By Elizabeth Gittemeier
Photo courtesy of Stanford University
“An eating disorder is like a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. It will lure you back with promises of better things,” said a young woman who has battled eating disorders for 7 years.
“An eating disorder always has a promise that it can cure so many things: my anxiety will go away; I will forget stress; relationships are better; I don’t even need relationships. But every time I turn back to it, it drops me on my face.”
The young women described in this story are only three an estimated 20 percent of college students struggling with eating disorders, according to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). Their names have been changed, at their request, to protect them from social stigma that can come from public knowledge of their struggles.
Eating disorders are common in America today, yet they are so well hidden that most people have no idea many of them exist or how to deal with them. Many of these disorders are manifested in girls, but they affect all people of all ages, according to the NEDA. At some point, almost every person in this country will be either directly or indirectly affected by an eating disorder.
There are three types of eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia, and overeating. Bulimia and anorexia are commonly used to lose weight, and they are becoming an increasing problem in young girls in America. According to the NEDA, they are seen in an estimated 10 million females and 1 million males. Data released by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) shows that it is important for people to understand what is going on in the minds of these young women so that they can receive help.
Kate, a tall girl with her blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail, slipped out of a meeting at the Kansas State student union early to tell her story. She grew up with two older brothers and has been playing competitive sports since she was 4. She felt constant pressure to perform well in athletic events, but everyone believed her spunky personality could handle the stress.
As her freshman year of high school started, no one could see the toll that the constant push to be perfect was taking on her. She was on the volleyball team, the basketball team and the softball team. She was a runner. From any outsider’s perspective, her life was full, complete, and perfect.
One day at the end of her freshman year, when she was out running by herself, she was attacked and sexually assaulted. This was her breaking point. At age 15, she began eating everything in sight and going immediately to the bathroom to throw it all back up.
By the end of her freshman year, she had developed bulimia.
This disorder continued throughout high school, and the worse it got, the more she tried to cover it up. The moment that she started covering up her eating disorder was when it began to take over and consume her. She was constantly thinking about where she could get her next big snack and how she would hide the fact that she was just going to throw it up.
After high school, Kate went to Kansas State University hoping for a normal college experience. She joined a sorority and quickly made friends, but she could not escape her eating disorder. As she began to get to know the coeds in her house, she discovered that eight others in her pledge class of 40 had similar struggles.
A bond developed among these young women, and they began to learn from each other’s habits how to lose even more weight. Kate said that this experience taught her to drink diet Coke and coffee and smoke in an effort to keep herself from eating. Her bulimia turned to anorexia, a disorder in which she continually starved herself.
When her anorexia set in, Kate’s weight was at dangerously low levels. Throughout the next couple years, she was hospitalized twice and sent to treatment seven times. The first six treatments and the hospitalizations did nothing for her.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Eating Disorders (ANAD), treatment costs between $30,000 and $100,000 per month. Her parents paid; they also bribed her to go. She said that she got a new car for attending her therapy sessions. After one particularly good day in treatment, she got a new laptop.
They were throwing money at her illness, but it was not accomplishing anything, she said. Every time she would gain enough weight to go home, then she would lose it immediately.
Other young women she met in treatment taught her how to hide her problems better.
By the seventh time she went to treatment, she was finally ready. She had hit rock bottom. She was completely broken. She lost her job. Her relationships were falling apart. She was exhausted, and she had nothing left.
“When you develop an eating disorder, your life stops then. It’s like I was stuck as a 15 year old. I didn’t know how to be a grown up,” she said.
After her seventh therapy session, she rediscovered her faith in God and found a support group that helps her through the recovery process. Her faith helped her because she knew that there were second chances and there was something bigger than herself. She discovered that life did not stop because of her eating disorder.
Kate is still recovering. She is still in therapy, but she is healing one step at a time. Sometime she still has the desire to lose weight, but she has people she can call who will help her move past her thoughts.
* * *
As Amanda sat at a table in Radina’s Coffee Shop in Manhattan, her eyes almost bore a hole through the table. After a few moments, she looked up and began talking. She had always struggled with body image issues, she said. She had to be perfect and look perfect.
The summer after her junior year of high school, her family bought a membership to the gym, and she started extensive workouts everyday. Her parents were not home that summer, so she skipped meals. By the time her senior year started, she was receiving compliments on her weight and her looks. Not only were these comments affirming her lifestyle, but they were shoving her farther into her eating disorder. She took a lunch to school every day, but she just picked at her food.
At this point Amanda said she knew she had a problem. Food and calories were consuming her thoughts and taking over her life. She said the worst part was the way that eating made her feel.
She had to eat sometimes in order for her body to function, but whenever she ate, she would feel huge, like she had gained five pounds. She would only eat granola bars or bananas, and immediately following that, she would go work out until she felt like she had burned off the calories.
