Lotta Dann Photo: CATHERINE CATTANACH 2020
*This story discusses disordered eating
When Wellington author Lotta Dann quit alcohol, she started to gain weight. She came across an American diet guru online, and began to think she had an eating addiction.
What followed was two years of extreme dieting, cutting out entire food groups, and obsessively weighing portions.
"All my life I've been aware and insecure about my body, and aware and kind of judgy about food, and sort of on certain levels of trying to control what I put in my mouth. But the really bad, you know, rabbit hole diet that I went down, was about five years ago," Dann told Kathryn Ryan on RNZ's Nine to Noon.
"It was obsessive."
"But the thing is, it worked initially, and I was so skinny and, Oh my God, that feeling is just intoxicating. You're floating on a cloud of thin and you just feel like you're winning at life. The whole world was just literally pouring praise on me, and then, you know, it stopped working."
But one night, the Wellington author recalls lying in bed, scrolling her phone when she started digging into body neutral content, and her algorithm started shifting and pointing out the flaws with the diet culture that she was so immersed in.
And because of Dann's experience with addiction and research, she says she quickly cottoned on.
"I had been through a massive journey and awakening to alcohol culture through getting sober and having my eyes opened to alcohol culture as this pervasive set of cultural norms that I'd been completely blind to. I just thought it was life, and I'd woken up to that, so I was already familiar at kind of having my view challenged or eyes opened," she explains.
Dann gave up alcohol more than 10 years ago now, anonymously blogging about it under the name Mrs D. The mother of three and wife of Morning Report host, Corin Dann, then outed herself as a recovering alcoholic in the wildly successful book Mrs D is Going Without and she now reaches an even wider audience via the Living Sober website which boasts over 50,000 members.
"I think quite quickly, once I started seeing this anti-diet, critiquing diet culture stuff, I very quickly cottoned on. Hang on, this is a whole other set of beliefs and norms that might not be true, and worse than that, harmful, and, you know, damaging."
Dann says it took about two-and-a-half years of her extreme dieting before her biology started fighting back.
"Even though it had a whole lifetime of ... somewhat moderating and controlling food, the extreme diet was a new thing for my body, and so it went into literally shock, and lost all the weight.
"Then after about two and a half years ... my biology started fighting back, and it comes in the form of thoughts in your mind and physical cravings.
"I just stopped being able to stick at the really extreme rules that I'd been following. And man, I tried so hard to stick to them. I was I was doing tick boxes in a notebook of 'did I make it to lunch without snacking?' I was writing myself letters, and I was every trick in the book.
"I started this terrible sort of bingeing and starving yo-yoing, of gaining and losing over five kg every two weeks."
Slowly, Dann began to learn that this was the most likely outcome of dieting, and while the ground had been covered before, Dann decided to write about her own experience and learnings in the new book, Mrs D is Not on a Diet.
Photo: Joe Evans/ supplied
"There's this thing called diet culture. It's all pervasive. It's really damaging."
In the book, Dann documents what she calls the "horror" of the two years - and retraining her brain to be comfortable with the roundness and softness of her body as it grew.
"It was hell ... because every day the scales were going up, my body was putting on fat, and I'd been so widely praised for the skinniness, it was just, it was a horror, and it was like a slow unfolding horror.
"I was starving, and then I was bingeing, and it was just absolute nightmare of a good two years at least ... It's hell ... it is hidden, it's in your head, and no-one knows you can be moving around your life, smiling, working, achieving and but the hours that you're spending in your head hating on yourself is heartbreaking."
Dann likened these feelings of disconnect and shame to those she felt when she was addicted to alcohol.
"I've got a lot of accolades and praise for the work I do with addiction and sobriety, which is great and makes me feel good about myself, and yet there I am, sort of locked in this shameful bingeing of chocolate, hiding it from my friends and family."
Lotta and Corin Dann at the Wellington Stadium watching the Phoenix. Photo: Supplied
In Mrs D is Not on a Diet, Dann plots her journey through extreme dieting, looks at the billion dollar skinny industry, and shares how she's ditched the food rules and is on a path to peace with her body.
"It is subtle [the healing], it takes time it involves weight gain. There's no getting away from that. You are going to put some weight on. And so the other piece, that side of the eating piece, is the making peace with your body and being okay with being soft. But I'm there as well."
Where to get help with eating disorders
- Eating Disorders Association of NZ: 0800 233 269.
