02/21/2022
Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2022
What Is and What Could Be
EDAW in February is intended as an opportunity to educate the public about eating disorders and to provide hope, support and visibility to those affected by eating disorders. As an eating disorder clinician, I am here to say that eating disorders are real, they are serious and life threatening, and they are on the rise. We have all heard the bleak news, that beyond the COVID pandemic, there is a growing epidemic all its own – mental health in our children, teens and adults in this country. The prevalence of disordered eating and body image disturbances in children and teens is alarming.
I’d like to offer a brief education about what eating disorders are and what they look like, and then I would like to bring your attention to what we can all do to address the rising rates of dieting, eating disorders and body image disturbance.
Eating disorders most often revolve around a fear of gaining weight and a fear of fat. Often there is a focus on trying to “be healthy”, to the point where one is actually not at all healthy. Eating disorders involve behavior around food that is extreme and are marked by psychological distress – fears of food, distortion of body image, preoccupation with food and body, withdrawal from normal life, impaired functioning in school, work and relationships. Eating disorders have serious emotional and physical consequences – depression, anxiety, social isolation, self-loathing, cardiac problems, hormonal issues, fertility problems, and poor bone health, to name a few. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.
Eating disorders impact people of all ages, races, ethnicities, genders, and socio-economic statuses. They are serious mental disorders with devastating psychological and physical outcomes. Once someone develops an eating disorder, there is treatment and hope for recovery. But it can be a long and winding road and it would be far better if we could address issues in our society that contribute to risk factors for these horrific illnesses.
So, if you or someone you know and love has an eating disorder, please know that resources and help are available and please reach out to NEDA, MEDA, FEAST, your physician, a local eating disorder therapist. If you have tried and can’t find one (because believe me I know how hard it is right now to find eating disorder clinician), keep trying!
And for the rest of, can we please look at our own values, our definitions of health, and why we as a culture are obsessed with thinness and vilify fatness? Why is the number on a scale or the size of our bodies more important than our character and our contributions to the world? Would it be possible to notice differences in size and shape without judgments or criticisms? What will it take for us to look inside for what healthy, nourished and validation feels like and not base our behavior on external “shoulds”?
We need to address the implied belief that by controlling what we eat and look like, by losing weight, by adhering to an arbitrary diet, by neglecting what we are on the inside in the pursuit of appearing perfect on the outside, that by doing all of this we can somehow magically address the anxiety, isolation, hopelessness, dissatisfaction and disconnectedness that we might be feeling on the inside. This is the paradox of the eating disorder, that by controlling our food, our body and pursuing the ideal, that this will make us feel better. In order to truly feel happier and healthier, we need to figure out what genuinely makes us feel good and what is uniquely healthy for each of us.
As shocking and scary as this may sound, you actually gain more than you lose by shedding the rules that don’t align with your values and your health. If we do this together, we may just build a culture of health where kindness, positivity, inclusiveness and acceptance benefits us all.
