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People was telling me, Christy, you look like you're dying, you know, you look terrible,
can't you see that?
Your hair's falling out and your ribs are showing and you can barely walk across the
campus and I didn't see that at all, which is a really scary thing.
All of you have known someone that's constantly complaining that they're fat, when they're
like a toothpick.
I see myself as fat, I don't care what other people say, I know, I feel that I'm fat.
I lost five pounds and I thought, I got so much attention, you know, you look good, you
look really good, you know, I was like, oh I'm losing weight, you know, I was telling
everybody I'm losing weight, and like, oh you look really good, and pretty soon I lost
weight, I got to 100 pounds, and then I got, then I thought, oh 100's not good, you want
to get to the two digits, the two digits are the good, you know, so I got, okay, 99 pounds,
I was really happy at this point, and then pretty soon though, you start going, 99 pounds,
I can't, you can never gain again, you have to go on losing, if you gain, you feel bad
about yourself.
You might not know it and they might not even know it, but they could have anorexia nervosa.
Anorexia is a serious eating disorder where people starve themselves.
It affects mostly women, many of them teenagers.
Anorexia is the person who typically won't eat, or in some cases if she does eat, then
she tries, feels so desperate about it that she tries to get rid of it, and that could
be over exercising, vomiting, but there's a body image distortion that goes along with
anorexia where these girls feel fat even when it's obvious to everyone else that they're
thin.
I told, you know, my friends, hey, don't worry about me, I'm not going to get below this
number, I'm going to eat, you know, I'll eat, I'll eat all the food in the world just to
gain it back, but I mean, when I got to that weight, of course, I went lower.
For an anorexic, you'll have, most of the time, you'll have very little eating.
You'll have maybe, they'll usually skip breakfast, it's easy to get out of the house and lie
and tell their mothers they've had breakfast.
You'll have them not having lunch at school either, which also a lot of, a lot of people
are doing, they say they're going out or whatever, they don't have lunch, maybe they'll have
an apple, and then they come home for dinner and maybe they'll have a salad or something
like that, maybe they'll have a salad and some kind of protein if their parents are
kind of forcing the issue.
And then there's another eating disorder called bulimia, which means hunger of an ox.
Unlike anorexics who control everything they put into their mouths, bulimics totally binge
and they could eat up to 25,000 calories at one time.
A binge for me would be I'd go out and eat a pizza and then a regular dinner, bags and
bags of potato chips and ice cream, and I think I'd get my hands on it.
These are the girls who are actually driven to eat large quantities of food in a short
period of time and then they're overwhelmed with shame and guilt and in some way try to
get rid of it.
After a binge, bulimics will often purge, which means vomiting or using laxatives or
other drugs to get rid of all the food and fluid.
I was losing weight by sticking my finger down my throat.
I would just basically throw up everything I ate.
First time I tried it I thought this isn't going to work, this is just too hard.
It was hurting my throat, but I continued and then I ended up throwing up.
Bulimics unlike anorexics are usually able to maintain a pretty normal weight, but many
anorexics, in a struggle to stay thin, also develop bulimia.
In my junior year, I guess I usually developed bulimia as a result of always wanting to look
a certain way and things like that.
That's kind of how it started.
It didn't start out as a big thing, it just started out as something kind of like a diet
plan because I was always on a diet or something and it just sort of started out that way.
It's not hard to figure out why women feel pressured to be skinny.
I mean, look around, billboards, commercials, magazines, we're constantly bombarded by
these images of skinny, smiling women who seem to have no problems.
I mean, let's face it, thin is in.
I definitely think there's so much pressure on people to look their best, to be the thinnest,
the prettiest, to look most like a model.
Too much pressure.
There's a fine line between when a person just goes on a diet and when a person develops
an eating disorder, but really it's when the person starts using the dieting to cope with
other emotional problems, when all of a sudden being thin is more important than anything,
more important than their health, more important than their boyfriend, more important than
their grades or than school.
I started rather being with food than my friends and my friends didn't really know what to
do because I didn't understand.
