There isn’t a specific time that I can pinpoint and say “There, that’s when I decided it was okay to be a healthy weight.”
Anorexia is never like that. Even now I fight with myself every day to accept my body, and believe that I am happy being the person that I now am.
I’m still uncomfortable eating in front of my friends, even ones that I’ve known since grade school. I avoid having meals with other people, because every time I eat there is an inner battle. Lists of calorie contents and serving sizes still scroll through my head. With every bite I take, my mind is calculating how much I’ll have to run to work it off.
The thing that keeps me from sliding back into old habits is trying to remember those awful years. Because I can’t.
One year blends into another, the months are all the same. Everything about that time in my life is marred by unbelievable cold, dark hazes, headaches and volatile emotions. If I wasn’t crying, I was filled with uncontrollable anger. The smallest things would upset me. There was a constant ache in my head and a body chill that I couldn’t escape. I never want to feel that way again.
he doctor sighed, “You’ve lost more weight.”
“Whatever,” I said. It was 2004 and I was a sophomore in high school.
“Are you not taking me seriously,” the doctor demanded, “Because I’ve made patients drink 2000-calorie drinks and I’ll make you do it too.”
“I tried!” I insisted. “I ate so much, but we hiked a lot so …”
The doctor had plenty of threats to hurl at me. “We’re going to have problems, understand?”
I just stared at the wall and didn’t respond.
alking to the car from the hospital my mom looked over at me.
“I don’t understand why you act that way. You’re such a smart girl and yet you act like you know nothing when you’re in there.”
“I hate her,” I replied.
“Well, I’ll make you a deal. As soon as you get your period back, you can stop going to see her, ok?”
“Yeah, ok,” I responded.
never thought of what I was doing. Not in the way that it affected everyone else. I didn’t think of the consequences or where I was actually heading with my actions. I had a goal.
Be skinny.
It was not unlike the goal of the majority of adolescent and teenage girls. We are constantly competing to eat less, be skinnier, and weigh the least. If one took the time to eavesdrop on a group of young girls, some variation of the following conversation would more than likely emerge:
“Oh, I didn’t eat dinner.” Then the retort of another friend, “Yeah, I’ve only had a banana today.” And then of course the person to finish it up by saying, “Well, I haven’t eaten anything all day.”
All these statements are said like we’re just chatting about the weather, but underneath we know it’s a vicious competition, and we all want to win. One feels a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when they know that they ate the smallest amount that day or when they find out that they weigh the least in the group or lost the most weight after going away for the first year of college. No one is immune. Even the people you think already have everything—health, looks, personality—feel that they are lacking something and think that they can be better if they are thinner.
I took it to the extreme. Anorexia became a word that I heard whispered around me and one that I strived to expunge from my vocabulary. I knew what I was. I was aware of the health dangers I was putting myself into. But I didn’t care.
Nothing was more important than fitting into that size zero.
was 5’7” and 105 pounds before anyone suggested that I go to the doctor.
I was waking up at 4:30 a.m., skipping breakfast, attending high school, skipping lunch, and going to drama practice. I was a featured dancer and would dance for two hours after school every day. When I got home at 5:30 p.m., I would grab an apple and jump on the treadmill and run for an hour, then cool down by doing a half-hour of Tae Bo before dinner.
Dinner was unavoidable, as my family was one of the few that still ate together. I served myself the smallest portions possible and avoided any foods I thought held too many calories like rolls, butter, salad dressing, sauces, and cheese.
I can remember standing in front of my parents’ full-length mirror in my running tights and tank top pinching at my hips and the insides of my thighs, which I always thought were too fat. I spent hours spot-training those areas, trying to leg lift away any fat that might be there.
When I laid on my back my hip bones stuck out so far that they left a good inch or two of space between my pants and my stomach. When I stood sideways in front of a mirror my hip bones protruded far past my stomach, which was curved almost concavely into my body.
You could count my ribs, even through my back, where my vertebrate stuck out so far that it was painful to get a massage. My collarbones jutted out to the point that I could wrap my fingers around the bone and touch them together through the skin.
