Megan Jayne Crabbe's story is one of profound transformation, moving from a life dominated by an eating disorder to becoming a leading voice in the body positive movement. Her journey reveals a critical shift in perspective: the problem was never her body, but how society teaches us to view ourselves.
A Childhood Shaped by Diet Culture
Megan Jayne Crabbe's struggles with body image began remarkably early. Before she had even reached ten years old, she was aware of diets. This preoccupation intensified as she entered puberty, with magazine articles on 'fixing' her body becoming a fixation. She used restrictive eating as a way to cope with anxieties about school and growing up.
By the age of 14, this had developed into a clinical diagnosis of anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia. "I was convinced I was fat and disgusting and needed to lose more weight," she recalls. For years, she hid the severity of her condition, until her body could no longer conceal the truth. It began to shut down, presenting severe symptoms including extreme fatigue, critically low blood pressure, hearing loss, and dizziness. "There's hair that grows all over your body, because it's trying to keep itself warm," she explains of her body's survival response.
Her health crisis led to several months in and out of mental health facilities and hospital. At her most critical point, after doctors warned her parents her body could fail at any moment, she was hospitalised and fed through a tube. "In that time where your eating disorder is saying to you, 'You have to stay in control', having that taken away is torturous," she says.
The Long Road to True Recovery
The first crack in her illness appeared when she witnessed her typically stoic father break down in tears. "Seeing the pain my eating disorder had caused him was a massive jolt for me," she admits. She then applied the same 'all or nothing' determination she had used for her anorexia to her recovery. She covered mirrors to avoid seeing her changing body and began eating meals alone, as she couldn't yet manage it in front of others.
By 17, she was medically declared recovered, but this was misleading. "Not the case," Crabbe states bluntly. "I was sent back into the world in this newly soft, larger body, and I didn't know what to do with that. I fell straight back into the diet culture trap."
The real turning point arrived when she was 21. After a summer of crash dieting, she finally reached her elusive 'goal weight'. "I still hated everything about how I looked," she says. "Something started to click in my brain of, 'Wait, this isn't working.'" This moment of disillusionment with diet culture became her gateway to freedom.
Finding a New Community and Purpose
She discovered the online body positive community, where she saw "people of all shapes and sizes saying, I'm not dieting, not hating my body, I'm wearing what I want, living my life." This revelation changed her trajectory completely. A decade later, she is one of the movement's most prominent advocates.
Her path required a conscious reshaping of her environment. She set boundaries with friends who focused on weight loss, unfollowed influencers who triggered shame, and educated herself with books like The Beauty Myth and Health at Every Size. "I started realising the problem was not me. The problem was how we are taught to see ourselves," she explains.
Healing involved reconnecting with her body's natural signals—relearning hunger and fullness cues and moving for joy rather than punishment. "My eating disorder years were trying to detach from my body and feel nothing. And now the goal is to be with my body and listen to her," she reflects.
Today, at 31, Megan celebrates her body's strength and heritage. "If I look back at my ancestors, this is the body they had. I'm strong. I'm fit. I can do everything I want to, and I can also enjoy food as a nice part of my life that I don't obsess over." Her work, including her book We Don't Make Ourselves Smaller Here, continues to inspire others to reject shrinking themselves and embrace living fully.
