I was recently enjoying a whole-wheat bagel with peanut butter at Einstein’s Bagels in Boston University when I overheard the following exchange between two young women:
Girl 1: “Did you see Stacy* at the party last night?”
Girl 2: “Yes! She looks anorexic!”
Girl 1: “Oh my god. I know, she looks so good. I wonder how she did it.”
Girl 2: “I asked her; she said she only eats one meal a day. I’m so jealous, I don’t know if I could do that.”
Girl 1: “I know. But she looks amazing…”
Surprisingly, there was no tone of irony or sarcasm in either of the girls’ voices—only the simple yet frightening revelation of these young women’s mentality towards body image. They couldn’t have expressed it more clearly; these two college-educated women were admiring and aspiring to have the body of an anorexic girl.
Having witnessed their exchange, I began to wonder how these two young women—and many women around the country—could be willing to trade their bodies with someone who has an eating disorder. Has our society become so demoralized that physical appearance preponderates over personality, intelligence, spiritual substance and even health?
“College is such an exciting yet scary time,” said Marci Anderson, R.D., a nutritionist and eating disorder specialist who has a private practice in Cambridge, MA. “As young adults we often leave behind what is familiar at home and try to figure [out] who we are and what we want. The instant freedom, lack of structure, increase in stress, and cultural expectations for thinness—you have a primed opportunity for disordered eating and disordered thoughts to blossom into full blown eating disorders.”
Amy*, a junior at the University of Iowa, developed an eating disorder during her freshman year of college. “I’ve always been a bigger girl,” she said. “My father’s side of the family is very big and broad and I unfortunately inherited that. My friends have always been lean and slender and I’ve just had a more curvy body. I know I should be proud and embrace that, since ‘real men love curves and real women have curves’, but it was hard. In high school my friends would swap and share clothes and dresses for homecoming and turnabout. I never could because I couldn’t fit my hips into their size six dresses, and [my friends would] swim in my clothes.”
Once in college, Amy yearned to be able to share clothes with her new roommate and the other girls on her floor; but because she was built differently, Amy had to settle for her own outfits.
“[College] was a fresh start; I was excited,” said Amy. “But sure enough, all the girls on my floor were tall, skinny, and slender—and I envied them.” Furthermore, she began dating a guy who would complain about being fat himself, which only increased Amy’s anxiety about her own weight. “This kid literally weighed only five pounds more than I did,” she said, “I felt so insecure.” Which is why Amy began a rigorous exercise routine and restrictive diet, yet she still couldn’t attain the weight loss results she wanted.
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At this point, Amy decided to take more extreme measures: “I remembered my friend in high school talking about bulimia, and I went on some ‘pro-mia’ sites to get pointers,” she said. “I had my own bathroom in my apartment; so after every meal, I would go and purge what I ate. There were some meals I would keep down, but I would make those small meals for fear of gaining weight. I ate so I wouldn’t pass out and freak everyone out.”
According to Anderson, women don’t develop eating disorders with the intention of causing harm to themselves, but rather as a subconscious attempt to protect themselves. “However, the need for control around weight may in fact impede a person’s ability to get better,” said Anderson, “So yes, in some cases the perceived benefits of weight loss may trump the risks of the condition.”
Which was the case for Elizabeth*, a student at Western Michigan University. “I was fascinated by the fact that I could be the skinniest, hottest b**** around,” she said. “I lived off of coffee, Tums, apples and water. Water was my best friend. After a couple of weeks, I couldn’t eat; I had no appetite and food disgusted me. I was smoking way too [many] cigarettes and I would lie to everybody about my eating habits. I’d say I had already had lunch, when in reality I was at Starbucks getting a Venti dark roast,” she said.
In a national survey conducted by Self magazine in 2008, sixty-five percent of the 4,000 women ages 25 to 45 who responded to the survey were identified as disordered eaters and ten percent were found to have an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia—which makes you wonder what the numbers would be if the survey were conducted with women in college.
The Department of Psychology at the University of Alabama in Birmingham published a press release in which Associate Professor of Psychology Mary Boggiano, Ph.D., explained, “To keep from gaining weight, some [college] students engage in risky behaviors such as excessive dieting or purging food. In many cases, people learn about the risky behaviors from other students in their dorm or over the Internet, so that obsession about weight can become infectious.”
Case in point: Elizabeth, who would watch “thinspiration” videos online every morning to remain motivated in her goal to lose weight. “I did it for attention,” said Elizabeth, “I wanted people to notice me.”
