Eating Disorder Talk

Heidi is a 25-year old girl. She allowed me to interview her and this two-part series is the result of her honesty and candidness. Today, I’ll cover what led her to present day’s habits. Please revisit on Monday when I describe how Heidi’s life today is affected by her history with disordered eating.

When I asked her to describe her history with disordered eating, she burst into laughter. She’s been diagnosed with multiple eating disorders over her short lifetime. After living with it for seven years, she was pronounced anorexic at 18. Then, she was a college freshman and her roommate made her a doctor’s appointment to get assessed. In hindsight, she describes her lifestyle then as an eight on the anorexic 1-10 scale – she over-exercised, fasted and played with her food, instead of eating it.

Four years later, Heidi was diagnosed as bulimarexic, falling into a habit that many closeted-anorexics do: eating socially and purging immediately afterwards, but mainly restricting and exerting energy to eliminate calories consumed. This was to allow the image of being “fine.” In fact, during her adolescent years, she says that the only time she would eat was during family dinners.

At the time, she was treated for another condition related to her eating disorder and her physician prescribed a medication that caused her to gain twenty pounds. She’s not happy that she still can’t drop all of the weight from the medication, but credits her doctor for saving her life.

Heidi grew up in a low-income family without religious participation – attending church was her escape. Her family has it’s own problems: parents who indulge excessively in marijuana and her sister is an avid speed user. Growing up, she felt she was the family mediator and that she couldn’t let on that she had any problems of her own. Because of this, she suffered understandable anxiety from an early age. Symptomatically, she’d fast during anxious moments from fifth grade until recently. Then she started getting compliments on her weight loss and the path was taken.

She doesn’t feel like she fits in with her family. She’s the only one in the family with high school and university degrees. She earned full scholarships for her freshman and sophomore years of university due in part to her activity in high school extra-curricular programs and having a nearly perfect GPA – she was even one person away from the top 5% of her graduating class. She went on a mission with her church. She avoided drugs and alcohol until early adulthood. She calls herself the “white sheep” of her family.

Add to that the lack of family resemblance. She’s a slightly over-average 5’6” when the rest of her family towers at 5’8”, 5’11” and 6’1”. She wishes she had her mother’s bone structure but inherited her father’s instead.

Please come back on Monday for more of Heidi’s struggle.