One day, the school counselor called Amanda into her office. She told her that people had been noticing unhealthy drops in weight and that some actions needed to be taken. She called Amanda’s parents. Amanda was sent to a nutrition coach and a counselor.
She hated therapy. Her brain was telling her she couldn’t eat. But she was being forced to eat, and if she didn’t make the weight improvements each week, she would have to eat more. She started chugging water before she went into her therapy sessions so that it would appear as if she had met the weight requirements.
Once she finally admitted that there was a problem, the healing process began. It is a painful process to completely change the way you think, she said, and she had to learn to eat so her body would function. She cried through most of her therapy sessions, and the things she learned in them eventually led her down the path to healing.
Amanda said the most influential factor in her recovery process was her friends. Not all of them understood what she was going through, but they supported her anyway. They couldn’t change her mind or her emotions, but they could love her through the whole process.
Amanda hated when people told her that she was beautiful and that she didn’t need this eating disorder because she could not believe it for herself. But her friends were willing to treat her the exact same way they had before the disorder took over her life, and that was the essential element in her realization that she could recover from this and be normal again.
* * *
Lauren brushed her hair out of her face as she started to her story.
When she was in sixth grade, she was her current 5 feet 7 inches tall. She was the first girl in her class to reach 100 pounds and the first to start wearing clothes from the junior section. Lauren was constantly comparing herself to the girls around her, and this combined with her perfectionist personality caused her self-esteem to plummet.
About this same time, the 12 year old developed a fixation with eating disorders. She began reading books and articles about them. She was fascinated with these girl’s perfect bodies and ability to precisely control this aspect of their lives. Eventually this fixation turned into a challenge.
She had heard her parents talk about dieting, so she decided to try it. Her sixth and seventh grade years were characterized extreme dieting and lying to cover it up. She no longer had her period, and she began to live for the feeling of her stomach growling.
By the end of seventh grade, people had started making comments like, “You are too skinny; you need to eat!” and “The wind is going to blow you over!” The comments only added fuel to the flame of the disorder that was developing in her life.
She started having extreme mood swings. She was unhappy with herself, and she thought about food constantly. The more she denied herself, the more she thought about it. She no longer got along with her mom, and eventually she had to go to a counselor.
In eighth grade, she started taking laxatives that she found around the house. Lauren saw this as the perfect solution because it meant that she could eat sometimes and then her mom wouldn’t make her go to school because she thought Lauren was sick. Eventually her parents caught on, and they made her go to school one day after she had taken laxatives. That was the last time she ever took them.
After that she went back to diets until she read on her friend’s blog that using a toothbrush is the easiest way to make yourself throw up. So she tried that. Bulimic habits continued off and on throughout high school. Her parents knew about it, but didn’t do anything. She saw that as permission to continue, and she became more and more comfortable with her disorder.
When she moved to Kansas State University after high school, Lauren began to overcome the eating disorder she had struggled with for seven years. First,, there were always people around her, which made her habits harder to cover up and more difficult to keep secret.
But then more importantly, she said, her focus began to shift. She found purpose in her life, and she had something other than herself and other than food to live for.
Through things she had learned in counseling, the process of discovering her purpose, and surrounding herself with healthy relationships, she learned to look at the root of her decisions. She thought deeper about the reasons she was struggling and her ultimate goals, and through this process she found healing.
Lauren said she has learned that people can totally control their mindsets and make themselves believe whatever they want even if they know it isn’t true. So now she has learned to shift her focus to other issues in life.
* * *
“Giving up an eating disorder is life giving up a best friend. It is giving up promises that you have believed in for 10 years.” Kate used this analogy as she explained that giving up her eating disorder was the hardest thing she has ever done.
Amanda described the difficulties that came from so many people telling her things over and over again that she could not believe for herself.
Lauren said that it is so hard to get refocused and to get the right mindset and a realistic body image back. She had to completely change her goals in life.
Although it is a difficult process, each of these girls can attest to the fact that recovery is possible and completely worth it.
Diseases defined
Bulimia, also called bulimia nervosa, is a potentially life-threatening eating disorder in which a person may binge and purge. Eating large amounts of food is followed by trying to get rid of the extra calories in an unhealthy way such as forced vomiting or excessive exercise.
Most bulimics are preoccupied with weight and body shape.Treatment involves nutrition and psychotherapy counseling and cognitive behavioral therapy.
Anorexia nervosa causes people to obsess about their weight and the food they eat. The disorder is often not about food but about equating thinness with self-worth. It is an unhealthy way to try to cope with emotional problems.
Treatment involves nutrition and psychological counseling.
For more information
National Eating Disorders Association (www.nationaleatingdisorders.org), National Institute of Mental Health (www.nimh.nih.gov/health/), Mayo Clinic (www.mayoclinic.com) among the sources of more information.
