The room is quiet as I walk in and take a seat. It’s an open space with couches and blankets, adjoining a kitchenette. A crazy quilt of body-positive prints and stickers cover the walls and windows.
Around me, women, ranging in age from 20s to 50s, are sitting on couches, wearing large hoodies or track pants. Some have tubes in their noses to feed them. Many don’t show stereotypical signs of eating disorders, and if they weren’t in an eating disorder treatment ward, I wouldn’t know they needed to be there.
This is a typical scene from the role I have as a volunteer in eating disorder wards.
As I began this role, I had a surprising number of friends and colleagues reach out to me.
These were people who knew someone with an eating disorder or even had one themselves, who had questions about what I did and my perspective.
I heard all kinds of stories of people who felt at a loss to know what to do. Sometimes, the lines between “getting fit and healthy” and “being ill” had blurred so much that they weren’t sure where the line was.
Other times, it was a cry for help or a desire to be acceptable in a society that tells us “big is bad”.
I’ll never share specifics of who I meet or their experiences (clearly, that’s their story to tell, not mine).
But considering one million Australians suffer from these illnesses (and many don’t seek treatment), it’s no wonder I’ve had so many people even in my own circles reach out to me with questions.
Eating disorder awareness is still very low. So, six months into the role, here is what I do and why I care so much about it.
(And if you feel inspired, please give to your local eating disorder organisation. They need your help.)
My role is as a Stories of Recovery Ambassador.
Once every few months, I go into a hospital and meet with in-patients and out-patients who are going through eating disorder recovery.
My purpose is to share an extended version of my personal story.
It’s about twenty minutes. I share how I spiralled into a restrictive and obsessive-compulsive relationship with my body in my teens. I talk about the significant moments where I realised something was wrong, the difficulties and stigma I dealt with, and the slow process of recovery.
I share this story as someone who’s been through the thing and survived. The goal is to provide some hope that recovery is possible.
Sharing a story can be a small thing. But in this situation, it can be critical.
When you have an eating disorder, finding someone who “gets it” is rare.
Misinformation about eating disorders is still rampant.
We’re told that eating disorders are “diets gone wrong”, that only young women experience them, or that they are grounded in some type of narcissism.
Those flow through the attitudes of people around you when you have an eating disorder. Even if it’s well-meaning, people can say and do things that inadvertently make it worse.
And the scary thing is, professionals may not necessarily have good eating disorder awareness. Some medical practitioners still believe eating disorders are a “lifestyle choice”, and I’ve heard cases where doctors have even triggered eating disorders by giving unhealthy advice about weight.
In training for being an Ambassador, I learned what to say and what to avoid when sharing my story. I don’t talk about specific weights I got to, for example, or describing behaviours that helped me lose weight. For a vulnerable person, these things can be a “how-to” manual for destructive thoughts and behaviour.
I knew that because I’ve been through it. But not everyone does because these disorders are still so mystifying to many.
Eating disorders are already isolating. The lack of eating disorder awareness makes it more so.
Few men are in the wards. But it’s not because men are not dealing with issues around the same things.
More and more often, I notice studies into men’s mental health around eating and body image. It’s not pretty.
Gym culture can reinforce the idea that men – like women – must look a particular way. Except, instead of waifish and tiny, men feel the pressure to be toned and muscly.
The Butterfly Foundation reported that around 360,000 men are living with an eating disorder in Australia. Risk factors include extreme exercising and changing their diet solely to build muscle (according to the report, 90 percent of adolescent boys admit to exercising just to build muscle).
Gay and bisexual men face a significantly higher likelihood of developing an eating disorder (eating disorders are rife across the LGBTIQ community).
I suspect that men feel embarrassed to ask for help. Not least because no one expects them to have this “teenage girl” illness.
Equally possible? That many men may have eating disorders and not even realise it because the awareness is so low.
We need to start breaking this lack of awareness around body image and eating disorders. Because it poisons our society.
I’ve had women in my sessions ask me how I deal with diet culture that’s around me every day. Do I still have thoughts that reinforce my old eating disorder?
My answer? I struggle.
Whatever size I am, the pressure to be thinner than I am is intense.
Make no mistake: diet culture is everywhere. From the moralistic diet talk we use (“I am being good on my diet”), to how we assume a “beach body” must be a thin one, our society worships a specific image of our bodies.
It’s literally killing people and making many more mentally ill. But it’s socially acceptable, and even lauded.
Little wonder that so many people who have eating disorders are very unlikely to ask for help. As Lorna Collins wrote in a Guardian piece on the disorders,
We live in a society where low weight is accepted, not talked about, not treated. As I know well from personal experience, people only get treatment for eating disorders when they are nearly dead.
It makes me chafe against the fad diets that we accept as science or the obsession with specific body goals like thigh gaps and abs. We explicitly and implicitly shame others for their weight or size.
And I’m tired of it. I have seen what it does to people.
Maybe, one day, we’ll mature as a society to a point where we can genuinely embrace diversity in body types. But we have a depressingly long way to go.
If I – someone who’s recovered – still struggles, these people who are in the midst of the storm need all our compassion and support.
That’s one reason why I care about raising the issue of eating disorder awareness, and why I am so happy to answer questions about it.
I see those in-patients in the wards, and it breaks my heart that we, as a society, still don’t understand them.
So, read about anorexia. Read about bulimia and binge eating, and read about ARFID. Read about orthorexia and other more variants of the disorders.
Because we need to start building up a community who understands the struggle that people face each day.
We need to point out the harmful “body goals” that infect social media and think about why we criticise or compliment a celebrity’s body. We need to investigate why we use moralistic language about food and dieting.
And can we please ask ourselves why we egg one another on to flog ourselves into a shape or size that may not be our own?
You never know who you could be harming. It might even be you.
