Eating Disorder Awareness
Eating Disorder Awareness
This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, February 25-March 3, 2019. Do you or someone you care about struggle in their relationship with food? Food is a complex issue that affects so many. It’s a slippery slope between disordered eating and eating disorders. As well as the connections between trauma, substance/sexual abuse and other mental disorders with eating disorders.
Facts about Eating Disorders
Let’s start with some facts. Although we might commonly think that eating disorders are a “white girls” disease, eating disordered behaviors are nearly as common among males as females. As with any disease, eating disorders simply do not discriminate. For instance, researchers found that Hispanics were significantly more likely to suffer from bulimia nervosa than non-Hispanic peers. And black teens are 50% more likely than white teens to binge and purge. Men with eating disorders often suffer with other coexisting conditions such as anxiety, excessive exercise, depression and substance disorders. Over 50% of individuals with eating disorders, both men and women, have experienced sexual violence in their past. The seeds of eating disorders often start early. 40% of overweight girls and 37% of overweight boys are teased about their weight by peers or family members. Weight stigma is documented as a significant risk factor for depression, low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction. Over ½ of all teen girls and 1/3 of all teen boys admitted to using unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting or taking laxatives. The facts and statistics may be disheartening but there is hope and there are lots of resources and people willing to help.
Disordered eating versus eating disorders
A common misconception about addiction in general is that you either have it or you don’t. You are an addict or you aren’t. However, research is telling us that in many cases, addiction is better understood as a broad spectrum or continuum of disease. Much like the Autism spectrum, someone may classify themselves on a less severe end of the spectrum as having disordered eating versus someone like Karen Carpenter, a famous singer in the 70’s, who needed to be hospitalized due to her anorexia and eventually died from the disease.
One big spectrum
Eating disorders can be thought of as all one big spectrum that people who struggle in their relationship with food and their body falls onto. People who struggle to eat are just on a different place of the same spectrum as those who struggle to stop eating as those who struggle to quiet the inner dialogue about exactly how this one tiny piece of food will show up on their body. The question then becomes where on the spectrum do you lie and when do you want to seek help?
My Own Struggle
Last Friday in preparation for National Eating Disorder Awareness week I spoke at my department’s weekly lunch & learn meeting. First I acknowledged the irony of talking about eating disorders at a lunch & learn which broke the ice and got a few laughs. I relayed many of the facts above and then I told them about my own personal 13 year journey of food recovery. As I said then and we say in meetings, I tell some of the details in hopes that people can relate to the feelings and not necessarily the specific incidents.
Safe or Unsafe
As long as I can remember I have categorized foods as safe or unsafe. For the most part safety was about texture and predictability. Bread is safe because you know how it’s going to taste by looking at it. Apples however are not safe because they look one way on the outside and might taste a totally different way on the inside. Tomatoes are in no way safe due to slimy texture. I know now that because my childhood was traumatic, I did not feel safe. Food was one of the few things that I could control to ensure my own safety. So I latched on that control and didn’t let go until I checked into treatment at age 36.
Teased and Made Fun of
I was teased and made fun of for the way that I ate over and over again. I remember my Dad saying “You kids are so difficult! The only children in America that won’t eat fast food.” I would go over to friend’s houses to have dinner and their Moms just didn’t know how to feed me. I eventually got to where I just asked for plain peanut butter sandwiches and that made everyone more comfortable. When I went to new restaurants as a young adult I would scan menus furtively trying to read all the ingredients to make sure I was ordering something “safe” so as not to embarrass myself. I lived in fear of gagging in public over something unsafe in my food that was intolerable.
Getting help
One of the more insidious things about eating disorders is that often so much of the damage is done inside one’s own mind. The interior dialogue and brain space taken up by an unhealthy relationship with food is astonishing. But that dialogue and inner warfare can be hidden away for years and years. You can almost even hide it from yourself if your denial is strong enough. But at some point you will know that you have had enough of waging this particular battle without any tools. You will want help. You will finally be willing to open up and talk to people about the inner dialogue. And if you do, you will learn tools to live in peace with food and the body you walk around in every day. Because here’s a secret – it’s actually not about the food!
It’s not about the food???
That’s right. It’s actually not really about the food. In the end food is fuel. Food is necessary. What I’ve learned is that my recovery is about my self-esteem and my spiritual growth. Yes I have some “tools” in my “toolkit” that help me with the actual food because occasionally I get overwhelmed and fall back in some old patterns. But daily I focus on self-care and spiritual connections to keep my recovery going and my food on track.
Comment below if you have something to share about your journey with disordered eating. We’d love to hear from you!
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