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News Articles About Eating Disorders
Woman fights anorexia to become mom
All Wendy Christensen ever wanted to be was the best. The best runner. The best daughter. The best anorexic. "If I found out there was a friend down the street who weighed 52 pounds, I'd want to be 50 pounds," said Christensen, who has devoted most of her life to combating anorexia nervosa.
Her biggest motivation to fight the disease now is her 4-month-old daughter, Terika.
The Oregonian News
Monday, April 10, 2000
From The Associated Press
"Now I just want to be a good mom," she said.
But Christensen almost was not able to become a mother because of her low weight. Now 36, Christensen was only 18 when she stopped menstruating.
Doctors said that is common among anorexics because a body without fat cannot produce hormones, which are necessary for normal menstruation.
Christensen began to menstruate again at age 34, when her doctor prescribed artificial hormones.
Motivated to become pregnant, she stopped her compulsive exercise routine and forced herself to eat until she reached the required 105 pounds.
"Today, I'm 99 pounds, but if I'm 100 tomorrow I'll wonder why I gained a pound," she said.
After two rounds of fertility drugs, Christensen discovered she was pregnant with twins.
Her husband, Denny, and her four stepsons were delighted. She credits her husband as the source of her stability.
"Denny's been great to me," Christensen said. "He's so strong, so reliable, and he's always been there for me."
During the first trimester, she miscarried one of the babies.
But her biggest problem was not her fear over the pregnancy, but a lingering anxiety over her weight.
The baby, who arrived Dec. 7, was a healthy 6 pounds, 15 ounces.
Christensen, who put on 24 pounds during pregnancy, worried that her baby was too heavy.
"I wanted a small baby," she said. "People make comments on how cute little babies are. Here I was with a normal-size baby, and I wanted her to be small. To be special. Which is just stupid. The thin part of me wants a thin baby," Christensen said.
Today, Christensen has the bone density of an 80-year-old woman, but she is more aware of her own thinness.
"I can look in the mirror and know I'm not big," she said. "Pictures scare me. It has to stop. I don't want to get any lower."
Britain to Hold 'Thin Summit' on Body Image
Britain is to stage a ``thin summit'' to grapple with the issue of young girls who feel under pressure to keep their weight down in a diet-obsessed society. Up to 200,000 people a year suffer from anorexia in Britain with research showing that most schoolgirls worry constantly about their weight.
Thin may be in, but the government thinks it may also be damaging the nation's mental health.
BBC News, 2000
Women's minister Tessa Jowell is so concerned at the possible link between skinny models and eating disorders that she is holding a summit meeting at Downing Street with the bosses of a top modelling agency and a teenage magazine.
"Women are over-preoccupied by feeling that they don't look right, that they don't meet the standards of thin models in young women's magazines," Ms Jowell told the BBC.
The summit is being held after research showed that more than half the 12- to 15-year-old girls questioned in a study said their appearance was the biggest concern in their lives.
Ms Jowell said she was holding the summit to "bring together all the people who can make a difference, who can begin to challenge some of the assumptions that the only way to be beautiful is to be thin".
One of the country's top model agencies, Storm, will attend the meeting, along with Rebecca Martin, editor of the teen magazine Jump.
Leading feminist writer and therapist Susie Orbach, who wrote the book Fat is a Feminist Issue, will also be there, and representatives of health and campaign groups have also been invited.
" For many, poor body image can lead to low levels of self esteem, for some it is far more dangerous, leading to eating disorders and other forms of self-abuse," Ms Jowell said.
'Larger women'
"I am concerned that girls may not be fulfilling their potential because of their lack of confidence about themselves."
The summit guests may find themselves being encouraged to consider using larger women to promote fashion and health.
Ms Jowell said the government will want to know what further research may be needed on the link between thin models and eating disorders, and may take action.
The Eating Disorders Association, which runs a helpline for victims and their carers, praised the summit, and spokesman Steve Bloomfield told BBC News Online: "Anything that looks at mental health and welfare, particularly where young people concerned, is something that we welcome."
But he says the media should not be held fully responsible when people develop anorexia or bulimia.
