The pain, suffering and hunger of eating disorders
Eating disorders affect at least 9% of the population worldwide.
When you're lost and alone in your eating disorder, the first thing you do is frantically search the Internet for information and support.
Yet this search typically takes you to private recovery centres that are out of reach ie unaffordable for most people.
Most of the sites you land on are very quick to provide excellent descriptions of the different kinds of eating disorders.
Binge eaters do this, anorexics do that, bulimics do this, and so it goes on. It's as if the person suffering is being watched, with morbid fascination, like a subject in a laboratory cage.
I have yet to find a website that begins with: An eating disorder is a problem of personal pain, individual suffering, poor self-esteem and a physical hunger for adequate nutrition.
What is the cause of an eating disorder?
There is no one answer to this question.
Shame, dieting and the media
Many eating disorders begin in shame. That uncle that laughed at the pink elastic around your waist as you rushed off to ballet when you were a teenager. That teacher who made a comment about your size. That family friend, that parent, that grandparent, that sports coach, and so it goes on.
As a young girl becomes a woman, she needs body fat to support the radical transformative process that is going on in her body and her mind. And then, as she begins this important journey into womanhood, someone thinks it is ok to make a comment about her changing body.
It is a well documented fact that eating disorders often start with weight loss diets.
The fashion and beauty industry’s obsession with thinness has been a major trigger for many women with eating struggles and poor self-esteem. Thin is beautiful and powerful, and when you are thin, men will respect you and they will want you.
Yet men also suffer with eating disorders. They too are influenced by the fashion and advertising industry which continuously puts forward what the ideal man looks like and what he does.
Eating disorders prevail in marginalized communities, including the LGBTQI community. They affect poor people and the affluent.
Warped values: sexism and gender roles
Women in particular are valued for their looks and their shape. Men 'like' their women to look good, and to be a certain shape and size. The 'fuller figure', certainly in my Eurocentric culture, doesn't cut it.
In traditional black cultures, patriarchal and cultural beliefs place value on a woman with 'good' childbearing hips and undermine women in smaller bodies.
So no wonder many women are freaking out!
I remember sitting in a boardroom in a meeting. A woman, smartly dressed and standing tall, walked passed. Indeed, she was in a much bigger body, but she was beautiful. The big boss looked at her and started laughing. Everyone else sheepishly laughed too. I didn't.
A while later I learned that his grandaughter was suffering with an eating disorder.
Bang on the money!
The role of trauma in eating disorders
Many eating disorders also begin in trauma. Trauma, like with many addictions, drives low self-esteem and a person who has been traumatized in some way often battles to develop adequate coping skills, and remains overwhelmed by the injustice they have suffered at the hands of another person, often someone they trusted.
Overeating and bingeing removes the pain temporarily, no different to alcohol or any other drug. Then it leaves you with the same self-disgust and shame in which your eating disorder took root. The US non-profit organisation ANAD reports that 30% of people dealing with eating disorders have experienced sexual abuse.
Traumatic events, like the death of a loved one, can also lay the foundations for an eating disorder.
Control and food restriction
When you experience a loss of control of your life, food restriction and weight loss can often become the one thing that you feel you can control.
Suffering, isolation and support
A person living with and suffering with an eating disorder can become very isolated. This only entrenches the vicious cycle of eating, starving, over exercising, vomiting and taking laxatives which will only ever be followed by the next binge.
It is a way of punishing yourself and you do it over and over again. You become trapped and you sink deeper and deeper into the problem, leaving you without hope nor the will to recover.
It feels like you are at the bottom of the deepest well that you will never be able to climb out of.
It is truly an awful thing to live with and experience.
For people that have never grappled with any kind of eating problem, it is very difficult to understand. You need to eat to survive, so what is all the fuss about?
The harm of an eating disorder
Eating disorders are so prevalent and are indeed a silent killer. An eating disorder causes significant harm to the body, and destroys your sense of self, your hope and often your will to live.
All too often, the person suffering is too ashamed to talk to others about what they are going through.
Diabetes and eating disorders
Eating disorders amongst people with diabetes are very common - the statistics are very worrying.
Unstable glucose levels, especially low glucose levels, can make it difficult to regulate your eating.
Added to that, other people think they are helping you with their relentless suggestions about what you should eat, yet this advice is seldom helpful and often leaves you feeling even more isolated.
For a person living with diabetes, an eating disorder becomes even more dangerous and detrimental to their health.
My recovery
It’s very empowering to recover from an eating disorder. You get your life back. You start creating hope for yourself again.
I finally started to connect the dots.
As a young diabetic who was very active, my glucose levels were always too low, and eating was the only way to correct them so I could ride my horse and have fun with my friends. I didn't realise that at the time.
My builimia began after the death of my step-father who I loved deeply and who was a rock in my life at a time when everything around me was uncertain.
But regardless of what triggered my eating disorder, I was stuck.
Medical support has improved
Psychologists and phsyciatrists didn't help me.
Thankfully, the approach to supporting someone with an eating disorder has changed. There is more acceptance by healthcare professional and better understanding of the drivers of eating disorders.
In my experience, the help that was availble in the 80s and 90s was far from ideal. I didn't feel understood, I felt like I was a freak. I was given medication to stabilise my mood, but the main side effect of this horrible drug was increased appetite. So I effectively went to doctors and psychiatrists for help becauuse I thought I was crazy, and was given pills that drove my eating! The main side-effect on the package insert was increased appetite.
Understanding your eating disorder, understanding yourself
Finally, I began to realise that my builima was leaving me in a permanent state of hunger and robbing me of the nourishment I needed.
My body was begging me to feed and nourish it. So I started to learn how to do this, and as I did, I started to trust myself and my body.
The heaviest I had ever been was when I was stuck in my bulimia.
Moving away from your eating disorder
When I learned how to eat again, my body responded so well, and over time, my body took rest at a weight it was comfortable with, which I call my natural weight. It was not easy, but over time, I taught myself to eat when I was hungry, to resond to thirst, to better manage my emotions, and to find other interests including some form of movement or gentle exercise like walking.
Eating Free is about building a way of eating and an approach to food and your body that will set you on a course of recovery and health that is sustainable.
Will it be easy? Not necessarily, though you're likely to experience the benefits of my approach fairly quickly.
Will it be worth it? Without a doubt.