Dying to be Thin One woman’s experience with an eating disorder
y heart was pounding as I looked down at my assessment. “Diana presents with a classic anorexic personality structure (people pleasing, goal oriented, perfectionistic) and has recently recognized the role anxiety has played throughout her life. Diana reports increased struggles with body image and self-esteem around the time she began college at UCLA, which resulted in increased isolation. Diana has identified fears around transitioning to adulthood and meeting expectations that she feels go along with such a transition.” Please let this all be a dream, I thought. “Primary Diagnosis: ANOREXIA NERVOSA” No, it’s a nightmare. The jig was up. I’d been caught. I was in rehab and my dirty little secret, compulsive self-starvation, was being wrested away from me against my will. Though I didn’t think I needed treatment, my list of rationales for my dangerous relationship with food (this isn’t anorexia, I’m not skinny enough to have an eating disorder, I’m just very active and healthy, plenty of girls naturally look like this, diets are normal...) was long and wholly unconvincing to the staff at my recovery center. Even my cheery, nonstop smile could fool no one into thinking I was fine. By the time my parents coerced me into checking myself into treatment, I had whittled my zaftig figure down to a startlingly bony one. My size zero frame was so skeletal that even lying on my plush mattress was extremely uncomfortable, and that’s to say nothing of the hair loss, amenorrhea, listlessness, depression, crankiness and virtual inability to walk for more than 15 minutes without needing to take a nap. As much as I protested my need for treatment, my body was begging for help. I began flirting with an eating disorder early in college, relentlessly criticizing my body and trying crash diets that never worked. In the meantime, I was going at turbo speed through my education, and found myself graduating with Latin honors in three years while simultaneously having maintained jobs, internships and friendships along the way. My anxiety around my future, however, was crippling, and the nonstop stress of classes and work did nothing to nurture my relationship with my body. Before I knew it, I was running several miles every day and living off of fruit and raw vegetables. The weight flew off. People are quick to blame the media for the prevalence of eating disorders. That’s definitely a part of it, but I can’t find the moral indignation to blame anything outside of myself. Kate Moss certainly didn’t storm my apartment and glue my mouth shut. My neuroses, insecurities and amorphous sense of selfloathing were tucked deep in me long before I decided I would be unhappy if I resembled anything heavier than a 14-year-old runway model. Anorexia is about food and bodies, yes, but those things are only tools to express the turbulent sadness and fear I felt but couldn’t articulate. The bodies of skinny starlets didn’t trick me into obsessing over my weight; they simply taught me how to scream my own pain without ever uttering a word.
20 | Fem | Health
A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders found that 5-10 percent of anorexics die within 10 years of contracting the disease; 18-20 percent of anorexics will die after 20 years and only 30-40 percent ever fully recover. Before I became sick, I had a misconception that anorexia was a glamorous disease or an extreme diet that vapid, shallow people got caught up in. But that’s far from the truth. It turns out eating disorder victims are endlessly selfless, sensitive and kind. The women I’ve met in treatment have shown me compassion and thoughtfulness like I’ve never known. When I mentioned to them in group therapy one morning that I’d be eating macaroni for dinner, nearly every woman texted me that evening to offer words of support. Shallow is the last word I would use to describe them. I’m still in treatment, though I only have to go for therapy three times a week. I don’t need a “bathroom buddy” anymore and I don’t need to be supervised by a therapist at all six of my daily meals. But I do still follow a meal plan that tells me down to the single serving of protein how much I need to eat. I still think I looked good at my lowest weight. And I still restrict how much I eat, in little ways but frighteningly often. Recovery isn’t a linear path upward. Every day I wonder if I will heal. The current research on eating disorders says that full recovery is possible. I’ve met numerous women who vehemently claim to have beaten their disorders. Yet it remains hard for me to imagine. I know now what I need to eat. I know that I don’t want to die from anorexia. I
Raquel Livson/ Fem Newsmagazine
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by Diana Bizjak
know that the anxiety around food does lessen. And I know that there are many people who love me despite the shape of my body. But will I ever learn to accept my size? Can I ever look at myself naked or step on a scale and not feel the urge to stop eating? I don’t have the answers, but I do know that life with an eating disorder isn’t life at all. All I can do now is take it one meal at a time, one bite at a time. Every moment is a chance to try to love myself and I won’t stop fighting for that.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, please reach out. An eating disorder is a lifethreatening illness that needs professional intervention. National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Nationaleatingdisorders.org Information and referral helpline: 800-931-2237 UCLA Eating Disorders Program Eatingdisorders.ucla.edu Information helpline: 310-206-3954 Eating Disorders Anonymous (EDA) Eatingdisordersanonymous.org