In honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week I feel obligated to share a portion of my own story. While every eating disorder looks different, here are some glimpses into mine. I’ll set out a trigger warning here, but I promise not to go into the details of my illness because I refuse to allow my story to become a training manual for other people to hurt themselves in the same way I did.
When I was fourteen I decided the only way to get people to like me was to lose weight. It happened quickly, a whirlwind cliche of calories and laxatives and far too much exercise. I was starting high school in a school filled with models and television personalities and as much as I wanted to fit in, I knew I didn’t. I was that girl in the corner with baby fat that accidentally stuck around past middle school. I was the girl who wore the baggy shirts, the girl who avoided spaghetti straps. I was the funny one, the one people came to for advice, but I was never the one that anyone came to for anything more than a joke and a hug.
I grew up in Los Angeles, the world’s capital of diet trends and juice cleanses. The culture I grew up in was, at times, the stereotype. Kids who got fake IDs and walked to sketchy markets by school where people didn’t card for cigarettes. People snuck cocaine and liquor in their backpacks at school, got high in bathrooms. People became famous in high school, scouted by talent agencies. Parents were billionaires and kids wore Chanel and Tiffany like most middle schoolers wore ring pops and candy necklaces.
This was a feeding ground for an eating disorder. Girls with thighs you could wrap your fingers around, all skin and bone and money. I had an eating disorder trigger branded on me since birth.
Your daughter comes home and asks if she’s fat. You say no and ask who said that to her. She says no one, she’s just wondering. You turn it over to your wife because you don’t know how to respond. She tells her she’s not, but she’s not entirely convinced.
I hit my growth spurts early in life, growing six inches in one year between three and four. By second grade I was heads taller than my friends. I remember going in for a routine check up and the doctors asking what I’d been eating. Apparently, I was in a higher percentile than was considered healthy, and they wanted to see how my diet and exercise matched up to this. Admittedly I didn’t play any sports and thought of exercise as more of a hell than a viable activity. But I ate well. I ate everything that was offered to me. My first solid food was smoked marlin, for Christ’s sake I wasn’t one of those kids who would only eat white bread and potato chips. I ate vegetables like candy and would ask for more fruit to go with my meals. I ate better than most of my friends who, at the time, stuck to diets of chocolate milk and white pasta with butter. I didn’t understand why the doctor told me I was unhealthy.
When I got to school the next day I told my friend that the doctor said I needed to lose weight. She thought this was funny, as her doctor had just told her she needed to gain weight. We decided to make a plan so that I could lose weight and she could gain weight. She had to eat all the food in my lunchbox and I wasn’t allowed to eat any. I had to run around a lot at recess while she was supposed to sit very still and coach me through the running. We were a team working towards opposite goals.
At this point in my life, I’d never been told I was fat before. But I got used to it very quickly, whether or not people were saying it directly to me. I took on my role of the fat friend wholeheartedly and never really questioned it. There weren’t any outside factors telling me I was particularly overweight. I figured it out for myself. It wasn’t the stereotypical childish bullying or the media’s portrayal of women. At the time the leading stars of Disney media were Raven Simone and Hillary Duff. They weren’t any skinnier than I was. It was just the nature of things, and I thought that fat was in my nature.
Eating disorders can come out of nowhere, or they can build up over time. Even though I consider myself to be in recovery at this point, there are elements of my illness that are hard to shake. I could still tell you the calories of an apple, a pear, an almond. I’m still afraid to workout because exercise bulimia trained me into measuring my worth on how many more calories I could burn without passing out. I still have days where eating feels like a punishment instead of a human necessity. I still believe that every man I’ve ever been with has moved onto someone skinnier after they were done with me, whether or not that’s the truth. But I’m trying to move past it, move into the light of recovery and all that is good on this road. It’s a long road ahead, but the only other outcome is fatal.
Eating disorders are not glamorous. There’s no beauty in starvation and while the romanticized Hollywood picture of sickly thin starlights may look different, I can promise that the reality of the situation is far from attractive. Eating disorders can lead to a reduction of bonds density, hair loss, abnormally slow heart rate and blood pressure (and therefore increased risk of heart failure), severe dehydration, kidney failure, fatigue, fainting, and the growth of a downy layer of hair that coats all the skin in an attempt to warm the body. In the case of bulimia, one could also develop electrolyte imbalances, tooth decay, potential gastric rupture, peptic ulcers, and pancreatitis. And that isn’t even the half of it. Eating disorders are ugly. They are an illness, not something to be romanticized or looked up to.
I’m not the only one of my friends to have an eating disorder. In fact, most of us have had one. The girls I’m still in contact with from Los Angeles treat food like a gift and stay away from anything that’s too calorie dense. The ones from boarding school talk about their past treatments, their past illnesses. And when you compare this to the national statistics, the numbers make sense.
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, at least thirty million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder in the United States. 1.5% of American women suffer from bulimia nervosa in their lifetime, followed by 0.9% of American women suffering from anorexia nervosa. In addition to that, it’s important to recognize that eating disorders are not a feminine illness. Due to the stigma surrounding men’s health, the numbers for men with eating disorders are much more varied and inaccurate, but the prevalence of poor body image and disordered eating is just as prevalent in the male and gender nonconforming population as it is in females. Men can develop an eating disorder just as easily as anyone else, and it will be just as lethal.
Eating disorders have the widest mortality rate of any mental illness. Say that to yourself one more time. The highest mortality rate of any mental illness. While not always a direct result of the starvation, one in five anorexia deaths are by suicide. And while their prevalence is higher than that of Schizophrenia, Autism, and Alzheimer’s Disease combined they still receive little to no funding for research. In fact, while the 2011 average research dollars spent on those suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease was about $88 per person, those struggling with an eating disorder only saw $0.93.
Eating disorders are illnesses that are taking far too many lives too quickly. In honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, let’s allow for them to find a space in our dialogue. Reach out to those who are struggling. Make a donation to an organization that helps to treat eating disorders. And most importantly, take care of yourself.
If you think you or someone you know might be struggling with an eating disorder, check out this website to learn more. And if you need more help, the number for the National Eating Disorder Association Hotline is 1-800-931-2237.
