Anorexia & Bulimia

by Carol Emery Normandi
& Laurelee Roark

Bulimia nervosa is a form of compulsive eating where you binge and then do some kind of purging. Types of purging may include vomiting, fasting, excessive exercise, or use of diuretics, laxatives, or diet pills. Many young women start purging after they feel they've failed at dieting. They either feel they were eating too much, or their body was too fat, or both. Like compulsive eaters, people with bulimia usually spend a lot of time being concerned with their food and their weight. They might also tend to have difficulty experiencing and resolving overwhelming feelings.

Bulimia can be harmful to your body. It can cause digestive problems, dental problems, diabetes, damage to the esophagus, and electrolyte and chemical imbalances that can lead to irregular heartbeats, heart failure, and death.

The reality is, this kind of "diet aid" not only doesn't work, but it is also dangerous and can be deadly.

What Is Anorexia Nervosa?

Last year I was going with a guy who was always telling me that I was fat because I didn't look like a model. After he broke up with me I was too upset to eat. I lost some weight and I really got a lot of attention because of it. All my girlfriends were so jealous of me. So I started to see how little I could eat. Every clay I tried to eat less than the day before. I just got thinner and thinner. But, in a weird way, I felt really strong and powerful My old boyfriend wouldn't say I was too fat, now. The bad thing is that these days all I can think about is how much thinner I could get and not die.

-- Les

Unfortunately many girls, in order to look like a supermodel, need to develop an eating disorder. This is exactly what is happening with Les. If she does not stop her drive to be ever thinner, she may endanger her life. In her quest for a different body, Les may kill herself.

Anorexia nervosa is self-starvation. People with anorexia refuse to maintain their body weight over a minimal natural weight for their age and height. These young women often have a distorted image of their bodies. People with anorexia who are very thin can look into the mirror and see their bodies as very fat. They have an obsessive fear of gaining weight or becoming fat even though they are underweight. Many times they have a very negative and critical voice inside their heads that tells them over and over again how fat they are. They spend an enormous amount of time thinking about controlling their food and weight or they indulge in excessive exercising.

More deaths are directly caused by anorexia than the other eating disorders. Anorexia can cause loss of menstrual periods, loss of ability to have children, osteoporosis, congestive heart failure, irregular heart rhythm, and damage to kidneys, brain, and digestive system.

These are just a very few examples of girls who have had eating disorders. Often individuals will have more than one type of eating disorder and will bounce back and forth among all three -- compulsive eating, bulimia, and anorexia.

Remember that everyone is different and will have different ways they struggle with food and weight, as well as different reasons why they have this struggle. What is important is to understand your own unique way and to get the right help. Eating disorders are curable and by working with them you can bring yourself back into living a joyful, fulfilling, and healthy life.

THE STRUGGLE TO BE OURSELVES

-- Tanya

Obsessing about food and weight makes it hard to be who you really are. Young adulthood is a time to explore who you are as a person. It's a time to discover who you are in relationship to your family, girlfriends, boyfriends, and community. It's a time to find out what special gifts and talents you have that make you different from everyone else. It's a time to dream about what you want to do with your life. It's a time to explore your feelings, your sexuality, and your physical and spiritual self. But let's face it ... who has time for all this when all you can think about is fitting into that pair of jeans, not eating too much fat, or wishing you looked like that model on the cover of some fashion magazine?

We know what it's like to waste all those years worrying about food and fat. We've been there and, to tell you the truth, it stinks. It is frightening to think that because our culture is obsessed with dieting and having a "perfect" body, we also learn to be obsessed. This obsession is dangerous. It can be a matter of life and death. In order to stop worrying about how fat you are or how many fat grams you should eat, we believe that you have to try to find out who you really are underneath your obsession with food and weight. That's what this book (Over It) is about: finding your true self. To do this, it's important to first become aware of your own unique eating patterns. Then it's about discovering the wisdom and unique beauty of your own body. It's important to start listening to your feelings and learning how to express them without eating too much or too little. It's time to explore what your passions, talents, and gifts are. Through this process you learn who you really are, not who you think you should be. You will find that underneath this constant struggle with food and weight, buried beneath your own insecurity and symptoms, there is a part of you crying out to be seen and heard, a part of you that is precious, wise, and different from everyone else.

YOUR CHALLENGE

I look at my stomach and say, "Why can't I be thin? Why can't my body be okay?" That's all I want.

-- Sarah

Keep in mind that you have received a lot of very negative information about your size, your body, your rights as a female, and your very self. Most of this has come from the society you have been born into. It takes an incredible amount of courage, strength, and tenacity not to give in to the hundreds of hurtful pressures that are put on you and on your female body. In the support groups at Beyond Hunger, our nonprofit organization, we call this "swimming against the tide." You will often feel that you are swimming upstream against a steady barrage of messages to keep you always wanting something other than what you have. We, adults and teens alike, have fallen over and over again for the promise of how good life will be when we are thinner, smaller, taller, different, sexier, better. In order to recover from an eating disorder and a horrible body image you must learn how to love and understand yourself no matter what. It will also take a lot of nerve and commitment to take a stand against the mainstream culture. This is your challenge. Only now are we, as adults, beginning to understand what messages we have been passing down to our girls about food and weight. It's time to stop the cycle once and for all. But it's up to you because you are the next generation. You can do it. You will discover how by listening to your own inner truth.

This article was excerpted from the book "Over It" by Carol Emery Normandi & Laurelee Roark. ©2001. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library, Novato, CA 94949. www.newworldlibrary.com

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About The Author

Carol Emery Normandi, M.S., MFT, and Laurelee Roark, M.A., CCHT, are cofounders of Beyond Hunger, a nonprofit organization that provides support groups, workshops, and education for individuals with eating disorders and body image disturbances. They are the authors of Over It  as well as of It's Not About Food, a book for adult women who struggle with food and weight.

Article excerpted from:

Over It
by Carol Emery Normandi & Laurelee Roark.
Info/Order this book.