Even when I was finally sent to the doctors at Children’s hospital and I was at my lowest weight, I still couldn’t see it. I looked in the mirror and I saw fat.
Now, looking back at pictures I can see what everyone else did—a walking skeleton. At the time though, all I could think of was where else I needed to lose fat from. I would cover my body with baggy pants and large sweatshirts, partially because I could never get warm, and partially because I felt so fat. I was trying to lose weight so that I could wear cute little outfits and bikinis on the beach but when I was finally small enough to wear them, I was psychologically convinced that I was too fat.
t’s a complicated road that leads one to become anorexic. The drive to become thinner is actually secondary to concerns about control and fears relating to one’s body. The individual continues an endless cycle of restrictive eating to a point close to starvation in order to feel a sense of control over their body. This cycle becomes an obsession, and is similar to a drug or substance addiction. There is something deeper, something more that causes one to starve themselves to the point where they risk death. That’s why anorexia nervosa is considered a psychological disorder.
Anorexia nervosa is characterized by restriction of food intake and a refusal to maintain a minimal normal body weight. Methods that are sometimes used by anorexics include vomiting, laxative abuse, diuretic abuse, insulin abuse, chew-spitting, and excessive exercise.
Any weight gain by an anorexic causes an immense and very real fear in them that they will get fat. In fact, weight loss does not lessen the fear of becoming fat; it actually seems to increase the fear and drive to lose more weight.
While some anorexics understand that they are thin, they still perceive parts of their body as fat. These areas are usually associated with maturity or sexuality including the buttocks, hips, thighs, and breasts. Anorexics will obsessively measure and weigh their bodies, spending a lot of time viewing themselves in the mirror. Other anorexics, no matter how much weight they lose, will still view themselves as fat.
Self-esteem and self worth is directly tied to an anorexic’s body shape and weight. The common conception is that weight gain is viewed as a personal failure and loss of control, while weight loss is considered a success and a sign of self-discipline and life control. This is the mental part of the illness and the true cause of weight loss.
or some anorexics, weight loss is so severe that it can interrupt menstruation. Further medical complications for individuals with anorexia nervosa can be severe and even life threatening. If left untreated, anorexia can be fatal.
According to MedicineNet.com, approximately 95 percent of those affected by anorexia are female, but males can develop the disorder as well. While anorexia typically begins to manifest itself during early adolescence, it is also seen in young children and adults. In the U.S. and other countries with high economic status, it is estimated that about one out of every 100 adolescent girls has the disorder. Caucasians are more often affected than people of other racial backgrounds, and anorexia is more common in middle and upper socioeconomic groups. According to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), an estimated 0.5 to 3.7 percent of women will suffer from the disorder at some point in their lives.
While no definite causes of anorexia have been discovered, experts are examining the demands of society and families as possible causes. While the destructive cycle of anorexia begins with the pressure to be thin and attractive, a poor self-image compounds the problem.
hen the school nurse finally called my parents, they sat me down in the office and talked to me about what I was going through. I remember sitting on the leather couch, so scared that they had finally figured out what I was doing.
I can remember my father trying to convince me that my personality was more important than my physical appearance. “You were always so full of life and spunk. It’s all gone. You just sit there, miserable all the time, never smiling, never joking around. It makes me so sad, and it hurts to see you like that,” he said.?I recently interviewed my parents to get a better idea of how they felt.
“We just tried to let you know how much we loved you,” my mother remembers. “I remember your Dad telling you, ‘People would rather be friends with someone who is fun and a pleasure to be around then someone who’s just skinny.’ He tried to show you that personality mattered more than what was on the outside.”
My mom and dad have been married for 27 years and have three children between the ages of 17 and 22. I’m their middle child and second daughter.
My dad owns a business and my mom does the company’s billing and paperwork. Both work from home and, growing up, my siblings and I always had at least one parent at home.
My mom cooked dinner and we ate as a family every night. She set a good example for us by cooking healthy food and remaining active. Both she and my dad are athletes—my mother finished the Boston marathon along with four other marathons, and my father once cycled the entire Blue Ridge parkway.
