Due to the sensitive nature of her story, the subject of this story has asked to remain anonymous and will be referred to as “Eva.”
One comment about her figure caused “Eva” to start altering her body at just 12 years old.
It seemed perfectly harmless in the beginning. Eva became hyper-aware of food and started taking steps to improve her health. She joined sports, ate healthier, and stopped depending on food as a comfort. The issue was her motivation.
“It was from that moment I started trying to lose weight. It was about the way I looked. And then the next few years, I realized how in control I felt when I was actively losing weight or how in control I felt when I was utilizing eating disorder behaviors. And what happened was that desire to be ‘healthy’ became a desire to look a certain way,” Eva, a sophomore at Asbury University, said.
One of the driving factors behind Eva’s eating disorder was a desire for control which is a common trend among eating disorder patients and something Asbury’s dietitian, Rachel Hunt, has seen many times.
“I personally saw two main reasons why some students had eating disorders: One, needing a sense of control in what may seem to be an uncontrollable environment. And two, EDs starting from little dieting tricks that led students to believe they needed to look a certain way to meet societal standards,” Hunt said.
These contributed to Eva’s three-year-long struggle with bulimia. An eating disorder marked by “purging” after eating.
“Bulimia nervosa is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by a cycle of binging and compensatory behaviors such as self-induced vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge eating,” the National Eating Disorder Association said.
At one point, Eva wasn’t getting proper nutrition and wound up damaging her voice— one of the many risks associated with eating disorders.
Eventually, through counseling, Eva faced her issues and since then has worked on improving her health and relationship with food.
For about a year, Eva has been in “recovery,” a term she hesitantly uses.
“It’s not as much of a fight as the early recovery was, but I can’t say I used to have an eating disorder because it does actively affect me every day,” Eva said.
Because of her journey, Eva sees the signs and warnings on campus with meal skipping, and the high-pressure students place themselves under.
On any given day, you can hear the phrase “Well, I haven’t eaten today” ring out on campus with students laughing off the missed meal.
“On a university campus, you are so busy. Often you forget to eat. Sometimes when you notice, ‘OK, I’m forgetting to eat, and I’m losing weight.’ Is that a good or a bad thing? You know, sometimes people see it as a good thing, and they enter further into it. So sometimes the eating disorder stems from innocent behaviors,” Eva said.
The genuine nature of just being busy and forgetful can turn into a tool for some students to look a certain way.
“It deeply saddens me to hear when students skip meals to help them fit this ‘mold’ society created, yet it does not surprise me since this is not a new problem, but rather a more talked about problem,” Hunt said.
Meal skipping has had a high prevalence on college campuses for years. In 2016 the National Library of Medicine published a systematic review of meal skipping in young adults.
The review “identified that the prevalence of meal skipping among young adults ranged between 5 and 83%,” with breakfast being the most common.
Trends like this continued, and the alarming part is their connection with eating disorders.
In a study published in the National Library of Medicine in 2022, examining the relationship between the risk of eating disorders and meal patterns in college students, there was a “significant correlation found between dieting, skipping meals, and the risk of eating disorders in both genders.”
However, this does not come up in everyday conversation when meal skipping is discussed or even “bragged about.”
Eva says it has become so normal and “a part of everyday life for a lot of people” because we “can’t see the enjoyment of food, apart from the consequences of it.”
However, this can impact college-age students in slippery ways. Those “innocent” beginnings of an ED take a heavy toll mentally, and college-age women are already at a higher risk.
“According to the National Eating Disorder Association, the majority of full-scale eating disorders start around 18-21 years of age, which is right around the time many start college,” Hunt said.
That time is a period of natural change. Yet, it can cause panic and get people started with “bad behaviors.”
To combat those behaviors, Eva says talking about it has been the way she is able to cope and stop feeding the “addictive” tendencies.
“The eating disorder voice will always want you to keep it a secret because it’s easier to hide, and it’s easier to indulge in those behaviors when no one knows. The most powerful thing you can do to recover is tell people because you have a system of people that you know and trust who will help you,” Eva said.
There are support systems out there to help anyone with an eating disorder or even the beginning stages of one, which can sometimes begin with excessively missed meals.
Hunt advises that you unfollow people who bring those negative influences in your life and to seek therapy or expertise from a dietitian.
“Just remember that food is fuel. Your body requires it to function. Check-in on your mental health and know that there is always someone rooting for you in your corner,” Hunt said.
“The bottom line is that your body is the least interesting thing about you,” Eva said.