Never mind the social and academic stress that are integral aspects of the college experience; add to those factors the “infectious” obsession with weight and body image that pervades amongst college women, and you have the fundamental ingredients for an eating disorder.
“I weigh myself every morning,” said Amy. “If a see my numbers go up I freak out and eat one meal that day and puke it up. I run in the mornings and go to the gym at nights. I avoid mirrors—especially when I am in my bathroom to shower, in my bikini, or in my room when I am changing. I hate seeing myself because then I scrutinize what I am and what I am not.”
According to statistics published on aplaceofhope.com—the website for a treatment center in Washington state—ninety-one percent of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting, and twenty-two percent had dieted “often” or “always”.
“I think college definitely played [a role] with the eating disorder,” said Amy. “I see all these skinny girls at the bars wearing nothing walking around—I envy that. And at college, everyone is too busy wrapped up in school or their own things to notice that I have this disorder. My parents aren’t around to ask me questions,” she said.
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With all the (often skewed) information bestowed upon us by our peers and the popular media regarding the “appropriate” number of calories we should consume; the “optimal” Body-Mass Index; the “necessary” amount of exercise we must perform each week—you name it—where do we draw the line between following a healthy lifestyle and having a disordered mentality and behavior?
This has been an ongoing debate in the world of eating disorder experts, where some advocate incorporating the term “orthorexia nervosa” into the medical manuals, while others claim that the term is too broad. Time magazine defines orthorexia as being “characterized by an obsession with avoiding foods perceived to be unhealthy.” Cynthia Bulik, the director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, told Time that orthorexia should not be introduced into the medical manuals, as it could be connected to an anxiety disorder or be a precursor to a more commonly diagnosed condition.
Marci Anderson, R.D., on the other hand, is one of the experts who consider orthorexia to be a real and serious condition. “[Orthorexia] is a true disorder that affects both the physical and emotional health of a lot of people,” Anderson wrote on her blog. Furthermore, the nutritionist believes that the difference between “healthy living” and orthorexia is found in the existence of an “unhealthy obsession.”
Herein lies the challenge for most of us collegiettesTM: How do we combat the information constantly presented to us by the media, culture, and even our peers, while maintaining a healthy lifestyle that doesn’t border on an “unhealthy obsession”?
This is a question that many of us struggle with daily, and there is not one definitive answer. Yet the potential consequences of disordered eating and mentality—aside from the perceived “benefit” of obtaining a culturally desirable slim figure—are alarming enough to ask yourself whether or not you fall into Anderson’s “unhealthy obsession” category.
According to Self magazine, “Without adequate body fat to supply hormones critical to bone health, you can develop an aggressive, irreversible form of osteoporosis as early as your 20s, leaving you with the easily broken bones more common to women in their 70s. Malnutrition can also cause hair loss, brittle nails and even nerve damage.”
Not to mention the psychological damage that results from an obsessive mentality towards food and weight. According to Anderson, psychological sings and symptoms that you have an eating disorder include if you are “…withdrawing from friends and family, you find it difficult to socialize, you feel tired a lot, you find that thinking about food and body-related issues takes up a significant portion of your day.”
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Given that the forces persuading us to maintain a slim figure regardless of the consequences are so powerful, how do we resist or recover from this mentality?
Anderson provides an approach to determine our standing within the complicated scale of healthy versus excessive: “It’s important to ask ourselves, ‘Are these thoughts and behaviors improving my overall physical, mental, and emotional health?’ If the answer is no, [the thoughts and behaviors are] probably disordered.”
Which was the realization Elizabeth arrived at once she reached a very low body weight. “I am 5′ 8″ and I dropped to 98 pounds,” said Elizabeth. “I just wanted to get healthy again; I was convinced I had developed a disease after pursuing the wrong goal.”
“In my opinion,” said Marci Anderson, “full recovery is not possible if a person isn’t willing to surrender to and trust what will happen to their bodies when they take care of it properly.”
Thus, trusting yourself—not external guidelines from the media or your friends—about what your body wants and needs is the most important factor in overcoming an eating disorder. And, believe it or not, sometimes your body wants French fries or ice cream. The key is learning to be compassionate enough with yourself to know that once in a while, eating those foods won’t make you a failure or a horrible person; on the contrary, it will signify that you are a strong enough person to determine what you need.
*Names have been changed to ensure anonymity.
Sources
Amy*, University of Iowa student
Elizabeth*, Western Michigan University student
A Place of Hope
Marci Anderson, R.D.
Marci’s Blog
Self Magazine
Time Magazine
University of Alabama at Birmingham