You’re probably familiar with the sign and symptoms for eating disorders: obsessive calorie counting, bathroom trips immediately following meals, loss of menstrual cycle, moodiness, etc.
And it’s likely you know someone who’s suffered from an eating disorder. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, in the U.S. there are as many as 10 million females and one million males who suffer from anorexia or bulimia while millions more struggle with a binge eating disorder.
But behind each sign, symptom and statistic lies a personal story from those who lived – or continue to live –it.
Grace and Victoria Gold are two brave IU women who were willing to share their battles and successes.
Grace’s Story
It’s hard to believe that Grace, a confident 20-year-old at Indiana University, used to stare at her hips and hit them because she hated the way they stuck out.
When she was in seventh grade, everything was going so well that she became paranoid. Not to mention, she grew six inches in one year, which attracted a lot of attention.
In order to keep getting noticed and to make sure everything continued to run smoothly, she felt she had to maintain her weight of 105lbs. She would weigh herself 18 times a day and would base what she ate on her most recent weighing. Her diet consisted of little more than 1,000 calories a day.
“Name anything in the world, and I can tell you how many calories it is,” Grace says. “I was obsessive. I would add up all the calories I ate, over and over again. I didn’t trust myself. It was a comforting thing for me, and it was something I could accomplish everyday.”
With such a small number of calories consumed, Grace didn’t have enough energy to play volleyball or basketball – sports she loved – or even to be happy. She wouldn’t eat anything of substance, usually just a lot of sugar. Grace would look at cookbooks and bake, but would never eat what she made.
“When you don’t eat you can’t be happy,” she says. “When you have an eating disorder, you can’t focus on anything else. Your life revolves around it and how many calories you take in. … You realize how much time in the day you have when you aren’t focusing on food for 10 of those hours.”
Her parents told her to eat, but her struggle was internal, and she had to make changes on her own. Therapy not only helped her overcome anorexia, but also helped her parents realize they couldn’t fix her. “If I only ate five pretzels a day there was nothing they could do,” Grace says. “It’s not fun to see someone you love starve themselves.”
Grace soon realized that her drastic actions could affect her future. If she kept starving herself, she could end up in the hospital with a feeding tube. The doctors told her anorexia could affect her fertility and prevent her from having children. Also, if she kept going on this path, her metabolism would permanently slow down. “It’s strange, but at 14 years old I realized I was affecting the rest of my life,” Grace says.
Soon, she started to take steps toward getting better. At first she was hesitant to take antidepressants because she thought it would make her gain weight. Filled with paranoia, she believed antidepressants were a way for her parents and therapist to trick her into gaining weight.
But once Grace started taking them, she had a more positive outlook on life. She went from not ever smiling, to smiling for seemingly no reason. Grace recalls a peer doing a silly gesture in her school hallway, and as she walked away a smile crept onto her face. “I just thought, ‘Wow, I smiled for little to no reason,’” Grace says. “I didn’t remember the last time I did that.”
Only a week or two later, she went to a childhood friend’s house. Her friend knew something was wrong since Grace had withdrawn completely socially. Her friend sat down with her and told her what she typically ate during the day. As her friend spoke, Grace couldn’t help but think about what it would be like to eat all of that food without worrying.
Grace went home and slept on this foreign idea. In the morning, she asked her mom to make blueberry pancakes and then she put peanut butter – something she swore off because it’s packed with calories – on them. After the pancake and peanut butter incident she knew she was stronger than her illness, and slowly put sworn off foods, including cream cheese and ice cream, back into her diet.
It’s been several years since Grace tackled her eating disorder, and she has taken the lessons she learned from her adolescent self and applied it to her current life. Most importantly, she realizes that this illness can always come back, and because of this, she has modified some of her behaviors.
Though Grace has always been a perfectionist, but nowadays, she’s no longer as hard on herself. She takes time to relax and does activities she enjoys. “I had to learn that I need to please myself,” she says. This has made her realize that if something is no longer fulfilling, she should stop doing it.
Grace no longer weighs herself. All that matters now is how she feels.
When she starts a new relationship, Grace tells her boyfriend to try not to comment on her appearance; she doesn’t want to know how “thin” she is.
Grace has also learned to eat healthfully, but understands that if she gives into food cravings it isn’t a sign of weakness. “Food is not an enemy; it’s a way to nourish our bodies and survive,” she says. “If we all did that, there would be no weight problems.”
