A quarter of a Pop-Tart for breakfast, four croutons for lunch, and a piece of meat the size of a quarter and a few peas for dinner doesn’t seem like a healthy diet. For one JC student, that was what she ate every day through much of eighth grade while she was struggling with an eating disorder.
“I was always big for my age and had a lot of baby fat. In seventh grade, I started noticing that I was bigger than the other kids and people would always joke about how I was larger. It hit me in seventh grade when my friends would take my lunch and tell me that they were doing me a favor because I didn’t need to eat anymore,” she said.
At first, she changed her diet in a healthy way. According to her, she “would eat less and eat healthier.” She started getting compliments about looking good, but said, “I had a picture in my mind that never matched up with what I saw in the mirror.”
The compliments only drove her deeper into her anorexia. She craved being called skinny so much that she sent a picture of her stomach to a girl that had called her fat in seventh grade and said, “I haven’t eaten in two days.”
“I felt empowered because everybody else needed to eat, but I didn’t have to,” she said.
There was no distinction between healthy and unhealthy foods. “It didn’t matter what I ate because everything was poison to me. It didn’t matter if it was chocolate cake or lettuce. I would choose the cake because, if I was going to eat, it had to be something good,” she said.
Besides avoiding food, she had an exercise regimen based on how much she had eaten that day. “My minimum requirement for exercise was 300 crunches and jogging. I jogged for 50 minutes straight once until my calorie count was high enough,” she said.
According to the student, her parents never said anything because “they were too embarrassed that their daughter had an eating disorder.” She only got help when her friends told her mom that she wasn’t eating. By this point, she had gone from 165 pounds to 115 pounds in the course of a year.
“My skin was starting to turn yellow and my mood swings were crazy. I would be elated and then would turn into a vicious monster. I was really weak, but I thought I was fine. I always thought that I was fat, always,” she said.
When her mother took her to a doctor, she was told that her organs were on the verge of shutting down. “I went to therapy and swore up and down that I was fixed. I wanted to fix it like a light switch,” she said.
After her visit to the doctor and therapist, she started eating again. “I started eating what normal people ate, but I started gaining weight. I was looking healthy, but I didn’t want to be healthy looking,” she said.
Now that she had started eating, she couldn’t stop. “I started binge eating because I knew how much I liked food. I would indulge, but then I would feel fat, so I became bulimic,” she said.
The feeling of power that she had gotten from anorexia returned with bulimia. By this time, she was a freshman at JC. “I was getting control and power because I could eat so much and still be skinny,” she said.
It all came to an end when her mom caught her throwing up one day. “I realized that I had all these dreams for myself and if I wanted to do them, I had to take care of my body,” she said.
Although these events took place her freshman year, she still has to work at being healthy. “It’s still a struggle because you have to change your mentality. My initial mentality when eating a cookie is that I already screwed up, so I may as well eat the whole box,” she said.
Things that some girls would think nothing of also beckon the return of old insecurities. “Having boyfriends makes it hard, because I only think that super skinny is attractive,” she said.
To those struggling with a disorder, her advice is this: “It makes you feel so strong and you feel empowered. But it’s the weakest thing that you’re doing, and you’re putting up the white flag and saying that you give up on your hopes and dreams. Find professional help, because not eating is the result of something deeper. If you are mentally healthy, you’ll be physically healthy.”
Martha Schick is a Managing Editor for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com.