Most of us are familiar with the concepts of eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. But to truly understand these disorders, it is crucial to understand the psychology of what goes on underneath. Anorexia is the ongoing act of self starvation to reach an ideal body image; one the sufferer will never reach. The reason those who suffer from eating disorders go to such dangerous lengths to lose a few extra pounds is because they truly believe it’s necessary.
We have all at some point experienced a version of body dysmorphia, becoming fixated on one minuscule flaw to the point where it becomes an overwhelming insecurity. Whether it be a pimple or the shape of your nose, this is something we can all relate to. Body Dysmorphia is a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, where the person sees themselves in a way that is distorted by their state of mental health. They become fixated on one or more flaws and it becomes all they see in the mirror, whether it be accurate or not. Not only do those suffering from anorexia experience this, but it is common in many body builders or weight lifters who believe they are not, “big enough”. This is what makes reaching out for help or recovery so hard. Every time the mirror shows you a distorted reflection, one where you are so convinced by what you’re seeing with your own eyes that the concerned comments from family and friends sound like lies.
Before I understood BMI’s, how many calories should be consumed in a day, or what an eating disorder was, I too was guilty of this mentality. After eating a meal, a size that would be considered a normal serving size to anyone else, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. I felt my love handles triple in size with every bite I took but I had to fight the urge to stop so people wouldn’t worry. When I was in eighth grade I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, it became part of my identity, and is still something I live with today.
Four years ago I weighed 90 pounds with my five foot six height. But when I looked in the mirror I was horrified with my appearance. I saw how my stomach bulged, and my thighs protruded in all directions. I was so embarrassed that I would refuse to go out with friends and ran on the treadmill I had in my room instead. Running ten miles a day and subsisting on celery and an occasional Jello cup, my friends and teachers began to take notice.
As a dancer, I was required to wear tight fit clothes such as leotards and spanks. My bony ribs poked through the fabric, and my face was noticeably thinner. Since I only wore baggy clothes to school to hide what I believed was my morbidly obese body, this is when people took notice to how small I had actually become. But the more people commented on my weight loss, the more weight I wanted to lose. I myself was not seeing the change. No matter how much weight I lost I only saw what I needed to lose. I needed others as a reference to how I actually looked; even though most of the time I believed they were overreacting.
As my other mental illnesses began to worsen, so did my disorder. I turned to more extreme measures to lose weight. I would starve myself for days at a time, subsisting on only water, going thirteen days without food the month I turned 15 would be my biggest accomplishment.
One year later I hit a wall with my weight loss. This is when I turned to drugs. First, it was Vicodin: taking multiple throughout the day at school so I would have no appetite or feel the body aches from the starvation. Then I was prescribed a medication, which I later discovered would make me throw up anything I ate. Since I had no gag reflex, bulimia had not been an option for me before this, but I admit I abused the medication that was intended to help me, to feed my self-destructive habit. This continued until my little sister began to mimic my habits and began to adapt my way of thinking. Not wanting her to follow in my path I made a drastic change and sought help.
Fast forward to my senior year of high school, I become an advocate for fighting anorexia as my platform for Miss California. Instead of eating less, I exercised more. I took on friends who struggled with the same illness and made a diet plan, cooked for them, and would train them at the gym. I went around to schools and discussed healthy eating and what an eating disorder was, but as the image of a successful recovery story, I couldn’t admit that I still had not fully recovered. All I had been addressing at that point was my eating disorder, not the fact that what I was seeing was still skewed from reality. My happiness and self-confidence were directly related to how much I ate that day and still is.
Though technically I have recovered from my disorder, the mentality is still there. I still struggle putting on shorts in the summer-- it takes all the courage I have. I still struggle to go out in public if I eat more than 600 calories that day and I still have trouble looking in the mirror, often having to do my makeup in my phone reflection. But the one thing I have accomplished is to accept that I am insecure and I am damaged. This does not stop me from being happy or doing things everyone else can. My disorder doesn’t make me weak. Instead, it pushes me every day to improve myself in other ways than my appearance so I can have something else to be proud of.
The lack of understanding of mental disorders is a much larger topic of discussion. Eating disorders having the highest mortality rate of any mental illness and even more living with body dysmorphia. This is clearly something that needs more awareness. Even with the rise of body acceptance campaigns the statistics are alarming. To help those suffering from these disorders we must understand what they are experiencing. They live in a different world where the truth is irrelevant and their insecurity is the only reality that matters. I have much more to fix for myself, but I hope my experience can show others that recovery is possible; that it's not something that will happen overnight and will be something you will have to overpower every single day. It will be hard, and sometimes you'll break and fall back into your old habits. But what is important is that you continue to try for those who care for you and know that you are much stronger than the voices telling you, you aren't good enough.
