A 4-Part Series from Tess on Recovery, Repair, and the Truth About Healing

Tess has been part of The Gut Cø community for years — you might recognise her from our Instagram. She’s a long-time customer, a thoughtful voice in the wellness space, and someone we’ve come to know and admire.
 
Recently, she came to us with something deeply personal: a desire to share her recovery journey in full — not just the before and after, but the hard, honest middle.

If you’ve ever struggled with your body, food, or your gut — this is for you.

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When I was in rehab for Anorexia and Body Dysmorphia, I have a vivid memory of sitting outside with a few of the other patients on a narrow patch of grass. It was a sunny Saturday, though judging by our collective sweatpants and Ugg boots, you’d think it was still mid-winter. Only a select few of us were there…those who had earned the right to add a few unrequired steps to the otherwise rigid route between the dining hall and therapy. It had been four months since I’d been granted this kind of freedom, and while the outing was mostly for the adults to smoke, I wasn’t going to miss my first chance to simply sit outside.

We sat in a loose circle, cigarette smoke drifting as I hugged my knees to my chest. Ben, the physical education therapist, reminded us this was a break—not a breakout—and we’d need to return to the ward in fifteen minutes to get ready for visiting hours. That’s when I saw my parents arriving early.

They paused, confused, and asked what we were doing. Ben explained it was a sanctioned break while Elizabeth, eighteen, took a drag from her cigarette. Right on cue, my mother offered her routine line:

“You know, Elizabeth,” she said, light and charismatic, “you’re so beautiful. You have great skin. I’m not going to tell you to stop smoking because it’ll kill you—I don’t want you thinking about cancer. I just want to leave you with this: smoking can make you look old. It can cause wrinkles, stain your teeth, make your breath smell like an ashtray.”

Now, this isn’t a piece about the harms of smoking, or whether my mother was out of line offering unsolicited advice—though it did cause Elizabeth to hold off on her next drag, at least until Ben gave us the five-minute warning.

No, I bring this up because I’ve thought a lot about the vanity approach my mother chose when trying to discourage someone from picking up an addictive habit. And if I were to use that same tactic on someone quietly entertaining the thought of restrictive eating, what would mine be?

I wouldn’t look any further than the gut.

What no one talks about, and what many don’t know, is just how much starvation wrecks your digestive system. We talk about the loss of your period. We talk about thinning hair and the fine patch of fur (lanugo) that grows in strange places. Some even know that when weight gain finally comes, it redistributes unevenly and never quite where it used to go.

But before I was refed—I didn’t know the real aftermath. The pain. The bloating. The kind of gas that left me doubled over. And I certainly didn’t expect it to linger for years after I was supposedly “fine.”

No one warned me that a bite of apple could make me burp, or that a piece of chicken could leave my stomach in knots for hours. And let me tell you: nothing is more embarrassing than sitting on a date wondering if the salad you ordered is about to make a kind of pass that’s far from romantic.

Starving myself didn’t just make me small. It made me fragile. Hyper-sensitive. And for me, nothing made me feel more isolated or more crazy than how broken my digestion felt. I can’t count how many times I cried in a doctor’s office—gastroenterologists, dietitians, GPs—trying to explain that the volatility of my stomach kept me locked in my room. They’d nod, offer some version of “I’m sorry,” and eventually suggest: “Have you tried cutting out beans?”

It wasn’t beans.

In rehab, I gained nearly 30 pounds in just a few months. It shouldn't have surprised, then, that my body couldn’t suddenly go back to digesting food like it once had. But it did surprise me. And it terrified me. Nothing seemed to like me—not the lettuce, not the yogurt, not even the pineapple dripping from the fork. And based on the vague advice I kept getting, I didn’t believe anyone could help me. So I said nothing. Which, of course, made everything worse.

Even now—years later, with most of the worst symptoms behind me—on the days my stomach acts up, struggling to break down a piece of manchego cheese, I feel my thoughts spiral. My brain tightens with obsession, discomfort, regret. I may not act on those old compulsions, but an unsettled stomach always reminds me where I came from.

Today, with what we understand about the gut-brain connection, it makes a kind of awful sense. How tightly my digestion was tied to fear. How the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. And how, in recovery, you have to go through the worst of it first.

It took me years, not just to heal my gut or forgive myself, but to find people I could trust. People who would really listen.

I’ll never forget the first email I sent to The Gut Co. It read like a miniature autobiography: a long explanation of my history with an eating disorder, how reactive my gut had become, how I’d cycled through probiotic after probiotic—each one helping, until it didn’t. Each one leaving me more bloated, more discouraged, and more afraid than before.

I told them I wasn’t currently starving myself. I was eating more than I had in decades, introducing new foods, catching myself when I leaned on safety over satisfaction. I’ve come a long way, I wrote. But I’m exhausted of this fear: the fear that one day I’ll eat something and it’ll be fine, and the next time it’ll feel like a drill boring into my intestine, and I’ll mentally unravel.

I ended the email with one sincere question:
“I want to see if your product can help me, but I’m scared of the transition from my last probiotic to yours. Should I be?”

You can imagine my surprise when I got a response—not just the next day, but from Pernille herself. Her reply was direct, generous, kind:

“Thank you for being so honest. You might experience a transitional period from one to the next, but it shouldn’t last more than a few days. I really believe my product can help repair many of the issues you’re concerned about. Please write back if anything else comes up.”

She was right. About all of it.

I’ve now been taking The Gut Co. for over three years. My hair has never been longer or healthier. My skin is clear. My hormones are balanced. But most importantly, my gut is calm. Which has brought me the deepest relief in mental peace.

A stable gut—a digestive system that can actually break down and absorb the food I enjoy—has allowed me to evolve from a girl who thought food was the enemy. A strong microbiome doesn’t just impact how we look; it changes how we feel and how clearly we can think. 

And beyond the products—which are beautifully packaged and made with the highest quality—what I’ve always appreciated about Pernille and The Gut Co is how clearly they understand the gut-brain connection. How the brand is about more than selling products. It’s about solving a foundational issue that quietly—and sometimes loudly—impacts nearly every part of how we function. 

Which brings me back to my mother. More specifically, to her warning—to a very stressed-out Elizabeth—about the vain repercussions of her vice. There’s power in appealing to someone’s image, especially when it comes to eating disorders. But if I were to offer my own warning, I wouldn’t talk about calories or bones or even fear. I’d ask you to remember the worst stomach ache you’ve ever had. Now multiply it by a hundred. And stretch it across a decade.

That’s what it costs. That’s what you risk.
And it’s not worth it.
But if you have to go through it, I can at least say this: we have better tools now. We have real ways to start healing.

For more from Tess, check out her Substack.