Eating Disorders Part 2
by: Lindsay Demchuk
When a senior in high school, I began to drastically cut back on the foods I would allow myself to eat. Lunches reduced to applesauce and yogurt barely assuaged the hunger I worked hard to ignore through the afternoons of class marked by dizziness and an inability to concentrate. Pressures to fit into the perfect grad dress (as well as to avoid the intensely critical eye of a new, ‘popular’ group of friends) marred my thoughts as I would run vigorously and expend maximum energy in physical education classes and soccer practices. Cleverly, I would avoid the comments and inquiries from friends about my behaviors and continue on as if nothing was the matter.
Later, as a university student wrestling through a myriad of the upheaval of personal issues and the tumult of transition, I found my comfort in a bucket of ice cream, chocolate chip cookies and many plates of food. To fill the hurt, the void, I continued to eat. The void never filled, but my stomach did – to the point of being ridiculously ill.
Never did my actions amount to that of a full-blown clinical eating disorder, but I was certainly disordered in my eating. Although I cannot fully understand what it is like to have an eating disorder, but I tasted a glimpse of what that world could begin to look like.
What is it that drives people to these disorders? What causes this? Is it genetic? Is it the result of internal or external pressures? Are expectations from family, friends, society or the media to blame? Are those expectations are actually real or just felt? Could it be an interplay of factors?
Even experts in the field of eating disorders cannot identify the exact cause of eating disorders but rather have identified a myriad of influences and factors that could contribute to the onset of a disorder. An individual, for multiple reasons, may be internally susceptible to an eating disorder and external factors may or may not affect whether they actually develop one. The list of contributing factors is long; however, there is one element that is capable of preventing eating disorders or, at least, disordered eating: self-esteem.
Self-esteem is a healthy sense of respect and pride in oneself. Low self-esteem, a dissatisfaction with one or more aspects of oneself (both internal and external), has been shown to be a catalyst in the onset of eating disorders. It doesn’t take much – an off-handed comment by a loved one or the latest photos of a young Hollywood starlet having lost 60 pounds four weeks after the birth of a child – that can cause someone to start comparing their waistline to hers, questioning why it is that she doesn’t meet those standards and resolving to do something about it. It’s a quick, easy cycle to get wrapped up in, to allowing your mind to race away until you begin to look in the mirror as you search for ‘flaws’ and concoct ways of ridding yourself of them.
Many are quick to blame the media and rightfully so. Although they are definitely not completely to blame, they do not help the situation. The values conveyed throughout magazines, advertisements, television and movies serve to associate the thinness with happiness. In a world where dissatisfaction, emptiness, unhappiness and loneliness run rampant, why wouldn’t an individual want to seek out measures to achieve happiness, wholeness and contentment? And, if those values can be achieved by being thin and attractive, why not lose a few pounds?
While the number on the scale may decrease, that won’t necessarily mean that a lasting sense of satisfaction will be present. And because that satisfaction doesn’t come, it must mean that a few more pounds have to go before that feeling of wholeness and contentment is completed in our lives – a long-awaited treasure chest of feelings that seems to continually bury itself deeper the further we dig, consistently out of reach no matter what we try to do.
If you’re trying to go about finding contentment in that way, you’re working entirely too hard on entirely the wrong thing. The hard work – and, yes, it is hard because everything we’re being taught or shown runs contradictory to this and running contrary to it is a challenge in itself – begins when we realize that each of us are made to have different body shapes and sizes. We cannot look exactly like the pictures we see or the people who stand beside us. Our worth is not determined by a number – if it is, would that mean that women back before the advent of a personal scale were worthless because there was not a number with which they could be classified? No, of course not. That is ridiculous. So is defining yourself by that number – either on the scale or the tag of your jeans.
We find our contentment when we work toward accepting ourselves for who we are, not leaving this acceptance to be conditional, dependent on who we will become. It takes changing the way we’ve been programmed to think, not longer should our first priority be to see our ‘flaws’ but find what you like about yourself, see those things first when you look in a mirror and let them be your focus.
There is no formula for how to go about this but it takes time and creativity to find ways that work for you, that successfully serve to change the patterns of thought that have been detrimental to your self-esteem and find solutions that help to build it in a healthy way. We may have to remove problematic things from our lives in order to best add in the things that build us up. We just need to step forward and do it. It’s about time this cycle of dissatisfaction and low self-esteem is broken.
Lacing up my running shoes and going out for a jog was my lifeline both in high school and later on in university. It was where my mind would clear and I began to initially see my problematic behaviors that I have since left behind. My focus shifted from having to run far and fast in order to drop those last few pounds to a consistent challenge to run further and faster, to see what my body is capable of doing.
We have to learn to love ourselves and help others to do the same, which is, arguably, the only preventative measure we can take to disable to crippling force and onset of eating disorders and disordered eating.
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