“It’s about whether you are completely living or if you’re just surviving.”
An interview with activist & vlogger Rebecca Jane Leung
by Haley Albright Johnston
Rebecca Jane Leung is one of the most prominent voices in the eating disorder recovery community on YouTube. She was born and currently lives in Hong Kong, where she works as a vlogger and motivational speaker. Her charismatic charm and fierce wit transcend the virtual medium; watching her videos feels like catching up with your coolest, smartest friend. Fortunately, I’m lucky enough to call Rebecca my friend in real life—she and I met in 2016 when we both attended the same PHP program in NYC (my treatment was sponsored by Project HEAL). Rebecca and I sat down to discuss her path to recovery and the unexpected lessons she’s learned along the way.
HALEY ALBRIGHT JOHNSTON: Hi, Rebecca!
REBECCA JANE LEUNG: Hi!
Thank you for doing this.
I’m really excited to chat.
I guess we’ll just launch right in; I want to talk a little bit about your YouTube career. Your self-titled channel currently has over 150K subscribers and over 21 million views. You uploaded your first video, “My Eating Disorder Story,” in June of 2018. What inspired you to post that?
Oh my gosh, that was so long ago. I started my YouTube channel kind of on a whim. I think you and I are both very creative and outgoing people in that respect. With an eating disorder, many aspects of your personality get stripped away.
At that time in 2018, I had just gone to treatment, actually. I was so exhausted and desperate, and I thought that treatment was the only way I could get escape those feelings. I had been to treatment before, of course, but this time was different because I entered it actually wanting to recover. And when I got back, I was really fired up. I regained my personality very quickly. It was strange. I started eating, and suddenly I was nice again! And quite quickly, I had that spark to create and share and speak, and that’s kind of why I started YouTube. It was more for me than anybody else. I’d spent many, many years being deceptive and dishonest in my eating disorder, and I didn’t want to be that way anymore. [Laughs] Did that even answer the question? Sorry, I’ll try to keep my answers shorter.
No, you’re doing great! Did you have any expectations for the video when you put it out?
Oh my gosh, no!
And then pretty quickly after that, you uploaded your video, “Challenging Five Anorexia Food Rules,” which basically went viral overnight.
Actually, that video, I hated.
[Laughs] Really?
Not in terms of the content or subject, but… I think it was my sixth video and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I remember that I was about to get on a plane to go to Hong Kong because I was in England at the time, and I just kept saying, “This is so boring!”. But I thought, “Well, it’s finished now. I’ll just put it up.” Then, I got on the flight, which was a good twelve hours. By the time I’d gotten off the plane, the video had reached 30,000 views, which was absolutely incredible. It was so cool, and then it just kept gaining. It was very exciting, for sure.
Especially considering that you’ve always been so interested in the arts, it must have been amazing to create something that resonated so deeply with that many people.
Yes! The number of comments and views on that video really opened my eyes to the number of people struggling with this. It sucks that that’s the case, but I’m glad I could create something that spoke to so many people.
And then in 2019, you gave a beautiful TEDxYouth Talk, entitled ‘What If’ I Actually Recovered?’ What made you want to do that?
I was asked to do it by a school in Hong Kong. It was an enormous opportunity, but I didn’t think that I would be able to pull it off. I was very, very nervous about it.
You did so well, though! You seemed very comfortable.
Honestly, I couldn’t even make lines of it during the rehearsal. I couldn’t remember anything, I was so shaky and frozen. I ended up saying, “You’re just going to have to trust me,” and I walked off the stage.
You totally pulled it off in the end, though.
Thank you. That ended up being a pivotal moment for me because I proved to myself that I am capable of working under high pressure, which was something that I’d always thought was impossible to do. But the speech was very easy to write; everything that I said was just from experience.
You open the TED Talk by saying, “When I was ten, I developed an eating disorder.” I was also diagnosed at that age, and I think it really impacted the way I conceptualized myself as an adult.
Absolutely.
A lot of us go through the most formative years of our adolescence with an eating disorder influencing our every thought. It’s difficult to rebuild an idea of who you are after going through something like that.
