In grammatical terms, he should be known as E.D. – but for people who live with him and refer to him as almost human or as an evil entity, he is simply Ed.
Seven panelists referred to Ed several times on Feb. 3 at the Italian Canadian Club here as the Guelph-Wellington Dufferin Eating Disorders coalition presented Faces of Recovery.
The coalition was celebrating Eating Disorders Awareness Week, which ran Feb. 1 to 7, by hearing from people who have lived with Ed, and how they managed to drive him from their lives. It wasn’t easy, and many of them were emotional as they told their stories. Some audience members found some of the material too intense, and at one point, a couple left the room in tears.
There are two common ailments involved with Ed:
– anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by extremely low body weight, distorted body image and an obsessive fear of gaining weight; and
– bulimia is an eating disorder in which the person eats large quantity of food in a short period of time (binges) and then gets rid of it to avoid weight gain by purging. That may take the form of vomiting or using laxatives to make the food leave their system faster so less of it gets absorbed. People with bulimia may also abuse diet pills and/or exercise compulsively in order to avoid weight gain. It can lead to death if untreated.
Along with that are issues of esteem, depression and loneliness, plus compulsive behaviour.
Only the first names of the the panelists are used to protect their privacy, and one of those names is changed.
Adrienne presented a view of Ed from a distance. She was anorexic from ages 15 to 17, and bulimic into her 20s. She looks back nearly 25 years at him.
Moving to Canada at age 11 was tough, and being placed in higher grades for her age was tougher. Her family has a high IQ, but she said, the emotional side is not there. Lonely and depressed, she turned to 17 Magazine, which she called, “not a good guide.”
She said distortion is part of eating disorders. “I was gaunt – and I thought I was fat.”
Adrienne’s salvation came from books and travel. The first gave her information, and the second allowed her to re-invent herself. As well, she found a best friend after pushing away friends from her younger years.
She became a social worker, because she became in tune with her emotions. “I got a career out of this,” she said.
She learned, “I had an emotional illness and I expressed it through my body.”
She also noted, “We have the ability to heal.”
Joanne and Keri are mother and daughter. Keri became depressed at 15, and lost weight to the point she no longer had a menstrual cycle. She was still strong enough, though, to excel at girls’ hockey, and the night before she went into the hospital, she scored. Joanne said nobody noticed her skill level was not what it had been, but her parents saw she was not as fast as she had once been.
Keri came home for Christmas, but left suicidal thoughts on a social networking website.
She went back to hospital with a “skeletal look.” Joanne said she and her husband knew that only Keri could fix herself. Two years later, with her weight regained, Joanne said she has learned it doesn’t matter what Keri eats, as long as she eats.
Keri remembered, “It hurt to eat. My stomach was shrunk.”
Why did she starve herself?
Joanne said, “She felt little control of her life. She could control what she ate.”
Keri said, “Ed was taking over my life. My mom said, ‘Eat.’ I said, ‘This is child abuse,’?” Keri remembered.
She spent three months in the hospital, and said, “You need people to support you.” She added she had to “believe’ she could recover. There were times she thought she did not have the strength.
“I didn’t. But look at me now.”
Ann had a tough time, too. Her mom was an alcoholic and her dad travelled. As the oldest of six, she “felt alone” and “food filled an emotional need.”
In high school, she became anorexic, with binges. She thought she was the only person in the world experiencing what was happening.
Ann started her recovery when she found a book, When Food is Love. She went into her 30s, got married, and still her body image issues followed her. About five years ago, she “hit a low point; not being what was in the magazines.” She found a group called Trellis, said to herself, “What do I have to lose?”
Today, “I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life.” As for the yo-yo diets, “I’m finished with that.”
She credits her therapy for “giving me the tools. If I look like this for the rest of my life I’ll be happy.”
Carly said “anorexia defined who I was.”
She started dancing at age 3, didn’t fit the body image, and by high school she was doing the diet and exercise. She suffered anxiety and depression, and thought she could control those through her weight.
“The first year of university, my best friend was my eating disorder,” she remembered. “I was in complete and total denial.”
That continued when a doctor told her she had severe anorexia nervosa.
“My family was in hell. I was in hell.”
She faced a long delay for treatment, then ran into a series of “bad doctors.” She left one program and “gave up.”
Carly ended up in the intensive care unit and spent four months in bed “too frail to do anything.” She finished her second year of university with straight As while in a hospital bed, and wondered if the doctors could be correct.
In private therapy, she began to turn it around.
Carly said, “I could be honest. We set goals. I was able to gain weight back.” She had been an exercise fanatic, and her doctor told her she could start exercising again, but only if she gained weight.
She not only has recovered, she now works at Danielle’s Place, helping people go through some of the things she herself had to fight. She said of Ed, “It’s like living with a voice in your head, controlling every mood – not just food.”
Tanya told the audience, “I met Ed at the age of 8.”
She was desperate to look like models in magazines, but, “I knew I was different. I started hating myself.”
At 16, she became anorexic, started to lose weight, and those “guys” she wanted to pay attention to her started paying attention, which only reinforced her illness.
Tanya became “addicted to the gym” and was continually “trying to reach that ideal I had in my mind I so badly wanted to look like. I discovered bulimia – my dirty little secret … I thought I had invented this big trick.”
Her 12-year-old brother learned her secret, told a priest at school, and she learned “the shame of [her parents] finding out. I was not in a good place.”
Sadly, she said, “I knew what I was doing. There was no reasoning with Ed.”
Her Montreal doctor sent her to Homewood in Guelph.
“I struggled, I resisted, and I fought, and I cried a lot,” she remembered. “It was the hardest year of my life.”
But she won. She quoted Dwight D. Eisenhower, former U.S. president: “What counts is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog.”
Tanya concluded, “If I can do it, anyone can. I know that from the bottom of my heart.”
Available help
The Guelph Wellington Dufferin Eating Disorders Coalition was formed in 2000 to help people break the cycle of eating and dieting.
Its website. www.eatingdisorderscoalition.ca, contains huge amounts of information on where to find help, from public clinics to private therapy, events, videos, and audio tapes to help people understand the suffering that comes in dealing with Ed, and how to drive him out.