"Media images don't cause eating disorders, but if someone is going through an emotionally turbulent time, for example the end of a relationship, it is possible that if they are bombarded with particular images, their thought processes might be influenced," he said.
Those most at risk of developing anorexia are 13-18, while the onset of bulimia usually happens slightly later in life, between the ages of 15 and 25.
The number of male victims has grown, now making up 10% of the total known number of victims, which the association says could be linked to the growth in male fashion and health magazines.
Gay men are particularly at risk in the male population. Twenty per cent of men with eating disorders are homosexual, according to the association's figures.
Storm Model Agency declined to comment about the summit.
Bulimia interventions via interpersonal influence
the role of threat and efficacy in persuading bulimics to seek help.
The causes and medical consequences of bulimia are well established in the literature, yet prevalence rates for bulimia continue to be quite high. Overall, this study confirmed the notion that high levels of both threat and efficacy are necessary to convince bulimic individuals to seek help.
J Behav Med. 2000 Feb;23(1):37-57.
Bulimia interventions via interpersonal influence: the role of threat and efficacy in persuading bulimics to seek help.
Smalec JL, Klingle RS.
University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA.
The causes and medical consequences of bulimia are well established in the literature, yet prevalence rates for bulimia continue to be quite high. Eating disorder books and popular magazines have offered a variety of ways in which individuals can communicatively influence bulimics to seek the help they need to treat their disorder. Unfortunately, many of the recommended influence strategies have been atheoretically derived and sorely lack empirical data affirming their effectiveness. The present study investigates and empirically tests the effectiveness of interpersonal intervention messages aimed at getting bulimic individuals to seek medical help. Several theoretical perspectives, as they relate to messages of threat and efficacy, were used to predict the effects of bulimics' threat and efficacy perceptions on message acceptance and message rejection. A main and positive effect for efficacy was found on message acceptance. A threat by efficacy interaction on message acceptance was partially supported for both cognitive and behavioral message acceptance. The threat by efficacy interaction was not significant for message rejection. Overall, this study confirmed the notion that high levels of both threat and efficacy are necessary to convince bulimic individuals to seek help. These findings can be used to aid concerned individuals in their quest to intervene and to get bulimics to seek out the necessary medical assistance and support.
PMID: 10749010 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Recovering Anorexics Regain Weight Around Their Middle
Anorexia nervosa is a common eating disorder in young women. Now, Japanese researchers say there's an unusual affect that takes place when someone gets better and regains weight – the additional body fat settles in the soft mass of the pelvis and trunk.
This study, reported in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, says when a women is 70 percent below normal weight, the standard body weight (SBW) of the pelvis and trunk is significantly reduced as well as that of the soft mass of the upper and lower extremities. When the weight is regained, however, the SBW of the upper and lower extremities doesn't significantly improve.
In other words, the regained weight goes mostly into the abdominal area. While we don't know why this occurs, it could be because of altered body fat distribution. I'm speculating, but something like this could be caused by yo-yo dieting.
Now, I've told you before how body shape - whether one is an "apple," who gains weight around their abdomen, or a "pear" who gains weight in the hips - can influence one's risk of cardiovascular disease. Apple-shaped people are at greater risk of heart disease, so this finding could have implications for the future health of these young women.
Since most young women develop anorexia nervosa because of how they view their bodies, it's also important for us to figure out how to help them to regain weight in a way that makes them feel good about themselves.
Source: International Journal of Eating Disorders, November 1999 Debilitating Body Image Disorder Often Begins In Teens The Dangerous Dance of Eating Disorders
Teen-agers' concerns with their appearance should not be dismissed lightly. The image obsession known as body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) typically begins in young people and left untreated may lead to impairment in functioning and even to suicide attempts, according to a new study by Brown University researchers. In an analysis of 33 children and adolescents diagnosed with BDD, 94 percent reported impairment in social functioning; 39 percent had been hospitalized; and 21 percent had attempted suicide. A specific class of antidepressants - serotonin reuptake inhibitors - proved effective in reducing the BDD symptoms for 53 percent of the participants who took them.
