When Food Is Your Enemy

Reflecting on her teen years, Jean vividly recalls being a target of teasing and ridicule. The reason? She was the tallest and largest girl in her class at school. But that was not all. “Even worse than being big, I was shy and socially awkward,” says Jean. “I was often lonely, wanting to fit in somewhere, but most of the time I felt like an outsider.”

Jean was convinced that her size was the cause of all her problems and that a lean, trim figure would fix everything. Not that Jean was obese. On the contrary, at six feet [183 cm] tall and 145 pounds [66 kg], she wasn’t overweight. Nevertheless, Jean felt fat, and at age 23 she decided to lose weight. ‘When I’m thin,’ she reasoned, ‘other people will want me around. At last, I will feel accepted and special.’

“That kind of foolish logic led to a twelve-year trap named anorexia nervosa and bulimia,” Jean explains. “I got thin all right, so thin I almost died, but instead of building a happy life, I ruined my health and created more than a decade of depression and misery.”

JEAN is not alone. According to one estimate, up to 1 out of 100 American females develops anorexia nervosa as a teenager or young adult, and perhaps three times that number are bulimic. “I’ve been working on schools and college campuses for years,” says Dr. Mary Pipher, “and I see firsthand that eating disorders are just as rampant as ever.”

They are also diverse. Once thought to be a problem of the wealthy, eating disorders are now considered to be common in all racial, social, and economic levels. Even the number of men being diagnosed is increasing, causing Newsweek magazine to call eating disorders “equal-opportunity plunderers.”

What is especially alarming, though, is that the average age of those being treated for eating disorders appears to be getting lower. “There are girls younger than 10, even as young as 6, being admitted to hospital programs,” says Margaret Beck, acting director of an eating disorder center in Toronto. “It is still a small number,” she adds, “but it is growing.”

All told, eating disorders affect millions—primarily girls and young women.a “They don’t think about food or use food the way the majority of people do,” notes social worker Nancy Kolodny. “Instead of eating when they’re hungry, eating for nutrition and good health, eating for pleasure, or eating to share good times with others, they get into bizarre relationships with food and do things that aren’t considered ‘normal’—such as developing odd rituals before they allow themselves to eat, or needing to immediately rid their bodies of the food they’ve eaten.”

Let us take a close look at two common eating disorders: anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

[Footnote]

Anorexia—Self-Starvation

Anorexia sufferers, anorexics, either refuse to eat or eat in such small amounts that they become malnourished. Consider 17-year-old Antoinette, who says that at one point her weight may have dropped to 82 pounds [37 kg]—very low for a teenager five feet seven inches [170 cm] tall. “I ate no more than 250 calories a day and kept a notebook about what I ate,” she says.

Anorexics are obsessed with food, and they will go to extreme lengths to avoid gaining weight. “I started to spit my food out in a napkin pretending I was wiping my mouth,” says Heather. Susan strenuously exercised to keep her weight down. “Virtually every day,” she says, “I ran eight miles [12 km], or swam for an hour, or felt terribly anxious and guilty. And every morning I got my greatest pleasure, usually my only real pleasure, by getting on the scale to confirm that my weight was well under 100 pounds [45 kg].”

Ironically, some anorexics become excellent cooks and will serve exquisite dinners that they themselves refuse to touch. “When I was at my very worst,” says Antoinette, “I prepared every single dinner at home and made all the brown-bag lunches for my little brother and sister. I wouldn’t let them near the refrigerator. I felt like the kitchen was all mine.”

According to the book A Parent’s Guide to Anorexia and Bulimia, some anorexics “become obsessively neat and may demand that the entire family meet their unrealistically fastidious standards. No magazine or pair of slippers or coffee cup may be left out of place for a moment. They may become equally, or even more, obsessed with personal hygiene and appearance, spending hours in the bathroom with the door locked and refusing to allow others to come in to get ready for school or work.”

How does this unusual disorder called anorexia develop? Typically, a teenager or young adult—most often a female—sets out to lose a certain number of pounds. When she reaches her goal, however, she is not satisfied. Looking in the mirror, she still sees herself as fat, and so she decides that shedding a few more pounds would be even better. This cycle continues until the dieter’s weight falls to 15 percent or more below what is normal for her height.

At this point friends and family members begin to express their concern that the dieter looks extremely thin, even emaciated. But the anorexic sees things differently. “I didn’t think I looked skinny,” says Alan, a five-foot-nine-inch [175 cm] male anorexic whose weight at one point dwindled to 72 pounds [33 kg]. “The more weight you lose,” he says, “the more your mind becomes distorted and you can’t see yourself clearly.”a

Over time, anorexia can lead to serious health problems, including osteoporosis and kidney damage. It can even be fatal. “My doctor told me that I had deprived my body of so many nutrients that two more months of my eating habits, and I would have died of malnutrition,” says Heather. The Harvard Mental Health Letter reports that over a ten-year period, about 5 percent of women diagnosed as anorexic die.