National Eating Disorder Awareness Week only lasts from Feb. 22 through Feb. 28, but for people living with an eating disorder, the awareness of the illness may last a lifetime.
“You can struggle with [the illness] for your whole life,” said Clorinda Vélez, professor of psychology at Quinnipiac University. “They are really challenging conditions.”
Eating disorders include diagnoses such as anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, but many who suffer from the illness exhibit more than one of those symptoms.
Anorexia, for instance, refers to people who experience “successful weight loss,” according to Vélez, but bulimics — despite using a variety of methods to purge food from their bodies — do not actually become underweight. Both are deadly.
“People can actually die from the health consequences of both anorexia and bulimia and I don’t think people quite recognize that. You are starving, so your body looks for energy elsewhere including your major organs.”
Clorinda Vélez, professor of psychology at Quinnipiac University
In addition to anorexia and bulimia, those suffering from binge eating disorder also face an abnormal relationship with food. They will often consume large amounts of food in a short period of time.
“You engage in binge eating when in a discrete period of time you eat an atypically large amount of food — larger than would be typical for you and larger than what might be considered typical for an average person,” Vélez said. “While you engage in that binge eating you feel out of control.”
While Vélez said that being at college is not a specific risk factor for developing an eating disorder, she said many qualities college students have can result in disordered eating.
“There are a number of things that are associated with eating disorders like perfectionism or being highly driven or not feeling good about your body — also different activities like sports,” Vélez said.
These are all factors that often exist among college students who are balancing school work, extracurricular activities and the pressures of friends.
Melina Khan is a freshman media studies major at Quinnipiac. Now, she said she has a positive relationship with food, but four years ago when she was a freshman in high school, things were much different.
“Toward the end of my freshman year of high school, I took a leave of absence for treatment,” Khan said. “Since my freshman year of high school, I have been in recovery.”
For Khan, freshman year of high school was a time of a lot of transition. She was starting at a new school and she began to feel overwhelmed.
“There was a lot of change happening in my life and I began to feel out of control,” Khan said. “I think that’s where I decided to channel any kind of control I had into my relationship with food.”
Now in college, Khan faces new stressors, including her roommates who often do not understand the mindset of someone in recovery.
“Living with other girls and people who didn’t understand what I have gone through — there is a toxic environment in college around food and diet culture and all of that kind of stuff,” Khan said. “It’s been hard because I live with girls who are constantly talking about, ‘Oh I ate too much’ or ‘I need to eat a salad.’”
Comments like these, while bothersome, have not caused Khan to waver in her recovery.
“I am strong enough to handle it, but it doesn’t make it less hard,” Khan said.
Part of what has made Khan successful in her recovery is the support system that she has from family, friends and her therapist. Sydney Reynolds, a third-year media studies major, has a 15-year-old sister who is recovering from an eating disorder. Despite the distance, Reynolds said she is doing the best she can to be a support system for her sister while they are apart.
“Even though I was at college I could Netflix Party with her, I could play an online drawing game with her. It was taking her mind off of it and creating new healthy habits that weren’t related to working out and telling her, ‘You’re strong.’”
Sydney Reynolds, third-year media studies major
Reynold’s sister’s organs were shutting down because of how underweight she was when she started recovery. Since her recovery began, she has used a wheelchair to move in order to avoid burning calories and her parents prepare all of her meals to ensure she is getting enough nutrients.
Reynolds has advice for friends and family of individuals with an eating disorder — model appropriate eating behavior.
“Show them that it is OK to have snacks,” Reynolds said. “Unhealthy foods are also part of your daily intake. Don’t put a good or bad label on food. Everyone can have eating disorder habits and not realize it. It can quickly snowball.”
According to the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders (ANAD), eating disorders affect approximately 9% of people worldwide. Vélez said they are most common in Western culture, but because of the globalization of media, the glorification of skinny bodies is spreading.
“Our Western culture has the ‘thin ideal’ where the ideal body is the thin body and that is definitely closely linked to eating disorders,” Vélez said.
If you, or someone you know is exhibiting symptoms of disordered eating, it is important to seek help. Sophomore nursing major Alexa Otto is recovering from an eating disorder. She said that it is important to realize it is easier to recover when you don’t suffer alone.
“Recovery goes at its own pace,” Otto said. “You will know when it is time to reach out to some outside source.”
Otto got treatment from The Renfrew Center for Eating Disorders based out of New York, but she said the resources closer to Quinnipiac such as the campus dietician are also helpful.
“The second I finished my first week (of recovery) I was like ‘Damn, I really wish I did this earlier.’ Give yourself grace and encouragement during the recovery process because it is really difficult,” Otto said.