The churning of her stomach was a good kind of pain, like the fire in her calf muscles after a vigorous workout. She was stronger than hunger, it told her, stronger than everyone else who needed food. ``Emotionally, you are on top of the world at that point in time,'' Caroline Winkler says.
DAYTON, Ohio -- The churning of her stomach was a good kind of pain, like the fire in her calf muscles after a vigorous workout. She was stronger than hunger, it told her, stronger than everyone else who needed food.
``Emotionally, you are on top of the world at that point in time,'' Caroline Winkler says.
The only time she felt better was when she was dancing. She loved everything about ballet the crowds, the applause, the flowers on stage, but most of all the pride of performing. Winkler the dancer was not an insecure teen-ager but a successful entertainer.
They went together like tights and a tutu, the dancing and fasting. It was obvious to her that the dancing helped keep her thin and her carrot-stick figure helped her dancing. ``You're told the costumes aren't made to fit you,'' she says. ``You're made to fit them.''
How was she supposed to know that her dedication to sleekness would jeopardize her dance career? She's only 19. How could she be on the brink of osteoporosis, with less bone density than her grandmother?
That's what they told her earlier this year when she left her Centerville home for 17 days in a clinic for eating disorders. Doctors said the intense exercise of dancing is out, for at least a year. They also told her it wasn't such a great accomplishment after all when she weighed as little as 90 pounds at 5 feet 6 inches.
``Dance is my life,'' Winkler said before leaving the Renfrew Center, a Philadelphia women's mental health center specializing in eating disorders. ``It's what I love. It's my passion. Knowing what I've done to myself, that I took my dream away and I'm my own worst enemy, is very scary. I basically shattered my dreams right before my eyes.''
Now on medical leave from Dayton Ballet's second company, Winkler sees a new dream dawning even beyond the formidable task of beating bulimia and anorexia nervosa after six years. She wants to help others recover from eating disorders, preferably without the panic attacks, bald spots, sleepless nights and shriveled bowel that she has endured. ``I want to go around to high schools and talk,'' she says, and she's establishing a foundation to help people pay for the expensive treatment that health plans rarely cover.
The mistake people make in trying to reach those who have eating disorders is in assuming they think and reason the same way as the rest of us. For one thing, says Winkler, people think the problem is food when food is only a means for coping with the real problems. Her story is a rare insight into the thought processes behind anorexia and bulimia.
Winkler believed she had to be perfect. Her older sister's a med student, her mother owns a dancewear store, her father owns an accounting firm and she's what? A dancer? ``I always felt that I was a failure. I love my family to death, but I just felt I couldn't compare to them.''
The best thing about her eating disorder was it insulated her from those feelings. She didn't realize it at the time, of course, but anorexia subconsciously relieved her from feeling anything. ``You don't have time for feelings. You're consumed with thinking about food.''
If someone insulted or slighted her, she didn't have to respond. She could just deny herself another meal, or maybe think about the dry salad she would eat for lunch, focus all her attention on the smell and the taste and the texture.
``A mask,'' she calls her eating disorder. It hid all her problems, not just from herself but from everyone else. Nobody was going to say, ``Caroline, you really shouldn't be so hard on yourself'' or, ``Caroline, why can't you be more assertive?'' To her friends and family, her dwindling body was so obvious that they couldn't possibly notice any other problems.
Eating disorders affect about 8 million Americans, including 1 million boys and men, according to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, which include compulsive and binge eating as well as bulimia. Between 3 percent and 9 percent of them will die, depending on the estimate, making the disorders more deadly than drug addiction.
``It's definitely not something just dancers get,'' says Kara Fowler, a registered dietitian in Cincinnati who is Winkler's nutritional therapist. Sure, it's more common among dancers, models, gymnasts, wrestlers fields driven by appearance and also among chefs and dietitians. But eating disorders ``happen across all age groups, in all types of fields,'' Fowler says.
For Winkler, dancing was another shield from those depressing human flaws. Whatever she did in school or elsewhere, she was a great anorexic and a great dancer. ``Dancers don't need to know anything,'' she told herself. ``Except how to stand on their toes.''
