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Walking a Thin Line
Recognizing and Preventing Eating Disorders
By Carma Haley
Carrie was diagnosed as bulimic at the age of 16, but says that the "rituals" of bulimia began much sooner. "I developed at a young age, 11, in the fifth grade," she says. "When I began getting breasts and filling out, so to speak, I saw myself as getting fat. It didn't matter that I wasn't gaining weight...I still saw myself as fat each and every time that I looked in the mirror."
Carrie says she began exercising and dieting, but when she did not lose weight, she began the binge-purge cycle of bulimia. "I would do this at least three or four times a day," she says. "Afterward, I would weigh myself and look in the mirror. I can remember thinking, 'Nope, still fat!'"
The American Center for Eating Disorders says that those with eating disorders tend to see themselves as one size – overweight – regardless of what size they are in reality, because anorexics and bulimics have a "distorted self image, and when they look in the mirror they see what their mind tells them, not their eyes."
Dr. Keseleler, a psychologist in Richmond, Va., reports that bulimics, unlike anorexics, are aware that they have a problem and feel guilt or depression after a bingeing episode. "Those that suffer from these eating disorders usually have a fear of being overweight due to some outside influence ... social status, family or peer pressure, or the requirements for athletics, whether real or self-produced," he says. "A person suffering from either of these disorders will see their weight problem as an imperfection. Anorexics and bulimics alike have been noted as being 'perfectionists' in most all areas of their lives – school, work, sports and home-life – and view being overweight as not being perfect."
