Editor’s Note: The name of the girl in this article has been changed to protect her confidentiality.
Amy is one of millions of college women who has battled an eating disorder and the depression that often comes with it. Amy, 23, was born into a wealthy family and what looked like a perfect life. But her sexually abusive father divorced her mother and left the family penniless when Amy was in the eighth grade, taking away any chance of perfection, Amy said.”I guess I just got used to not eating,” Amy said. “I used to live off canned peaches.”Her anorexia followed her to a small Ohio college, where she often fainted and battled exhaustion. After her boyfriend broke up with her, she attempted suicide, but still did not know she had an eating disorder. “I remember going to a psychologist and the first thing she said was, ‘I want to talk to you about your anorexia,’ ” Amy said. “I had no idea what she was talking about, even though at times I weighed only 89 pounds.” She started noticing her stark collar bones, deteriorating nails and teeth, and lanugo on her neck. Lanugo is a fuzzy hair growth that the body produces to compensate for its lack of muscle mass and keep the body warm, said Dr. Laura Hill, director of Harding Center for Eating Disorders.Common biological effects of anorexia include thinning and dryness of hair, a slowed heart rate and decreased bone density that can result in osteoporosis later in life, Hill said.Bulimics can experience an abnormal heart rate, swollen jaws from vomiting and tooth enamel erosion.In addition to harming the body, eating disorders can harm a person’s emotional and mental state.”I used to feel that eating in front of people was a violation,” Amy said. “I equated eating in front of people with sex and abuse and the sheer act of putting food in my mouth disgusted me.”Many anorexics have been sexually abused, Hill said.”It’s as if there’s this wound under a scab, and the scab is the eating disorder,” Hill said.People used to tell Amy that she was small, but she took it as a compliment. She was small, and she liked feeling invisible to other people.After intensive therapy and nearly failing out of college with a 1.9 grade point average, Amy transferred to Ohio State. She met people who told her she was too thin and for the first time in years Amy began to realize that eating can be a positive social thing.”I started doing things like going out to get an ice cream cone with friends,” she said. “I had to relearn how to eat in front of people, and all of a sudden I had more energy.”While at OSU, she started to gain more control of herself and her grades began to go up. Now she’s preparing to get married and working on an honors thesis. “I still have problems because I believe once you’re an anorexic, you always have a part of that with you,” said Amy. “I look in the mirror and see lumps, and there are weeks when I get absolutely obsessive about exercising.”She no longer owns a scale and tries not to pay attention to the sizes of her clothes. She thinks about her anorexia everyday, but she sees it as something that has made her stronger and that enables her to relate to other people with eating disorders.It angers her to see pictures of extremely thin models, who she thinks are unrealistic portrayals of women in society, on magazine covers. “But it also makes me mad when people think eating disorders are only about wanting to be thin,” she said. “I think it makes women and men seem superficial when you think about anorexia like that.”For Amy, and many of her friends who have anorexia, their eating disorders sparked from deeper problems that may have included a desire to be thin, she said. “For many people, eating disorders are a coping method to handle an incredible pain,” Hill said.Anorexia and bulimia can start out as a way to handle stress and emotional problems, or as a result of a diet that got out of control, she said.”We have to all realize that our bodies are gifts,” Amy said. “People are not valued for their waist size, and sometimes you have to look a little deeper to find out the real cause of someone’s pain.”