Dancing added the benefit of letting her be somebody else. Even if she didn't deserve much attention and applause the rest of the time, she always got it when she took the stage. She knew she deserved it there, too. She liked Caroline the dancer, and so did everyone else.
``You're so pretty,'' people would tell her. ``You have a great body. I can tell you're a dancer.'' That became her identity, thin and a dancer, ``and that's what I loved.''
Not that she necessarily agreed about being pretty. Even when Winkler weighed 105 pounds, wearing size 1 or children's clothing, she couldn't bear the sight of that blob in the mirror. ``I don't see bones. I see fat all over my body,'' she says even now at 114 pounds.
``My stomach was flat, but never flat enough. My hip bones stuck out. It still wasn't flat enough.''
Her stomach, her thighs, her rear end, ``even my face is too fat.'' She can accept the muscular calves and biceps from dancing, but her ankles? ``Way too big for me.'' So are her fingers. Her wrists, as her weight creeps up, ``are getting a little big, too.''
Worst of all is her lower back. She can't see her ribs there anymore. ``It's so scary.''
Winkler went on her first diet at 13, the age her caretakers mark as the beginning of her eating disorder. She threw up her first meal on purpose at 16. She'll never forget what her dance instructor told the class that day. The guest choreographer had told them to take a break, but when the teacher came back to the studio, she hollered, ``Get up off your fat, lazy, Centerville-snobby asses.''
The instructor was right, Winkler told herself. ``I am fat and lazy. I probably need to start losing weight.'' She threw up her dinner that night, and soon she was taking diet pills and laxatives.
She still ate McDonald's and pizza with the rest of the kids. ``I would just get rid of it.'' Eventually all she had to do was go to the restroom and bend over, without even sticking her finger down her throat.
``I usually kept about one meal a day and maybe a snack down,'' she says.
Sometimes she couldn't sneak off by herself, but that's why she carried laxatives in her purse. ``I popped three or four of those puppies in and the same thing happened.''
This bulimic routine was not painless, Winkler says. Her esophagus hurt almost constantly, and the retching tortured her stomach.
``Almost every time I threw up, I threw up blood,'' she says. ``But it didn't matter what I did to my body.'' Anything she did to stay thin was worth it.
Winkler's fear of gaining weight rarely loosened its choke hold from that first bulimic night at 16. ``That would have been, as I saw it, killing myself,'' she says. Not literally. She never was suicidal. But if anything ever kept her from dancing, that would be ``killing my identity.''
It could happen, she was sure. She had seen other dancers put on probation for gaining weight, and she never lacked for weight-loss techniques. Among dancers, she says, calories, carbohydrates and resisted cravings are standard shop talk.
Winkler's fear was scarred into her mind like gasoline spilled on the lawn by the time she earned a spot with Dayton Ballet II, the amateur apprentice troupe. Freshly graduated from Centerville High School in 1997, she made her career choice expecting to hear even more emphasis on weight. She was surprised to hear the instructors there talk about better conditioning instead of less weight.
``Our issue is fitness, not thinness,'' says Dermot Burke, Dayton Ballet's executive director. These are high-performance athletes, he says, and they can't function any better on an empty stomach than pro football players.
From Burke's perspective, that's the attitude at most elite dance companies. He thinks dance directors are probably more sensitive to eating disorders than other athletic instructors because anorexia and bulimia have been so closely associated with dance. They're learning to say, ``You're out of shape,'' for example, instead of ``You're fat.''
But that enlightenment hasn't necessarily trickled down to youth instructors, he acknowledges, and they're at the level where dancers ``start to equate goodness with thinness.'' Then when a young dancer starts wasting away, even the most loving friends and family members don't quite know how to bring up the skeleton in the living room. Most of the time, Burke says they don't allow themselves to see it.
Winkler's mother, Susan, missed the signs for the longest time even though she had experienced mild anorexia in her dancing days. Looking back, she can't believe the conversation she once had with a friend of hers as they watched their daughters practice. They were talking about other girls on weight probation, and they decided their daughters had ``just figured out how to lose weight.''
