Eating Disorders: Starving for the Scale

This article has been last updated on August 15, 2018 to remove the last name at source’s request.

Media seems to make eating disorders almost unpreventable in this current age of technology.  As of a 2015 study made by the National Institute of Health in 2011, 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from an eating disorder at some point throughout their lives.

The ‘ideal body’ is altered year after year as body images change, but being “thin” and what society considers “healthy” has been brought to a whole new level of extremity.  According to mirasol.net, only 5% of American females naturally possess the ‘ideal body type,’ yet advertisements continue to teach people, as young as adolescents, that that is what they could and should look like.  This is displayed at the high school too.

“I see that a lot of patients have a generalized concern about how they look.  I think that a lot of boys and girls between the range of twelve to mid-twenties are at risk [of having an eating disorder].  Even in older adults there are definitely plenty of [cases],” Lisa Kozlowski, local clinical psychotherapist, said.  “Most people are clear that eating is a part of how we live, but they must recognize this way [they are handling it] is no longer serving them.”

Often beginning  between the ages of thirteen to eighteen,  eating disorders are most prevalent throughout the middle and high school years according to National Institute of Mental Health and Lake Zurich is no exception.

Starting sophomore year of high school, Katherine Koebel,  senior, experienced the debilitating effects of anorexia and reflects on the unforgettable situation.

“I’ve accepted the fact that I’ve had an eating disorder for several years of my life.  It’s perfectly healthy to be sick sometimes.  It’s not healthy to starve yourself or try to hurt yourself, but [telling others is] kind of me accepting what has happened,” Koebel said.

Realizing the probable cause of her eating disorder, Koebel said “it was the perfect storm.”

“There were a lot of personal and social things that were going on.  I just kind of said one day, ‘maybe if I were thinner then I’d look like everyone and I wouldn’t be so different,’ ” Koebel said.

Also feeling like she did not belong, Lizzie, eighth grader at Lake Zurich Middle School South, began to experience similar signs of an eating disorder and claims to have “felt like the fattest person on the team” after the beginning of cross country in her 6th grade year.

“I remember seeing myself as big and even when I was at my lowest, I remember saying ‘I am so fat.’  My goal was that I wanted to be able to wrap my hand around my leg and I could do that but I thought it wasn’t good enough,” Lizzie said.  “I wanted to get better but when it got to the moment then I couldn’t.  I would talk a good game but I couldn’t actually [do anything about it].”

Looking from the outside-in on Lizzie’s situation, the average person wouldn’t realize that “there’s a bigger problem” behind the eating disorder and why she had the urge to lose weight.

“People always think that [others]‑‑ with eating disorders are vain, but they aren’t.  Something is not there,” Lizzie said.  “I grew up really well, I just felt like I was never able to be a kid.  I was going through puberty, I was getting bigger, and I just wanted to go back.”

Not knowing that she was developing faster than her classmates at the time, Lizzie looks back and realizes that was most likely the cause of her disorder.

“I was really frustrated with my weight and how I looked but a lot of an eating disorder is not just how you look,” Lizzie said.  “A lot of it is that there’s something else that triggers you or there’s something wrong in your life that you need to or want to fix.”

For Lizzie, she believes that not being able to be a kid triggered her eating disorder, but for Koebel there was more to it.

“There was a death in the family, I didn’t have a lot of friends in my classes, and — low and behold — in Health class we were doing the unit on counting calories.  That’s how it started,” Koebel said.

As both girls first began by restricting, they each lost a significant percentage of their weight, but tried their best to hide it.

“I wore baggy clothes so no one could see that I was losing so much weight, but you could tell.  My hair was falling out, my fingernails were blue, and they would come off in strips,” Koebel said.

The side effects that began to show because of their eating disorders began to become severe as time went on and it became hard for each of the girls to hide.  “I used to have to empty the shower of the hair three times during my shower, to prevent it from clogging,” Lizzie said.

Continuing to lose weight, anorexia took over the girls’ lives, and they say losing weight was an addiction that wasn’t controllable.

