GREAT EXPECTATIONS
All her life KATE REID dreamed of a career in Formula One. When reality didn’t live up to the dream, anorexia took over. It was baking, says the Lune Croissanterie founder, that put her on the path to recovery.
When Lune Croissanterie’s Kate Reid started baking, it put her on the path to recovery from anorexia.
From a young age I had my entire life planned out: a predetermined university degree in aerospace engineering, followed by an inevitable move to the United Kingdom, with the ambition to be the first female technical director of a Formula One team. By the time I was offered my first role as aerodynamicist at Williams F1, I’d been working toward this goal with single-minded determination for a decade.
High expectations are dangerous. Where I’d imagined a creative, collaborative environment, the reality was long days in front of a computer with minimal human interaction, churning out designs with multiple variations. Directives, not moments of brilliance. Eighteen months in and I hated my job. A rather unexpected predicament. The subtle signs of depression set in. Maybe designing Formula One cars actually wasn’t for me.
Dissatisfied and unhappy at work, struggling through the grey English winter and missing home, I joined a gym in the hope of making some new friends. It became my safe haven and I started to exercise a lot. Regular assessments at the gym included weight tracking, as well as being “educated” on nutrition and calorie burning. It didn’t take long for me to recognise that this was a numbers game, and I started to play it. Although I’d never been overweight or unhealthy, there was something deeply satisfying about watching the number on the scales decrease. I started a spreadsheet where, daily, I’d record my weight, exercise and food intake. It was so controllable and had tangible results. And it was addictive.
At first everyone told me how fabulous I was looking, which increased the incentive. Those comments soon turned to “you’re looking a bit thin”, and “are you okay?” I was fine, never better! I was in control of my body, dropping from a size 10 to an 8, and then suddenly I was fitting into a 6! My food knowledge was growing too. I’d spend hours planning what to cook for dinner: researching recipes, new ingredients, and associated calories. The first thing to stop was eating out at restaurants, then at friends’ houses. How could I trust the food anyone was preparing for me? Eventually, I wouldn’t even let my boyfriend cook for me. I exclusively ate food that I’d prepared.
Ironically, baking brought me the most pleasure during this time. Obsessively following recipes, I’d bake in the evenings for my colleagues, then watch them relish my latest creation. Inwardly, I revelled in the incredible willpower required to resist joining them, and lived vicariously through their enjoyment.
Anorexia well and truly has you long before you know you have it.
My attention span shortened, drastically. The mood swings were extreme. The quality of my work slipped. My social life dwindled and my relationship started to fray at the edges. But I was determined to keep that number on the scales going down. I started to lie about what I was eating. The lunches my boyfriend packed for me were thrown in the bin at work, when no one was watching.
Breaking point came after a long weekend of 20-hour days at the Spanish Grand Prix. The small amount of rational thought I had remaining told me that I wasn’t coping and it was time to come home.
In May 2008 I arrived back in Melbourne and was formally diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Knowing very little about the disease, those close to
me believed my homecoming represented the beginnings of recovery; that, with support, I’d simply start eating again, gain weight, and get better. But refusing food is merely a symptom of a far deeper problem, and I was going to get much worse before I started to get better.
What followed were four of the hardest years of my life.
Each week I saw a GP, psychiatrist, psychologist and dietitian. I’d have blood tests and an ECG, along with periodic bone-density scans. Anorexia has the highest death rate of any psychiatric illness; one of the biggest risks of starvation is heart failure. And yet, despite all the hard evidence, I was firmly in the grip of the disease and couldn’t be convinced that what I was doing was wrong.
Any observation about my eating brought on immediate panic attacks and waves of unbearable anxiety. I weighed myself after most meals. Even a tiny rise in the number on the scales would further fuel the panic and the anxiety. Some nights I’d reach a level of unmanageable hysteria.
On nights like this, my parents just didn’t know what to do. To watch a daughter – once intelligent, career-driven, and most of all, happy and healthy – who was now slowly killing herself, must have been hell. Yet despite their efforts, they could only look on.
The doctors banned me from doing cardio-based exercise; they were worried my heart would fail. So instead I walked everywhere. I would walk so fast, with such determination, that it was hard for anyone to keep up with me. Even in the depths of winter, I’d march the streets for a couple of hours every night after dinner, my bony frame chilled to the core.
Working with my psychiatrist, I began to uncover what lay beneath this need to control my food and exercise. Anorexia was hiding a great mental struggle to deal with the dissolution of a lifetime dream. I no longer knew what defined me, nor did I have any clear purpose, no goal that I was working towards.