So pretty soon they stopped calling or when they did call I didn't return their calls.
So after a while it was just like I lost a lot of my friends that way because they didn't
know what to do for me and I didn't know how to say help me or I wasn't able to.
I'm wondering what's going through the minds of these girls?
The disorder seems like so much more than a diet gone out of control.
Well actually we find that the dieting or the obsession with their bodies is just a
distraction.
It's a symptom of other underlying psychological problems.
We have a clip of Rebecca now.
I think part of the reason I lost weight was to give back at people.
I remember saying to myself you're going to pay for it when I'm this much weight and
you're going to pay for it.
I wouldn't do stuff like drugs and I don't drink and I don't smoke.
I just choose not to eat.
I guess it's just safer for me.
You can see with Rebecca that she's very angry.
She wanted to get back at people.
Rebecca actually got down to 62 pounds, had to go in the hospital to be tube fed.
This was a way that she could express her feelings and her need to gain some control
in her life.
So what did she mean when she said it was safer for her?
Well a lot of these girls are the good girls in the families.
They're the perfectionistic, the cheerleaders getting good grades.
They don't want to do things, take drugs, smoke, drink.
So this is an easier way to channel it, to channel that kind of energy or way of getting
back or getting in control.
I never drank.
I never did drugs.
I never did the little good girls thing.
I never did anything that set people way off.
And so it was the only area in my life that I was really irresponsible and it didn't matter
what happened as far as I was concerned.
I didn't know all this but that was kind of what it was.
Now we have a clip of a former patient of yours, Christine.
From my own history, and this happens to a lot of girls that have been sexually molested,
they tend to think that all they are is a body.
And at a young age, when I was in ninth grade, I did have what would be considered a nice
figure and I was getting a lot of attention and for me, I was afraid of that.
That was a big fear for me and I guess the pressure of being the age of dating and sex
was a tremendous pressure for me personally because of the abuse issues.
A lot of these patients, you know, Christine is a good example of someone who felt like
her body was invaded and so what more perfect way than be in control of her body by what
she puts in, by what she puts out, by manipulating the numbers on the scale up and down.
She was sexually abused and so this is a way that she kind of fought back against that.
Guy started shying away from me, which is what I kind of needed at the time because
for me I needed to say help, I had been abused and I can't handle this attention from guys
right now.
Was every girl with an eating disorder, were they sexually abused as well?
Oh no, and I think it's important to stress that there are a variety of reasons that cause
eating disorders, a lot of underlying issues that take place.
So why does dieting make them feel good?
Well, dieting is a perfect way of doing something that's very specific, it's measurable, you
can judge your success.
Girls can feel successful if they go through the day eating a few hundred calories, where
other ways are very hard to judge or measure your success.
Also it's a way that girls are rewarded, it doesn't matter how they lose weight, if they
lose five pounds, if they lose ten pounds, if they're throwing up, taking laxatives,
they're rewarded, encouraged for this weight loss.
I had a set schedule of food and it wasn't very much at all, it's like a piece of bread,
piece of cheese and stuff, so I would still eat because I knew I needed to eat to stay
alive, but that was a pretty crummy excuse because then I would go out and I'd exercise
for hours upon hours and just do crazy things that I just knew were bad for me.
It seems like we should take girls that are on diets a lot more seriously.
What's important really if someone has a friend who is dieting, who is obsessed with her body,
who cares more about the way she looks than who she is or how she feels, to talk to them,
to try to get them to open up and talk about what's going on inside, what's going on underneath.
Thank you so much for being with us today Carolyn.
It was my pleasure.
I kept losing weight and it got really bad and to a point where I had to be too fed,
there were these tubes going down my nose and it was just the worst thing.
I wanted to die.
If it was through anorexia, if it was through suicide, I don't care, I wanted to die.
You know that your eating disorder has gotten serious when you end up here in the hospital
where you're possibly tube fed.
Can you define their mental state?
They may be crying a lot and certainly feeling a lot of emotional pain and anguish and out
of control.
