blog, that proved to be especially difficult.
Lynn:
Initially I gained a lot of weight. I'd probably gained about 20 pounds. At the same time I was trying to get pregnant. And I can remember a lot of people thinking that I was actually pregnant. You know, the fact that I was no longer acting, the fact that I had gained weight, the fact that they knew that I was trying to get pregnant. People were congratulating me. It was actually shocking. Wow. People could be so clueless.
Vic:
I'm so sorry.
Lynn:
Yeah. I remember being like, “Wow. This is painful.”
Vic:
You actually ended up having a hard time getting pregnant.
Lynn:
Yeah. I was at war with my body for the infertility and the getting over the eating disorder. Like I was very upset at my body already.
So I wanted to take other people's opinions out of the equation because I knew that that had been so much a part of how I treated my body in the past. So it became like a callus that I was developing, you know, like this armor that I was building up. Because if they could say horrible things like that to me and I could not go home and binge, that meant I was winning. And slowly but surely that started happening. You know, it started happening with the blog too when I heard negative comments. Like, I just stopped caring what other people thought.
Vic:
Yeah. And it was starting to take off. Like, it was, it was successful.
Lynn:
It came to the point where it was my former self, as a binger – her worst nightmare and greatest fantasy have come true. Like, “Here. We're going to just bring food to you, and you're going to eat bites of all of it and tell us what you think. And it's all gonna be free, and it's gonna be the best.” And I had that for almost 10 years. And in having that simultaneously while dealing with my infertility issues, all of that really changed just the way that I looked at food and how I consumed it, but also how I treat myself and my body and how I really don't allow others, including my family, dictate how I'm going to eat, when I'm going to eat, and how much of it I'm going to eat.
Vic:
That's great.
Lynn:
And it also became exciting, especially as it was no longer even eating disorder-focused and more about just, like, celebrating food. Food really became so much fun for me. And in a way that was no longer scary or anxiety-ridden, it just became my best, best, best friend.
Vic:
And after all that time struggling, food also became a big part of Lynn's livelihood. She continued to write “The Actor's Diet” and create content all about food. And in writing about this subject for so long Lynn realized there was a gap in what was being talked about. She started a second blog with a friend who had also recovered from an eating disorder. They called it “Thick Dumpling Skin.” It was all about creating a space for Asian Americans to talk about this issue. But then in 2016, things changed again. Lynn wasn't feeling well physically. She was having some stomach problems and was breaking out in rashes. Ultimately she was diagnosed with celiac disease, a severe gluten intolerance, which means she couldn't eat any foods that had wheat. And for someone who literally eats for a living, it was a huge blow.
Lynn:
I really went through a mourning period because food was my identity, and so much of it revolved around, you know, wheat. But when I found out about it, I think that because of everything I had gone through already with the eating disorder and with the infertility, I just sort of looked at it as this new challenge that was gonna be in my life. And I was just determined to not let it take over. I'm just determined in general to never let anything take over in the same way that the binge eating disorder had taken over my life.
Vic:
So did you ultimately overcome your habit of binge eating through the blogging and through that more positive association of food? Or was there something else that flipped the switch for you?
Lynn:
I'd say that the blog was a great tool in allowing me to shift, to begin that shift. But a lot of the work that did happen, happened obviously internally, but also just – I remember I wanted to make my own rules.
And so even though the books and my therapist and other people may tell you to get rid of all the clothing that no longer fits because you have to be able to be where you’re at right now and not have reminders of your past self – for me, I said to myself, no. I kept clothes of every size that I felt good in. You know, there's always like one pair of pants or one dress that I always felt good in, no matter what size I was. Like for each size, I would have that outfit. And I would always just keep it. What that did for me was take the pressure off to always have to control and be a certain way. It just said to me, no matter who you are, no matter what size you are, I'm still going to make sure you look great and that you feel great.
Vic:
Coming to peace with your body.
Lynn:
Yeah. Learning to truly be at peace with my body came in this form of being at peace with all of it. And that included the fact that I have infertility. It also coincided with the frustrations of my career. And I think just this general feeling of why me, why me, just ringing in my ears constantly – which was always ringing in my ears with my eating disorder. Suddenly it just stopped.
I realized: I don't know why, but it's happening, and I have to accept it. And I have to change the way I'm looking at things. So victimizing myself was really not helping. And now I think when I find that I'm starting to act in a way that's not the best for myself, I tend to avoid it.
Vic:
There's gonna be some people listening to this episode, perhaps many, Lynn, who are struggling with eating disorders right now. What advice would you give to them?
Lynn:
[Breathes deeply] I just want people to know when they're feeling like, I've done the work and I'm just still so deep in this hole. I don't know what the journey will be to get out of that hole, but I know it's possible. ‘Cause I've been there several times, and being kind to yourself during those moments is just so important.
Vic:
I always tell people, have compassion for yourself. And, you know, as long as you're above the ground, you got a chance. There's still hope.
Lynn:
Absolutely.
Vic:
Lynn Chen continues to act, write and speak out about the issues she cares about. She even stepped into the role of director for her latest film, which she also starred in, called “I Will Make You Mine.”
“Back from Broken” is a show about how we're all broken sometimes and how we need help from time to time. If you're struggling with an eating disorder, you can find a list of resources at our website, backfrombroken.org. Our lead producer today was Rebekah Romberg. And you can find a list of all the folks who worked hard to make this episode in the show notes. This podcast is made possible by Colorado Public Radio members. Learn about supporting “Back from Broken” at cpr.org.
