Most of my life I felt responsible for the happiness of others, even if it was at the expense of my own. I was dating a guy who liked to control every aspect of my life, from what I ate to who I spoke to. My grades were suffering and I had lost friends. While some of my drive to lose weight came from insecurity, much of it stemmed from an overwhelming desire to reclaim a life I felt had been stolen. Dieting despite the disapproval of others made something click inside. It was as if I had just realized that no one could actually make me do anything I didn’t want to do. For someone who frequently felt forced into things that piece of knowledge was exquisitely addictive. A voice in my head said, “This is the way to show them you can’t be pushed around anymore.” I couldn’t bring myself to dump my boyfriend. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone I worried about my future. But I could focus on being thin. Making this the single focus of my life seemed to shut out all the noise around me. You don’t care your boyfriend shadows your every move when you’re busy tallying up what was in your last meal. I had found what I thought was the perfect way to prolong facing the things that unnerved me the most and for a time it felt like things were okay. The diagnosis changed everything. I had felt fine when I initially was brought in to the doctor. With the exception of feeling a little cold, I was doing well. I was a few pounds below what was considered a healthy for my age and height, but I was eating lots of fruits and vegetables and arguably receiving more nutrients than I had on my previous diet of refined carbs and fast food.
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Eating disorders are diseases of the mind, brought about by a combination of genetics, personality traits and circumstance. But ironically, they are often measured physiologically. It was as if the doctor just placed my results against the BMI chart, noted I was a few pounds off and slapped a label on me. At the time no one questioned whether the BMI was a fool-proof way to measure someone’s health. The emphasis my medical team placed on numbers perpetuated the vicious cycle beginning to take place in my head numbers mattered. Within a single moment those who allegedly had the tools to help me most had joined the ranks of all the people I was fighting against. While vile, eating disorders have become fetishized in our society. From pin boards dedicated to thigh gaps to celebrities joking that they’ve “tried anorexia,” there is a sort of cavalier attitude toward the diseases. We make the mistake of focusing on the outside instead of what is going on on the inside. The disorders are insidious in nature and long before muscle wastage takes place or neurosis sets in, damage can take place in the body. Of all the experts I saw, no-one spoke to me about nutrition or why food was important. Only now am I not surprised to find that many doctors are not trained in the science of it. A 2010 survey revealed that only twenty-five percent of medical schools offered twenty-five hours of nutritional education. Some schools revealed that taking a course in nutrition was optional, while others lacked to offer medical students an actual course dedicated to the subject. A 2012 PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) showed that Ameri-
cans as a whole lacked basic nutrition knowledge. Of the 1,015 adults surveyed, only twenty-two percent knew that broccoli and beans were high in calcium. Only thirty-six percent realized that both fish and beef had no fiber. Like me, my medical team focused on numbers. Someone should have brought up health. No one saw it pertinent to tell me that if I didn’t get the right amount of vitamins and minerals my body would cease to function properly. Everything from my thought processes to my metabolism was affected by what I ate, and yet, I was clueless to these things. Whenever anyone spoke to me about food it was in terms of calories and their ability to make me grow bigger or smaller. No one pointed out that thin, fat or somewhere in between, my body could still be starving for nutrients and without them I’d be screwed. Instead I was left to figure these things out the hard way. Finally I hit rock bottom. On a night my mother had not so lovingly expressed a lack of faith in my future I decided to take a drive. I thought of my life before I got sick and it hurt to realize that all the things I had once loved, like writing and music, had all taken a backseat to my disorder. My heart was still beating, but my life was gone. Anorexia had eaten it up. I knew behind it all lay painful things like the issues with my boyfriend and family. I wanted to try to face them all, but even as I tried to think about it a frantic, ever-present voice screamed in my head. What about food and the weight and the worrying…just thinking about it made me cry in fear. How could I tackle my issues if the sickness took all of my energy?
CHICKPEA MAGAZINE winter 2013