Not long before she graduated, Winkler told her sister, Valerie, about the bulimia. She must have wanted to quit throwing up, she says now. She even kept the appointments with her school counselor and the Undereaters Anonymous group that Valerie made for her, even though she knew her bulimia problems were over.
``I decided I just wouldn't eat,'' she says.
That summer, a trip to the dentist clinched her decision. She had 25 cavities in 11 teeth from all the stomach acid she had thrown up.
But anorexia was harder to hide from her friends and family. She couldn't go out to dinner and order coffee with a parsley sprig. ``I didn't want people to know,'' she says. They just would have nagged her about eating.
So when she moved into an apartment two summers ago, she went back to bulimia. Not until March 1998, when she returned to her parents' house after foot surgery, did she settle on anorexia exclusively.
The high was what hooked her on anorexia, a light-headed feeling like an exercise high. She'd feel intensely hungry about four times a day, but the pangs would leave after 10 minutes and the high would last for two or three hours. ``But after a while, I had no hunger, and I still had the highs.''
She ate enough, she figured. She had lots of light yogurt and fruit, especially apples and cantaloupe. She knew anorexics died of potassium depletion, so she ate a banana every day. She had the impression it burned 100 calories to digest an 80-calorie egg, so that was her protein source.
``I wanted to protect my muscles,'' she says. But carbohydrates, starches, dairy products besides light yogurt? Not a chance. After a few months, she always knew how many calories were in her body. She could figure it out in her head.
She suppressed her hunger every day with six gallons of water. She supplemented that with the diuretics in caffeinated Diet Coke and coffee.
When she came home and her parents offered a meal, she would say she had eaten out. ``I lied a lot,'' she says.
She also shopped a lot, oddly. She'd come home with bags of groceries, but she gave them all away. Or she baked. Cookies, pies, cakes, and she always told people she had sampled them while she was cooking.
``The way I satisfied myself was watching them eat, and asking, `What does that taste like? Is it good? Describe it to me.'''
She volunteered to make the lunch runs for her co-workers, and she usually brought everyone back something extra. That was satisfying, too. ``I was stronger than they were,'' she says. ``They were weak. They ate that cookie.''
So it wasn't that Winkler didn't care about food. ``It's all I thought about,'' she says.
She dreamed about the half a cantaloupe she would gorge on for breakfast. Where others express their emotions by singing or painting or writing poetry, she obsessed about the food she would not eat.
Winkler's parents were alarmed about her weight even before she went to Puerto Rico on a dance tour last June and July. They had argued about her lack of eating. She was down to 105 pounds.
Looking back, Susan says the biggest mistake she made was trying to deal with it herself. She had been through anorexia, both her own and her brother's. She knew what to do. She'd cook Caroline's favorite meals, she'd sit with her at the table, as long as it took, giving her moral support through the meal.
It didn't help. All Caroline ate was fruit, dry English muffins, unbuttered corn, salmon and crab legs, and not a lot of those.
``We lost real precious time before we got professional help,'' Susan says.
At least Caroline was traveling with her private dance instructor, another recovering anorexic. The coach assured Susan she'd help Caroline gain weight in Puerto Rico. But when she came off the plane in Dayton, Susan knew right away Caroline had lost more weight.
``Her upper arms were so small I could pretty much put my fingers around them,'' Susan says. ``Her legs were tiny and fragile.''
Caroline started spending seven hours a day at the gym and dance studio. She had a chance to get her body fat measured and it was 8 percent. Normal for a healthy female is 18 percent to 24 percent, says Fowler, the dietician at Nutrition Access. Anything below 14 percent is considered dangerously low.
``I thought it was so cool,'' Caroline says.
Her parents felt helpless. ``We didn't know where to turn,'' Susan says, and they couldn't stop wondering what they had done to cause this horror for their daughter, ``what you've said in the past. Did you make comments that she needed to lose weight? What was going to happen to her? It was awful.''
Beautiful women at greater risk for eating disorders
Women who are physically more attractive than their peers are also more likely to be preoccupied with their weight, putting them at increased risk for eating disorders, according to results of a new study. "These findings provide the first evidence of physical beauty as a risk for disordered eating," report researchers led by Dr. Caroline Davis.