That was one of the reasons I didn’t want to leave my eating disorder. I was like, “I don’t even know who I am! What if without my eating disorder, I’m a terribly boring person?”
Do you have a treatment team right now?
I don’t, no. I haven’t had one since I left treatment. What about you?
I do. I especially love my nutritionist. She specializes in Binge Eating Disorder, which is great for me. I think treatment can sometimes come off as anorexia-focused, with the therapists hoping that their advice will somehow also work out for the other patients. I went to residential about 8 months after I’d graduated from PHP with you. I remember the first meal was a bagel and chips, and the nutritionists were like, “Okay guys, we’re working through the fear of eating bagels.” And I was like, “Girl, I’m fine with eating bagels. I’m a little too fine with eating bagels. That’s why I’m here!”
[Laughs] Yeah.
So, yes, I do have a nutritionist, therapist, and psychiatrist now. But I went a long time without them because I couldn’t afford them. I remember this lady coming in to give a talk when I was in residential, and she sort of poor-shamed me. In front of everyone, she asked who my team would be after getting discharged. When I told her that I couldn’t afford to see anyone, she said, “You cannot recover without a treatment team! It’s impossible! You need to find a way to make it work!” And it made me sad because I was going there through the Project HEAL scholarship. I was like, “I literally steal my toilet paper from Starbucks bathrooms. I cannot afford a full treatment team. I simply cannot make that happen.”
You can’t, yeah.
And I’ve found that what she said is not true. I wouldn’t consider myself recovered necessarily, but I’ve made a lot of strides towards that. And I think your journey also demonstrates that no one’s eating disorder is the same, so no one’s recovery is going to be the same either.
Exactly. I think a treatment team is absolutely an asset. But for me, I’ve taken a very, very unconventional way to go about recovery. I don’t think that my way is going to work for everyone, of course, but we all have different stories. Whatever works, you know?
Absolutely. In regard to treatment programs, there is a significant overrepresentation of a particular demographic—white, thin, wealthy, female, etc. Unfortunately, I think that really warps the public’s perception of people who suffer from eating disorders.
Yeah.
It’s a multifaceted and systemic issue, but I want to talk about how to start breaking that down a little bit. What do you think that we can do to help uplift marginalized voices?
I agree that the general public’s conception of who struggles with eating disorders is inaccurate. Growing up, my understanding of it was typical, as well—very skinny, white, I guess—there’s one look that I thought about. And when you have that idea in your head and you don’t fit that, it’s very easy to disqualify yourself from thinking that you’re deserving of help. But ultimately, it’s not about age, a look, a race. It’s about whether you are completely living or if you’re just surviving.
Would you consider yourself recovered?
I would say that I’m actively recovering.
Do you have an idea of what it would take to think of yourself as fully recovered?
I feel like recovery is kind of this invisible thing that you don’t even notice is there once you’ve achieved it. It’s looking back on your life and realizing that the eating disorder doesn’t have a grip on you. And at that point, it doesn’t even feel like this huge celebration because it’s simply not your life anymore. I suppose it’s a bit anticlimactic, but at least you’re living!
What goals do you have for yourself in the future?
YouTube has become a massive part of my life, and I absolutely love it. It’s helped me define who I am as a person. Going forward, I want to continue working on that and expanding it into different aspects of my life. Of course, recovery is a huge part of who I am, but it’s not all of me.
In closing, I want to ask: what advice would you give ten-year-old Rebecca?
I wish there was something succinct I could say that would have helped her immediately, but I know that nothing would have done that. But now, looking back, the lowest points of my life are some of the biggest reasons that I’m successful, and I am who I am today. So, I would tell her that her darkest struggles and the things that devastate her will one day be what makes her so strong. ✦
This interview has been condensed and edited for publication.
Rebecca Jane Leung can be found on her YouTube Channel and on Instagram.
Haley Johnston is a writer, photographer, and musician living in Columbus, Ohio. As a Project Heal grant recipient, Haley is dedicated to continuing the dialogue surrounding eating disorders and mental health. She hopes that creating a broader understanding will reduce the stigma surrounding those issues.
