Crossing the too thin line

“Morgan”, an anonymous former Granite Bay High School freshman who transferred schools, remembers when she realized she had an eating disorder. She was 12.
“I was anorexic, and then I became bulimic. I didn’t eat for almost a week. Then I started to freak out, so I went through bulimia for two months. I started getting really sick. I actually ended up in the hospital, because I wasn’t having anything in my stomach.
“It was scary. You don’t eat anything, but your mind starts to eat you, because it’s so hungry. It starts to make you insane. You’re mad at everybody. Your insecurities eat you alive, and you don’t think you’re beautiful. You just want to keep throwing up and (feeling) horrible. It’s just a really, really scary state.”
Eating disorders – dangerous fixations on weight and food – are estimated to affect 11 percent of high school students, according to the National Association of Anorexia and Associated Disorders (ANAD). They are some of the most common – and destructive – mental illnesses facing teenagers today.
Anorexia nervosa, one of the two most common eating disorders, is typically defined as severely restricting one’s own food intake – including starvation – and an obsession with weight and calories.
Bulimia nervosa, the other common type of eating disorder, is characterized by cyclical binging – eating abnormally large amounts of food – and purging, either by forcing themselves to vomit or by abusing laxatives and diuretics.
It isn’t uncommon for anorexics to delve into periods of bulimia, and many have experimented with other diet methods. But an eating disorder is more than a diet – it becomes an obsession.
“Most people assume that someone struggling with an eating disorder is just vain, seeking attention, or let a diet get out of control,” said Jennifer Lombardi, Director of Admissions at Summit Eating Disorders and Outreach Program.
  But that simply isn’t true, Lombardi said. In reality, eating disorders are serious health problems, which can wreak havoc on both the body and the mind.
According to Lombardi, teens with eating disorders can suffer hair loss, osteoporosis, organ damage and even death by cardiac arrest.
But the physical aspects of an eating disorder are just scratching the surface of the problem.
“Typically, students with anorexia, if they look at themselves in the mirror, even if everyone else thinks they’re skinny – or too skinny – they still see themselves as fat,” GBHS psychologist Angela Sanchez said. “Their vision of themselves has become distorted, and they think they look fat, even though everyone’s telling them, ‘you’re too skinny.’”
This need to be thin is a common denominator for many eating disorders, particularly bulimia and anorexia.
“We live in a highly toxic culture that focuses on weight and appearance,” Lombardi said. “Imagine challenging yourself and your friends to not talk about weight or dieting, or to refrain from saying anything negative about your appearance for the next week. It won’t take long to see how difficult that is.”
The hypocrisy of popular culture is also to blame, Lombardi added.
“We view ads every day that tell us that we need to buy something in order to ‘fix’ something about us that’s wrong, and then we tell kids and teens to ‘just love yourself.’”
Though eating disorders are stereotyped as a purely female affliction, as many as 10 to 15 percent of documented cases are in men, according to ANAD. Men are also less likely to seek treatment, Lombardi said, due to the misconceptions about them.
Eating disorders cause emotional trauma not only for the sufferer, but for their family and friends, as well.
“Steve”, an anonymous GBHS senior, recounts his friend’s struggles with an eating disorder.
“She just always thought she wasn’t hungry – that’s what she told us,” he said. “We tried to tell her, ‘You need to eat,’ and she always said, ‘I’m never hungry, though.’ Then we made her see her doctor, and her doctor was the one who told us (her diagnosis).”
“I used to stay up at night, worrying about her, praying for her,” Steve said.
Though the vast majority of people living with eating disorders will need professional help to recover, the best thing a friend can do to help is to gently confront the bulimic/anorexic about their concerns, according to Sanchez.
Lombardi advises helping the ill person to “break the silence” surrounding the condition.
“The person struggling may get mad, deny it or even cry, but imagine how you would react if a friend was suicidal,” she said. “Would you sit quietly by, saying nothing because it made you uncomfortable? Hopefully not. Eating disorders are … life threatening. They should be viewed with the same seriousness and importance.”
The anorexic or bulimic should also seek psychotherapy, as well as medical attention, Sanchez said.
If treated within the first year after developing an eating disorder, the odds of recovery are more than 75 percent.
Steve’s friend is in that majority: she has recovered.
“People get eating disorders because they have such low self-esteem,” he said. “Other people tear them down so much. I wish I could just show people that your words actually do have such a big effect on people.”
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Morgan now considers herself recovered.
“I started doing kickboxing, so I lost a lot of weight from that, and I just feel a lot better about myself.
“(My friends) say, ‘(Morgan), you’re always beautiful, you were never really fat. They never should have called you that.’ Of course, I didn’t believe them, but I am glad I made it through that, and I’m never going to have to go through that again.”