Children aware of dieting, body image
This time of year, the air is filled with New Year's resolutions about losing weight. A good idea for many adults -- but a new study reports a disturbing finding: Children as young as 8 are reporting dissatisfaction with their weight. Researchers found that half of 8- to 11-year-old US children surveyed wanted to weigh less. Although few had actually tried to lose weight, the team concludes that children are learning about body image and dieting from their parents, and from advertising on television and other media sources.
Fear of Being Fat
I remember my first time. It was during the beginning of my sophomore year at the University of Maryland. We had been drinking and it had gotten late, so we stopped to get fast food just off campus and took it back to the dorm.
By Amrit Dhillon
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, April 12, 1999;
I remember my first time. It was during the beginning of my sophomore year at the University of Maryland. We had been drinking and it had gotten late, so we stopped to get fast food just off campus and took it back to the dorm.
As we sat in one of the lounges on the south side of the building, I looked at the remnants of food scattered around us, the grease stains on the paper wrappers and the bits of shredded cheddar cheese that had fallen to the ground. Although I had eaten just one chicken fajita and a small bag of nachos, I felt like I had gained weight immediately. I didn't want that food inside of me. So I walked across the hall to the bathroom and made myself throw up.
I laughed about it to my friend still sitting in the lounge, who had consumed exactly what I did. But then I started doing it regularly, purging myself of whatever I had eaten that day, usually carrots or pretzels or cold broccoli from the salad bar. Three months later, it was not funny anymore, but I didn't think I had a problem. Every now and then the word bulimia would creep into my head, but I felt ridiculous for even thinking it was that serious; after all, by no means did I look skinny or malnourished, the way people with eating disorders were supposed to look.
I had been a big girl growing up, taller than everyone until eighth grade and heavy, too. In high school, a lot of the fat turned into muscle because of sports, but I thought I was still overweight. It never seemed unusual to be preoccupied with my size or what I ate or how much I exercised. Wasn't that what girls were supposed to do?
In high school I counted calories to the point where I had memorized the nutrition labels on many foods. I would spend hours working out at the gym after lacrosse or soccer practice. Still, I didn't think there was anything wrong. I was a 5-foot, 5-inch, 130-pound muscular girl, so what harm could watching what I ate and exercising do?
My freshman year of college I gained 15 pounds, so it was obvious excessive weight loss wasn't my problem. When I went home for winter break I began exercising and lost most of the extra pounds. I was back to being healthy.
I'm not sure what happened my sophomore year. Nothing consciously changed; I purged what little I ate but still thought I was fine.But friends would ask if anything was wrong when they noticed that I had become withdrawn. I would sit in a corner at a party – an onlooker. That was not like me.
During high school, I had watched a friend deal with anorexia nervosa. She was the kind of thin where people don't find you attractive anymore. The veins stick out of your neck and your skin always has a pale blue tinge. But I never looked like that. I thought I was fine.
That Friday night in September, the first night I leaned over a cold porcelain toilet in a dark dormitory bathroom, the first night I was literally and figuratively sick about the way I looked, everything changed.
I became preoccupied with weight and anything related to it. Imagine spending every other minute thinking about the last thing you ate, or how many calories the Stairmaster said you burned, or if a roll of fat could be seen beneath your sweater. It makes time stand still. My head felt heavy and actually hurt from thinking and analyzing my body so much.
My notebooks were covered in calculations of various calorie combinations. I couldn't concentrate and by the end of the semester my grade average had dropped by an entire point. Each time I went out of the dorm I stared into space; friends kept asking if I was okay. I still didn't think I had a problem.
I lived in my own room on the fourth floor of a high-rise dormitory. The other girls on my floor were nice, but there was always one of them around who might hear any sounds coming from the large bathroom down the hall we all shared. Unfortunately, I also knew most of the people who lived on the fifth floor, so that bathroom was off-limits, too. After eating a piece of bread or a handful of pretzels, I'd run up two flights of stairs and hope there wasn't anybody in the sixth-floor bathroom. If there was, I'd try the seventh floor, and then the eighth. Sometimes the halls were so busy it was easier to lock my door, turn up the stereo and improvise by using a plastic bag.