When I got back from the UK I immediately took a front-of-house position at Phillippa’s Bakery in Melbourne’s south-east, driven partly by my love for baking, and partly by “the anorexia’s” need to be around food.
I had a love-hate relationship with this particular job. Enchanted by the array of baked goods, it was a considerable test of my willpower to be surrounded by so much deliciousness. On the rare occasion I gave in to temptation, tasting a rogue crumb left on a tray, I’d beat myself up for not being strong enough to resist. The days at Phillippa’s were long, and tough on me physically and mentally. After a few months, the physical demand of being on my feet for nine hours a day became too much, and I had no choice but to quit.
Coffee at a little local café near Hartwell Station became a morning ritual. Gradually I got to know the beautiful husband-and-wife owner-operator team. One morning I summoned the courage and asked Mary if she’d consider giving me a job baking for the café. In spite of my gaping lack of experience (and skeletal figure), Mary took me on for four hours each morning. At 10.30am I’d gently but firmly be encouraged to hang up my apron and punch my ticket.
It felt like magic happened every day in that tiny kitchen, and mornings there became my reason for getting out of bed. Seasonal, raw ingredients Mary procured from the markets were transformed into the most incredible Mediterranean dishes, and rather than just baking at home, I now had a purpose and a place to legitimately bake for other people. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I was also being taught a deep respect for ingredients, their provenance and for seasonality.
“I started Lune in 2012 as an anorexic. Recovery was slow, but Lune was healing me.”
Much later, Mary revealed to me that she’d recognised the clear signs of anorexia immediately. I have so much to thank her for: the opportunity to gain experience, for knowing my physical limits and never pushing me past them, and for providing me with a supportive, happy, caring work environment, all the while fostering my growing love for baking.
It was while working with Mary that I began to feel a glimmer of hope, a small sign of a life with a new direction. And one afternoon, after I had finished a shift, I found myself at home with a new coffee table book about Paris pâtisseries. This was to be a Sliding
Doors moment. I opened to a double page photo of a stack of pains au chocolat at Parisian boulangerie Du Pain et des Idées. Hypnotised and enchanted by the perfect layers and golden shells, I closed the book, walked into a travel agent and booked a ticket to Paris.
You might say the rest is history, but the honest truth is I was still very much suffering from anorexia. Though medically considered to be on the path to recovery, I was still well below a normal healthy weight, and not yet out of the woods.
The difference was that I was now forming a new set of goals. There was something I cared about much more than calorie counting and exercise.
And I was starting to develop a healthier relationship with food. Telltale behavioural traits persisted, however. My dietitian asked me to write down all the rules by which I ate food. I laughed at her – what a ridiculous concept that I’d have “eating rules”. Humouring her, I sat with a pen and paper. Four-and-a-half A4 pages later I realised I ate to an extensive set of rules. And those rules were hard to shake. Working in a commercial kitchen, I also still had that element of control associated with preparing food but not necessarily eating it.
I started Lune in 2012 as an anorexic. The road to full recovery was slow, almost unnoticeable to those closest to me, however my life slowly started gaining momentum again, and the anorexia was muscled out. I no longer had the time to worry about adhering to all those rules I’d subconsciously created around eating and exercise. Lune was healing me.
At some point in the last few years I completely stopped worrying about food and just started enjoying it again. I stopped weighing myself every day, abandoned the numerous habits and rules that had defined my anorexia, and just started to live fully. I don’t think I could ever fall back into the clutches of anorexia again; I just love good food too much – surely it’s one of the very best things about life!
Recently I observed a significant shift in my motivations. When I started Lune I was consciously making croissants for others; personal satisfaction came from creating them, then seeing others enjoy eating them. I wasn’t changing the world in any dramatic way, but providing people with something that brought them pleasure and happiness, even just for a moment, I felt I was making a small difference to their everyday lives.
Now, I simply adore the croissants. I love making them and find deep satisfaction in the precision techniques, and in the daily challenge to understand the natural variations in the raw ingredients and how they interact with the ever-changing environmental conditions. I’m so grateful for the knowledge that comes with this perfectly imperfect craft, but, mainly, I just love eating a Lune croissant. My love for what I do feels truly authentic, and this is justification enough for me to carry on.
More importantly, I now know that I am strong, I can overcome immense obstacles, and that sometimes great opportunity can come from the bleakest of places.
If you or anyone you know is experiencing an eating disorder or body-image concerns, you can call the Butterfly Foundation National Helpline on 1800 334 673 or email support@thebutterflyfoundation.org.au.