Canadian singer Lindsay Ell gets candid about her eating disorder: 'You're just in recovery for the rest of your life'

Eating disorders might come with assumptions that a person or their body type might look a certain way, but Canadian country singer Lindsay Ell wants people to know that's not always the case. The Calgary-born artist is getting candid about her own disordered eating journey, as well as what her road to recovery has been like.

The 35-year-old songstress spoke with Ontario-based influencer Sarah Nicole Landry on "The Papaya Podcast" about her experiences, as well as how her new EP, "love myself," looks at themes of body image and self-worth. Here's everything we learned from the conversation between the two Canadian stars.

Her eating disorder showed up differently

In 2023, Ell was diagnosed with anorexia subtype binge-purge, which developed over a 20-year period and meant she'd starve herself for weeks and then binge eat uncontrollably. It wasn't until a time when she was crying on her kitchen floor "eating everything in my sight" that she realized it was "something I don't have control over anymore" and needed help.

"When I got diagnosed, I was like, 'What? I didn't see that coming. That wasn't even on my radar,'" she said. "Which was probably part of the problem."

After getting support from a therapist, nutritionist and other health-care providers, she said she "realized that eating disorders are not a body type. Anorexia is not a body type, it is a behaviour."

She continued to say she learned people experiencing anorexia can have a "very wide spectrum" of body types and that it actually reflects your relationship to food. "I don't even recognize myself of how I used to look at food and how I'm the exact same girl. I still get triggered all the time and I know who she is and I fully embrace her and it's kind of wild."

Her eating disorder stemmed from trauma as a teen

At 13, Ell was sexually assaulted, she said. She said during an interview last year she doesn't think she "really understood what happened" since she was so young. She refused to tell her parents for years, adding she felt she had done something wrong. "I can see that's where it stemmed from," she told Landry about her eating disorder.

But growing up, she recalled falling into the trap of adopting new diets and trying to control what she ate alongside her mother. "I remember being a little girl and learning diets and the just cumulatively doing every diet," Ell noted. "I remember as a little girl going to Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers with my mom, and I would just go with her to support her."

Ell agreed with Landry, who said that dieting culture was simply a normal culture and not their moms's fault. Ell added she remembers learning the point system and knowing the calories of every food when she was 15, adding tallying up points with her mom was like a game.

"I'm like, 'Why am I dieting as a 15-year-old girl who already had been trying to deal with all these emotional things previously that happened in my life?'" Ell shared.

Eating disorders and the entertainment industry don't mix

Despite her love for being a songwriter and artist, Ell noted the entertainment industry isn't necessarily full of body positivity and support. "It's not the best place for loving your body and fully embracing everything that you are," she said. "It's just a breeding ground for eating disorders and for a very negative view on those things."

Even being a live performer can lead to problems with her body image, she stated. For instance, she reflected on moments where she'd play a live show, people in the front row would take photos and then upload those online.

"It's the worst possible angles ... and I'm like, 'This is so hard. How am I supposed to love my body like that?' And yet that's also been the biggest gift because it's like, 'OK, I'm human. We all look like that,'" she added.

She felt 'so numbed out' in her world

While Ell said facing her eating disorder and embarking on the road to recovery has been difficult, getting help and sharing her journey has been a massive relief. "For the longest time, I think I was living in a world where I was so numbed out. We can numb ourselves out as humans in so many way, obviously with drugs and alcohol and food. ... Food was my drug in a lot of ways."

At some point, she said she was "so numbed out" where she didn't even know what she liked or what her preferences were. Her therapist would have her do a "before, during and after" exercise to look at her feelings whenever she felt the urge to binge or purge.

"Looking at that massive roller coaster swing was always so interesting to me because anytime I would do either, it was emotionally driven," she noted, adding she loves food — especially sweets — and would restrict herself from having a treat like Oreos in her home to avoid eating the entire box.

"Now, I'm able to keep whatever kind of food I want in my house and have like a few Oreos anytime I wanted. It sounds so counterintuitive, but if you let yourself have things ... you don't feverishly crave for them. ... It just feels like, I feel like a completely different person."

She's felt a sense of freedom since getting help

Before getting help, Ell recalled thinking about food all day long. She'd consider everything she ate and do calculations in her head — even while out for dinner and reading a menu — to ensure she wasn't consuming too many calories.

For years, she'd also tune out her body's feedback. But now she's learned to listen, and hearing from her body as well as having more free thinking space are some of her favourite positives since starting recovery.

"It's just been amazing because I thought that my relationship with food was always going to have this claw in me and just be so difficult," she reflected. "Now, it's very life fulfilling, it's very life giving. I look forward to eating and I look forward to meals. ... I look forward to going to restaurants and trying new things and knowing that my body is going to tell me when it's full, when it's not."

Still, that doesn't mean everything in her life post-diagnosis has been easy. "It's not like Nirvana where I'm loving my body every day and I'm eating," she said. "It's hard. I'll speak for myself, I'll never be recovered. ... You're just in recovery for the rest of your life.

"You just get a lot more tools on how to deal with things in the moment compared to delaying them for 20 years. The thing I'm most excited about is just being able to fearlessly be myself and release music that I am so inspired by and stand on stage as somebody who fully accepts who she is."

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