The Right Way to Have An Eating Disorder

From the WW

Warning:  In this post, I will divulge some things that I did before I began living with a healthier concept of myself and my body.  I have not done any of these things in over a year, and I rarely talk about them, but after an incident with a student today, I felt inspired to share and speak out.

For those of you who are new to our blog or who may have forgotten, I work at a residential treatment center.  Because our main focus is on relationships, I have certain freedoms in my job as a teacher that I would not have in a public school.  Among these freedoms is time to sit down with my students and "process," which basically means listening to what they're struggling with and showing empathy and care.  Today as I was processing with one of my students, she informed me that she has an eating disorder, but that she doesn't talk about it often.  She said that when she tries to talk to people about it, she stops because of the looks she gets.  As she started to tear up, she struggled to find the words for what the looks mean, but I already knew.  Finally, she said, "It is because I don't look like I have an eating disorder."

This was one of those moments where I had to fight back my own tears, because I have felt a similar hurt in my own way, and I wish I could protect all of my kids from ever feeling that way.  I've never been diagnosed with an eating disorder, but I firmly believe that I am living with one.  Eating disorders are terrible roommates.  Even with my recent acceptance and love of my body, I have days in which I feel the familiar pull of dieting and restricting, bingeing and purging.  This is something I have under control because I know how to live with it, but it is something I do not see going away anytime soon.

See, there is no "right" way to have an eating disorder.  I may not have been anorexic, and I have NEVER been underweight in the slightest, but as a teenager, I would hide and hoard and binge and then purge, either with a finger (not often) or with laxatives and/or a ridiculous amount of water.  I even made the water into a game.  How many times can I go to the drinking fountain to refill my water bottle during study hall?  Six was my record.

As a young adult, I have restricted myself to insane amounts.  One summer I lost thirty pounds by eating nothing but yogurt and nuts.  I'd tell myself the headaches and lightheadedness would go away eventually.  I thought I was smart enough to not use the "stupid" ways to purge, like the finger.  Instead, I'd drink raw eggs to make myself sick.  One time, I "accidentally" swallowed soap.  Muuuuuch healthier.

I was pretty good at covering most of my disordered eating by calling it "counting calories."  Don't get me wrong, counting calories is NOT bad.  In fact, it works for a lot of people.  Not so for me.  For me, it becomes a race to the smallest amount possible.  For me, it gets out of control.

But you know the biggest reason for it being easy to hide my disordered eating?  My body.  The common misconception about eating disorders is that they always make you smaller.  Unhealthy looking.  Anorexic.  But that is so, so, so false.  No matter how hard I tried to make it smaller, I only ever made it bigger.  It was an endless source of frustration, one that damaged my body in ways I may never be able to change.  It was one of the reasons that I never even thought of my behavior as disordered eating, and one of the reasons that I don't think anyone else really picked up on it.  When a fat person loses weight, our first instinct is to congratulate them, not think that they might have an eating disorder.  In fact, the summer that I finally lost thirty pounds, I remember getting a lot of compliments on my weight loss, but not a lot of comments on my diet, which only solidified my belief that what I was doing was okay.

I have never looked like I have an eating disorder, and I guarantee that I am not the only one.  Telling people like me that what we dealt with was not really an eating disorder only invalidates our experiences.  I'm not trying to say that my eating disorder was ever life-threatening, nor was it extreme. But telling me that my eating disorder was just poor self-control and uninformed dieting takes away the power I have in having pulled through those times, and sets me up to fall back into bad habits.

Please be mindful of the fact that there is absolutely not one way to have an eating disorder.  If you or someone you know is suffering from an eating disorder and is not receiving help, I urge you to check out places like NEDA who have helplines and other resources.