It may sound awful but many anorexics and bulimics don't get help until they're hospitalized.
How does someone know that they have to be treated?
That's a good question because it varies and it varies because many of these girls are
very good at hiding it.
They wear many layers of clothes and so it's not until maybe they've had a physical with
a pediatrician or somebody saw them accidentally that somebody gets the scare of a lifetime
to see skin hanging off a bone.
The physical effects of anorexia and bulimia can be long lasting or even life threatening
so if you know someone with these symptoms you may want to confront them.
I think you should say you know I think you've got a problem and if they say no I don't
say the friend just has to make sure that they're there for the person.
Look for warning signs like?
That I can usually tell an anorexic is certain bones may be starting to stick out of course
a major drop in weight.
Well there are a lot of changes that happen simply from the malnutrition which is very
interesting certain nutrients that you need on a regular daily basis the recommended daily
allowances and things like that if you're deficient in those they can actually cause
obsessive compulsive behavior.
Saying I think I'm so fat you know all the time.
I feel depressed I mean I get depressed really easily.
You have hair loss where these girls will start losing their hair because their body
just doesn't have the nutrients to do everything it's supposed to do or the calories so functions
start shutting down and the body says I don't have enough energy to take care of everything.
My friends will joke about it you have no hair you're bald and it's cute but I really
feel bad because I used to have so much hair and you know I'm pale I used to be tan.
You also get extreme physiological changes where menstruation stops which is particularly
harmful for young girls in high school because when that happens it means that their estrogen
levels are low and that means that they're going to have bone loss and bone damage.
And another thing that happened to me is I lost my period for five years when you lose
your period you increase your chances of getting what's called osteoporosis or bone disease
or bone deterioration and weakness of the bones and so I have a 75 percent chance of
getting that.
Some mix our anorexics that purge may show the following symptoms as well.
Are you purging your food you know are your friends going to the bathroom after they eat
are they eating a lot of food or are they not eating?
I mean are you using diet pills are you using laxatives are your friends using a lot of
these things?
I know that doesn't make a lot of difference where the place that you're at but all I can
say is I have a lot of physical symptoms that I really wish I didn't have from a lot of
the things I put my body through.
You can notice a lot of times in people's faces like a little discoloration sometimes
they get chipmunk cheeks from all the fluids when you throw up.
And then there are a lot of complications that come from vomiting such as you can rupture
your esophagus people have died from rupturing their diaphragm during the act of vomiting
blood vessels will burst in the eyes.
I've had clients who've had to replace all of their teeth from wearing through the enamel
on their teeth.
All of these warning signs are cries for help from people often unable to help themselves.
It's like the small part of you wants help so bad but the disease is so controlling that
you can't it's like it's like asking someone to take something away from you that you want
so bad.
It's not worth it just I'm not going to tell them go eat.
It's just the wrong thing.
I would just basically tell them to get some help.
People can be recovered from this and that's the good news about it.
I have a lot of patients who have recovered.
I've been treating eating disorder patients for 14 years and I myself am recovered.
I was afflicted with anorexia when I was about 15 and a half 16 years old.
I was in high school and I was a mascot and I was on the cheerleading squad and so I had
a lot going for me but I was that perfectionistic type and I needed a way to express it and
the way I did that was going on a simple diet that got out of control and I went from 140
pounds to 79 pounds and I had the disease for a long time.
I had it for about seven years but now being recovered food and weight and body image and
do all of those things are no longer important issues in my life.
I looked at it and was able to resolve and deal with my problems in other ways and these
girls can do that and what they really need is to be able to have that caring professional
to understand and to go with them through the long haul and they can get over it and
it doesn't mean that they have to get fat and it doesn't mean that they have to give
up a desire to look good and be thin, it just means that they have to do it in a healthy
way and separate food and weight issues from the other issues and problems in their life.
If you think you or someone you know has an eating disorder and you'd like more information
you can write to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders
PO Box 7 Highland Park, Illinois 60035 or you can call them at area code 708-831-3438.