“We tried to be good examples for you kids,” my mother remembered, “by showing you how to grow up healthy. It’s still hard to understand why you took such extremes when you knew what you had to do to lose weight healthfully.”
ost individuals with anorexia become obsessed with food and thoughts of food. They think about it constantly and become compulsive about eating rituals. They may collect recipes, cut their food into tiny pieces, prepare elaborate calorie-laden meals for other people, or hoard food.
“Going out to a restaurant usually ended up with you tearing up and sulking in your seat after your salad got messed up and came with something like cheese on it,” my father remembered. “You easily got overwhelmed by little things like that, having to do with food. We just never realized how out of your control it was.”
“I remember all that year getting calls from the nurse to come pick you up because you didn’t feel good and wanted to come home,” my mom recalls. “I think it was mostly exhaustion, headaches, and being cold. I couldn’t really argue with you; your grades were wonderful and you never had any problems in school.”
While control and perfection are critical issues for individuals with anorexia, aspects other than their eating habits are often found to be out of control as well. Many have, or have had at some point in their lives, addictions to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Compulsions involving sex, exercising, housework, and shopping are not uncommon. In particular, people with anorexia often exercise compulsively to speed the weight loss process.
s I sit at my computer I begin to cry. I read article after article about anorexia and in every one I see myself.
My cookbooks are stacked in the corner of my room, my scrapbook filled with recipes lies open on my desk. Page after page filled with recipes for the most decedent chocolate desserts I could find; the one food I feared above all others when I was anorexic.
I remember a time when I would hide peanut butter M&Ms in my closet and obsessively mark my food in the refrigerator.
Exercise balls, yoga mats, medicine balls, and various other workout paraphernalia still litter my floor, enablers I accumulated during my years of struggle for the perfect body.
It’s not that I didn’t know what I was doing; I just never let what I had done to my body sink in. Even now, I realize I’m not truly cured of eating disorders as I read down a list of what to look for in a person suspected of having an unhealthy relationship with food.
I still answer “yes” to every question.
This is a life long struggle. The doctors forget. The psychiatrists move on. Even your family slips up and starts teasing you about your weight. But people don’t just miraculously get over whatever caused them to starve themselves uncontrollably.
I remember at the end of my freshman year of college, I was just finishing my first year of rowing on the light weight varsity crew team, which involved extreme workouts and meticulous observation of what we ate. I had worked myself down to the point that my hip bones were again sticking out of my sides; although this time I had avoided anorexia. I was sitting in the backseat of the mini van on our way home for the summer and I was telling my Dad how I couldn’t wait to actually eat a real meal after living off spinach and egg whites for the past semester. He looked at me and said, “You’re not going to go crazy are you? You’re still going to watch what you’re eating right? You don’t want to go nuts.” That shocked me and brought back the fear of gaining weight all over again. I lost my appetite and even started to think that I would lose more weight just to show him that I knew what I was doing.
But I didn’t. This time I was in control and I had to remember that as long as I was happy and healthy everything was okay. I didn’t need to fulfill the image that someone else had of me anymore.
ealing with anorexia changed my life in all aspects. I discovered my love of baking but also my sugar addiction. I realized that I truly do love running and it’s not just an obsessive tool for weight loss. I also found my future in becoming a dietician and studying food and the effects that it has on our bodies.
I’ve tried to find pictures from the worst part of my anorexia and was surprised to discover they don’t exist. Files of pictures skip from Thanksgiving 2002 right through 2004. Easter 2004 is missing except for one group shot. There is no evidence that Christmas 2003 occurred. It’s strange because I know there must have been pictures. We always take certain traditional shots during holidays. When I asked my mom where the pictures were she just shrugged, “Maybe it was a bad year.”
Anorexia is a complicated and all too common illness. It can be the result of not being satisfied with ourselves and being too concerned with what the rest of the world thinks of us and our bodies. It is important to remember that at the end of the day, when you’re standing in front of the mirror, criticizing yourself for how your butt looks in those jeans, the only person whose opinion truly matters is your own.
And without a mirror you can’t see your butt anyway.
