McCall Dempsey: Dare to Love Yourself

McCall Dempsey, an eating disorder survivor and passionate recovery advocate, spoke to the GPS student body and visited several classes on Monday, March 13. With a message of health as “mind, body, and spirit,” not just quantity and quality of food eaten, she told her story of hope and healing after a 14-year battle and an eight-year addiction to diet pills.

 

Dempsey is the founder of Southern Smash and blogs at Loving Imperfection. Her writing has been featured in various national print and online publications, including Women’s Health Online. She has also appeared on HuffPostLive.com multiple times, and she speaks to treatment centers, corporate meetings, high schools, and colleges.

 

“The media glamorizes being ultra-thin,” she told the assembly of students and faculty, “but that is all photo-shopped.” Eating disorders, she said, “transcend genders, ages, and socio-economic levels.” Noting that most with the disorder will engage in anorexia, bulimia, and/or binging, she said her addiction also involved exercise compulsion and sometimes checking the scale over 20 times a day. Her recovery, she said, “involved lots of small decisions made every day,” and as a mother of two, she is paying it forward in her blogging and speaking engagements.