“There’s a little tiny voice in the back or your head that slowly creeps in on your life until it consumes everything you do.  It’s like a tumor, and in this case, your eating disorder likes it.  When you try to separate yourself from your eating disorder, instead you just merge with it,” Lizzie said.

After becoming obsessed with her weight, Lizzie began to only eat 100 calories at dinner each day and began to spend a lot of time exercising.  Looking back at the struggles, the girls see how necessary treatment is for patients like themselves.

“No matter what you say, [people with eating disorders] are sick and they are going to need treatment,” Koebel said.

Looking back now at pictures of themselves at their worsts, their mind sets have changed for the better, and both see how skinny they were in the past.

“Once your weight is up, the voices that tell you ‘you’re not good enough’ begin to go away,” Koebel said.  “It took a lot of support before I was able to tell myself I was worth more than I was putting myself through.”

Lizzie felt the same and said the voice was always there to make her feel guilty.

“There’s a voice in your head when you’re sitting down to eat and it looks through the calories like ‘oh there’s 100 calories in that and there’s 50 calories.’  Then it adds it up and the voice tells me what to eat and what not to eat.  It said ‘you’re not good enough, and I’d feel guilty if I ate breakfast,” Lizzie said.

To this day, both girls still do not believe there is ever a ‘full recovery,’  yet both are confident that they are starting to get better. and recover.

“There’s two types of recovery.  There’s recovery where you actually get better and then there’s recovery where you [think you do],” Lizzie said.  “Here’s an example:  you get a cookie.  At first I would just eat the middle because they want me to so I would eat the best part.   If you actually recovered then you’d eat the whole thing.”

For Lizzie and Koebel, talking to others, like their therapists and families, helped them most and made them feel like they were going to get better.

“In certain moments I would feel ‘yes, I’m going to get better.’  Overall I think that it’s really yourself; you can’t get better from someone else.  You have to decide that you want to get better,” Lizzie said.

Continuing to recover, Lizzie said she doesn’t “waste calories” and always feels the constant urge to be standing or moving.  Lizzie says that this experience “has opened a lot of windows” for her as this experience has changed her point of view.

“You can be any size and have an eating disorder.  I want to stress that a lot,” Lizzie said.  “There are so many people I saw who weren’t skinny.  Walking down the street you wouldn’t see it, but they still have the same problems as I did.  Probably throughout all of my journey I met two other people, besides me, that are your stereotypical anorexic and are skeletal-like.”

When she is struggling or going through a tough time, Lizzie tries to remind herself that “this is a part of her, but doesn’t define her.”

“I think throughout high school this will make me more aware of others and is going to make me much more open to people,” Lizzie said.  “I used to [immediately judge others].  I realized that everyone is fighting a secret battle you don’t know about.  You have to remember that.”

After feeling alone for so long, she says that now everywhere she turns she sees another person who is suffering with an eating disorder.

“I wasn’t confident and I felt like I was the only one who had those insecurities, but it’s really just hard in the moment.  Going through your recovery is hard but it’s so much better to live.  However, I did remember that there was a part where I thought ‘if I was ever going to die, then I want to die skinny,’” Lizzie said.

Still seeing four doctors ranging from weekly to monthly, Lizzie sees things looking up for herself.

“Honestly, I think this is a good weight to stay at right now.  I know I’m supposed to gain more.  It’s kind of hard for me now that I have to go gain more though,” Lizzie said.  “I’m not fully better yet because I think I’m okay, but I also thought I was okay when I was at 68 pounds.”

Emphasizing Lizzie’s point and also continuing her recovery, Koebel agrees that everyone recovering from an eating disorder will never be able to forget it.

“Nowadays everyone is dressing rather revealingly and you can’t help but think ‘maybe she’s anorexic,’ or ‘if I don’t eat my lunch then I’ll look like her.’  You’re never going to get rid of your thoughts,” Koebel said.  It’s the way it is, living as a recovering anorexic.”