THE TIMES-DELPHIC Student talks about living with an eating disorder

Katherine Bauer News Editor katherine.bauer@drake.edu @bauer_katherine

Most 7-year-olds worry about learning how to add and subtract or sitting by their friends at lunch. For Olivia Orichiella, at 7 years old she was thinking about being an athlete in the best shape possible.

However, excessive training and comments about her weight turned her drive into an eating disorder.

“I’ve suffered with anorexia since I was 7-years-old,” the senior elementary education major said. “It’s always been that pressure of not being good enough.”

Orichiella explained that there were dreams of being a collegiate athlete in her future, specifically in soccer. She was also training as a triathlete by 7. Tennis, basketball, track and cross country were all added when she turned 11.

“(I was told), ‘You need to lose more weight so you can be the best’,” Orichiella said. “‘If you looked like that girl, you would be better.’”

The hard hours of training at 8 a.m. soon turned into unhealthy habits. Orichiella said she used laxatives to keep her weight down and avoided eating.

Orichiella pinpoints her eating disorder to this environment. Fourteen years later and she is still fighting to be in control.

“There’s that voice in my head,” Orichiella said. “She’s always there. She gets quieter, but she’s always there in the back of your head.”

Melissa Nord, who is a counselor at Drake’s health center, explained how eating disorders affect people’s mentality.

“The mind totally plays tricks on the individual with an eating disorder,” Nord said. “The individual might look into the mirror and see someone with curves and ‘extra weight’ when they’re really so sickly thin that their bones are poking through their skin and they are barely strong enough to stand. They truly do not see the true them.”

Orichiella explained that an eating disorder is not about losing weight. The desire to lose weight is a result of a mentality.

“The whole idea of food in general is terrifying,” Orichiella said. “Losing weight comes from a side effect of having that mindset and having those voices telling you all these things.”

Some people have the mentality that they will reach a goal by not eating, Nord said.

“Sometimes eating disorders convince the individual that they don’t deserve to eat, for whatever reason,” Nord said. “Sometimes eating disorders convince the individual that if they do this one more thing (eat less, exercise more) then they’ll have everything they’re wanting.”

Anorexia had a detrimental effect on Orichiella’s body. Standing at 5 feet 10 inches, she dipped to 115 pounds at her lightest weight. Someone at that height with a healthy weight could weigh between 130 and 170 pounds, according to the BMI index.

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