Abby Anderson overcame an eating disorder and made the album of her dreams when she stopped denying her 'strong gut feelings'

• The country-pop singer Abby Anderson released her debut album as an independent artist on July 15.
• She said that leaving her label helped her realize her potential and overcome an eating disorder.
• This article is part of "Me, First," a series about successful women who prioritize their passions and well-being.

When Abby Anderson moved to Nashville at 17, she wasn't only chasing a career in music — she was leaving behind a future that focused on service.

Raised in Texas, Anderson and her six siblings — five sisters and one brother — were brought up as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church.

For women in the church, "the underlying message was 'Hey, go get married. Be a good wife. Serve your husband,'" Anderson, now 25, told Insider.

"I'm not saying that service is a bad thing. Service is an amazing thing," she said. "But at least for some of the women in my life, it was service to a fault — in that I would see them not getting the things they needed or that they wanted."

Luckily, Anderson said, her religious parents were "super supportive" of her big-city dreams. After crossing paths with a talent agent in her senior year of high school, Anderson packed her bags for the nucleus of country music before she even graduated.

The transition wasn't as smooth as the singer hoped. After two years of pursuing music, she broke through, signing a contract with Black River Entertainment.

"I found myself in a record deal, which is something that most young girls in town would kill for," she said. "But I found that little scared church girl coming out in the worst way. It felt like I was praised more when I listened quietly, the more I just did what everyone wanted me to do."

Feeling stifled by her record deal, Anderson developed an eating disorder

Under the watchful eye of her label, Anderson shaped herself in the mold of a budding country starlet.

In 2018, she released her breakout single, "Make Him Wait," a ballad about celibacy. That year, she was chosen as one of CMT's Next Women of Country and released a moderately successful EP, "I'm Good."

But behind the scenes, Anderson was struggling. "I would come home every night just so sad, because I was singing music I didn't like, I was wearing things I didn't like, I was in an environment I didn't like, and I didn't feel like it was safe for me to speak up at the same time," she said.

Anderson said that faced with the prospect of losing her record deal and all its resources, she adopted her old pattern of "please, please, please." She allowed her team to make decisions on her behalf and overrule her input, especially when it came to which songs she recorded. Her creativity suffered, and her confidence followed.

Anderson said she sunk into a secretive and unsustainable cycle of restricting, bingeing, and purging. She described her eating disorder as "a denial of my intuition, a denial of my own needs, my own wants," seeking a shred of control that she didn't have in her career.

"All I did all day was stuff down everything I wanted and just executed things the way everybody else wanted me to," she continued. "And it made me sick."

When Anderson gathered the strength to leave her label in the summer of 2020, her physical recovery began. She said her eating-disorder symptoms began to improve "almost instantly."

"The day I walked out those doors for the last time, I felt it was the first time I really had ever spoken up for myself and followed through on a deep gut feeling I had," she said.

"In the past, I would have these strong gut reactions, strong gut feelings, and just deny them and just cast them aside," she continued. "That day, I just remember feeling so much peace — just this lightness and this love. And I remember sitting in my car bawling happy tears, because I just felt this overwhelming blanket of love pass through me, like, 'Everything is OK.'"

Anderson's new music celebrates a positive self-image

Anderson released her first single as an independent artist, "Bad Posture," in late 2021. She said it was inspired by her quest to make herself smaller.

"I used to hunch over to hide my chest because I would feel guilty if, God forbid, a man looks at 'em," she said. "Now I kind of go by the reasoning of, hey, let 'em look."

She followed with a string of empowering singles, including "Juicy," an upbeat pop anthem celebrating Anderson's curves with comparisons to a ripe piece of fruit.

Both are on Anderson's album "Sugar Spice," released on July 15 by her own imprint, Fat Cheeks.

Asked for a single word to describe this new era of her life, Anderson chose "freedom."

"It was made possible by leaving my old beliefs — not just a church, not just a label," she said. "It was about breaking up with the story I had been telling myself."