A former Oklahoma City University softball star will compete on a reality television show after having won her own battle against eating disorders.

Melissa Rhodes reached a dangerous 110 pounds at the most drastic time in her anorexia and bulimia. Photo provided.

Melissa Rhodes, 29, said she might not have been alive to compete in “Worst Cooks in America” if not for a vision that opened her eyes to the magnitude of her disease.

“I've learned how to eat. That was the hardest thing in the world for me to do,” Rhodes said. “But in the kitchen, I'm a disaster and I want to learn how to cook.”

The third season of “Worst Cooks in America,” including Rhodes as a contestant premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on The Food Network. The winner will receive $25,000.

The show has finished filming, but Rhodes is sworn to secrecy about the results.

Rhodes said her battle with food began as an identity struggle after she graduated from college.

“I used to be able to shake somebody's hand and say, “Hi, I'm Melissa. I play softball at Oklahoma City University,” she said.

Life changes are often triggers for eating disorders, said Sharla Robbins, president of the Oklahoma Eating Disorders Association.

“Usually we find a combination of variables set someone up for an eating disorder,” Robbins said. “Societal pressures, genetics, family dynamics, sometimes the presence of trauma, and others.”

After graduating in 2005, Rhodes said, she lost the identity with which she'd been so familiar, along with the constant exercise that kept her fit.

Then she started working with a trainer to enter a fitness competition and started to lose weight.

“It just got to be like an addiction for me,” she said. “I liked it and I wanted to know how I could lose more. How could I be skinnier?”

Robbins said some people have a genetic propensity to eating disorders.

Rhodes' obsession with losing weight started with bulimia. By purging food, Rhodes said, she felt control over her body — and a new identity as “the skinny one.” Living on her own for the first time, she spent hours vomiting, sometimes to the point of losing consciousness.

The addiction escalated to anorexia and, though Rhodes thought she was keeping her secret, her family noticed major changes in her body, her moods and especially her eating habits.

“Melissa's idea of going out to dinner was a salad with salsa dressing on it,” her mother Carol Rhodes said.

Once sociable and outgoing, she became reclusive, her mother said.

Melissa Rhodes decided she needed a change of locale. She found what she thought would be a perfect situation as a nanny and housekeeper to a family in Naples, Fla.

She loved being near the ocean and enjoyed her work. The family she worked for owned a yacht and Rhodes met her fiance, David Workinger, during an outing on the boat. He was the captain.

Nobody in Florida knew about the eating disorder she had been fostering for nearly three years. Her weight had plummeted from 150 pounds to a skeletal 110 on her five foot, seven-inch frame.

“Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of all the mental health disorders,” Robbins said.

One night in Naples, “I started throwing up again and I passed out,” Rhodes said. “I had a dream or a vision, whatever you want to call it. I still didn't believe there was a God, so I didn't credit this to Him yet.”

She dreamed she'd awakened to the chiming of a grandfather clock. She saw, in her dream, the eyes of her employer who was telling her that it was time to go home.

She awoke and knew that her eating disorder was too out of control to fix on her own. She called her mother and the next day flew home to Oklahoma.

She worried that Workinger would not stick by her through her treatment, but knew she wouldn't live to be with him any other way.

“We'd only been together three or four months and he had no experience or any idea what an eating disorder was like, what it was about,” Rhodes said.

A faith-based center called Bermuda Ranch in Arizona was where she decided to seek help.

She spent 60 days relearning how to eat and slowly working her way back to a healthy weight. She ate upwards of 6,000 calories a day and gained 30 pounds.

After rehab, she stayed with her parents for a year, as she was advised to do by her therapists.

“The idea behind this was that if you can recover in the place you grew up in, you can recover anywhere,” she said.

Today, Rhodes lives with Workinger in Naples and the two are looking forward to a wedding this year.

“With God and the help of many treatment providers, I was able to re-teach myself how to eat and gain an appreciation for my body,” she said.

Rhodes hopes that through her appearance on “Worst Cooks in America” and public speaking, she can help other people avoid what she went through.

She works with young women as assistant softball coach at Community School of Naples and they know her story.

“I think the world needs to know that recovery is possible and that there are many positive recovery stories out there,” Rhodes said. “Recovery takes time. It's a process, not an event.”

Show / Hide Comments