‘Each day is a struggle’

Feb. 25 through March 3 marks an important, yet often overlooked, week. It is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, a week devoted to spreading knowledge about a dangerous and deadly disease that is highly misunderstood.

Anorexia nervosa is a pathological fear of weight gain that leads to malnutrition and faulty eating habits. Bulimia nervosa is a cycle of overeating and purging, characterized by self-induced vomiting or laxative abuse. While I am not a mental health professional, I consider myself to be an expert on eating disorders because I have struggled with one for over 10 years.

Most people think eating disorders are a vain disease that can be cured by “just eating,” “stop exercising” and “not throwing up.” However, over the course of many years and much help from psychologists and nutritionists, I have learned that it is not that easy.

Eating disorders are not about the food, the weight or the appearance. They are about deeper psychological issues that are somehow connected to food, which is then transformed into a coping mechanism for emotional needs. When I look in the mirror, I do not see someone who is attractive and thin. I see someone who needs to gain weight, who needs to take a break and who needs to let her body heal.

Eating disorders are dangerously unhealthy and can lead to fatal consequences. However, living in misery can be much worse than death. For years, I have wasted time, money and energy on practicing my eating disorder. It has cost me relationally, financially, physically and even educationally.

In September 2004, I was forced to quit the cross country team because of health concerns. Two weeks later, I withdrew from Milligan at the urging of faculty, staff and friends to seek in-patient treatment. I spent the next two months being re-trained on how to eat at Remuda Ranch in Wickenburg, Arizona.

At the beginning of December, I returned home to a new world, where I felt scared and overwhelmed by the freedom to choose my own foods. Instead of progressing in recovery, I fell deeper into my eating disorder than before. In April, I returned to a treatment program, this time at the Renfrew Center in Philadelphia. I chose to stay there for close to three months, and I left feeling like a smarter, healthier and more assertive person.

However, my eating disorder is not gone, and I am terrified by the fact that I still hear the voices of it in my head. Each day is still a struggle and each new event brings about different concerns and fears.

For National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I want to open the doors to share my struggle and hopefully reach out to someone who needs help. I urge anyone with a similar struggle to contact me or a professional organization for help. I have lost too much time, money, friendships and pieces of myself by letting this struggle control me and I don’t want to see this happen to anyone else.

For more information, go to http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.