For starters, this article is not an analytical, evidentiary account of eating disorders and their causes. I would not want you to think I was writing something I do not have the research depth or breath to understand. That would be unjust and feed into unwarranted generalisation.
Rather, this article is one account, from one person in one place and time, about how eating disorders can manifest themselves. But, please know, it is not attempting to provide a broad, binding theory of all food-related anxieties, so please remember that all experiences are different because, ultimately, everybody’s relationship with food is different.
Here is my commentary.
Food and control are intimately interlinked. When it feels like you can’t control any other aspect of your life, what you can control is what goes from your plate to your mouth. As swarms of chaos surrounds you, food becomes a method of management. When you don’t want to deal with things that are too big to emotionally digest, you can minimise or maximise what you put in your gut.
This could be related to stress over upcoming exams, trips or social-relationships. It could stem from grief over the loss of a family member, a friend or a previous life that you thought was certain. The external world changes in an erratic and unwelcome fashion, thus people attempt to alter their internal world in order to cope and regain control.
Hence, eating disorders do not appear overnight. They develop overtime as part of a wider contextual web of events, placing an individual in a position of anxiety and uncertainty.
Of course, media images and a socially induced fear of “fatness” play a participating part. Skeletal images of beauty create a goal for losing weight, so you start to cut down here and cut down there, you stop eating meat, dairy and eggs, and then chocolate, cake and crisps are of course off limits if you want to reach that ideal figure.
Wow, I am actually losing weight and I am now a size 8! I am no longer an “elephant” but an object of desire. In some shops I can squeeze into a size 6 and my old jeans, the ones that made my thighs look like tree trunks, are cast aside. Actually, most of my old clothes no longer fit me, because I finally look like “those” girls – all because I am in control.
Then, soon, before you know it or care to admit it, this method of control goes out of control. The feeling of starvation becomes normal. The prospect of supper is painful, every reluctant gulp scratching down the throat. You can’t eat with people because they make awkward shuffles and piercing looks, and you can’t eat alone because that would be cheating. Food is now a form of alienation, because everyone else is gorging themselves daily on three square meals whilst you are cold and small.
Friends and family take you aside, attempting to coax out of you a realisation that something is wrong, but they never use the finite, stomach-turning term. But you know exactly what is happening.
Why are they worried about me when I have everything under control?
However there comes a point when you can no longer convince yourself that this is true. When your body changes so much that the mirror casting only a bony, skin-stretched shadow reveals the truth even when you don’t see it.
If you or someone you care about is suffering from an eating disorder, please visit one of the links below for more information and to seek help:
https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/eating-disorders/
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