Grace is not ashamed of her eating disorder, nor is she ashamed of her body. At 5 ft. 11, with blonde hair and a big, bright, white smile, her positivity is radiant and contagious. “To be completely honest, I love my body. I’m not unhappy at all. I love that I’m tall. And, yes things can always be better, but if you achieve perfection in your body,” she pauses and then says, “so what?”
Victoria’s Story
Victoria Gold would normally throw up two or three times a week after binge eating. One time, though, her regular binge and purge session became more frightening than relieving.
Victoria found blood on her finger, which meant her esophagus was wearing down.
But even the blood on her finger couldn’t stop her from purging. What made her finally stop binging and purging? Discovering that it would only make her metabolism slow down and put her body in starvation mode, which would ultimately make her gain weight.
Victoria, now a 20-year-old student at IU, had always been overweight as a kid. So when she moved from Connecticut to California she was determined to not be the “chubby new girl.”
When Victoria was 8 or 9 years old, she left one of her classes – where she was working on a project with a partner – to attend her sister’s elementary school graduation. When Victoria returned, her partner said, “It’s not fair that you left me because you were only there for the food.”
This particular incident, and the fact that she couldn’t fit into abercrombie kids or felt she was unable to show her bare stomach in dance costumes, contributed to Victoria’s low self-esteem. So she started taking on anorexic tendencies and felt guilty whenever she ate junk food.
But one night before homecoming she ate a whole box of cookies and didn’t think her dress would fit her the next day. She made the comment, “Oh my god, my dress is going to be so tight tomorrow,” and her older sister told her if she threw up, she would feel so much better. So, Victoria took her sister’s suggestion and from that moment on she was hooked.
To Victoria this was the perfect idea: she could eat whatever she wanted and then just throw it up.
In high school a normal weight for Victoria was 125 lbs. so at 5 ft. 3 and 110 lbs. she says she looked sickly. Her mom threatened that if she lost one more pound she was going to take her to get professional help. “For some messed up reason it made me happy to know I was too skinny,” Victoria says.
Victoria was putting too much pressure on herself to be the “perfect” size. The summer before her junior year of high school she went to England and lost eight pounds from walking everywhere and eating light. When she returned, high school rumors were spreading about her that she lost the weight from cocaine use. Even though it was negative attention, she became obsessed with being called skinny and didn’t want to gain any of the weight back.
Bulimia was not only consuming her life, but was affecting her family as well. Her little sister, who was only in sixth grade at the time, was outside the bathroom while she was throwing up and asked her what she was doing.
And her sisters were fed up that she consistently asked, “Do I look fat? Did I gain weight?” to the point that they did not answer. Victoria’s little sister started picking up some of her bad habits, which included making comments like “my thighs are so fat.” “I just thought, ‘That’s not ok, she is not fat at all,’ she says. “It had me rethink what I was doing.”
But college helped Victoria realize that she couldn’t let food control her. Before coming to IU, she vowed that she would not gain the freshmen 15, but when she got there it seemed as if college was just filled with alcohol, 2 a.m. pizza deliveries and candy.
At the beginning of Victoria’s freshman year, she would eat junk food, feel bad about it and throw it up in the center building of McNutt Residence Center so that the girls on her floor wouldn’t see or here. After three times of doing this, however, she decided she was done.
“I just thought, ‘I can’t keep doing this. I’m in college,’” Victoria says. “Everyone gains weight and it’s ok if I do too. I started working out more and letting myself have foods that were once limited. And I came to realize that no one is perfectly fine with themselves.”
Even though she has become more lax on herself, her bulimic mindset sometimes reappears, but now she has the tools to help her. When she thinks about vomiting after eating too much, she changes the way she thinks. Instead of thinking ‘I’m fat’ she tells herself she’s just full. If she feels like she is about to relapse she calls her mom for support.
And instead of getting attention for her weight, she now receives recognition for her dance moves in Off Beat, IU’s Greek Hip-Hop Dance Team. “When I’m dancing, I realize what my body let’s me do and I’m not focusing on what it looks like,” Victoria says.
Now that her eating and exercise habits have improved she is not only in better shape, but in better spirits as well. “Don’t waste your life worrying about your weight when no one else cares so you might as well have fun,” Victoria says. “You can’t be on a diet forever; you have to live a little.”