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A Journey Out Of Anorexia

Truth in Love 6

Rebecca Maketansky shares her journey with anorexia, including the steps she took to turn from her sin and trust Jesus to change her.

Heath Lambert: Anorexia is a deadly problem, with some studies indicating that as many as ten percent of people who struggle with it will lose their lives. This is a very significant issue that Christians must know how to respond to, and to help us think about it, I have asked Rebecca Maketansky to join us on the podcast today. Rebecca is a graduate of the biblical counseling program at Boise College, and she serves the Association of Certified Biblical counselors at our headquarters here in Louisville. Rebecca, as a young girl, you struggled with the problem of anorexia. Rebecca, I would like for you to share with our listeners what your struggle looked like.

Rebecca Maketansky: Yeah, I began in eighth grade when I wanted to lose weight, and I wanted to lose weight because there was a particular girl on a television show that I wanted to look like. I saw her, and I determined in my heart that I wanted to be her size by ninth grade. So I started dieting and exercising toward that end, and I began to lose weight. But what happened to me was I kept lowering my weight goal, and the target kept shifting; my methods became more drastic to achieve that goal. I went from dieting and exercising, which are good things, to bad things, like not eating enough food and spitting out food after tasting it so as not to swallow it. I began exercising on top of exercising and going to bed hungry so that I would wake up with a smaller waistline in the morning. And so, that’s what my struggle began to look like.

Heath Lambert: One of the most seriously concerning realities about anorexia is that the person with the struggle does not perceive that they have a struggle at all. They think the struggle is with the family members and friends who were talking to them. And so it can be very challenging to get the lights to come on in the heart of someone who has this problem. Tell us what happened in your life so that you began to understand that I have a real problem here.

Rebecca Maketansky: I began to see that I had a real physical problem when I began experiencing chest pains. And I didn’t tell anyone; I was afraid to. But I started realizing that something wrong and scary was going on. I realized it was a spiritual problem when my older sister Corrie Ann challenged me one day—I’ll never forget the conversation—she said to me, “I want you to know that what you are doing is sin. And now that you know that it’s sin, I want you to know that believers do not choose to continue to live in sin.” And that was when the lights came on in my heart. I was a follower of Christ, I hadn’t seen it as a spiritual problem until then, but when she said that, I realized that I had to choose to follow Christ, which led away from the lifestyle I had built.

Heath Lambert: I want to ask you about that because we sometimes operate in a Christian culture that doesn’t see pointing out sin as a good thing. Sometimes we look at somebody like yourself as a young girl who was struggling with a serious and dangerous sin, and we’re worried that if we extend a rebuke of sin, we’re going to somehow make it worse. But you didn’t receive that rebuke as harsh from your sister who loved you. You received it as a gracious and hopeful thing. So, talk to us about how you received your sister’s rebuke.

Rebecca Maketansky: I received it in love because it was given in love. I knew my sister, and I knew she loved me. It was also received in love because she was trying to restore my relationship with Jesus. She was trying to salvage that which I was destroying. I received it in love because it was pointing me to Christ and not just camping out on my sin.

Heath Lambert: After that initial conversation where you became aware that you needed to respond with greater faith and confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ in how you were eating, there was a process that ensued. So help us understand some of the change processes that followed that conversation. In particular, what were some of the key turning points that led you to be able to get into a different spot?

Rebecca Maketansky: The key turning points in my struggle with anorexia started with the conversation with my sister pointing me to Christ and away from my sin. That led to my wrestling with the Lord in prayer and telling Jesus that I wanted to change, I wanted to follow him, I wanted to let go of my sin, but I needed His help. And then that led to a conversation with my sister where we sat down together with a notepad, and she helped me write up guidelines for myself each day for the process of change. That notebook had things in it like you had to eat a certain amount of food each day, you had a limit on your daily exercise, and so that was very helpful when I would get in moments of temptation or get in moments of worry that I was gaining weight. Those were helpful, tangible realities that kept me on the road to change.

Heath Lambert: And how long did that take? I mean, you were in the eighth grade when you started to develop a problem. How long until you would say that I was really out of the woods and in a different spot?

Rebecca Maketansky: Yeah. The process of change was a long one. My sister was a very persistent counselor. I think it probably took maybe a year and a half for me to get out of the woods to a safer place. Perhaps longer than that before I quit needing occasional check-ins. There were lots of things that needed to change. I had to change the way I thought about food. There are a lot of things that the Lord had to change. He had to change my desires, He had to change my outlook on myself, and He had to change my motivation for gaining weight. He had a lot of work to do, so it was maybe about a year and a half.

Heath Lambert: And what about now? What is your attitude about food and healthy eating now versus what it was back when you were facing this struggle?

Rebecca Maketansky: Yeah, thankfully, the Lord has changed me a lot and given me whole new desires and perspectives. I even remember coming out of the struggle, and in the walk of repentance, the Lord replaced desires to be the skinniest in the room with desires to be a healthy weight and to be an example to other girls that may have been struggling like me. And desires to steward my body well so that I was healthy and able to serve the Lord in a greater capacity than I was before. And another thing that the Lord has taught me is to be thankful for food. You know, when I was struggling with anorexia, food was my obsession, but it was also my enemy, and now, the Lord has changed that to food is a gift from the Lord that we steward well for His glory and that we are thankful for it each meal.