By the winter break, I had become tired of living on campus and moved home. Although I get along well with my parents and my brother, I have always been an independent person, never letting them into my head. I make my decisions, motivate myself. I also keep all the painful things inside. I am very manipulative (words of my mother!) and people don't know what I don't want them to know about me.
I was in a period of withdrawal when I came home to live, and my parents were concerned. My father wondered why I was spending so much time in my room.
My mother finally made me go to our family physician, who diagnosed me with bulimia nervosa and referred me to a therapist. I wasn't surprised. No matter how much I denied to myself and others that there was a problem, I knew I was bulimic. I was reluctant to seek therapy, but agreed when I saw my mother cry over my mood changes.
The specialist recommended extensive treatment. But she was abrasive so I stopped going to her. My mom found out, but she said nothing. My parents realize they are unable to get me to do anything I don't want to do.
With my family at work or school all day I had the house to myself during the break. The clinical definition of bulimia nervosa says one must purge at least twice a week. I did it three times a day.
I had never regularly binged and purged while at school. I sustained myself with pretzels or carrots or other vegetables and purged whenever I had a moment of weakness. It was different at home; there was a kitchen full of food. I couldn't eat fast enough, my heart pounding. It beat with the same intensity as I attempted to rid my system of everything I'd just consumed.
Sometimes it would be late at night and my parents would be sleeping. I'd gorge myself with chips, leftover pizza, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was like I couldn't chew fast enough. Then I'd go into the garage and line a paper grocery bag with a plastic one and use that as my toilet. I'd hide the bag until I could dispose of it.
I began to cry a lot.
It's difficult to gauge moodiness, one of the symptoms of an eating disorder, but even I knew my emotions were fluctuating more than usual. The slightest thing would set me off. One day, reading a magazine while riding a recumbent bike at the gym, I came across one woman's story about her battle with bulimia. I couldn't hold back the tears, so I sat there crying in the middle of a crowded room, legs spinning around on the bike.
I continued to spend hours at the gym, riding the Stairmaster up and down until the three little beeps finally signaled the end of an hour, or running laps around the small wooden track, but I still thought I was fat. I went to get my nails done one afternoon in January and couldn't believe how big and round my fingers appeared. It made me sick to look in a mirror, but that was all I wanted to do.
One day, my mom threatened to remove all mirrors from the house. But it wouldn't have mattered because I could still see my reflection in the microwave, the sliding glass door, or in the dark screen of the television. I don't know what I spent more time doing, staring at myself and obsessing over every inch of my body, or standing on a scale measuring each weight fluctuation.
The therapist had explained that bulimics don't lose weight, they just jeopardize their health. This explained why I wasn't skinny, why I didn't look like all those girls in the magazines. I thought the fact that I was doing this to lose weight and had failed would make me stop bingeing and purging, but it didn't.
I'm now 21 and am about to graduate from college. I live in apartment at school, but spend a lot of time at home. I am still caught in the cycle of bingeing and purging and avoiding treatment.
I also continue to exercise compulsively. I'm frustrated and irritable if I don't. I've also used diet pills, but they were expensive and I stopped. I can't say I'm happy with the way I look and I wonder if I will ever be completely satisfied.
I'm lucky because I don't believe I've caused my body irreparable harm. I passed a recent physical and have no obvious health problems. My family doctor and the therapist probably wouldn't agree, but I have come a long way. My thoughts about food and my body are more rational today, and I don't binge and purge as regularly. I can go a month or so without doing it.
My throat hurts a lot, my nose always runs and my stomach can't digest what would be normal amounts of food for others.
I've come to realize that an eating disorder is like being caught in a hunter's trap. You know you're stuck, but you can't get out of it. I know it won't go away. Maybe it is time to return to the therapist.
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
What is Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS)?
PWS is a complex genetic disorder. People with PWS have a flaw in the hypothalamus part of their brain, which normally registers feelings of hunger and satiety. While the problem is not yet fully understood, it is apparent that people with this flaw never feel full; they have a continuous urge to eat that they cannot learn to control.
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