13 May I Feel Fat at 38Kg
This article was first published in First Magazine May 2011. For the original feature click here
According to an article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry (2009), in the US alone up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder. Whether it is anorexia, bulimia, binge eating or another type of eating disorder, only 1 in 10 of them ever receive treatment. The saddest statistic is that eating disorders have the highest mortality rate associated to any mental illness.
“I’ve always been conscious of my weight,” says Marylynn Bezzina(36), “but at the age of 19 I became fixated. At school I was very active and loved sports but, when I left school and got a job that I hated I also stopped participating sports. At this point I weighed 55kg and was ideal for my height, but every time I looked in the mirror I saw something that I detested. When someone jokingly suggested that I was getting fat I immediately went on a diet. At first I was not starving myself, I just started to skip the evening meals and also started running again.”
“Slowly I started to lose weight, but I still thought that I was fat. At one point I stopped menstruating and weighed 38kg and perhaps unbelievably, I still thought that I was fat. My family and friends knew there was something wrong, but I just couldn’t see it. At this point my parents started forcing me to eat. They used to sit down with me to make sure I ate my meals, especially in the evening. Every time I cried, and felt so guilty afterwards.”
“My parents insisted that I get professional help and I went to a psychiatrist who slowly started to convince me that it is not normal to weigh 38kg. She explained that I was too skinny, not thin, but sickly skinny. I also started going to a nutritionist to help me with my ‘diet’ in order to start gaining weight again. At one point I did realise that I was too thin, but I still did not like the idea of gaining weight. I also had to stop running because I felt weak and it was counteractive to gaining weight.”
“Psychologically I was distraught, and I never liked those kilos coming up slowly. My nutritionist used to weigh me every week and I had to write a diary of my food intake. It took me more than a year to come back to weighing 50kg, but by now not only was I running again but I had also started cycling and swimming. Eventually I got into triathlon and competitive sports. Sports helped me accept my weight but even though I felt good, whenever I looked in the mirror I still saw myself fat. At times I still did not eat enough especially for the amount of training that I used to do. My weight used to fluctuate between 50 to 45 kg, sometimes even 43kg, but every time my weight went down, my performance, especially during competitions, deteriorated. My coach knew what was going on and he used to lecture me to eat, explaining that without the right fuel my true potential would not be reached.”
“Over 10 years have passed now and I’m still haunted with the thought of getting fat. I’m still very careful and watch what I eat, particularly now that in a few months time I will be giving birth. I have no problem staying away from the usual foods that are not recommended during pregnancy, but I do not like the thought of gaining weight because of the pregnancy. I hate not fitting in my clothes and I’ve now stopped looking at the mirror. Even though I know that the weight gain is because of the child that is growing inside me, and that it will be by far a joy to have this child, I just hate my body at the moment. I know that it is natural to gain weight during pregnancy but it is not easy to accept. All I can think of to get through this is that in a few months time I can start running again and get back to weighing what I used to weigh before I got pregnant.”
According to the same article that appeared in the 2009 Journal of The American Journal of Psychology, 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting, and by age twenty, 86% of them indirectly reporedt the onset of an eating disorder.
Marika* is a student in her twenties. She first noticed the onset of an eating disorder when she was still 14 years old. At the time Marika was a loner, but not out of her own choice. Sadly she spent most of her time alone, wishing she could be enjoying herself with friends. “I was still in secondary school” she recalls “and at first it wasn’t an issue of losing weight. I just felt that I did not belong anywhere and I used to think that no one enjoyed my company. One day I got so upset that I lost the will to eat,” she explains. “I just lost my appetite for a few days and it all spiralled downhill after that. Soon I was throwing up most of the food I ate.”
“Looking back, I now know that not eating and throwing up was just my way of being in control of something. It made me feel different, and in turn, I felt better. Over 10 years have passed now and even though I’ve been through the worst of it, I still feel lonely. I still don’t feel that I belong, and I still struggle to keep my eating disorder under control.”
Back when it first started, Marika didn’t know anything about eating disorders. “I was totally unaware of what was happening to me. I didn’t think it was an issue that I could go for hours without food. At school some people did realize that something was wrong, and they suspected that I was dieting because they never saw me eat, but I don’t think that any of them really knew the extent of it, and they surely didn’t know what to do to help.”
Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents and yet Marika believes that it is still very much overlooked and not taken seriously. “I was in and out of the pits for years. At times it was really bad, and at times it hardly showed its head. But it was always there, I was never free of it, and whenever I felt that I was out of control or else something went wrong in my life I would always go back to throwing up. I never wanted to tell anyone about it. It was my little secret. I certainly didn’t want my parents to know, as worrying them was the last thing that I wanted to do.”
“I tried to talk to friends and to secretly look for help but it was very difficult, so instead I found ways how to hide it, and I managed pretty well. In a way, getting away with it made me feel powerful. It was my secret and no one could take it away from me. I couldn’t and wouldn’t give it up because it made me feel special.”
2007 was the turning point for Marika. “I wanted to take part in a talent show in which I wanted to sing. I knew that throwing up would harm my voice so instead I started to drastically reduce my food intake. After a while I started receiving compliments for my weight loss and that gave me an even bigger boost to keep doing what I was doing. Soon enough, I was counting each and every calorie and setting myself ridiculous limits. By the end of it even I realised that I was eating too little. I reached a point where I couldn’t lose more wait so I started to train every day. Training made me feel good, because I knew that it burns more calories and hence helps me lose more weight.”
“Although my problem is not that obvious now, I can honestly say that over the years, weight has become my number one concern. I wish I could invest my thoughts and energy on something better, but it is not easy to let go. In the last past two years many things have changed. Mostly everyone realized what I was going through, including my parents. This meant that it stopped being my personal secret and I started feeling very guilty for worrying the people around me. The self blame made me feel horrible but not enough to stop. I had to be hospitalized twice because my weight went down to a dangerous 47kg.”
“Even though every day was a struggle, I don’t think that I have hit rock bottom yet, and even though I was physically weak, I had lots of strength inside me that kept me going.”
“Sometimes I’m worried that I’m too deep into this disorder to ever get out of it completely. I worry that it might be something that will follow me for the rest of my life, and I wonder if I’ll ever be strong enough to block it out. I know that I need lots of will power, support and understanding, and one of the reasons why I want to share my story is to raise awareness about what people with eating disorders go through. I wish that I could prevent other people, especially young adolescents from going through the same ordeal.”
“Unfortunately eating disorders are still not taken seriously. It took years before someone realised that something was wrong with me, and even then, it was hard to find the right help. Preventing the disorder altogether is where I believe we should be concentrating our attentions. I truly believe that had I found the necessary help at the beginning of my eating disorder, I would probably not have gone through all this for so many years.”
Sources :
Crow, S.J., Peterson, C.B., Swanson, S.A., Raymond, N.C., Specker, S., Eckert, E.D., Mitchell, J.E. (2009) Increased mortality in bulimia nervosa and other eating disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry 166, 1342-1346.
Collins, M.E. (1991). Body figure perceptions and preferences among pre-adolescent children. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 199-208.
